Different Spaces And Narrative Strategies

Alice Munro(1931-)is a Canadian author writing in English.She is regarded as one of the most important short story writers and was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.This thesis is concerned with Munro's tenth collection Hateship,Friendship,Courtship,Loveship,Marriage,exploring the way that different spaces are constructed from a narratological perspective and the significance of the second space in this collection.Time order like analepsis and prolepsis play important roles in Hateship,together with multiple perspectives andthe shift between external and internal,omniscient and limited perspectives.These strategies contribute greatly to the construction of different spaces and different identities of the female protagonists in these spaces.This thesis includes five chapters:Chapter One is an introduction to the thesis,with information on the author and the target text,the current scholarly context,the research problem and its significance,the theoretical framework and the structure of this thesis.Chapter Two analyzes life centers for the heroines in this collection.Usually a house,a husband and the heroine's daily life identity are major components of this space.Among different narrative strategies,analepsis and limited perspective are shown as the major techniques to patch the picture of a woman trapped or blindfolded in her daily life space.The character's daily life and mental condition are parts of the narrative as they can help to explain the existing identity crisis in the primary narrative.Chapter Three focuses on the construction of some different space and happenings in it that bring significant changes to the heroines' identities.The second space is usually a marginal place where she temporarily escapes to.There may be a man other than the husband sharing a transitory love experience with the heroine.The first person and the third person experiencing perspective are dominant in the presentation of this space.The internal perspective is limited in vision.However,it is this limitation rather than the omniscience that attracts attention to their changes.Suspense and resolution of crises are gradually worked out as the character's experience grows in the second space,until the kernel events take place.Chapter Four studies the way the heroines recall and deal with the pivotal events that shortly occurred to them after returning to their life centers.Prolepsis and retrospective perspective often appear at the end of the stories in this collection.Suddenly,the primary narrative ends,and it comes to years later.When some long buried memory reappears in the heroine's mind,epiphany occurs.As the characters grow older,they become mature and sensible enough to reexamine the kernel events and gain significant insight through external perspectives.The last chapter is the conclusion of this thesis.There exist two spaces for the female protagonists in these short stories.Daily life is the first space,with the protagonists' identity crises fermenting and aggravating.This work stresses on the significance of the second space which is marginal but liberating,leading to the resolution of the crises.Strategies of narrative perspective,time and space help to construct the crises and their resolution,and enhance the interplay between outer space and people's inner world in this collection,thus helping reveal the affirmative theme of this work:women's lives are complex although they sometimes appear the opposite;women have room to resist suffocating lives,and that in a sense shows women's agency,even in the case that their resistance strategy is escape.