A Study Of Polyphony And Thematic Construction In The Woman Warrior

Among Chinese-American writers,Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most remarkable since the late 1970 s,and is considered to be a leading figure.Her representative work,The Woman Warrior,known as “an important milestone in the developing process of Chinese American literature”,has achieved great success since its publication and has been awarded the National Book Award.Maxine Kingston's exploration and innovation in her artistic techniques have been vividly reflected in The Woman Warrior and the variety and vividness of its artistic expression are astonishing.The book is divided into five chapters.Each chapter is separate and independent but also closely linked with other chapters.The whole novel is like a huge dialogue,in which all kinds of consciousnesses are independent and meanwhile blended well with each other.Kingston's artistic use of polyphony further reveals profound themes,making the novel much more attractive in artistic form.In The Woman Warrior,Maxine Hong Kingston uses a unique narrative approach.The whole work has two narrators,the mother and the author herself.Through the dialogues between the mother and the daughter and between them and other characters such as the dialogue between the two sisters,between the author and her rewritten characters,between the author and herself,and so on,the story is developed into various levels.Among these dialogues,the dialogue between mother and daughter runs through the whole work,linking other dialogues together so that the work seems to be a unity;at the same time,each character is an independent individual with equal power of discourse.Thus,it is evident that The Woman Warrior is a polyphonic novel.The polyphonic novel theory is the summary of the basic characteristics of Dostoevsky's novels by Bakhtin,a famous literary artist,theorist and critic of the former Soviet Union.Bakhtin believes that Dostoevsky's novels are a “multi-part” and “full-scale” dialogue,that is,polyphonic novels.According to Bakhtin,a genuine polyphony consists of fully valid voices and consciousnesses which are independent from and unmerged with each other.Bakhtin emphasizes that what unfolds in polyphonic novels is not a multitude of characters and fates illuminated by a single authorial consciousness.All the characters in the novel are equal,and the protagonist's arguments about himself and the world is just as fully weighted and valued as the author's word,that is to say,the characters are free people rather than voiceless slaves and they are capable of standing alongside the author,capable of disagreeing with and even rebelling against the author.The novelty of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is that the author has made several characters have the same right to voice as the narrator,forming a polyphonic multi-part and full-scale structure.Therefore,The Woman Warrior is obviously polyphonic both structurally and thematically.Besides Introduction and Conclusion,this thesis consists of four chapters.Introduction tells about the life and works of Maxine Hong Kingston,the main contents of The Woman Warrior and its academic achievements both at home and abroad.In addition,the significance of the study is presented in this part.The first chapter systematically discusses Bakhtin's polyphonic novel theory,including the basic concepts,main features and artistic forms.The second chapter to the forth chapter,based on the polyphonic novel theory,focus on the concrete expression of polyphonic artistic tactics in The Woman Warrior and explore in detail the relationship between polyphony and the construction of themes.Chapter Two explores the themes embodied in the Great Dialogues between Kingston and rewritten characters — Fa Mu Lan and Ts' ai Yen,including the coexistence of racial discrimination and gender discrimination,and the pursuit of ideal cultural integration.Chapter Three explores the Americanization embodied in Great Dialogues between characters.Through the dialogues between Mother and Daughter,and between Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid,the impact of Americanization on the Chinese-Americans and the opportunities and challenges in the process of Americanization are revealed incisively and vividly.Chapter Four explores the intensification of the themes studied in former two chapters in the Microdialogues of Kingston's self-consciousnesses.The last part is the conclusion of the paper,making a summary that Kingston's artistic use of polyphony is of great significance in The Woman Warrior to help deepen its themes and enhance its aesthetic value.