Construction Of Female Authority

Toni Morrison,a famous contemporary African-American female writer,won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.Her ninth novel A Mercy was published in2008,widely acclaimed,and attracted extensive attention from literary critics and researchers.In the novel,Morrison breaks through the limitations of her previous works which mainly focus on the fate of black women and extends her vision to women from different races under slavery.The novel narrates the living conditions of different ethnic groups on the North American continent at the end of 17 th century.There are rare studies on the novel from the perspective of feminist narratology,mostly from feminism,identity construction,narratology etc.Feminist narratology originated in the 1980 s and is an interdisciplinary subject of structuralism narratology and feminist criticism.This theory provided a brand-new and powerful basis for the study of the works of female writers.Feminist narratology uses narrative form as the place and tool of political struggle,and pays attention to female “voice” which refers to a kind of narrative voice.According to feminist narratology,the voice expresses female-centered thoughts.What type of narrative voice or narrative discourse used by the narrator has a great influence on its narrative authority.The female figures in A Mercy are highly authoritative and influential,and their “voices” resonate with the readers.Toni Morrison establishes the discursive authority of the female characters in the text and her self-authority beyond narrative through masterful narrative skills in the novel.This thesis uses Susan Sniader Lanser’s theory of feminist narratology with three kinds of narrative voice(authorial voice,personal voice and communal voice)to analyze A Mercy in order to explore the path of female consciousness and identity construction of the characters,and to reveal how the author applies specific narrative strategies(such as the interlaced use of internal and external perspectives,the speech presentation of the characters)to subvert male discourse,construct female narrative authority,and show her gender political position and narrative aesthetic effects.This thesis is divided into six chapters.Chapter one is the introductory part,mainly including the author’s life and the main content of A Mercy,and the previous researches at home and abroad on A Mercy,the significance of the study and the framework.Chapter two mainly introduces the origin and development of feministnarratology,and Lanser’s division of narrative voice.Chapter three analyzes the authorial voice of the novel,in order to explain how the author uses this narrative mode to subvert the male authority and construct the female narrative authority.Chapter four mainly discusses the personal voice embodied by two female characters in the novel,in order to reveal how the author penetrates her female consciousness into the characters and realizes her narrative authority.Chapter five probes into the communal voice scattering into the above two voices,and establishes the author’s narrative authority by giving voice to the marginalized female group.Chapter six summarizes the research results in this thesis.A Mercy is a novel with masterful narrative skills,which presents both female consciousness and female narrative form.The analysis of narrative voice in A Mercy reveals the important significance of female discourse to the construction of female identity.By using feminist narratological theory to analyze the novel,it establishes the narrative authority outside Morrison’s narrative discourse,and highlights Morrison’s insight into society,history and human nature.