female authority and narrative voice
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Female Authority and Narrative Voice
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Contents
Introduction 1
Outline 2
Researching Findings 3
Further Study 4
Introduction-Susan Lanser’s Theory
Authorial Voice
Personal Voice
Communal Voice
Fiction of Authority
establish & maintain authority in a number of ways
““ a quest to be heard, respected, a quest to be heard, respected, and believed, a hope of influence” and believed, a hope of influence” (Lanser, 1992, p.7)(Lanser, 1992, p.7)
Introduction-Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen (1912-2007)
American Jewish Writer
Yonnondiio: From the Thirties I Stand Here Ironing Hey Sailor, What Ship? O, Yes Tell me a Riddle Silences
Initially
1960s-1970s
Present
form and technique
feminist thoughts
three divisions
feminist thoughts
social struggle roots
adoption into a Jewish-American literary canon
Unnamed mother
Black mother Alva
Russia Jewish Woman Eva
I Stand Here Ironing
O, Yes
Tell Me A Riddle
Outline
Researching Findings
Authorial Voice
Personal Voice
Communal Voice
Resisting Masculine Narrative Authority
Fastening Authority of Maternal Narration
Establishing Narrative Authority of Marginalized Group
Authorial VoiceAuthorial Voice
“The authorial voice may have the risk of being disqualified if it has represented itself as female. It is possible that women’s writing has carried fuller public authority when its voice has not been marked as female” (Lanser, 1992, p.18).
“narrative situations that are heterodiegetic, public, and potentially self-referential” (Lanser, 1992, p. 9).
Frye concludes that it is through the use of the first person that women writers achieve the dual outcomes of
femininity and authorship and create protagonists who are both female and autonomous. (Frye, 1986, p.47)
“narrators who are self-consciously telling their own stories” (Lanser, 1992, p. 18)
Personal VoicePersonal Voice
“a practice in which narrative authority is invested in a definable community and textually inscribed either through multiple, mutually authorizing voices or through the voice of a single individual who is manifestly authorized by a community” (Lanser, 1992, p. 21) .
Communal VoiceCommunal Voice
singular form
Communal VoiceCommunal Voice
a simultaneous form
one narrator speaks for a collective
a plural “we” narrates
a sequential formindividual members of a group narrate in turn
Conclusion
Interruptions & Obstacles
Absence of Female Voice and Presence of Female’s Oppression
Motherhood ExperiencesThree Voices
Female Realities
Authorial Voice
Personal Voice
Communal Voice
Internal Struggles
Suppressed Desires
Further Study
Besides multiple voices, there are many other narrative strategies employed in her works to reveal her abiding theme which can be studied in depth.
There must be more works written by other feminist writers that can be analyzed from the perspective of feminist narratology.
References