《恩惠》的女性主义叙事学解读

rrators‘autodiegetic’narrators,in which the‘I’who narrates the story is also the story’sprotagonist.”(Lanser,19)However,as the personal voice directly exposes the gender of the narrator to thereaders,it is impossible to disguise the narrator’s gender.“Hence,a female personal narrator risks thereader’s resistance if the act of telling,the story she tells,or the self she constructs through telling it,transgresses the limit the acceptably feminine.”(Lanser,19)Nevertheless,it is precisely because thegender of the narrator in this narrative voice is clearly marked as female that makes the authority toconstruct a black female voice become justified.

A Mercy begins with Florens’personal voice.The female personal voice is used extensively in thenovel,and nearly half of the chapters are composed of the personal voice.The female narrator Florens isboth the protagonist and one of the narrators of the story.Morrison uses this narrative voice to let hernarrate her own story around her from her perspective and experience.Through her personal voice,Morrison shows readers Florens’psychological process from naively and spiritually confused to matureand spiritually free,and describes the social status of black female slaves in that era.All the informationreceived by readers is conveyed through the first-person narrator“I”,and this first-person narration willmake readers feel as if they are talking to the narrator of the novel,which also makes this narration bring asense of reality.

2.2 Authorial voice

“Susan Lanser defines authorial voice as heterodiegetic,public and potentially self-referential.”(Lanser,16)Without being limited by time and space,it narrates the characters and events in the story with an omniscient God’s perspective,thus making the narrative more objective.At the same time,byobscuring gender identity,female writers can participate in the construction of male social discourse withthe help of gender masks,and they do not want to be rejected by the authority of male discourse onaccount of their“female”status,thereby avoiding threats to male authority.Authorial voice is understoodas fictional,but its narrative voice appears more credible.Personal voice,on the contrary,is often regardedas autobiographical,but the authority is thus justified.As a supplement to personal voice,authorial voice,on the one hand,reconstructs the narrative authority partially eliminated by personal voices.On the otherhand,it weakens male narrative authority and establishes female narrative authority.

In A Mercy,Morrison uses authorial voice to narrate the story of three female characters and one malecharacter:the“named”maid Lina,the“white bride”Rebekka,the little mixed blood girl Sorrow and themale farmer Jacob.As mentioned above,the gender of the narrator of authorial voice is ambiguous,so it isdifficult for readers to judge the identity and gender of the narrator.In this case,the implied author canparticipate in the construction of the discourse authority of the text under the cover of the gender mask,andreaders will more naturally accept the female consciousness the text wants to convey,so as to achieve thepurpose of constructing a certain narrative authority.Meanwhile,by giving and dispelling the voices ofthese characters,Morrison constructs her own narrative authority.

Chapter Three Female Subjectivity Constructed Through Narrative Point of View............................20

3.1 First-person Retrospective Point of View..............................20

3.2 Variable Internal Point of View..............................23

Chapter Four Female Trauma and Growth Unveiled Through Narrative Time..........................30

4.1 Narrative Order................................30

4.2 The Changes of Duration..............................35

Chapter Five Female Identity Constructed Through Narrative Discourse...................42

5.1 Free Direct Speech....................................42

5.2 Free Indirect Speech.....................................45

Chapter Five Female Identity C