The short story A Woman Like Me, published in the early 1980s, is a woman's inner monologue. The novel describes the psychological activity of "I" sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, waiting for my boyfriend "Xia" to arrive and preparing to take him to visit my work place. The "I" in the story is engaged in the "special occupation" of making up the dead in the funeral home, but my boyfriend thinks that "I" is making up the bride who is about to get married. Now I will take him to visit the place where I work. Maybe it will be over by then. At this time, my heart is complex and heavy.
1. Truth and Blank-Internal Focus Narrative Perspective
Perspective plays a very important role in narrative and is the basic point of constructing narrative text. According to the concept of "focus" elaborated by French structuralist critic Genette, from the perspective of defining narrative texts, perspectives can be divided into three types: unfocused, internal focus and external focus.
(A) internal focus perspective
The novel A Woman Like Me is a typical internal focus narrative perspective, that is, everything is presented in strict accordance with the feelings and consciousness of one or several characters. [1] "A woman like me is actually not suitable for falling in love with anyone ... I can't resist fate." [2] At the beginning of the novel, the narrative begins with a pessimistic, calm and even self-blaming tone. From the narrative point of view, this is the self-knowledge perspective of internal focus, that is, the full text is unfolded through the protagonist's self-narrative. The protagonist is about to introduce her love story with her boyfriend Xia to readers. The pessimistic narrative at the beginning creates suspense. Why do you say "a woman like me is not really suitable for dating anyone"? What kind of woman am I? This self-knowledge perspective of internal focus shows the thoughts of the protagonist, thus shortening the distance between the characters and the readers in reading, making the readers feel that the stories in the novel are true and credible, and making people get a sense of intimacy.
(b) Finding gaps
Internal focus narrative perspective is a type of perspective with strict visual field restrictions. In the novel A Woman Like Me, the perspective is fixed in the field of "I", and "I" can only present what "I" sees, hears and thinks, but can't deeply analyze other people's thoughts. Therefore, this leaves many "blanks" in the novel text for readers to discover and think about. The so-called "blank" refers to the unexposed part of the text, which is "nothing" in the text structure. The determination and realization of blank depends on the communication between the text and the reader. " [3]
Due to the limitation of the internal focus angle of "I", readers can only know the consciousness and narrative of "I", and the inner world of others that readers know nothing about is a big "blank" in this paper. For example, all the narratives in the article are from the subjective angle of "I". Does Xia know what my real job is? What does Xia think of me? We have no way of knowing. These "blanks" need readers to explore. Maybe Xia already knows my occupation, and maybe the story is not necessarily a pessimistic ending.
Dialogue and Monologue —— Mutual Transformation of Narrative Methods
The novel A Woman Like Me consists of my monologue and my dialogue with Xia. Every monologue is complete and lengthy, and every dialogue is concise. The combination of monologue and dialogue makes the narrative style of the novel transform each other.
soliloquy
One of Xixi's storytelling skills lies in the monologue form in A Woman Like Me, most of which are monologues of the protagonist "I". Because every character in the novel lacks omniscience and omnipotence, there are multiple psychological entanglements in the novel: "I" is uncertain about the final choice of Xia; I am pessimistic about fate's inability to fight back, but I have the courage and hope to resist fate and long for love. Multiple psychological entanglements make the ending of the story appear happy or sad, and also make the narrative structure multiple.
In the monologue of the novel, Xixi explained the story of "I" and my boyfriend Xia, as well as the love story of Aunt Yvonne and my parents. The reason why Xixi chose such a long and complete monologue to tell the story in the novel is related to the character and occupation of the protagonist "I". From the psychological activities of "I", we can see that "I" is introverted, sensitive and inarticulate, and there are many sentences similar to "I am a person who is not good at expressing my thoughts" in the novel. In addition, the makeup artist's special occupation of the remains also intensifies the introverted personality of "I", because "I" has long faced the dead and does not need to communicate with people often. "I was originally a person who didn't know how to express myself. For a long time, I was used to being silent at the same time." [4] So most of the content in the novel is the inner monologue of "I".
(2) Dialogue
In addition to monologues, there are dialogues in the form of questions and answers. "So, what's your job? /He asked. /fill people. /I said. /Ah, it's makeup. /He said. " [5] In this conversation, when I expressed Xia's words and thoughts, I didn't completely stand in Xia's perspective, but put myself in Xia's experience and accepted Xia's perspective in time and position: Xia thought that I said "make-up" for the bride, while "I" really made up for the dead, and "I" knew Xia understood. Therefore, from the perspective of deep discourse mode, the dialogue in the novel is a kind of free indirect speech.
The so-called "free indirect speech" refers to "a discourse way in which the third person describes the language, feelings and thoughts of the characters from the perspective of the characters". [6] The most basic narrative feature of free indirect speech is that "it contains the narrator and the characters, and the two voices coexist." [7] Therefore, the short dialogue between "I" and Xia in the novel contains two voices of "I" and Xia, including the perspective of "I". Compared with indirect speech, free indirect speech is more real and vivid, and its discourse mode is more suitable for the monologue of the novel.
3. Looking for contradictions-the complexity of the text structure
Contradiction, like blank, is an important attribute of narrative text. Therefore, analyzing the internal contradictions of text structure is the key to criticism and reading. There are also many "contradictions" in the novel A Woman Like Me. From the binary opposition of these contradictions, we can see the complexity of the text structure and explore the deep connotation of the novel.
(A) fate-obedience and resistance
"Destiny" is a key word in the novel A Woman Like Me. At the beginning of the novel, I wrote "I can't resist fate", which set a pessimistic emotional tone for the love between me and Xia, which originated from the love tragedy of Yi Fen's aunt. "I" thought that "my fate has overlapped with that of Yi Fen's aunt". "I" can't resist fate, which seems to be a fatalistic view, just like the fatalistic color in the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus the King.
Although Aunt Yvonne's love ended in tragedy, not all the love stories of fictional dead people are tragedies, but the love stories of "my" parents are an exception. My mother is "not afraid because of love", and "I" is like my mother, from whom I have the courage to challenge my destiny. It is from this seemingly obedient contradiction to fate that readers see the tenacity and struggle of "I". Therefore, although "I" repeatedly emphasized in the article that "a woman like me is actually not suitable for falling in love with anyone", what "I" wants to express is that "I" have the right to strive for happiness like everyone else.
(B) the results-pessimism and optimism
Looking for contradictions is to explore the deep connotation hidden in the works and reveal the confrontation of implied meaning that can't be revealed or implied involuntarily. In this novel, the most intriguing part is the ending, where "I" sits in a dark corner of the cafe and sets a pessimistic emotional tone for the love between "I" and Xia from the beginning. At this time, summer brought sunshine into the dark world of "me". He is as warm as his name and brings hope to me. He brought me a bunch of flowers, but I think it's a bad omen, because in our industry, flowers mean farewell. But there are different understandings of "farewell" here: does this mean that Xia bid farewell to our love, or does it mean that Xia bid farewell to the prejudice of the world with his own actions and bravely walked towards our love? This is the reflection left by the novel A Woman Like Me.
The tortuous ending of the novel contains rich connotations: pessimism-hope-farewell-hope (optimism)? From a series of contradictions and conflicts, readers can see my inner contradictions and struggles. Xixi once said, "I prefer comedy to sadness." [8] Therefore, the author believes that in this novel, the author Xixi subconsciously prefers an optimistic ending.
Xixi thinks that "narration only provides the angle of the speaker's personal choice". [9] Therefore, Xixi constantly prevents readers from accepting without thinking in his works, and also constantly dispels "the unique authoritative voice in his works". [10] The novel A Woman Like Me provides us with many possibilities for text interpretation: the focused narrative perspective in the novel guides readers to find "blanks" and dig up more unexplained languages; The dialogue mode of long monologue and free indirect quotation is transformed into each other, which makes the narrative mode flexible and changeable; Looking for the contradiction between fate and ending in the works, readers can observe those unspeakable ambiguities and understand the complexity of the text structure.