Abstract
Abstract Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior has been widely discussed for its heteroglot and dialogic elements of diverse socio-cultural ideologies. However, critics who apply Bakhtinian assumptions in their investigation simply focus on the demonstration of the heteroglot and dialogic phenomena interwoven within the text. Left without further research are not only how the young narrator (also the protagonist) dialogizes with multicultural conceptions, ideological belief systems, and individual consciousnesses, but also the motivation and purpose of her utilizing the heteroglot and dialogic strategy. My thesis examines how the narrator-protagonist, a Chinese American woman, challenges the established moral traditions and customs, and the authoritative ideological frameworks of gender and race. Through her (re)telling stories of other women, the narrator-protagonist intermixes multiple contesting socio-cultural ideologies derived from multicultural conceptions of different female characters. The heteroglot sphere of diverse consciousnesses nourishes a dialogical environment for deconstructing the accepted male-oriented and white-oriented views. Moreover, this thesis studies closely how this young narrator- protagonist, with the narrative strategies of heterogenization and dialogization, subverts the imposed patriarchal and racist definitions, voices out her individual ideological consciousness in a unique multicultural background, and forms her alternative self-identity as a Chinese American woman. To develop my argument, the introduction in Chapter One begins with a brief presentation of the diverse socio-cultural background for Chinese American women and then a survey of the scholarship on The Woman Warrior. By indicating the insufficiency of the researches, this examination anticipates my further investigation of (1) the contesting socio-cultural ideologies within the arena of The Woman Warrior and (2) the subversive voices created throughout the process of challenging, deconstructing, and self-inventing. In Chapter Two, I elaborate the theoretical bedrock on which my discussion bases. First, in M. M. Bakhtin’s views on self, community, heteroglossia, and dialogue, the former Russian critic has argued that one’s self-invention depends on the dialogic relations with other consciousnesses. One’s internal consciousness must be re-accentuated to create new meanings for oneself within the arena of intense interaction and never-ending struggle with others. Throughout the becoming of one’s self, the continual dialogic interaction repeatedly (re)defines and (re)constructs one self toward the formation of an individual ideological consciousness. So, Bakhtin’s assumptions are employed to analyze how the narrator-protagonist in The Woman Warrior dialogizes with the dominant ideological discourses and effects her voicing-out for self-identity. In addition, certain theoretical propositions of Michel Foucault are drawn as a supplement to my theoretical framework for the discussions on the operations of existing power relations, the functioning of absolute ideological discourses, and subversive voices of resistance within the text. And these discussions serve to examine further the dialogic interactions of multiple alien voices from the dominant discourses, the characters’ world views, and the narrator-protagonist’s value pattern. The third chapter analyzes how the narrator-protagonist blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, questions the authority of dominant views, and gives legitimacy to the created multiple and provisional individual discourses. Kingston asserts that a story changes from telling to telling according to the needs of the listener, and to the interest of time and environment. The Woman Warrior gives expression to Kingston’s view about story-telling. The unique multicultural background of the narrator-protagonist leads her to undermine the authority of the stories her mother tells, to question the fixed messages carried in them, and to accentuate her own re-interpretations. By retaining skepticism, uncertainty, and ambiguity in her narratives, the narrator-protagonist brings out multiple possibilities of contingent individual discourses to legitimize her marginal difference. Next, Chapter Four examines how the narrator-protagonist struggles to confront the racist and patriarchal norms and to subvert the traditional superstitions and customs throughout the process of voicing-out and self-inventing. It explores the complex dialogic interactions between and among the narrator-protagonist’s world view, Brave Orchid’s belief system, multicultural perspectives, and pre-existing ideological discourses. Within the never-ending negotiation with external socio-cultural ideologies, she (re)accentuates and (re)invents her self, and comes to develop the alternative formation of her hybrid uniqueness, forever changing and developing. In the concluding chapter, I re-examine the book reviews and critical essays of both Euro-American and Chinese American critics and further talk about the alternative identity, which the narrator-protagonist comes home to claim. By breaking down the dominant racist, sexist, and ethnic ideologies, she ultimately creates her self-identity as a Chinese American woman, fluid and dialogized with both Chinese and American cultures.