Female Authority and Narrative Voice

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Prof. **

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