If we situate the major works of Jane Austen chronologically based on the time of composition, the last published novel Northanger Abbey (1818) becomes her first finished novel. The thirteen years that bridged the completion and the publication informs changes in the contextual and literary circumstances between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Northanger Abbey adopts an authorial narrator whereas authoriality was not the literary trend when the work was published. At the time of composition, because of their female gender, women writers experienced difficulties when negotiating with the publishers and explicitly making social criticism. When they employed an authorial stance in their writing, it was preferred that the authority of the voice should be appropriately mitigated. Developing on Susan S. Lanser's arguments, my essay explores the narrative strategies adopted in the creation of an authorial narrator. Taking the view that cultural construction of gender can affect narrative form and production, I would enhance the reading of the novel from a feminist narratological perspective. I shall first delineate how the use of paratextual texts reveals the conditions of female authorship and the position of women novelists of Austen's time. Then I draw on Claudia L. Johnson's argument that Austen employs understatement as a form of overstatement to minimize the overt authority of the narrative voice. Focusing on the discourse of negation and narrative refusals, I will account for how what appears to be understated and disnarrated is a disguise of its opposite meaning.
關聯:
Hwa Kang English Journal ； 23卷 (2018 / 07 / 01) ， P67 - 82
