This dissertation aims to examine the various ways in which three Victorian
novels, such as Wilkie Collins?s The Woman in White (1860), Anne Bront�?s The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Charlotte Bront�?s Villette (1853), address the
relationship between storytelling and self-formation, showing that a subject
formulates a sense of self by storytelling.
The constructed nature of self and storytelling in Collins?s The Woman in
White shows that narrative is a significant way of attributing meaning in our lives
and that constructing stories about self is connected to the construction of self,
illustrating that storytelling is a form of self-formation. Anne Bront�?s The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall exemplifies Bront�?s configuration of the relational and contextual
aspect of storytelling and self-formation in her belief that self is formed not merely
through the story he/she tells but through the triangular relationship of the
storyteller, the story, and the reader. This novel proves that even though the writer?s role in constructing his/her self-concept through his/her narrative is
important, the narrator?s triangular relationship with the reader and the text is also
a significant component in his/her self-formation. Charlotte Bront�?s Villette is
concerned with unnarration, in which the narrative does not say, and it shows that
the unnarrated elements provide useful resource for the display of the narrator?s
self. For Charlotte Bront�, unnarration is part of the narrative configuration that
contributes to constructing and presenting the storyteller?s self-formation.
These three novels illuminate that narrative is more than linguistic activities
of the symbolic representation of the world, and that it cannot be fully conceived
without taking into consideration the storyteller?s experience and thoughts of the
world.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2008-08-52 |
| Date | 16 January 2010 |
| Creators | Hyun, Sook K. |
| Contributors | O'Farrell, Mary Ann |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
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