英语语言文学硕士论文

2020-07-07 来源：小奈知识网

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硕士学位论文

艾丽丝·默多克小说《杰克逊的困境》

的叙事技巧研究

学位申请人：

学科专业：英语语言文学指导教师：教授

、、、、、、、年五月

三峡大学硕士学位论文

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Master of English Literature

Narrative Strategies of Iris Murdoch’s

Jackson’s Dilemma

Graduate Student:

Lin Xuelian

Major: English Language and Literature Supervisor: Prof. Xu Jiangang

China Three Gorges University Yichang, 443002, P.R.China

May, 2012

三峡大学硕士学位论文

三峡大学学位论文原创性声明

本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果，除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确方式标明，本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。

学位论文作者签名：

日期：

三峡大学硕士学位论文

内容摘要

艾丽丝·默多克，全名吉恩·艾丽丝·默多克，是二战后英国文学领域主要的小说家之一，同时也是一位在世界上最具影响力的作家之一。她一生著有二十七部小说，这其中还包括一些大奖得者《黑王子》、《神圣的和亵渎的爱情机器》以及《大海啊，大海》。不止于此，她同时还创作了大量的戏剧、诗歌以及众多颇具影响力的文学评论文章。源于她对于人类伦理道德的深切关注，她同时还以一位伦理道德哲学家的身份为大家所熟知。她以小说为媒介向外界传达了她的哲学观点，也正是这一点使得她与同时代的其他作家相比，更具有了她自己的鲜明特色。她“认为哲学是任何一名具有专业素养的学者都必须触及到的学科，而散文与小说则是表达思想的绝佳手段......”但是默多克的小说也绝不是常规意义之下的哲学小说，她自己也反对将小说刻意地写成哲学小说。

作为默多克最后一部得以出版的小说，《杰克逊的困境》显然不如默多克前期的作品那样吸引人们的关注。然而，对《杰克逊的困境》研究的忽视却导致了对默多克及其作品研究的不完整，这也是其系统性研究的一大损失。基于上述原因，本文将依据杰拉尔·热奈以及国内著名学者申丹的经典叙事学理论对《杰克逊的困境》中的叙事技巧进行一个较为系统的尝试性研究，以填补该小说文学研究方面的不足，丰富默多克及其小说的系统性研究。论文共分六个部分：

第一章节引言部分首先介绍默多克的生平、文学创作经历、写作特色及其创作成果。同时这一部分还将简要介绍《杰克逊的困境》的故事情节。然后本文的作者将对国内外的研究现状作出较为细致的分析。第三，介绍热奈特以及国内著名叙事学专家申丹的经典叙事学理论，并对本文即将应用到的叙事理论及术语进行解析。最后将对本研究拟产生的文学效果进行简要陈述。

第二章节主要分析《杰克逊的困境》的叙事结构。这一部分将为后文的研究打下一定的基础。对其叙事结构做完分析之后，本文作者将分析默多克在该部小说中所采用的复调叙事结构与其主题的暗合之目的，挖掘出叙事结构以一种独特的方式凸显了小说所彰显的主题。小说所具有的复调叙事结构的多人物、多中心、多角度，非全知全能式的叙事特征隐射出了小说珍视他人的存在、追求至善真我的主题。

第三章节主要对小说中的叙事时间进行分析。作者所用的多样易变的叙事时间使得整部小说时间界限模糊，故事情节发展有张有弛。故事发生在当下，作者却以倒叙的方式于其中穿插叙述过去发生或未来即将发生的事情。小说的正常时间顺序叙述常被倒叙或者预叙打断，过去、现在和将来之间的界限被混淆甚至被忽略。这使得整部

三峡大学硕士学位论文

小说打破了线性叙事的传统。另外文本中对人物的悔恨反省的反复叙述深化了小说的主题。

第四章节依据热奈特的“聚焦”理论分析小说所采用的多重叙事视角。默多克在这部小说中采用了零聚焦、外聚焦以及内聚焦，另外各种叙事视角处于不断变化的状态甚至出现重叠，使得小说中的故事于动态中向前发展，从而达到了独特的叙事效果和阅读效果。不同叙事视角间的不断交替即强调了读者的直接感知，同时也拓展了叙事空间，使得整个故事发展更为自由，更为灵活。

第五章节将对小说文本中不同的叙事话语进行分析。通过对转述话语、间接转述话语以及戏剧式转述话语的灵活运用，作者自如地控制叙事距离与叙事角度，同时还为读者留下了自我想象及自我创作的空间，从而使得整个故事的主题得到了拓展与深化。

第六章节为本文的结论部分。通过结合经典叙事学的相关理论对小说进行了较为细致的分析之后，本文得出结论，《杰克逊的困境》并不是其作者默多克写作生涯的退化之表现，它有着独具匠心的叙事技巧。这些独特的叙事技巧对叙事距离的自如控制、故事情节的发展以及主题的展现有着极其重要的作用。

关键词：《杰克逊的困境》叙事技巧经典叙事学

III

三峡大学硕士学位论文

Abstract

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), in full Jean Iris Murdoch, one of the major English post-World WarⅡ novelists, has also a strong claim of being one of the most distinguished novelists in the world. She is the author of twenty-seven novels which include those prize-winners such as The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and The Sea, the Sea (1978). Not only that, she is also the composer of a handful of plays and poems, a number of influential articles and treatises. Owing to her deep concern for ethics and moral problems confronting human beings, she is also known as a moral philosopher. She uses the novel as a way of developing her own philosophical ideas, which of course distinguishes Murdoch from her contemporaries. She “approaches philosophy as a professional academician and considers prose fiction…to be a desperately important means of expression.” However, Murdoch’s novels are not philosophical ones in any usual sense, and she herself is opposed in principle to the enterprise of writing philosophical novels.

As Murdoch’s last novel which has been officially published, Jackson’s Dilemma obviously does not receive as much publicity as Murdoch’s earlier novels. However, the neglect of the research on Jackson’s Dilemma leads to the incompletion of the research about Iris Murdoch and her works, which is also a loss of the relevant systematic study. Based on the reasons stated above, this dissertation tries to make a marginal contribution on filling in the research about Iris Murdoch’s last novel Jackson’s Dilemma, and enrich the systematic study of Iris Murdoch and her works. The following parts offer an overview of the whole dissertation which is in a six- part frame.

Chapter One firstly gives a general introduction on Iris Murdoch’s life story, writing principles and characteristics, and literary achievements. And the main plots of her novel Jackson’s Dilemma are also introduced in this part. Secondly, a systematical literary review is presented from two aspects: at home and abroad. Thirdly, it gives a general introduction to the narrative theory of Genette as well as the theory developed by a famous Chinese professor Shen Dan, and explains some important terms that are adopted in the dissertation. Lastly, it illustrates the academical significance of this study briefly.

Chapter Two analyzes the narrative structure of Jackson’s Dilemma. The analysis in this part is going to lay the foundation for the later study. After figuring out the narrative structure, this part discusses the author Murdoch’s purpose of using this special kind of

三峡大学硕士学位论文

narrative structure. The author of this dissertation supposes that the narrative structure reflects the theme of the novel from a quite different perspective. Characterized by multi-characters, multi-centers, and multi-focalization, the polyphonic narrative structure interacts with the theme of valuing others' existence and pursuing goodness and true-self. Chapter Three analyzes the narrative time of the novel. By using variable narrative time, Murdoch places her story in a chaos. The story is set in the present time, but the past always appears by means of flashbacks. The present narration and the chronological time order of the story are often interrupted by flashforwards and flashbacks. The narrative moves constantly back and forth between the past and the present, and thus blurs the demarcation between them. It not only makes the novel complicated and fragmented, but also corresponds to the tradition of dealing with time in a linear way. And by adopting the repeated narration of the characters' remorse, the theme of the novel has been illustrated deeply.

Chapter Four employs Genette’s “focalization” theory to analyze the different narrative focalizations used in this novel, including zero focalization, external focalization and internal focalization. This dissertation finds out that the focalization in Jackson’s Dilemma is often changing or even mixing with each other, which makes the whole story be developed in a dynamic way and achieve a special narrative effect and a unique reading effect. The alternating of those different focalization emphasizes the direct perception and at the same time broadens the narration scope, thus make the whole story develop in a freer way.

Chapter Five discusses the narrative discourses of the novel, including the narrated discourse, the indirect narrated discourse, and the dramatic narrated discourse. By adopting varied discourses, the author controls the narrative distance and the narrative angles freely, and also invites the reader's participation and imagination, thus the theme of the novel is widened and deepened.

Chapter Six is a conclusion of the dissertation. Based on the detailed analysis of the narrative strategies of the novel by using the relevant theory of classical narratology, the dissertation comes to a conclusion that Jackson’s Dilemma is not the surprising turn of its author for its unique narrative strategies. The special narrative strategies of Jackson's Dilemma play very important roles in narrative distance-controlling, story-developing and theme-presenting.

Key words: Jackson's Dilemma; narrative strategies; classical narratology

三峡大学硕士学位论文

Contents

Chapter One Iris Murdoch and Classical Narratology ................................................ 1

1.1 An Introduction to Iris Murdoch and Jackson's Dilemma ....................................... 1 1.2 The Significance of the Study .................................................................................. 3 1.3 Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 4 1.4 The Theoretical Foundation of this Dissertation ...................................................... 6 Chapter Two The Theme-Interacting Narrative Structure of Jackson's Dilemma .... 9

2.1 The Narrative Structure of Jackson's Dilemma ........................................................ 9 2.2 The Theme of Jackson's Dilemma ......................................................................... 11 2.3 The Structure’s Interacting with the Theme ........................................................... 12 Chapter Three The Variable Narrative Time in Jackson's Dilemma ........................ 14

3.1 Time Duration in Jackson's Dilemma .................................................................... 14

3.1.1 Summary in Jackson’s Dilemma ................................................................. 15 3.1.2 Scene in Jackson's Dilemma ........................................................................ 15 3.1.3 Ellipsis in Jackson's Dilemma ..................................................................... 17 3.1.4 Pause in Jackson's Dilemma ........................................................................ 17 3.2 Time Frequency in Jackson's Dilemma.................................................................. 19 3.3 Time Sequence in Jackson's Dilemma ................................................................... 20

3.3.1 Prolepsis in Jackson's Dilemma ................................................................... 21 3.3.2 Analepsis in Jackson’s Dilemma ................................................................. 22

Chapter Four The Dynamic Narrative Focalizations in Jackson’s Dilemma ........... 24

4.1 Zero Focalization Alternating with External Focalization ..................................... 24 4.2 External Focalization Alternating with Internal Focalization ................................ 26 4.3 Internal Focalization Alternating with Zero Focalization ...................................... 28 Chapter Five The Varied Narrative Discourses in Jackson's Dilemma........................ 31

5.1 Narrated Discourse ................................................................................................. 31 5.2 Indirect Narrated Discourse ................................................................................... 33 5.3 Dramatic Narrated Discourse ................................................................................. 34

三峡大学硕士学位论文

5.3.1 Dramatic Dialogue ....................................................................................... 34 5.3.2 Interior Monologue ...................................................................................... 36

Chapter Six Conclusion.................................................................................................. 38 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 40 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 44 Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 45

VII

三峡大学硕士学位论文

Chapter One Iris Murdoch and Classical Narratology

1.1 An Introduction to Iris Murdoch and Jackson's Dilemma

Born in Dublin in 1919, Iris Murdoch with the full name Jean Iris Murdoch, is universally accepted as one of the most significant fiction writers of the postwar literature world. Brought up in a middle class family of London, Murdoch received good education which indeed built favorable foundation for her future writing career. It was in college where she began to show her great interest and enthusiasm to the literature, and her deep concern with human existence and the world led her into the field of philosophy. Her reading of Plato, Kant and other world-famous thinkers helped the forming of her world-view and philosophy outlook. As a talented and original novelist, Iris Murdoch is a writer who combines perfectly the prolific output with the high level of literature achievements. Kingsley Amis asserts that Iris Murdoch is \"a distinguished novelist of a rare kind\" (qtd. McEwan, 1981:38); Frederick P.W. McDowell later confirms her achievements by saying that Iris Murdoch is the most prolific one of her contemporary novelists, and Critic Lindsay Tucker, with marvelous academic vagueness, calls Iris Murdoch \"something of a phenomenon\" (qtd. Lodge, 191:103), however, Lindsay Tucker's suchlike vague assessment reveals that Iris Murdoch’s creation does make profound influence to the public for her deep concern for the ethics and moral problems confronting human beings.

She wanted, through her novels, to reach all possible readers, in different

ways and by different means: by the excitement of her story, its pace and its comedy, through its ideas and its philosophical implications, through the numinous atmosphere of her own original and created world--the world she must have glimpsed as she considered and planned her first steps in the art of fiction. (John Bailey, 1999:178)

Murdoch's constant dealing with everyday ethical or moral issues also distinguishes herself from her contemporaries, and her works continue to give pleasure to the public and command respect and honors from all over the world. In 1963 she was named Honorary

三峡大学硕士学位论文

Fellow of St. Anne’s College; and in 1970 she became a member of the Irish Academy. Moreover, Murdoch was made Commander of the British Empire in 1976 and elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982. In 1987, she was made a Dame of the British Empire and a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature as well. In 1990, she was awarded National Arts Clubs (New York) Medal of Honor for Literature, and knighted by the Queen for her distinguished contribution to the English literature, so her death in 1999 not only left her family and friends in deep grief, but also led to a great loss to the literature world.

Led by her \"novelist\" debut-making novel Under the Net (1954) which is regarded as one of her best works, Murdoch composed twenty-seven novels which include those prize-winners such as The Black Prince (1973) that obtained the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) which awarded the Whitbread Literary Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize winner The Sea, the Sea (1978). As the only child of her Anglo-Irish parents, Murdoch, however, set the backgrounds of only two of her novels in her motherland - Ireland, The Unicorn (1963) and The Red and the Green (1965), nevertheless, Irish people appear more or less prominently in many of her works. Some of these Irish characters are ironic or playful, occasionally using stereotypes of enchantment and irresponsibility, but this country also appears to fascinate her as a place of moral and spirit decisiveness. Murdoch is a writer who cannot be easily understood for all of her novels closely link to her philosophy outlook and ethical thoughts, but she tries to avoid moralizing and attaches much importance to the writing skills. Fastidiously plotted, with serious themes and incisive characterizations, her fictions have been hailed as a major contribution to English literature of the second half of the twentieth century. They were written under the acknowledged influence of Shakespeare and those great 19th century novelists Dickens, George Eliot, Henry James, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, and constitute an enduring meditation upon dense and complex constructions of chaos and contingency, goodness and evil, truth and fallacy, love, power, fantasy, enchantment. \"we are influenced by Shakespeare, in the most effortless manner he portrays moral dilemmas, good and evil, and the differences and the struggle between them. \" (Iris Murdoch, 1970:177)

Not only that, Murdoch also composes a handful of valuable plays and poems, and a number of great articles and treatises, including her most influential pieces of philosophy Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), The Sovereignty of Good (1970); literary criticism

三峡大学硕士学位论文

essay Against Dryness (1961); a volume of poetry, A Year of Birds (1978).

Officially published in 1995, Murdoch’s last novel Jackson's Dilemma was a psychological thriller to its readers. It begins from a group of friends--upper-crust, with the time and disposition to sit around discussing Tolstoy and Heraclitus -- elaborately preparing for the wedding of Edward, who is good-looking and polite, and pretty young and beautiful Marian. The night is tranquil and tender, and the wedding guests wander the meadows and enjoy the lovely evening time. Then, all of a sudden, a letter left by an unknown messenger is found by them at the hall. They are informed that Bride Marian will not attend the wedding any more. This event puts this group of friends into a turmoil of horror and agony of worrying about Marian's whereabouts and her safety, and all blame themselves by thinking that it’s all their fault. However their crazy search which consists mainly of the friends' phoning one another with the news that there is \"no news\" about Marian, and flitting hastily between London and their country retreats turns out to be totally fruitless. All this time Marian is dashing around London and suffering a mental breakdown, nearly mad with remorse. When the group can do nothing but wait for Marian's news, Jackson, the servant of the host Benet, being found curled up in a cardboard box by Benet according to the legend of him, comes to help. He discovers Marian's whereabouts as well as the secret of the letter. During the search for Marian, the group of friends actually makes discoveries about themselves, others and the nature of being as well. These friends and lovers are forced to make new choices. The story comes to a skewed Shakespearean coming together after all the group members find \"themselves\": Edward marries Anna for the real father of Anna’s son is Edward; Tuan, who keeps a kind of homosexual relationship with Owen, marries Marian’s sister Rosalind at last; Marian marries Cantor whom she really loves; And Jackson who once vanished because of Benet's misunderstanding of him comes back to Benet as a friend instead of a servant.

1.2 The Significance of the Study

Compared with Murdoch's other works especially her earlier novels, Jackson's Dilemma does not catch so much attention of the public. However, the ignorance of the research on Jackson's Dilemma leads to the incompletion of the research about Iris Murdoch and her works, which is also a loss of the related systematic study. Based on the reasons stated above, this dissertation tries to make a marginal contribution on filling in the

三峡大学硕士学位论文

research about Iris Murdoch's last novel Jackson's Dilemma, and enrich the systematic study of Iris Murdoch and her works. The significance of the study can be stated from four aspects. Firstly it intends to pave the way for the later scholars to know more about Iris Murdoch’s rich and splendid writing skills and her luxuriant knowledge in varied fields. It is foreseeing that more and more Chinese researchers have been aware of the research value of Iris Murdoch’s works and it seems that young scholars are going to study her works in a more systematic way. Secondly the study tries to make a marginal contribution to filling in the research about Iris Murdoch’s last novel Jackson's Dilemma and deepening people’s knowledge about Iris Murdoch’s literary creation. And then it can contribute to the study of western literature, especially contemporary writers’ works for domestic scholars. Lastly, this study will present a new research perspective for the study of Iris Murdoch, which of course can provide a new reference for the future researchers.

1.3 Literature Review

Iris Murdoch is a novelist as well as a philosopher; such a blending makes her unique, and at the same time it also leads those critics who undertake the task of writing about her and her works often at a loss, because all of her works are obviously capable of moral, philosophical and aesthetic interpretations beyond the mere interest offered by good stories that are excellently told. It is not surprising when Fiander states that the scholar who undertakes the task of writing about Murdoch's novels may find himself or herself in something like the position of Time Reede who is the unsuccessful painter in Murdoch's novel Nuns and Soldiers (1980); one may be tempted by the many different means that others already have taken like Time who imitates other artists at his cost, and may be at the risk of failing to make great contributions by using any one of them.

A.S Byatt, who is honored on the list of the 50 most greatest British writers since 1945, changes the impression of Murdoch in the 1950s in her superb 1960’s book about Murdoch’s first seven novels, Degrees of Freedom (1965), Murdoch is pictured a novelist of anger, by presenting her as a novelist of strong social and moral inclination who is much concerned to depict the opacity of the world as the field for testing of the human freedom, the conflict of art and commitment, and Satrean influences. To Robert Scholes, Murdoch is a \"fabulator\"; her works are the manifestation of her efforts to break away from the limitations of realism that characterizes so many contemporary fictions in the United States

三峡大学硕士学位论文

as well as in Britain. In Iris Murdoch: Work for the Spirit (1982), which is a quite severe study by Elizabeth Dipple, Murdoch has been pictured as a novelist of broadly religious character who possesses the moral and aesthetic attitudes towards life and world, her suchlike attitudes are always fighting against \"our modern diseaserue and real art, against false or indulgent art. The major full-length study Iris Murdoch: the Saint and Artist (1986), written by Peter J. Conradi, provides pretty detailed expositions of Iris Murdoch’s complicated yet lucid philosophical works. Deborah Johnson intends to analyze Iris Murdoch as a women writer in her heart-devoted book Iris Murdoch (1990). Bran Nicol’s book, Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective fiction (2001) classifies Murdoch as a retrospective novelist after a thorough and deep exploration of her narrative style.

Here in China, the research on Iris Murdoch and the translation of her works are unduly quite a little, compared with the attention her contemporary woman writer Doris Lessing has obtained. And only three novels have been translated into Chinese: The Sandcastle (1957), The Italian Girl (1964) and The Unicom (1963). From 1979 up to now, the research on Iris Murdoch has not received much attention, which the statistics of CNKI Chinese Knowledge Net shows only about sixty articles about Iris Murdoch and her works. The research fruits are mainly concerned with the combination of moral and art in Iris Murdoch's fiction creation. And the Chinese scholars focus their attention mainly on Murdoch's novels in early stage or her two prize-winning novels: The Black Prince (1973) and The Sea, the Sea (1978）. Besides, most of Chinese scholars pay attention on Murdoch's uniqueness—her \"philosophical temperament\discuss her \"existentialism\and some of them analyze Murdoch's idea of \"No-God theology\". \"Philosophical temperament\" has been the most important breakthrough point for many scholars. In addition, some of the scholars adopt related theory of narratology to analyze the narrative focalizations or special narrators based on the texts of Murdoch's different novels.

As for Murdoch's last novel which has been officially published, Jackson's Dilemma gives rise to a beating in many reviews, and most of the reviewers greet her last novel with disappointment. Penelope Fitzgerald once holds that the economy of the writing makes it appear that Murdoch have \"let her fiction wear through\". Brad Leithauser writes in The New York Times that Murdoch's prose is strewn with imprecisions and blatant redundancies, Leithauser also asks why the phrase ''then suddenly'' shall appear three times in a single

三峡大学硕士学位论文

paragraph. The mistakes urged Murdoch's devoted readers to send these comments in letters to the author. A.S.Byatt says the characters \"have no selves and therefore there is no story and no novel\".(qtd. Jeremy Laurance, 2004) Even in many critics' eyes, it is a surprising turn for the Booker Prize—winning author. In the famous science magazine Psychology Today, Jackson's Dilemma has been used as the evidence of Murdoch's suffering from Alzheimer's disease for its less sophistication. Dr Garrard describes that the change in Murdoch's use of language is as predicted for Alzheimer's. \"We knew what to expect. We didn't just trawl the novel for simplicity. The sentence structure remained complex, only the vocabulary changed, which is typical of Alzheimer's.\"(qtd. Jeremy Laurance, 2004) The researchers compares Jackson's Dilemma with two of her earlier novels— The Sea, The Sea , written when she is at the peak of her writing career in the mid-1970s, and Under the Net , her first novel that is published in 1954. The texts of the three novels are converted to digital format which is analysed in order to show the frequency with which each word is used. They find that her vocabulary has obviously dwindled and her language is much more simpler in Jackson's Dilemma while the structure and the grammar remains consistent. The smallest vocabulary is proved out to be in Jackson's Dilemma while the largest to be in The Sea, The Sea. The rate of introduction of new words is obviously higher in the earlier works than in her last one. Hugo Barnacle even suggests that it is as reading the work of a 13 years old schoolgirl who does not get enough education and social experience yet. Therefore, no critics abroad takes an interest and enthusiasm in discussing Murdoch's narrative strategies that employed in Jackson's Dilemma.

Worse than what it has sufferred abroad, Jackson's Dilemma seems to be left out by the readers in China. Almost sixteen years have already passed since its publication in 1995, the research on this novel still gets nowhere at home. With the death of its author Iris Murdoch, Jackson's Dilemma seemingly have been forgotten by the public, at home, nearly no article or book is absolutely about this novel. Jackson's Dilemma, only occasionally, is brushed lightly over in some of the articles about Murdoch's other novels.

1.4 The Theoretical Foundation of this Dissertation

This dissertation will approach Iris Murdoch's novel Jackson's Dilemma in light of the perspective of classical narratology. That is to say, by combining the textual reading with

三峡大学硕士学位论文

the theoretical analysis, the author of this paper will discuss the fictional narrative strategies and make a further exploration about the special effects achieved by adopting those special strategies. The world-famous literary theorist Gerard Genette and the distinguished scholar in China Shen Dan's classical narrative theory will be used as a guide to analyze the unique narrative features of the novel Jackson's Dilemma.

Among the French narratologists, Gernard Genette is obviously the most distinguished representative of the important narratological theory. To Genette, only insofar as they are recounted by a narration that can the events of a story count as important points in time. And the critics should regard the telling of a story as a retelling of its events as if they have already happened successively prior to their narration. And narration itself also should occur in time. The narrative time is hence not necessarily the same as the story time. As Gernard Genette suggests, the differences between the narrative time and the story time can be analyzed in terms of time duration, time frequency and time sequence. Moreover, when Gernard Genette makes the exposition of the traditional \"prospective\he introduces the term \"focalization\" to the public for the first time, and divides it into three sorts: zero focalization, external focalization and internal focalization. Genette further points out that, it is difficult even impossible to distinguish the types of focalization out one by one completely because focalization in narrative works is often overlapped or even mixed with each other. And the critics can only use the relatively precise definition of each kind of focalization. Furthermore, Genette differentiates the narrator's voice from the character's voice, studies the different degrees of the narrator's intervention into the text, and he also discusses the variable narrative discourses in the narrative writtings and divides them into three sorts: narrated discourse (there is much of the narrator's intervention into the text), indirect narrated discourse( it implies a dash of more intervention of the narrator and has more imitative power when compared with the narrated discourse,) and dramatic narrated discourse which is nearly no intervention of the narrator into the text). In addition, Genette mentions another three sorts of narrative discourse which belongs to his analysis of dramatic narrated discouse--dramatic dialogue, interior monologue and stream of consciousness as well.

When narratology is mentioned in China, one name appeares very frequently, and that is Shen Dan. She is, so to speak, one of the most outstanding experts on narratology at home. Being greatly influenced by Gernard Genette, Shen Dan introduces many of Genette's works to Chinese scholars, and puts forward many unique viewpoint of her own.

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As far as she is concerned, \"character's point of view\" is the perception of the characters which is adopted by the narrator to observe and filtrate the events happened in the story. When it happens to belong to the \"story level\" as well as the \"discourse levelhere will be no difference between the \"story\" and the \"discourse\". And the perception of the characters may always belongs to both the \"story\" level (just like the conduct of the characters) and the \"discourse level\" (as other narrative skills), which thus makes it difficult to draw distinction between the \"story\" and the \"discourse\" under this kind of category.

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Chapter Two The Theme-Interacting Narrative Structure of

Jackson's Dilemma

2.1 The Narrative Structure of Jackson's Dilemma

Jackson's Dilemma is a novel which possesses a polyphonic narrative structure. And its polyphonic structure is built on the basis of the juxtaposing of the plots. Characterized by no transition but unexpected juxtaposition, the polyphonic structure does not require variation but repeat and gets into the core of all things all the time, it holds that only those words which voice the substantive content can have the right to exist. So \"polyphony\" is a kind of special narrative art which depends on its author's meticulous construction of the structure. In Jackson’ s Dilemma, Murdoch builds three clues in it while all of them play equal roles in developing the theme of the novel. Three clues of the novel are as follows: 1. The emotional entanglements between Edward, Anna, Marian and Cantor. 2. The love dispute between Rosalind and Tuan

3. The emotional conflict between Benet and Jackson

Though it seems that more characters are involved in the first clue, it does not represent that the first clue takes the main part in developing the theme of the novel, each one plays important role in the emerging of the theme. The polyphonic narrative structure enables the clues can be distinguished out for they develop in a separated way, not being quite influenced by other ones. However, the clues are not completely isolated from each other, for they sometimes cross-refer from one to another just like what the \"counterpoints\" in music do. Murdoch breaks the traditional practice, and makes the plots of the story developed out of sequence. The story begins its narration from a coming wedding. Nearly all the characters present in this scene; however, as for one of the soul ones of this group Jackson, the author only gives a simple information to the readers that he is the servant. And the narration of the story of Benet and Jackson begins from the third chapter, which of course does not represent that the story between them really happens after the \"wedding accident\". Yet the \"wedding accident\" becomes the turning point of all the stories. Based on this \"turning point\more and more clear, the images of the characters are more and more distinct, and the suspenses of the stories are thus cleared up step by step. The complementary and

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interactivity between these narrative clues produces tension as well as unity. Two important characters—father-like Benet and God-like Jackson make the novel is no longer a one-central-character novel any more, and the narrative focalization of this novel always alternates from one to another. Narrated mostly by the narrator of internal focalization, the novel enables all the characters have the opportunity of stating his or her feelings and avoids the monotonousness caused by the zero-focalization, the author purposely makes all the characters be equally introduced to the readers, and this is just the so-called \"dialogism\" possessed by polyphonic narrative. And \"true polyphony\" with great value and different voices in it, in those masters' eyes, should be composed by a large number of independent and nonintegrated voice and consciousness. Namely, to be the narrator, to be the characters, enjoy the equal right in the narration. The focus of the art of thinking has been changed from the traditional narrator's \"looking up\" at the hero or \"overlooking\" the hero into the narrator's \"facing\" the hero. According to Bakhtin, the \"looking up\" at the hero refers to the narrator is controlled by the hero, and the \"overlooking\" the hero means that the hero is in the control of the narrator. And in the opinion of Canadian scholar Northrop Frye, the former means that the hero possesses the superiority in social class, education level and the circumstance when compared with the ordinary people, while the latter is physically and mentally weaker than common people. \"Facing\" the hero implies that the voice of the narrator is by no means \"louder\" or \" lower\" than that of the hero, the voices of them is of equal value and status. In order to create an equal circumstance for the narrator and the hero, Murdoch, in this novel, on one hand chooses a thinker-like hero, and on the other hand puts the focalization on the hero's thinking of the world as well as thinking of himself when it comes to the program of portraying the hero. In Jackson’ s Dilemma, Benet, as a person who holds the \"centre position\" of the group, works on a philosophy book on Heidegger, and always wonders \"who am I\" or \"what am I\". He has a strong sense of self which is as intense as the narrator's, that is, the author's voice is not superior to the voice of the hero, they are equal. More than that, nearly all the characters have the equal right of voicing with the narrator, the whole novel is constructed under a state of active dialogue between the narrator and the characters. Quoting an opinion promoted by Murdoch herself here, the \"ideal novel\" should be \"scattered, with many different centers\she indeed does it in Jackson’ s Dilemma, with multi-characters, multi-centers, and multi-focalization, the novel is characterized by its polyphonic narrative structure.

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2.2 The Theme of Jackson's Dilemma

As one of the most influential female novelist in England, Iris Murdoch melts the after-war British society and her moral philosophical ideas into her novels, and skillfully makes the characters in her novels teach people how to improve their life quality and find true-self by goodness and how to value other ones' existence. In the same way, Murdoch leads her last novel Jackson’s Dilemma towards a happy ending by emphasizing the power of the “goodness”. In Murdoch's philosophy, one will enter into a state of confusion under a natural environment, namely one will focus on his own conjecture when is in a natural state. The conjecture always makes one feel he or she is very important to others, thus holds his or her accepting of new knowledge and new things back. One will become \"invisible\" when he or she slips into a inflated feeling of self-importance. Therefore, only when one has already experienced a hard time of moral or spiritual struggling that can he or she possibly obtain the \"truth of the goodness\" after breaking the \"confusion\"which he or she indulges in.

In Jackson's Dilemma，Murdoch creates two \"good\" men—the \"father-like\" Benet and the \"God-like\" Jackson. However, their \"goodness\" is proved out not the \"selfless goodness\" promoted by the author. There are vices hiding behind their \"goodness\" before they undergo a hard time of moral struggling. Benet possesses the \"centre position\" of the \"net\" made by the author, with each character harboring very private griefs and happiness. And he quite enjoys the feeling of being trusted by others. However,when all the things go beyond his anticipation, he is surprised , and feels ashamed and helpless. More than that, Benet is the only one who does not like Jackson sometimes even envies him for Jackson is always needed and trusted by others, he worries about that Jackson will take replace of him. So Benet's goodness is not totally selfless because he is also vain, selfish and jealous. Selfishness is a vice that absolutely ingrains in human nature. Murdoch argues \" ...Our vices are general, dull, the ordinary rotten mud of human meanness and cowardice and cruelty and egoism\" (Iris Murdoch.1970:68). The author of this paper believes that the \"goodness\" that Benet shows to others is used for him to satisfy his vanity of being placed at the \"centre position\vanity gets the better of him. As for Jackson, he is a person who has mysterious past, which however puts an \"aura\" surrounding him, and makes him possesses extraordinary charming to others. The past life, which Jackson always tries to escape from, may be a blank, or

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something depressed he desperately wants to forget. He never talks it to others, and withdraws others' questions about that purposely. He always remains hidden until needed, but most of the time he is \"horrified by the 'order' which surrounded him, and by his own utter incompetence. He is (was) a watcher.\" (Murdoch, Iris. 1995:122) In order to melt into the group, he does his utmost to help others as \"a man of all trades\". His goodness to others wins other people' s sympathy, and other people blame Benet for his driving Jackson away. So his goodness is used by him to win the sympathy of the others, which provides him necessary social environment for him to quest for true-self. And Murdoch's father-like Benet and God-like Jackson has gone through the same spiritual struggling for they sometimes experience a loss of identity.

In order to get back the identity and pursue for true-goodness and true-self, one has to constantly reflect upon himself or herself. So Murdoch makes her characters which include not only father-like Benet and God-like Jackson but also other characters generate remorse in themselves again and again. At last, Edward and Tuan, who always keep the door of their heart closed to others even those ones who love them deeply, overcome the cowardice in their heart and bravely pursue their true-love. Benet changes his attitude toward Jackson for he realizes that Jackson is a potential adviser and friend of him. Though now Jackson is visible much more than Benet, Benet no longer envies him but blesses himself for at least he is the person closest to Jackson. Jackson, who is treated equally by the group, gets more freedom than before and can live a life according to his own will. By depicting two characters who seems like \"saints\" with a group of people who are obedient to the law, Murdoch promotes that a \"good\"man may lose his or her identity when the vices such as vain, selfishness, cowardice get the better of him or her, he or she has to reflect upon himself or herself by constant remorse. Only by remorse, by this kind of \"deconstructing of oneself\" and valuing others' existence and the existence of the \"otherness\"can one make progress on the respect of morality.

2.3 The Structure’s Interacting with the Theme

Jackson's Dilemma, in the opinion of the author of this paper, is a new attempt of Murdoch for she has combined the structure of the novel so closely with its theme. The polyphonic narrative structure characterized by multi-characters, multi-centers, and multi-focalization interacts harmoniously with the theme of the novel. In the novel, by

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depicting two characters who seems like \"saints\" with a group of people who are obedient to the law, Murdoch promotes that a \"good\"man may lose his or her identity when the vices such as vain, selfishness, cowardice get the better of him or her, he or she may stubbornly believe that he himself is a very important one to others and disregard other people's feelings. And sometimes may treat other people unequally. For example, Benet, who treats the people around him so friendly, always dislike Jackson even can be irritated by other people's expression of praise for Jackson. He waits for the chance to drive Jackson away for he worries about that Jackson may become more popular than him. Jackson, who is so welcomed by others except Benet, however, is always horrified by the \"order\" which surrounded him. Before any possible change might take place, Jackson is only a watcher, and is not invited to join the discussion about philosophy or literature. Obviously, his right of voicing is not equal with that of others for the existence of the \"order\". When the \"order\" is broken, along with that changes occur, Jackson's opinions become the chief criterions of those arguments. The change takes place in Jackson's position produces a change in his right of voicing, and based on this change the theme of the novel is thoroughly highlighted. \"True goodness\" requires that one should value other ones' existence during his or her pursuing for true-self, that is to say, equal treatment of others is an essential quality for a person who wants to achieve the \"true-goodness\". Skillfully Murdoch arranges a polyphonic narrative structure to interact with this theme. As for the polyphonic structure, the core of it is the philosophy of dialogue, which mainly refers to the equal confrontations between the thinking of different cultural values with the independence and equality as their prerequisite. It enables the hero has the sense of independence, gives the others the voice of freedom and independent personality, and makes it possible for different awareness coexisting and interacting with each other. The narrator only do objective description without comment, thus it forms a kind of \"equal-dialogue\" relationship between the narrator and the characters as well as between the characters and the characters. So the \"equal dialogue\" relationship possessed by the polyphonic narrative structure interacts with the theme of the novel that equal treatment of others is an essential quality for one to achieve the \"true-goodness\".

三峡大学硕士学位论文

Chapter Three The Variable Narrative Time in Jackson's

Dilemma

In Genette's opinion, time in narrative fiction can be defined as the chronological relations between the story and the text. The text time refers to the linear or spatial disposition of linguistic segments in the continuum of the text, and the story time refers to the ideally natural chronology of the events. According to Genette, the relationships between the text time and the story time can be analyzed in terms of duration, frequency and sequence.

3.1 Time Duration in Jackson's Dilemma

Genette promotes that time duration can be used to measure the length of the narrative time against the temporal span of the story. The duration which is awarded to event will unnecessarily be the same for every one of them, and the organization of similar or variable duration produces a narrative fugacious pacing. According to Genette, there are four narrative movements of the time duration: summary, scene, pause and ellipsis. The relations between the story time and the text time in terms of duration are between two durations instead of between the length of the text devoted to the story (measured in lines and pages) and the duration of the story itself(usually measured in minutes, hours, days, months, years), that is, the relations are not permanent but temporal. In general, the measure which is yielded by this relation is space (speed). Genette tends to use constancy of pace as the norm to examine degrees of duration. In narrative constancy of space is the unaltered rate between the textual length and the story duration. Taking constancy of pace as the \"norm\and deceleration. While the effect of acceleration is generated by a short segment of the text being devoted to a long developing period of the story, the effect of deceleration is produced by the opposite procedure, scilicet by devoting a long segment of the text to a short developing period of the story. And the minimum speed is pause while the maximum is ellipsis. There are two intermediaries between these two poles: summary and scene. The author of this paper will study the time duration including the exploration of summary, scene, ellipsis and pause in Jackson’s Dilemma in the following part.

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3.1.1 Summary in Jackson’s Dilemma

Summary, in the light of Genette, is the narration in a few paragraphs or pages of several days, months, or years of existence, without stating out any details of the action and the speech. Namely the story time is much longer than the text time. Summary can be used both in the very beginning as a start point and the continuous narration of the events as supplemental information. Summary enables a novel to be brief and succinct and is favorable for the readers getting more related information in a relatively short time. In Jackson’s Dilemma, there are some summaries. From the very beginning, the author makes the readers know that the young master of Hatting Hall Edward Lannion is already twenty-eight, and the readers can know his former life by being informed that: His beautiful mother had died of cancer when he was ten... When he was

eighteen, his younger brother was drowned. He had no other siblings. He loved his mother and his brother passionately. He had not got on with his father... Unknown to his father he employed himself at publishing for only two mornings a week, devoting the rest to reading, and attempting to write historical novels, even poems. When Edward's father died Edward shed tears and wished he had behaved better to his father, who had left him the house in Notting Hill, and the estate, and the handsome house in the country...(Iris Murdoch, 1995:01）

From Murdoch's summary one gets to know the character Edward's misfortune of loss of those beloved ones, his family background, his work and his future plan. Those information, though not stated detailed, lay a very important foundation for the later development of the story. His misfortune causes the darkness in his deep heart and leads to his spiritual isolation and the \"self-discovery\" dilemma, which precisely forms the complicated plots of the novel.

3.1.2 Scene in Jackson's Dilemma

In the condition of scene, the story duration and the text duration are traditionally considered basically identical. A scene usually creates an effect of vividness and immediacy. According to Genette, the most common scenic form is dialogue which always makes the readers feel that the characters are presenting their speeches before their eyes as

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they are reading between the lines. The narrator's voice often disappears under this kind of condition, the reader directly listen to the characters' talks without any comment or statement of the narrator, which makes the readers feel that he or she is personally on the scene. For instance:

\"Are you thinking of opening your house to the public now?\" Owen was saying

to Edward. \"you thought of doing that, didn't you?\"

\"I didn't actually,\" said Edward. \"My father mentioned it, but he never really

wanted to. I certainly don't.\"

\"I don't blame you,\" said Owen. \"After all you don't need the money, and

showing the place would be a burden and a nuisance. Yes, I can see, absolutely a nightmare.\"

\"Quite.\"

\"Have you still got that Turner, the Pink One it was called?\" \"Yes. How did you know about the Turner?\"

\"It was lent for the Turner exhibition. Your ancestors had very good taste. Of

course I am not implying that you and your father lacked it.\"

\"That is just as well.\"

\"Of course you have the latest burglar alarms I assume. Are you writing a

novel?\"

\"No. Why should I be writing a novel?\"

\"Everyone writes novels nowadays. Someone told me you were. I feel that you

have much to write about.\"

\"And you are a painter.\"

\"Yes, I am a painter. One day soon I shall paint you.\" (Iris Murdoch, 1995:19）

This conversation, obviously, is not a pleasant one in which the readers can catch the strong smell of \"gunpowder\Owen, who is always jerky and noisy, cracks ironically upon Edward, and Edward replys curtly, not paying much attention to his partners. These two characters' personality is brought to the surface. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotion is also clear to the readers. Edward is going to marry Marian, he is uncertain to his marriage, \"Can I be happy....can my dark soul see the light at last?\"(Iris Murdoch,1995:05), so during the before-wedding dinner time, Edward indulges in his own thinking, which reveals his uneasiness toward his future life. The scene of this text reveals vividly

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the different personality of the characters.

3.1.3 Ellipsis in Jackson's Dilemma

It is when the narration omits one or more points in the story time that an ellipsis occurs. The event that is not narrated can make its absence legible in a number of ways. An ellipsis can be referred to before or after the existance of a fact in an anachrony, and it also can be inferred by the readers based on the cause and effect, or be completely omitted and completely unrecoverable by readers' inference. There are two kinds of ellipsis in the light of Genette, explicit ellipsis and implicit ellipsis. Explicit ellipsis is often stated by the narrator who takes no part in the story, with the sentence like \"many years went by\" at the beginning of the next plot. Being different from explicit ellipsis, implicit ellipsis can not be observed by the readers so easily, the readers can conjecture the ellipsis of one point of the story only from the time order of the events happen in the story. The skillfully adopted ellipsis in a story no doubt can accelerate the narrative speed and the narrative rhythm, highlight the movements between the main events and their structural meaning produced for the plot, and ensure the succinctness and the conciseness of the story. Such as, Murdoch introduces the \"already dead Mr. Popular\"-Uncle Tim just as follows:

Uncle Tim (he did not marry...) was for Benet, and indeed for others, a

romantic and somewhat mysterious figure. He had been involved in \"various wars\". He had left the university without a degree but had been (this much was known) a talented mathematician. He became, using this talent no doubt, an engineer, and somehow thereby came in contact with India, where he then spend much of his life, returning at intervals to England... (Iris Murdoch, 1995:08）

Obviously, the readers can not get to know what on earth Uncle Tim's \"various wars\" are from the above information given by the narrator. What kind of business he is involved in, why does he come in contact with India? The narrator makes them elliptic, which left the readers a more \"mysterious\" impression on Uncle Tim.

3.1.4 Pause in Jackson's Dilemma

A pause further stresses the narrative time over the story time. It occurs at any time in

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the text when the time of the narration continues while that of the story stops, it is commonly used in character or place's description, commentary, exposition. But Genette points out that not all the descriptions can be called ellipsis. Only those descriptions which are given by the stand-by narrator in order to provide the reader some certain information, and under this kind of condition, the continuous process of story is paused. Namely when the story is developed by using the figure's perspective to describe the object, the story-time is still going on through the observable behavior or the psychological activity, so there is no pause of the story time. Pause in the story can slow down the narrative pace and the narrative rhythm of the novel.

In Jackson's Dilemma, there are many pauses existed. Such as:

Benet now, looking at himself in the mirror, experienced a usual surprise. He

still looked so remarkably young. He also, when thus caught, always seemed to have his mouth open. He was of medium height, about the height of Uncle Tim, though shorter than Pat. He was lean and slender, always neatly dressed even when gardening. He had thick ruffled hair, copious red and brown, flowing down over his ears, without any streaks of grey, a broad calm face, a high bland brow, dark blue eyes, a neat straight nose, full lips which often smiled though their owner was now often sad. (Iris Murdoch, 1995:11)

The narrator of this paragraph begins her description from the character's \"looking at himself in the mirror\other movements or events but to give a very detailed description about the appearance of the character. The readers get the impression that the character Benet is man who is lean and slender with thick ruffled hair, a broad calm face and so on. Though \"Benet\" is a figure who is not real-existed but created by the author of the novel, the readers may accept him as a real man. Murdoch herself states that she wants to create somebody who never existed, and who is at the same time a plausible person. The development of the story is slowed down, so as to the narrative speed and the narrative rhythm.

On the whole, time duration in Jackson's Dilemma enables the narration to put the emphasis on the important events of the story, distinguishing them from those less important ones for they are given more time to be detailed in the text, and when it stresses more important events over less important ones, it results in an imbalance in the story, which creates a particular artistic effect for its narration. The alternating of its four

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different forms in the story affects the narrative speed in varying degrees and imparts a sense of rhythm, and makes the story develop under various movements just like a piece of music.

3.2 Time Frequency in Jackson's Dilemma

According to Genette, time frequency represents several basic types of transient relation between the narration and the story. And frequency refers to the relationship between the number of times that an event happens in the story and the number of times it is narrated in the text. It inevitably involves repetition in it. There are three forms can be taken to reveal the repetition-relations between the story events and their narration: singular narrative, iterative narrative and repeated narrative. Singular narrative event is the one that occurs once and is accordingly narrated once, iterative narrative event occurs more than once but is narrated only one time, however, repeated narrative event refers to the event that occurs once but is narrated more than once. As in Jackson's Dilemma, singular narrative is so commonly used just for the necessity of the narration with no significant artistic effects produced, and iterative narrative is little used by the author, so this part is going to focus on Murdoch's adoption of repeated narrative and analyze the purpose of the author and the special effects produced by it.

In this novel, Murdoch so many times depicts the remorse of the characters. \"When Edward's father died Edward shed tears and wished he had behaved better to his father...\\"Benet had loved his parents and regretted later that he had not revealed his love more openly. Remorse.\punishment, remorse.\"(Iris Murdoch, 1995:01,08,10), all kinds of remorse is depicted by the author to reveal what she insists all the time—there is no redemptive suffering, only remorse for remorse is what is real. Through the repeated narration of the characters' remorse, Murdoch illustrates her opinion about one's spiritual struggling during his or her pursuing for true-goodness and true-self. According to Murdoch, either artist or ordinary people, in order to get better on the aspect of morality and achieve the \"true-goodness\or she has to undergo a hard moral struggle or a spiritual journey, and breaks the \"confusion\" which he or she always sucks in, at the same time casts his or her eyes towards the wild world. At times, one cannot see the world clearly, because obsession, anxiety, jealousy, enmity, fear and suchlike things block the view of the outside. One has to fight

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with those evils in himself (herself) so that he can gain the \"true-goodness\way to do this is to reflect on his or her past mistakes now and then. In Jackson's Dilemma, Benet constructs a personal world in which he himself is the center, that group of friends trust him and harbor their \"private griefs\" to him. And Benet is quite satisfied with the feeling of being trusted, but more often, he reflects that really, profoundly, it is all his fault. When Marian disappears on the night before the wedding ceremony, the group buries in grief and despair, Benet thinks that it is he who have messed it up for he has hustled Marian and Edward together, because in his mind, they should pair off, they should go walking together, they should sit next to each other at dinner. Mildred thinks it's \"all our (their) fault, we had not been deep and loving enough to see what the difficulties were, we had not tried, we had thought selfishly of our own satisfaction...\" (Iris Murdoch, 1995:32) By continuous remorse, the characters realize that they should respect each other's individuality, and the right of pursuing their own happiness. The very first thing that they do is to change the attitude of self-conceited arrogance, by continuous remorse they understand that the best way of loving those beloved ones is to make them support each other in life but independent in spirit. And by the repeated narrative of the characters' remorse, the theme of the novel is illustrated deeply.

3.3 Time Sequence in Jackson's Dilemma

It is unnecessary for the text time to be in tune with the chronological succession of the events though it is inevitably linear. Actually, it usually departs from the story order and creates various kinds of discordance. In fact, there is no absolute beginning of time in existence for almost all the novels begin their narration from the middle of their stories. Genette terms the specific points of discrepancy between the temporal order of the story sequence and that of the narration as \"anachronies\" and divides them into two fundamental categories: analepsis(flashback), or textual point of retrospection, which reaches back to a time anterior to that have been narrated usually for the purpose of exposition, and prolepsis (flash-forward), which reaches ahead to those events yet to occur in the story sequence usually for the purpose of foreshadowing. Narrative time in Jackson's Dilemma does not follow a traditional linear pattern for the reason that it meanders through time, sometimes circling back, other times moving vertically, spirally out of time and space, which engages the readers not just with some ineffable spiritual horror, but also with disarming sense of

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timelessness.

3.3.1 Prolepsis in Jackson's Dilemma

The basic story of Jackson's Dilemma actually starts from the gathering - dinner before the wedding party of Edward and Marian, a close-knit circle of friends joyously is enjoying their delicious food and discussing Tolstoy and Heraclitus as usual. However, the real beginning of the story is not the wedding. According to the order of what they really happen in the story, the constituent episodes could be illustrated particularly by the following diagram:

(Edward and Marian) Becoming acquainted with each other → Falling in love with each other → Marian's escaping before the wedding → Marian's leaving with her Australian lover →Edward's marriage to Anna

The five episodes of main story of the novel do not go on in a cause- and -effect and chronological order. For example, the preparing for the wedding is set at the very beginning of the story, foreshadowing their later love story presented by the narrator. More than that, those episodes which happen before the wedding also foreshadow that some troubles are going to occur in the wedding. Edward sits upright at his desk on the first-floor drawing room of his house in Notting Hill. He tolerates at the thought of his coming wedding.

Suddenly something terrible and unexpected occurred. The window pane

had cracked and fallen inward, showing the carpet with little diamonds of broken glass.... A pistol shot? He leapt to his feet, crying out, as he remembered later.... Yes, it was a stone. He picked up the stone and held it, then dusted it with his other hand to remove the specks of glass. He put the stone carefully upon the mantelpieces. (Iris Murdoch, 1995:05)

Edward first frightens by the sudden happening, but later he becomes so calm just as he has seen this thing go down. He even puts the stone carefully upon the mantelpiece, which reveals this \"stone\" is somehow so important to him that he would like save it. According to this, the reader get to know that there is going to be another story about the \"stone\". In fact, when the readers reach the end of story, they find that the \"stone\" becomes a very important \"incentive\" for Edward and Anna's getting together. As for Marian's

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escaping from the wedding, Benet comments to Mildred on the evening before the wedding: \"Marian says she has just found another man! I don't know. My God, Mildred, I shall be so glad when this is over!\" Father-like Benet is uncertain to the coming wedding for the existing of \"another man\". And the information from Benet also indicates that something quite unforeseen may happen at the wedding.

Through the steady use of prolepsis (foreshadowing), Murdoch is able to create this sense of the cancelling of the wedding and the dilemma of the characters' love. Moreover, Murdoch's use of prolepsis plays an important role in producing the structural meaning for it makes the structure of the story develop in a compact way, and achieves the special mood effects on the readers.

3.3.2 Analepsis in Jackson’s Dilemma

Besides prolepsis which has been analyzed above, Murdoch also adopts much analepsis in Jackson’s Dilemma. When her narration on the present level proceeds, the stories of the past invade into the narration in fragments and pieces randomly in the form of re-memory. The characters, especially Edward and Benet, just cannot help casting back the past though it is entirely reluctant for them to think about or mention their such unpleasant past. Yet, any scene or action of the present time can evoke their recollections about their past. Several days after the \"wedding\familiar \" tea room\" and \"the sea\even those \"stones\" there make him remind of his younger brother Randall who died at fifteen years old. Randall's death is real a blow to him, which make him always lives in remorse and darkness. The author of Jackson’s Dilemma arranges nearly one part of chapter to insert a flashback of Randall's death. Every detail of the event puts on again in Edward's thought, which reveals that Edward never forgets what has happened on that day even though so many years have passed since then. It follows that Edward always suffers a lot from his brother's death.

As for the \"secretive\" servant of Benet—Jackson, in the first two chapters, he only turns up two times, there is no more information about him except the mentioning of him by that group of friends during their dinner time. Actually no statement of them is proved true, but one thing is beyond doubt—Jackson is mysterious. In chapter three, under the title of \"the pasthe author gives an account of Benet and Jackson's acquaintance by still having some reservations about Jackson's background and former life. And the narration of

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the main story is paused here while chapter four goes on the searching for Marian, namely the main story continues to develop. So the past and the present are interweaved. The past becomes a part of the present and at the same time the present is surrounded by the past. Moreover, one of the important characters Uncle Tim is dead in Jackson’s Dilemma, but the readers feel his presence in the narration. Uncle Tim, though dead, is from beginning to end a felt and seen presence in the narration. Through Benet's memory, the readers get to know that most of his life time is spent in India, he does not get married, loves reading very much, and so on. More than once, the group of friends hopes that Uncle Tim was still alive during their talkings or dinners. Obviously, though Uncle Tim is already dead, but his spirit is still with his friends and the readers.

Above all, the plot of Jackson’s Dilemma is confusing and complicated for it unfolds step by step in fragments and pieces as different characters remember and share their experiences and memories. The present narration and the chronological time order of the story are interrupted by flashbacks and flashforwards now and then. It interweaves the stories that happened in the past and those that happen at present, which of course reveals great fragmentary and leaping characteristics of the narration. The stories happened in the past and the stories that happen at present are mingled and mutually interfere with each other. Though the story is set in the present time, the past always appears by means of flash backing characters' past experiences and memories. The narration moves constantly back and forth between the present and the past, and thus blurs the demarcation between them and leads to a special dislocated narrative effect.

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Chapter Four The Dynamic Narrative Focalizations in

Jackson’s Dilemma

Strictly speaking, when the narrator of a narrative work begins his or her story, he or she has to choose a narrative angle which is called \"angle of vision\of narration\his research on so called \"perspective\other traditional terms for he insists that those terms listed above are over-specialized visual terms, and divides it into three categories: zero focalization, external focalization and internal focalization. The real advantage of the term \"focalization\" is that it can break away from the ambiguity which may be possessed by the term \"point of view\" or \"perspective\" because they do not always refer to the positions for the view. In Genette's opinion, when the narrator of the story is a traditional omniscient one, the narration's focalization is zero, and of course there is no fixed focalizer; when the narrator functions as a focalizer at the same time, and the narration's scopes restrict only to what a character knows, thinks, and feels, then the narration's focalization is external; and internal focalization can be divided into three sorts: fixed internal focalization (limited to a certain single character), variable internal focalization(shifting from one character to another one) and multiple internal focalization (omnisciently ranging among a group of characters). In general, the \"focalization\" in modern works is more flexible while it is comparatively stable in traditional ones. Genette once supposes \"the commitment as a focalization is not necessary steady over the whole length of a narrative\\"any single formula of focalization does not, therefore, always bear on an entire work, but rather on a definitive narrative section, which can be very short\" (qtd. Keith Green, 1996:107) This is true to Jackson’s Dilemma, thought is dominated by zero focalization, it allows the co-existence of other focalizations even mixed focalizations. Different focalizations interfer and intermingle with each other, which makes the story roll forward just like a river.

4.1 Zero Focalization Alternating with External Focalization

Many narrative works, which are characterized by an omniscient point of view in a

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traditional manner, are described by the modern narratologists as having a zero focalization. As far as Genette is concerned, \"the narration with zero focalization is one in which it is impossible to fix the perspective in terms of which the narrated characters, events and distinctions are being observed and presented.\" (qtd. Hawthorn, 2000:258-259) In a narrative with zero focalization, the narrator knows everything at all time and places, just like the God. Standing on the tallest mountain of the whole world of the story, the God-like narrator is relatively objective, never disturbed by what happens in the story world. In Jackson’s Dilemma, the readers encounter the narration with zero focalization here and there. At the very beginning of the novel, the readers are told that \"Edward was good-looking. He was tall and slim and pale. He was very well dressed. His hair, slightly curling.... He was twenty-eight... His beautiful mother had died of cancer when he was ten... When he was eighteen, his younger brother was drowned...\" (Iris Murdoch, 1995:01) From the narrator, the readers know Edward's appearance, his family background, and the relationship between his family and Benet's. The only thing that the readers should do is to accept the information given by the narrator, no need of guess or making judges upon that, which results in the boringness of the reading. So there is a danger of telling everything and leaving the reader no room for imagination. However, the author makes this disadvantage of the zero focalization be avoided skillfully by adopting of another kind of focalization. When the readers indulge in Edward's thoughts by following the narrator's narration, the story changes abruptly to its next plot. \"Suddenly something terrible and unexpected occurred. The window pane had cracked and fallen inward, showering the carpet with little diamonds of broken glass... A pistol shot?... An assault, an attempted assassination, a nearby bomb?..\" (Iris Murdoch, 1995:05) As the person involved, Edward is no longer in shock when he finds out it is just a stone, but leaving the reader in horror and confusion. Obviously, the narrator here is no longer the narrator of the zero focalization above. The focalization is turned to the external focalization by the author. The external narrator does not give any explanation upon this sudden change and gives no more information about this \"stone\" event but keeps the readers in suspense, which urges the readers to go on with their reading so that they can know how it ends at last. However, in following chapter, the narrator of the zero focalization comes back again. The narrator acquaints the readers with the members of the group of friends one by one, their appearance, their family background, their education, their relationship and suchlike information is more or less told to the reader. And the narrator of the zero focalization

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withdraws again, the story develops to another stage. While all the wedding guests and the readers are surrounded by the happiness, a note left by someone unknown spoils all the things which should have been wonderful. The external narrator pretends to be a spectator and does not tell the readers who leaves the note and the reason why he sends such a note. Where is Marian now? It is not at all clear to the characters of the novel as well as the readers, for the second time, the readers are left in confusion. But that is by no means all, in the whole story, there are so many suspense left, which makes the story rise and fall in turn like the waves of the sea.

4.2 External Focalization Alternating with Internal Focalization

In Genette's (1990:109) opinion, external focalization refers to a focalization that is limited to what the observer could actually have observed from the outside of the story world. In a narration with external focalization, the hero performs in front of the readers with his thoughts or feelings being forbidden to be known by the readers. The limited adoption of external focalization in narration creates the effect of suspension when necessary, just like what we have discussed in last part. And the external narrator shows his (her) readers a relatively objective picture and invites the readers' participation and imagination. Internal focalization describes a story that is seen from within the story, characterized by the adoption of the perspective of characters. According to Genette (qtd. Shen Dan, 2010:97), \"internal focalization is fully realized only in the narrative of 'interior monologue'.\" No doubt, this is only in strict sense. There also exists narration with internal focalization which is not interior monologue when it is in a less strict sense. As far as Shen Dan is concerned, narration with internal focalization usually happens in the third person narration-on one hand, the narrator tries to observe everything from the angle of the focal characters; on the other hand, he (she) reserves the freedom of referring to and describing the focal characters. And the narrator of the variable or the multiple internal focalization definitely know much more than any character does for his (her) narration includes all the characters' observations and perceptions. The distinctive feature of external focalization is that it invites the readers to participate in the creation of the plots and the portrayal of the characters, while the internal focalization can achieve a much more vivid and appealing effect when the inner world of the characters is depicted, thus strike a responsive chord in the hearts of its readers and get a better reading effect.

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In Jackson’s Dilemma, after Marian's escaping from the planned wedding, Rosalind, the younger sister of Marian, is totally at a loss and wanders in the village church alone. Murdoch uses the figure of speech of \"stangeness\" by letting the character Rosalind have a new and careful observation to the object which she already knows well, which thus promotes the communication of the emotion between the character and the readers. Of course it was the lonely alabaster knight, also in armour, deep in this alcove,

whom someone had shown to her long ago, pointing out the little dog which lay at his feet. Rosalind stroked the dog, feeling his head, his pricked-up ears, and the tossed locks of his fur. Then, breathing deeply, she gently touched the serene and the pilgrims. Her fingers touched his lips and it was as if his lips moved. (Iris Murdoch, 1995:36)

The narrator of the narrative above both conveys what he (she) objectively observes and what Rosalind sees and feels subjectively, and this kind of situation is exactly what Shen Dan has pointed out. The author of this thesis believes that this is a perfect blend of the internal focalization and the external focalization. This combination ensures that the readers can get enough information, at the same time it guarantees the information obtained by the readers vivid enough with strong infectivity. According to the narrator's observation, the readers can get to know Rosalind's conditions and acts, \"Rosalind stroked the dog...breathing deeply, she gently touched the serene and the pilgrims.\" However, \"her fingers touched his lips and it was as if his lips movedhe narrator actually can not directly get the feeling of \"as if his lips moved\" but through the character Rosalind's perception.

It is not merely what is discussed above, as a real master of novel-composition, Murdoch skillfully takes advantage of the contrast of external focalization and internal focalization, instructing the readers to watch the story putting on from the side now and leading them to observe closely through the eyes of the characters then.（Shen Dan，1998:245）The readers may feel quite confused when Tuan refuses Rosalind again and again, Rosalind is madly in love with Tuan, but Tuan refuses to open his heart to her with no explanation though he accepts her at last. The readers may make some guesses on that, Tuan may be a real gay for he once kisses Owen, \"Tuan, who did not share Owen's inclinations, but loved him, stood quietly dreamily smiling, now leaning back against one of the trees. Owen kissed him\". So in order to prevent the readers' suchlike wild thoughts,

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Murdoch replaces her narrator of external focalization with the narrator of internal focalization. The narrator of internal focalization reveals the real reason of Tuan's struggling.

He thought, what does all that struggling and confusion amount to? It

amounts to this. I cannot marry a woman who is not Jewish. My father did, but I cannot. Why is that? I know why but I cannot marry any woman. My father's sufferings, my grandfather, my grandmother, the whole of that indelible sorrow, all that is forever, I must carry, not sharing it with any other being.(Iris Murdoch, 1995:198)

So the real reason is that on one hand Tuan's family has sorrowful past which makes Tuan suffers a lot and on the other hand he cannot accept the fact that Rosalind is a woman who is not Jewish. Thus the imagination of the readers is restricted within a boundary, which can avoid the misunderstanding of the theme. After a detailed analysis of the text, it comes to the conclusion that Murdoch makes the internal focalization and external focalization complement each other. The alternating of these two forms of focalization avoids the misunderstanding of the theme caused by unrestricted imagination and subjectivity resulting from too much depicting from the perspective of an inner focalizer.

4.3 Internal Focalization Alternating with Zero Focalization

In general, internal focalization is often chosed by modern narrators to see or experience an event from a character's point of view. \"The story telling from the perspective of a point that is internal to the story\" is a narration with an internal focalization. As far as Genette (1980:190) is concerned, internal focalization can be fixed internal focalization(limited to a single character), variable internal focalization(shifting from one to another) and multiple internal focalization(ranging omnisciently a group of characters).

In the novel Jackson’s Dilemma, the zero focalization narrator always plays an important role. He (she) can go backward and forward in time and space, and can avoid the limitations of the internal narrator's consciousness. It can tell the readers the events, which he (she) could understand while the character could not possibly have understood. Through these narratives, the readers see the characters as they are seen and as they see themselves,

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so the readers can understand how they get to be as they are. With the adoption of the zero focalization, it allows the readers receive more background information which can help them with the understanding of the theme of the story. The author of this paper has already stated in the first part of this chapter that the narrator introduces the members of that group of friends to the readers by adopting the zero focalization. Only one person among them is still \"mysterious\" both to the other characters and the readers. That is the servant Jackson. The readers are only told how Benet comes across Jackson and how Jackson becomes the servant of Benet. No more information about his family, his former life. Artfully, here the author adopts the narration with multiple internal focalization which is one of the three subtypes of the internal focalization. \"The narration with multiple internal focalization is one, in which the epistolary technique allows the same events to be presented more than once from different and contrasting perspectives.\" More information about Jackson is given by the conversation of the friends. To them, Jackson is a \"dark angel\\"suffering secret agonies of remorse\\"Benet's illegitimate son\\"a strange animal, a good tame animal\novel become the narrators of the multiple internal narration. Different characters give the readers different information about Jackson, the narrator of the zero narration who knows all the things makes no judges upon those diversity comments, neither confirms nor denies them, which urges the readers to judge by themselves on their own perception. The readers even feel that they are among this group and take part in their discussions, and speak out their own impression of Jackson. Compared with the completely passive acceptance under the narrative of the zero focalization, the readers can get the feeling of being a part of the story from the narrative of internal focalization interweaved within the narration of zero focalization. Moreover, when the inner world of the characters' is involved in the story, the narration of the internal focalization can achieve a much more appealing effect, thus strike a responsive chord in the hearts of its readers and get a better reading effect. Murdoch practises this art very well in Jackson’s Dilemma. For example, when Edward thinks about his coming wedding, the author uses the internal focalization instead of the zero focalization, \"how had it all so gently, so quietly, so inevitably come about? Can I be happy?\and uncertainty towards his future marriage and life, when the readers reach here, their heart may also be fulfilled with depression and worry, so they look forward to seeing the development of the story. The readers suffer psychic struggles together with nearly most of

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the characters in the developing process of the story.

The technique of adopting different focalizations in Jackson’s Dilemma clearly reveals Murdoch's delicate skills in writing: zero focalization ensures the credibility of the story that be told; external focalization impresses the readers with the sense of suspension; internal focalization uncoveres the characters' inner world vividly to the readers. The free and proper shifting of different focalizations makes them complement each other, which exactly reveals the great ingenuity in writing of its author Murdoch. The alternating of those different focalization emphasizes the direct perception at the same time broadens the narration scope, thus making the whole story develop in a freer way. The narrative of the story does not spring from a single omniscient perspective, nor stay with a single character, but constantly changes perspectives as it shifts from one character to another. The narrative breaks free from one character's thought and enters the thoughts of the others, a shift that brings a welcome sense of connection and movement. The narration with suchlike variable focalizations simultaneously offers enough information about different characters and different places to the readers, and ensures the brevity and the conciseness of the story, and also avoids the monotonous and undynamic reading-effect caused by unchanged focalization.

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Chapter Five The Varied Narrative Discourses in Jackson's

Dilemma

In the former chapters, the attention is mainly focused on the narration and the narrator of the story, but without narrative discourses, not merely the narration and the narrator but also the story cannot exist at all. The narrative discourses serve as the medium between the narrative and the story, while \"every narrative...is a structure with a content plane (called 'story') and an expression plane (called 'discourse'). And the 'discourse' includes not only the character's speech but also the character's verbalized thoughts.\"(Seymour Chatman, 1978:146) According to Genette, there are three sorts of narrative discourses: narrated discourse, indirect narrated discourse and dramatic narrated discourse. In this chapter, the author of this paper is going to discuss the narrative discourses of Jackson’s Dilemma by adopting Genette's classification, and analyze the special effects achieved by adopting different discourses.

5.1 Narrated Discourse

Narrated discourse which hovers at the very borderline of what can be called \"reported discourse\in Genette's opinion, includes narrated dialogue and narrated thoughts. In general, narrated thoughts is less common than narrated dialogues in narrative works. The character's speech or thoughts is incorporated into the author's narrative, the narrator acts as his representative, speaks in his behalf. Though in order to suggest that the character originates the utterance, enough of his or her own words are remained, however, the narration does not completely quote it. Obviously, this kind of discourse keeps the distance between the narration and the story at its maximum. As for Jackson’s Dilemma, there are a few narrated discourses adopted in it, however different from the common practice of other writers' adopting of the narrated dialogues, Murdoch uses more narrated thoughts in her novel.

No news about Marian's whereabouts, Edward goes to the coast where his younger brother Randall has been drowned, \"what had made him come now, perhaps he knew. He had made another death, that of Marian. Even if she was alive, she was dead. And between these two deaths, there was yet a third thing, a third crazy thoughtless deed, which must

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forever be hidden in darkness.\"(Iris Murdoch, 1995:105) This narrated discourse mingles both narrator's narrative and Edward's inner thoughts. The readers are invited to make their own imagination of the \"third crazy thoughtless deed\at the same time experience the emotional struggling of the character.

Marian's news of going to Australia together with her lover Cantor arrives at last, Benet is in such an ecstasy for a moment, and then, he returns to his previous grief, Jackson.

Benet had fairly soon repented of the ferocious letter he had left for Jackson...

He felt ashamed at his anger and his haste, also distressed by what the others might think. He realised also that he had put Jackson out into a market where he would be readily snapped up! But was it not just that he was making a fool of himself. He had lost not only a valuable handyman, but a potential adviser and friend. He had blundered, he had muffed it all, and he could not see how he could ever mend the damage...(Iris Murdoch, 1995:177)

Being accepted by Benet reluctantly on Uncle Tim's insistence, Jackson is liked and trusted by everyone except Benet, Uncle Tim makes a pact with him and everyone makes friends with him, in other words, he is quite popular, which hence causes Benet's jealousy. In order to keep his \"centre of power\" in this group, Benet always keeps the idea of driving his servant away, so when the chance comes, Benet turns Jackson away without hesitation, leaving no opportunity for Jackson to explain. However, when Benet realized that he has lost Jackson completely, he indulges himself in deep remorse. By adopting the narrated discourse, the narrator delivers the information of the character's psychological state to the readers by combining his judgement and the character's thought.

In Jackson’s Dilemma, suchlike narrated discourses found abundantly adopted in revealing characters' emotion and psychological activities with the co-existence of those indirect narrated discourses in the context. Language economy and narrative speed are achieved thanks to the fact that the words making up the narrated speech belong simultaneously to the author's narration and the hero's speech. And narrated discourse controls the narrative distance as far as possible. It conceals the character's feelings and invites the sensitive readers' participation, thus achieves unexpected artistic effect and reading effect. By using this narrated discourse, the readers of this story can easily participate in it and share the experience of its narrator and characters.

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5.2 Indirect Narrated Discourse

Indirect narrated discourse has more imitative power when is compared with the narrated discourse. In this kind of discourse, the narrator often uses narrated tags and verbs, such as \"she said\\"she thought\and a clause to express the content of the character's speech, dialogue and verbalized thoughts. Although indirect narrated discourse is also a kind of discourse that summarizes the content of the character's speech, dialogue and thoughts as the narrated discourse does, it has more traces to reveal the characteristics of the character's utterance and it does not quote the words of thoughts directly as well. Indirect narrated discourse implies a little more narrator's intervention, since the readers cannot be ensured that those words in the report clause are precisely what spoken by the quoted speaker. (qtd. Shen Dan, 2010:151) Naturally, when they differ entirely in syntax and diction, they may form the established \"well-spoken\" style of the narrator. Indirect narrated discourse may correspondingly summarize, interpret, paraphrase or otherwise change the exact words of the quoted speaker.

In the novel,when nearly all the turmoils seem to be settled down, Jackson still does not turn up. For all the other people have their own dearest ones, Benet feels extremely lonely.

Benet did a lot of walking fast round the house and exclaiming and talking

aloud to himself. What was to become of all these weddings? Nothing but surprises; he had expected Marian to marry Edward, then he had wondered if Rosalind might marry Edward, he had never expected Anna to appear from France, or Marian to go to Australia or young silent Tuan to seize hold of Ros... Would he, Benet, be invited to Australia? Would he become an intimate at Hatting Hall? Would Bran confide in him and love him? Would they all ask his advice? Or would he be quietly set aside? All these were instantaneous wandering pains.(Iris Murdoch, 1995:213)

The indirect narrated discourse above reveals Benet's anxiety about his \"centre position\round the house and talking aloud to himself is a kind of true reflection of his uneasiness and nervousness. The narrator's description about his behaviour can help the readers to feel the struggling of Edward's inner world. Edward's thoughts are presented by the indirect narration of the

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narrator. Though the readers cannot touch the character's heart directly, they also can get to know part of his thoughts according to the narrator.

Similar to narrated discourses, suchlike indirect narrated discourses which exist in a small number in this novel summarize the character's speech or verbalized thoughts. Compared with narrated discourses, however, indirect narrated discourses show more characteristics of the quoted speaker's speech or thoughts with a shade of more intervention of the narrator, and further reveal the personal traits of the character and make the readers get more appreciable information from its narrator.

5.3 Dramatic Narrated Discourse

Not similar to narrated discourse and indirect narrated discourse which try to quote the speech and the thoughts indirectly, dramatic narrated discourse quotes the speech and thoughts of the characters directly and completely. In it there is absolutely no narrator's intervention. Genette (1990: 112), once in his discussion, mentions two kinds of dramatic narrated discourses: dramatic dialogue, interior monologue.

5.3.1 Dramatic Dialogue

Most narratologists often calls the dramatic dialogue \"quoted dialogue\". In dramatic dialogue, the narrator tries to recite the character's exact words and the language is most vivid, vigorous and powerful among all the discourses. It makes the readers feel like the persons who are on the scene. And the distance between the narrator and the readers is shortest. According to Shen Dan (2010:157), the directness and the activity of the dramatic dialogue play very important roles in the characterization of the character. Besides, when placed in particular context, the quotation marks can produce extraordinary sound effects. In Jackson’s Dilemma, the author Murdoch adopts many dramatic dialogues to reveal the most vivid scene of the conversation between the characters.

Listen, I want you to stay with me, to be with me now as a friend, not as a

servant. Of course that's so now, isn't it? I want that you should live with me permanently-please. Of course you'll be perfectly free-\"

These were Benet's first words, standing opposite Jackson in the drawing

room. Benet trembled.

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Jackson, smiling faintly, looked at him, then said, \"Such an arrangement, if

attempted, must of course be between equals.\"

Benet said, \"I am sorry, of course I take that for granted.\"

\"And I cannot guarantee that I will stay here or indeed anywhere

permanently.\"

\"Well, of course. I just want you to be here as my friend--\" Jackson looked

pensively away, then said, \"Well, all right, let us give it a try.\"

\"Thank you! Then what about a drink to celebrate? Here is a bottle and two

glasses--\"

\"I have noticed them. A glass of water please, then I shall go. I shall be back

in three days.\"

\"Let me drive you over in the car?\" \"No, thank you.\"

\"So now you will live in the house--\"

\"If you don't mind I would rather stay in the Lodge.\"(Iris Murdoch,

1995:244)

After his coming across Jackson on the Waterloo Bridge where Jackson promises that he will come back if he wants after two weeks' consideration, Benet waits in anguish, and distracts if Jackson does not come back, unexpectedly Jackson comes back at last, which is a blessing to Benet. However, all the things are changed, the former host-servant relationship cannot be sustained any more, Benet is always very afraid of annoying Jackson, which is revealed quite obviously from the dialogue stated above. In the past, Jackson always keeps silent and maintains in his proper place, and turns up only when he is needed, keeping hiding behind this group. The conversations between him and his host are rarely mentioned by the author. Precisely speaking, as a servant who is not so welcomed by his host, Jackson's right of speech is deprived for the reason of the \"order\". Benet drives Jackson away for he misunderstands him and gives no opportunity for him to excuse himself. However, when nearly all the turmoils seem to be settled down, all the other people have their own dearest ones, Benet feels extremely lonely. He realizes that Jackson already becomes an indispensable company in his life. The dramatic dialogue above happens on Jackson's first day back. In contrast to his former manner, Benet pleads with Jackson to stay with him as a friend instead of a servant. And Jackson, whose identity already changes, now gets the equal right of speech with Benet. From their conversation,

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the readers can find that the words of the former servant are much more powerful than that of the former host. Besides, on account of the sound effects produced by the quotation marks, Jackson's words packs quite a punch, which reveals that a person can gain equal rights of speech and human rights after the breaking of the so called \"orderhus highlighting the theme of \"quest for true self and value other ones' existance\".

In this novel, dramatic dialogues are really indispensable parts. The author Murdoch develops the plot of the story and reveals the characteristics of the characters partly depending on dramatic dialogues. The author's narrative conveys without interruption or digression something of the flavor of the original speech and something of the psychological activity of the speakers.

5.3.2 Interior Monologue

In Jackson’s Dilemma, the most direct and obvious method of handling the thoughts of the characters is to treat them as \"unspoken speeches\" by placing them in quotation marks and sometimes accompanies by tags like \"she thought\". This is the so called \"direct tagged thought\": the tense of the report clause is present instead of past as it would be in the case of the indirect discourse, a tag is used or sometimes is even eliminated, and the thought appears in quotation marks while most of the time the quotation marks are dropped. The result is direct free thought. Without the narrator's interpretation, the readers read the character's thought appears in or not in quotation marks directly. Only the words—the every word, diction, and syntax as emerged in the character's mind have been completely taken down. By shouldering suchlike function, the narrator is a bit more prominent. This kind of enactment which is extended form is named \"interior monologue\".

As Robert Humphrey defines it, \"interior monologue is, then the technique used in fiction for representing the psychic content and processes of character, partly or entirely unuttered, just as these processes exist at various levels of conscious control before they are formulated for deliberate speech\". (Humphrey, Robert, 1955:04) Present tense verbs and first-person pronouns are used to display the characters' most inner world when interior monologue is employed. In order to represent the actual texture of consciousness—in order to represent it finally and perfectly to the readers, interior monologue also proceeds in spite of the readers' expectations of conventional syntax and diction. In this novel, apart from Edward and Marian, those who are involved in emotional

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entanglements, Rosalind and Tuan also have emotional troubles. Rosalind is madly in love with Tuan. However, Tuan is always so reluctant toward her love for he has something black in himself. Both of them suffer a lot before they make up their minds to get married. She thought, people talk of dying with love, but they don't really believe it- at

least not many do, I suppose some people-yet not very many-have felt this sort of anguish- when it is really a matter of life and death-though perhaps I won't die- yet I can't imagine going on living.(Iris Murdoch, 1995:180)

He thought, what does all that struggling and confusion amount to? It

The author employs \"interior monologue\" so as to ensure the fluency of the narrative, and avoid awkwardness caused by the transforming from the characters' speech and thoughts to the narrated discourse. More than that, it also strengthens the the sense of psychological reality, which can make the readers feel that they are the character and experience the pain of being trapped in love. By adopting interior monologue, the narrator ignores the boundary of the time, the boundary of the space and even the boundary of the reality and the psychology, and increases the tension of the narration.

In brief, Murdoch uses the varied discourses to mingle the voice of the narrator and the characters' voice together, to control the narrative distance and narrative perspectives freely, and also to invite the sensitive readers' imagination and participation, thus increasing the flexibility of the text and serves for highlighting the theme of the novel.

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Chapter Six Conclusion

Based on the detailed analysis of the narrative strategies of the novel in the light of Gernard Genette and Shen Dan's theory of narratology, the dissertation comes to a conclusion that Jackson's Dilemma is not the surprising turn of its author for its unique narrative strategies. The special narrative strategies of Jackson's Dilemma play very important roles in character-depicting, story-developing and theme-presenting. It is clear that, in Jackson's Dilemma, Murdoch uses polyphonic narrative structure, variable narrative time, dynamic or even mixed focalizations, and varied narrated discourses.

Through the analysis of the narrative structure of Jackson's Dilemma, including the analysis of the relationship between the structure and the theme, the author of this thesis finds out that the novel possesses a polyphonic narrative structure which unconsciously alludes to the theme. Characterized by multi-characters, multi-centers, and multi-focalization, the polyphonic narrative structure interacts with the theme of valuing others' existence and pursuing goodness and true-self.

Through the analysis of the variable time of the novel, including time duration, time frequency and time sequence, the author of this paper holds that the time in Jackson's Dilemma is circular and spiral, and that the boundaries of the past, the present and the future are dimmed. They are mingled and mutually interfere with each other. The story is set in the present time, but the past always appears by means of flashbacks. The chronological time order of the story and its present narration are often interrupted by flashbacks and flashforwards. The narration keeps moving constantly back and forth between the past and the present, and thus blurs the demarcation between them. It not only makes the plot of the novel complicated and fragmented, but also corresponds to the tradition of dealing with time in a linear way. And the repeated narration of the characters' remorse, the theme of the novel has been demonstrated deeply.

Through the discussion of the dynamic narrative focalizations of this novel, including zero focalization, external focalization and internal focalization, the author of this dissertation finds that the focalizations in Jackson's Dilemma is often changing, overlapped or even mixed. Zero focalization guarantees the credibility of the story; external focalization adds the sense of suspension; internal focalization increases the vitality for its vivid exhibition of the characters' most inner world. The free and proper shifting between

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these different focalizations makes them complement each other, which exactly reveals the great ingenuity of its author Murdoch. The alternating of those different focalization emphasizes the direct perception and at the same time broadens the narration scope, thus making the whole story develop in a freer way. Due to the narrator's telling the story from different \"points of view\" and presenting the story from different aspects, the narration with variable focalization offers much information about different persons and different places simultaneously and ensures the economy and the conciseness of the novel.

Furthermore, through the detailed analysis of the novel, one can discover that the author Murdoch employs variable narrative discourses in her work, including narrated discourse, indirect narrated discourse and dramatic narrated discourse. By adopting varied types of narrative discourses, the narrator controls the narrative angles and the narrative distance freely, and also boldly invites the readers' participation and imagination, thus the theme of the novel has been widened and deepened.

As mentioned above, by combining textual reading with theoretical analysis, this thesis represents an initial inquiry into Jackson's Dilemma with a corresponding range of emphasis on narrative structure, narrative time, narrative focalizations and narrative discourses. Due to the lack of related references both at home and abroad, especially the lack of the comments on this novel from the China critics and the limits of the ability of the present author, the analysis of this dissertation is inevitably partial to some extent though its author has done her utmost to better it. The author of this paper attempts to offer a systematic, though tentative, interpretation of Jackson's Dilemma with the theory of classical narratology to explicate Murdoch's narrative art in Jackson's Dilemma, and hopes to contribute to further study of the fictional narrative and to fresh appreciations of this Murdoch's novel as well as to enrich the systematic study of Iris Murdoch and her works. However, this study is still a preliminary one. It remains open to much more in-depth discussions and explorations of the prospective researchers or anyone who takes interest in Jackson's Dilemma. Jackson's Dilemma, which is criticized by so many people for its imprecisions and blatant redundancies, is proved out that it quite deserves to be read as much for what it cannot say as for what it can. Just like what she has done in her earlier novels, Murdoch still wears the eyes for minuting psychological detail, and possesses the ability to tell a bloody good story as what she has done before.

三峡大学硕士学位论文

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三峡大学硕士学位论文

Acknowledgements

Upon the completion of this thesis, I would like to take this opportunity to express my heart-felt thanks to all the people who have contributed to my accomplishment of the thesis directly or indirectly.

First and foremost, numerous thanks should be given to my supervisor, Professor Xu Jiangang for his wisdom, enthusiasm and encouragement. His profound knowledge and constant strictness made the thesis proper possible; his inspirational ideas and effective instructions played such important role in my writing and revision of my thesis; his kind understanding and patience made the process of writing so pleasant all the time.

I am also glad to express my sincere gratitude to the other teachers in the College of Foreign Languages, CTGU who have taught me in the first two years and given me so many valuable suggestions during the preparation of the graduate program and the thesis proposal.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my beloved parents and my close friends, who have offered me great help and encouragement in whatever conditions. Their constant support and love gave me strength and confidence to overcome difficulties bravely.

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Appendix

[1] 林雪莲，徐建纲. 《再见，我的弟弟》的美学蕴涵—浅析《再见，我的弟弟》中的叙事美学体现. 湖北经济学院学报（人文社会科学版），2011（4）：101-102

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