틈새 존재, 그 간극의 정체성: 레씽의 『마사 퀘스트』와 킹스턴의 『여인무사』

Abstract

This study explores the in-between identity in the novels of Doris Lessing and Maxine Hong Kingston. Despite the writers' diverse ethnic backgrounds, they all have experiences of 'exile.' Being an outsider separated from insiders leads to radical and critical point of views and simultaneously to social interests in societal mechanism of dominance and dependence. I find outsiders' keen observations and critical awareness in their works. Doris Lessing lived in British colony, Southern Rhodesia. Though she was a member of white settlers community, she couldn't assent to the white's Euro-androcentric prejudice. In Martha Quest, the conflict from a complex position as a white woman in colony is embedded in the main character, Martha. Martha's situation as a white, bourgeois, colonial subject makes it impossible for her to occupy just one position in the complex network of differences. From this experience, Martha gains the critical view about binary opposition. Maxine Hong Kingston is an Asian-American writer. As non-white ethnic writer, she experienced different processes of identity formation from white American. she is not either Chinese or American. In The Woman Warrior the narrator tries to transcend both Chinese tradition and American identity by transforming the oral story into writing. Kingston denies the power of patriarchal Chinese traditions and ghosts in the dominant society. By doing this she gives voices to herself differing from the 'model minority', orientalist's construction of Asian American. The in-between identity enabled these writers to have a keen awareness of themselves as alien and transcend the dominant social norm and monolithic tendency.