| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 外國語文學系 === 93 === Abstract
This thesis aims to interpret Michael Cunningham’s The Hours from the viewpoints of Julia Kristeva’s melancholia and Luce Irigaray’s female genealogy. Kristeva’s melancholia is a kind of narcissistic depression, which the melancholic suffers from the most archaic expression of unnameable sadness, the Thing. However, the melancholic are not totally severed from the use of signs, but search for meanings in their own despairs. Kristeva suggests that the melancholic have to identify with the father of individual prehistory in order to reconcile with the external world.
On the other hand, Luce Irigaray indicates that woman is in a state of dereliction due to want of female genealogy. Firstly, Irigaray purports touch in opposition to man’s gaze to demonstrate the multiplicity of female sexuality. Secondly, Irigaray suggests that an ethics of female genealogy can be achieved by women loving each other not only as mothers, but also as women. Irigaray, however, does not intend to construct another sameness; instead she turns to Descartes’ wonder to create an ethics of sexual difference. The notion of wonder can be further implemented by the incorporation of generosity in order to provide the basis for respect and the kind of limit wonder needs. Accordingly, woman is not equal to man, but is his other.
We could, thereby, summarize the following main points if interpreting Cunningham’s The Hours in terms of Julia Kristeva’s melancholia and Luce Irigaray’s female genealogy. Firstly, three female characters in Cunningham’s The Hours, in terms of Kristevan melancholia, suffer from unnameable sadness. Cunningham devices a triangular relationship﹘a writer, reader, and a character﹘to demonstrate the depression of each character. Cunningham devices the death of the author to illuminate the importance of reader’s involvement in the reading experience. Therefore, Cunningham sublimates the depressive mood to literary experience, which is able to give meaning to depressive mood. Secondly, incorporating Irigarayan theory with Cunningham’s The Hours, I found Cunningham intricately devices the death of Richard Brown to bring out the final encounter between Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan. Without the mediation of Richard’s narrative, Clarissa can finally understand Laura’s sorrow and realize the value of her own life. Accordingly, she is able to face Laura with generosity and to meet the challenge of life with wonder.
Michael Cunningham breaks through time and space barrier and unravels depressions of his three female characters in The Hours. The novel does not end in a depressive mood but in affirmation. The thesis intends to read Cunningham’s The Hours from feminist perspectives hoping to contribute different insights such as melancholia and female genealogy to this novel.
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