The North China Lover: Postmodernism

Introduction to Postmodernism in The North China Lover

Though highly autobiographical to the point of truth, The North China Lover, a novel by Marguerite Duras not only depicts her own life story in a French Colony, but also the everyday happenings of her love. She once said during her interview to Salma Rushdie, “I swear it. I swear all of it. I have never lied in a book. Or in my life” (Rushdie & Ash). In the comments, Salman Rushdie and Timothy Garton Ash write that she has stated that “she was ostracized for her reckless teenager affair with an older Chinese millionaire” the reason that her novel, The North China Lover, seems and autobiographical document.

If studied minutely, this love happening of Vietnam bore several resemblances of love with the creator, Duras. It is even more autobiographical than it is, for it is not only a cultural document, but also a social and economic critique, surpassing all the literary boundaries in the modern world. Despite its being the voice of a bold feministic attitude having crossed the patriarchal dominance, this fictional biography has the traces of her earlier fictions, which too are biographical in nature. As a novel, The North China Lover, demonstrates several new techniques that the writer has used. Including using easy to understand third person voice for narrating the entire story, Duras has won several strands of fictional techniques into a single fiction which is often called a style of woven personal fiction into history. Writing about this quality of her fiction, Naoki Sakai argues that this is remarkable in Duras that “she dealt with the work of the unconscious in her own historical memory in which the affiliation of fascism and colonialism was unambiguously” given in clear fictional terms (179). This sort of creative technique is a clear demonstration of the quality of a postmodern fiction. However, this is not all, for she has demonstrate not only intertextuality and self-reflectivity or subjectivism, but also used transgression beyond the accepted norms in this novel.

Intertextuality in The North China Lover

As far as intertextuality when tracing postmodernism in The North China Lover is concerned, it means to create a sort of relation of one text with another written in the same way earlier and create a sort of “interwoven fabric of literary history” as stated by Ramen Sharma and Dr. Preety Chaudhary. It means there is a reference to another work or even fairy tales. They are of the opinion that pastiche or using of pasted elements together to create a piece of work is also a feature of postmodern literature (195). A la all of her fictional works, Duras has constructed several strands of pastiches or texts into one. Specifically, there are several memories of her childhood woven into this text. The girl, her mother and brothers living a French colony not in acute poverty makes the whole simple story. However, it happens that their father left them in the middle. Despite this acute poverty, Duras studied up to France and graduated from Paris. This has sharp parallels in her story as the girl also is fond of telling stories, “She is telling the story of her life”, while “The Chinese listens from far off, distractedly” (Duras 88). This shows clearly her own romance with the Chinese millionaire who is not able to listen to her stories, while she is quite adolescent. In the same way, the protagonist of the novel leaves Vietnam for France, which is another resemblance with her life. As Duras has seen historical events within her own eyes, her fictions are autobiographical in a sense that they show what she had seen as a child. This could be a subjective movement for the writer to show herself in her own fiction. However, this is not all. The intertextuality of Duras is not limited to this.  

The other intertextual parallel is between her father and family and the family of the child of her novel, motifs and themes. Throughout her life, she has sought love in adults despite having a strict family norms and traditions. The image of patriarchal dominance prevalent throughout, The North China Sea, are reflected through her father and brother in the shape of Pierre and his brother. Oppression and dominance are two of the qualities that she sought to represent but this is of course through her own life. Even the motifs also point out the relations between the previous novel, The Lover, and The North China Lover. Obviously both the texts as written by a single author must have some similarities but in the case of both of these novels, there are strong parallels. In their book, Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction, Charles Forsdick and David Murphy write that the motif of river is also common in both the novels though the texts have also been linked in various ways such as “embodiment of flux, desires and transgression” but “many of the Mekong’s symbolic associations can only be fully deduced by reading them in intertextual association with those of The Lover” (260). They mean that this parallel structure not only go with themes, but also with the same motifs as both of them have already stated that despite it was written seven years later, the story was the same though it was only reworked a little (259). However, Aleksandra Tryniecka presents another hypothesis in her paper regarding this attempt of intertextuality on the part of Duras, arguing that she wants to show another alternative to her readers than presenting the “traditional generic model” the reason that she has used several texts within the same text to make it more interesting. Although several other writers have explored the themes of childhood and love in their fictions, she wants to show, she argues, that it “is now tread differently” which is not only through the social confusion that the child of The North China Lover confronts when migrating from Vietnam to France and through her rebelliousness in the traditional setting as she evinces (467-468). However, the consequences of the juvenile rebellion and resultant loneliness only makes things worse for the protagonist which is a sign that the author must have faced the same situation.

It is quite plausible that the life of the author and the text becomes interchangeable. Even the distinction between the two is blurred to a point. In this connection, C. K. Sample argues that her novel, The North China Lover, in fact, Duras has tried to play with her status as an author as well as a female figure, blurring the difference between her life and that of her characters. He is of the view that “Throughout text Duras manipulates intertextuality to blurs the lines — the lines between autobiography, fiction, among author, character and narrator” and the fact is that she has rather done it intentionality. She does not mince the word in saying that she has not done in in the previous novel, The Lover (280). In this connection, the most important point is that of hybridization which is the story and the setting. Although it is very much clear that as a biographical novel, it must have the same setting, the author has done her best in writing short and pointed sentences to point it out in the story where a new setting is replacing the old one with a bang such as “From Annam. From the islands….” (Duras 99). This is enough to show that she has played with the cinematic technique of sharply and abruptly introducing the new thing instead of making a long weaving of tale before changing the setting. In this connection, it is very interesting to seek further parallel of real character with that of the character created by the real one, the child.

Characters in The North China Lover

It is fair to say that a created one resembles more like a pastiche instead of a full-fledge character. Duras has clearly stated what she could have never stated in her conversation or interviews. She introduces the child saying that “She’s alone in the picture, she looks at the nakedness of his body, as unknown as that of any face, as unique, delightful, as that of his hand on her body during the trip” adding that “She isn’t alone in the picture any more” (Duras 69). This type of writing where the cut-paste technique of photoshop has been beautifully used with the poetic language. This image of her own life resembles with her own desires. However, even in the middle of this, the realization that she is going to love a person more than twice of her age will only result in the Chinese isolation that she thinks is going to make her wiser than before (59). This is also her desire that she has expressed in interwoven terms in Chinese isolation rather than the French one. Even more interesting is her technique of filmic or cinematic description of replacing one picture with another one and then make them run in a sequence such as “She starts to get out of bed. With his hand, he stops her from getting up. She doesn’t try again.” (70). Such a technique has made her unique in her narrative. It is not only abrupt but also poetic with pace very fast but movement very sluggish.

In its intertextual setting, the most important point is the subject which could be “self-absence” as stated by Todd in his paper. However, it is more than a reason for the book itself. In fact, Ruby Todd has argued this novel is revisitation of the previous, The Lover. The reason is that it is a catalyst of this narrative. There is the same intensity and same myth. In other words, Todd states that both of these books are “mere fragments of the limitless ones simultaneously present within autohr’s imagination and memory” which brings a sense of myth and “multivalency” or a new trait of weaving more than one texts into one. Although Todd asserts that Duras has refused to comment on the Chinese lover as being the same as in The Lover, he is of the view that the storyline is the same. It expresses the same desires, same experience, same wild emotions and same non-satisfaction (8). In other word, both of the texts have been interwoven into a one, showing the postmodern feature of intertextuality.

The North China Lover as a Histriographic Metafiction

It is also fair to label, The North China Lover, as a historiographic metafiction” for it involves not only the history but also the fiction. In this connection, a writer has two responsibilities to fulfill; the one that pulls him towards his native land and the other to his adopted land. Duras has beautifully constructed her story in a larger historical background. She has given the setting of the novel a French Colony, Indochina or Vietnam where she passed most of her childhood. Her birth within a French family and French colony and movement from Paris to home and back for education, and then her own tale of love with an old Chinese millionaire have been presenting on a huge historical canvass. Speaking about historical metafiction, Linda Hutcheon has argued that though it is correct to say that history and art are woven together to produce fiction, but challenges that historical metafiction poses are very serious and cannot be bridged by a common reader. However, she has also argued that this convergence of both the historical context and real text is “illimitable”, for this poses challenges in both “closure and single, centralized meanings” (07). In this connection, Duras has achieved success in this that she has woven history into her own autobiographical love story. She has lived in the elite neighborhood in Lycee de Saigon in Vietnam from where he left for France. This is the same that the child has to go through. The child leaves her home from Vietnam exactly like Duras. Both goes through the same historical period. Both sees the same historical happenings. Therefore, the challenge that it poses to the reader as a metafiction is only resolved when reader and the character are understood through the same lens. Regarding historical setting, the novel demonstrates the violence of attacks and patriarchal dominance of that era. Patriarchal dominance and oppression were common against the feminine perspectives in general life as well as private life.

Narrative of The North China Lover

The narrative of the entire novel is rather self-reflection or subjective. It could be that it is about the author herself, as it is an autobiographical account, but still the reflection in simple language is still there. It is the same like a mind that is remembering the past. In this connection, the comments of Ruby Todd are very important as he terms the narrative reflective, rather than non-linear, a postmodern trait of literary fiction. He is of the view that “linearity is bypassed in favor of the kind stop-start fragmentation experienced by a mind remembering” by which he means that this repeated remembering brings meanings into the events which is a sort of self-reflection (6). He further argues that “The order in which scenes come to us, for example, is not linear but rather a reflective of the narrator’s process of remembering” which is an evidence that she writes whatever she remembers from her memory (05). For example, the child says, “Doing nothing is a profession. It’s very hard” (130). In fact, this doing nothing is a self-reflection of the author herself when she has not being doing anything. In fact, the story in autobiography is in itself a self reflective retrospective, for she has been writing the same in The Lover, and as she has found not satisfaction, she started the same in this novel. It is because she has written gone a way beyond an ordinary fiction of autobiography. In this connection, Bethany Ladimer argues that she is popular for her rejection of ordinary and common autobiographical structure as followed in the fictional world. She is of the opinion that it was self-reflection of retrieving her own past several years back. Commenting further on this technique, she is of the view that it is a “personal truth about herself, as distinct from the “verifiable reality” which has made this novel rather a more self-reflective than self-explanatory (104). That is the very reason that self-reflection often comes in the form of flashbacks and hence the narrative is somewhat rudimentary or fragmentary.

Non-Linearity in The North China Lover

Although the novel itself seems to be a good narrative, it has the hallmarks of temporal distortion such as fragmentation or non-linear narrative. As it is clear from this above paragraph that the narrative is non-linear which are features of post modern fiction as stated by Ramen Sharma and Preety Chaudhary, but they argue that it is often used for the sake of irony. However, it is not clear whether Duras is ironic in The North China Lover, but it is confirmed that distortions are central in which it seems that fragmentation in the novel is in the shape of self-reflections (196). For example, the girl talks about the Chinese diamonds and then immediately returns to the Chinese, the old man and them again there is silence. Referring to Duras, John Taylor argues that even her previous lover on which this one was build was highly fragmentary and visual. He quotes her saying that The Lover was “highly poetic, fragmented, cinematic, visual and strangely paced” perhaps due to the reason that she has turned to cinema for which fragmentation of the narrative suits the best (Taylor). However, it is another thing that there are not many stories. Although there is only a one story, it is just in fragmentation and not in a full sequence like an ordinary novel. This fragmentation at parts is filled with silence which has successfully evolved the sense of self-reflection after a pause. Ben Kemper, a theater reviewer has obliquely referred to this fragmentation technique used by Duras as saying that though The North China Lover as a play has won the hearts of the audiences, it has been a Herculean task, he argues to bring this play on the stage. He pays tribute to the director saying, “Stillman has done her level best to bring the very sensory and fragmented novel to the stage” and he is quite right in his analysis in watching it that it is rightly fragmentary (Kemper).

As fragmentation is used to show a sort of self-reflection, Felix Guattari has made a very revealing commentary on the fragmentation in the postmodern interpretations saying that in literature fragmentation means fragmentation of the character. In other words, he is of the opinion that “The devaluation of the meaning of life provokes the fragmentation of the self-image” (12). Seen in the light of this interpretation, The North China Lover is a mirror image of Duras, and it could be that she has been suffering from acute devaluation of her own life in that strict family system in which she could not find an opportunity to satisfy her soul. He further comments that “its representation become confused and contradictory” that is very difficult to describe in language (12). It could be that Duras found her own story as very difficult to render in a linear narrative, the reason that she adopted the self-reflective mode and that too in fragmentation. Interpreting this point of view further, he goes on to say that “the crucial thing is to move in the direction of co-management in the production of subjectivity” (12). The subjective is another word for self-reflection in which the author does not find any other motive except his own life. That is why Duras has always asserted in her interviews that she has been destined to write about her as she has not seen anything else to write.

In this connection, it is also important that she has gone for transgression of the social norms and family and tribal traditions in not only loving a man much older than her but also writing several stories about her love affair. She has followed the feature of postfeminism of asserting her own gender identity as Judith Butler has called it in her book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity, in which she has asserted that women gender identity is formed in the absence of social and familial norms as outlined by the patriarchal dominance (31). In this connection, it is but fair to state that Duras finds herself expressing very outright and defiantly despite knowing this fact that she has very strict family system and living in a very strictly norm-bound society. Despite this, she has not only transgressed those norms, but has also expressed them in fiction. In other words, she has rather crossed the symbolic order as Judith Butler has called it as a Lacanian concept of forming identity through the norms, traditions, language and social traditions of the society. In the case of the child, this symbolic order was present around her in the shape of her brothers, her father and mother. As she says about her mother that, “Howe can that be, my mother does not even know that you exist” by which she means that if she has known, she would have traditionally forbidden her from meeting him (Duras 137). In other words, she has imbibed this symbolic order in her bones. Despite this, she is transgressing against this order in a defiant way, a sign that she has taken the chalice of recognizing her gender identity from which there is no way out. That is why she has asserts her identity even with that Chinese as “she pulls even further away from him” when he says that that nothing has been left. However, at the same time, she was fully aware as she told him that “I talked to her about my father’s preferring me dead to violating the law” which is a Chinese law and she dares to violate it by going to marry this old man (138). Even more than this, this is a bold expression of the empowerment of her sexual identity that she has been moving around with such an old man without even making him feel that she is after his wealth too.

Even this transgression is more than feministic as in Lacanian sense. It is because as Forsdick and Murphy has stated that even the title of the novel “transgress its moral and ethnic boundaries” which are the elements of symbolic order in Lacanian sense. They further argue that “Not only do the age, class and ethnic differences between them make their affair scandalous, but the fact that the lover is Chinese, rather than  ‘Indochinese’ (259). In other words, she has crossed all the boundaries in showing her feminine side of the personality in the midst of this strict and harsh symbolic order. Commenting on this transgression, Ladimer argues that it is committed in the forbidden “dangerous jungle and in her behavior with Vietnamese children, and stepped in a dynamic of interracial relations that defined mother” (116) where mother is the name of a strict social order. In the midst of this, it is not easy to show transgression from a trodden path. Therefore, this postmodern trait is not only in her novel, but also in her character itself.

Conclusion

In short, the novel The North China Lover is a new type of fiction which has gone beyond the modern fiction. It has rather displayed the features of postmodernism where the narration crosses all the modern boundaries. Not only is the text studded with intertextuality as the writer has woven her own autobiographical detail into the novel, but also that it has crossed the boundaries of self-representation. It is rather a second sequel of the first novel, The Lover. Moreover, the writer has also interwoven the history and fiction into a single story. Therefore, it is also a model of Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction. However, the author has gone much ahead in in it and has presented her own story in self-reflective mode. This means that she has given full reflection to her story before writing it on the paper in such a way that it seems as if she recalls some memory and pen it down and then recalls another one. This is a unique amalgamation of history and narrative in a way that the author has projected her own subject in it.

This sort of temporal distortion of reality to project it as a truth has rather blurred the vision and difference between the author and the character. That is why it seems somewhat fragmentary or a work of pastiches as if it is jotted own. However, in the midst of this fiction, Duras stands tall as postmodern feministic character and author who has presented such a strong character of the child in such a stifling symbolic order. The gender identity and sense of sexual empowerment runs deep down in her character which in other words mean in her. This project is more than the society around her could endure. Therefore, she could be stated as a postmodern writer and figure not only because she has wrote such a strong novel, but because she has painted such a strong picture of her own defiance in such a patriarchally dominant society where even mother figure cannot be defied. However, the child as well as the author, both defined almost all the figures and even symbolic order of the society in which they grew up. If seen through the prism of intertextuality of narrative, metafiction, pastiche, temporal distortion of reality, fragmentation, postfeminism traits and above all the self-reflective narrative, then The North China Lover is a postmodern novel as it bears almost all the traits of a postmodern fiction and still has the taste of a narrative that can be turned into a movie or a play.

Works Cited

1. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. New York. Routledge. 2003. 30-35.
2. Duras, Marguerite. The North China Lover. United States of America: New Press, 1992.
3. Forsdick, Charles & David Murphy. Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction. New York. Routledge. 2003. Print. pp. 259-260.
4. Guattari, Felix. Chaosmosis; An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Indianapolis. Indiana University Press. Print. 12-18.
5. Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and The Intertextuality of History.” TSPACE. n. d. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
6. Kempber, Ben. ” Cheep Goods in a Gorgeous Gown.” Chicago Theatre and Concert Reviews. 07 Oct. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
7. Ladimer, Bethany. “Wartime Writings, or the Imaginary Lover of Marguerite Duras.” Studies in 20^th & 21^st Century Literature, 33.1 (01 Jan. 2009): 103-117. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
8. Naoki, Sakai. “The West-A Dialogic Prescription or Proscription?” Social Identities 11.3 (May 2005): 177-195. Print.
9. Rushdie, Salman & Timothy Garton Ash. ” Marguerite Duras’s The Lover: But, but, but … did it really happen?” Stanford University. 04 May. 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
10. Sharma, Ramen & Dr. Preety Chaudhary. “Common Themes and Techniques of Postmodern Literature of Shakespeare.” International Journal of Education Planning & Administration 1.2 (2011): 188-198). Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
11. Sample III, C. K. “Life And Text As Spectacle: Sacrificial Repetitions In Duras’s The North China Lover.” Literature Film Quarterly 32.4 (2004): 279-287. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
12. Taylor, John. ” Fuse Book Review: From France with “L’Amour” — A Neglected Volume by Marguerite Duras.” The Art Fuse. 09 Jul. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
13. Todd, Ruby. “Writing Absence: A Case Study of Duras’s The North China Lover.” Deakin University. n. d. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.
14. Tryneicka, Aleksandra. “The Bildungsroman Revisited: J. D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in The Rye” and M. Duras, “The Lover” and “The North China Lover”: An Intertextual Study of the Genre.” International Journal of Arts and Sciences, 08.7 (2015): Web. 22 Nov. 2016.

Relevant Questions Postmodernism in The North China Lover

1. How does Marguerite Duras employ postmodernist narrative techniques and structures in The North China Lover to challenge traditional storytelling conventions and engage the reader in a different way?
2. In what ways does The North China Lover explore the theme of identity and reality through a postmodernist lens, particularly concerning the blurred boundaries between the protagonist’s personal experiences and the fictional world she creates?
3. Discuss the role of intertextuality and metafiction in The North China Lover and how these postmodernist devices contribute to the novel’s overarching themes and the reader’s understanding of the narrative.