THE DIALECTIC OF SUBJECTIVITY IN MARGUERITE DURAS' THE LOVER

Abstract

The Lover by Marguerite Duras, - originally conceived as an album that its only absent picture transformed into a tale made of words evoking images -, shows a power of creating images which explains the narrative devices of its writing process. When the narrator designates herself, she oscillates between the first and the third person narrator; she apparently does so because she expresses her point of view (the uses of “I”) and others’ point of view (the use of “She”), mostly her mother’s, her lover’s and colonial society’s point of view. In particular, the use of the third person narrator during the encounters of the two lovers (the girl and the Chinese) in the flat of Cholen, intends to connect the narrator’s individual experience to the myth of passion (Janice Morgan) of Anne-Marie Stretter’s character. In any case, the third person’s impersonality is the clue of a difficult, free, subjective and deeply internalized writing that the author has achieved after a long path, in The Lover and Blue Eyes, Black Hair