The Concept of Narrative Time in Women's Writing with a Look at the Works of Marguerite Duras

The beginning of the twentieth century is considered as the period of flourishing and emergence of women's writing, however, women's writing has existed for a long time without the aim of its authors to portray the feminine features of their writing. Women writers gradually addressed the issues that were ignored by the masculine discourse, with the aim of changing preconceived definitions of women, as well as social values. They sought to invent a new language and somehow try to break the masculine language and free themselves from prohibitions. The first step women writers took to break with traditional and masculine language was to destroy what was considered to be the basis of the novel's integrity: time. In fact, literature and novels in particular are considered as the art of processing time, and by analyzing it, one can achieve results in terms of the meaning of the work. In the works of the contemporary French writer Marguerite Duras, and in the two novels reviewed in this article, The Lover and The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein time is processed in a feminine and modern way. In this article, we study in descriptive-analytical way, the narrative time in Margarita Duras's female writing. Examining the text time, story time, relationships between them and also studying the eclecticism of narrative times, we came to the conclusion that in women's writing, time has a feminine dimension that originates from women's inner characteristics and perception of time and is the result of effort. Women are writers to break the traditional rules and definitions of writing. Therefore, this paper examines the time component from the perspective of narratology as one of the branches of literary criticism.
Introduction
Political, cultural, and social influences on the time and place of writing a work shape its form and theme, as well as its specified aesthetics. However, it is still noteworthy to ask; whether the words and scripts, that "second gender" has entered into the field of writing, have such an effect? The field of literature and writing has always been a field belonging to men, and until the beginning of the 20th century, women were considered to lack any talent for creating literary works. The term novel or women's writing by itself indicates the existence of a socio-cultural problem. In fact; the word "feminine" carries critical concept since men's novels and writings are never mentioned, and this indicates a kind of ideological superiority or even the real superiority of men's writing over women's. It is as if men's writing is the superior and women's writing is scored as the "second rate" and "marginal" ones. The same hierarchy has existed for men and women and considers women as the "second sex." However,being influenced by the social trends, women's writing changed a lot and novelists made a lot of effort to improve the position of women in society. From a sociological point of view, a woman can be compared with words and signs. Claude Lévi-Strauss compares kinship systems that were created by women with language systems. In his structural anthropology, he emphasizes that by considering marriage rules and kinship systems as a kind of language (a set of things to establish some kind of communication between individuals and groups), the message is transmitted by the women of the society who were found and entered the other clans, lineages, or families. Therefore, the woman is related to the origin of writing. By considering women and femininity as the origin of writing, it is realized that it is undoubtedly through writing that femininity can express itself. Therefore, by examining the writing, traces of femininity can be discovered.
Method and Result
Narrative is a mirror of the whole view of thought in the form of a story, but do the narrative and the time component create a suitable platform for reflecting women's ideals and dreams? How can the traces of femininity in the writing be deciphered through the examination of the time of narration and the meaning created with it? Finally yet importantly, can women's writing be a challenge against predetermined social values? With that in mind, the assumption of the present research is that the use of time in the writing of Marguerite Duras has given a feminine dimension to the story and events. The answer to this hypothesis and questions can help to clarify the frameworks and intellectual currents of women's writing.
Marguerite Duras is one of the most significant and highly addresseed writers of the 20th century in France and the pioneer in the field of women's writing. Furthermore, the novels examined in this research are considered to be her most important works. Having that in mind, this research can help to introduce this author as much as possible, be effective, and pave the way for comparative studies in the field of women's writing.
With a descriptive-analytical approach, this article analyzes the two novels “The Lover” and “Mania of Lol and Stein” by Marguerite Duras. In the descriptive part, the research data has been obtained using library sources, and in the analytical segment, the research is analyzed qualitatively with Genette's narratological approach and with emphasis on female components.
Conclusion
According to the analysis carried out in this research, is can be deduced that time has a feminine dimension in the writings of women writers, which originates from women's inner thoughts and perceptions of time. Furthremore, unlike men's writings, the objective and real dimension of time is ignored. However, throughout the novels that have been studied in this research, Duras has tried to present a new narrative structure that provides a platform for the emergence and manifestation of female intellectual strains. The investigations of the present research indicate that author has tried to question the format of the common writing by replacing the new structure of the narrative instead of the traditional structure and presenting a new dimension of time. Furthermore, time, as one of the major elements of storytelling, provides the author with various ways to represent the story world. Therefore, the writing of Marguerite Duras is a challenge against the traditional narrative time that limits time and place. Redefining the new concept of time allows the characters of the story to free themselves from limited and closed time, and accordingly, the narrative is placed outside the principles of time. Duras confuses the past, present and future by using complicated types of time in which the linear course of the story is ignored. Therefore, “The Lover” and “Mania of Lol and Stein” have not been proceed in a linear, regular, and usual order. The time of clocks and calendars has no place in Duras's writings, and the flow of an imaginary time in his novels can be clearly witnessed. All these narrative techniques lead to uncertainty in the story and the feeling of a kind of time suspension. As a result, the time of the narrative text and the time of the story have lost their harmony chronologically and the reader has witnessed the failure of time. Isn't the failure of real time a kind of questioning of all reality?.