Gender Identity Construction of Mother in A Woman’s Story Based on Social Identity Theory

Abstract

Papers on A Woman’s Story are mainly about the novel’s narrative strategies and writing techniques, mostly onanalyzing the static features rather than the dynamic characteristics of the novel. According to the theory of social identity,identity construction is a spontaneous process driven by individual self-esteem, with social mobility as one of its commonidentity construction strategies. As spatial mobility is a metaphorical expression of social mobility, which also could beregarded as the active choice and practice of Mother’s identity determination, we explored the corresponding changes inMother’s clothing and cognitive information based on her space mobility through her life. We then analyzed the awakeningof her identity consciousness and the processes involved in her identity construction. The dilemma and breakthroughof identity construction, represented by Ernaux’s mother, in the spatial mobility of marginalized individuals living in20th-century French society, were expounded. Thus, we excavated the correlation between spatial mobility and identityconstruction.