SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis is a first attempt to make an extended study of the life and work of a single Thai novelist. Chapter I supplies the need for a statement about the contemporary setting in which the author worked and about the development of the novel. Although Dokmaisot is an outstanding figure in modern Thai literature, she remains somewhat apart from her contemporaries and material on which contrasts can be based is required. The starting point is taken as 1900. This is convenient because at this time literary magazines printing original work heralding the emergence of the novel were beginning to appear. An account of Dokmaisot's life is then given. She was the first Thai female professional novelist and it is important to relate her personal life and that of her family to the development of her work. Chapters III to VIII contain a treatment, descriptive and critical, of thirteen novels. In general a progression through time is followed but this has been departed from in some instances in the interests of showing the novelist's development more clearly. Dokmaisot's last and unfinished novel is given separate treatment in Chapter IX. It represents a departure in motive, attitude, and tone from her previous writing even though some characters, appearing in an earlier work, are used again. A political motive and criticism directed against the Thai Government, especially in its social policies, appear overtly for the first time. Chapter X takes the world of Dokmaisot which has emerged through fourteen novels involving at least two hundred characters and summarizes its attitudes in sections which deal with religious, social, and external influences such as that of the West. The thesis concludes with an appendix in which the twenty-two other works of Dokmaisot, including four poems and a play, are briefly considered. A second appendix is a list of life ceremonies referred to in the novels. Appendix three contains comment on Thai terms for "novel".