Emerging From the Horizon of History : Modern Chinese Women’s Literature, 1917–1949

This book systematically studies the literary output of female writers in contemporary China within the frame of literary theories of feminism. With tools from psychoanalysis, structuralism and deconstructionism, the two female authors, Meng and Dai, analyze 9 important female writers from 1919 to 1949, including Yin Lu, Xin Bing, Ning Ding, Ailing Zhang. By decade, the authors provide a comprehensive depiction of these female writers' historic-cultural background as well as their reception by critics and audiences. Navigating the complex relation between mainstream literary trends and female writers’ practice, this text represents a landmark of practice of literary feminist criticism within the Chinese language. Acknowledgments from Translator Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Two Thousand Years: Women as a Blind Spot of History 1.1.1 Women’s (Anti-)Truth 1.1.2 From “Men Plow, Women Weave” Division of Labor Mode to “Father-to-Son” Inheritance 1.1.3 “The Beginning of Ethical Human Relations” 1.1.4 “Wife Is My Equal”—A Hegemonic Discourse 1.1.5 Female Image—An Empty Signifier 1.1.5.1 Female “Objectification” and Male “Right to Desire” 1.1.5.2 Gender Misrepresentation 1.1.5.3 Gender Integration 1.2 One Hundred Years: Where Have We Ended Up? 1.2.1 Women and National Subjectivity 1.2.2 From “I am Myself” to “Women Have No Truth” 1.2.3 “The Sister Xianglin Series” and “The New Women” Part I (1917–1927) 2 Ten Years of the “May Fourth” Era: A Floating Historical Stage 2.1 The Era of “Patricide” 2.1.1 Patricide—The Zero Point of Recalibrating History 2.1.2 Attraction and Deprivation 2.1.3 Two Dead, One Mirror Image 2.2 From Daughters to Women—An Overview of Women Writers in the May Fourth Movement 2.2.1 “Father’s Daughters” 2.2.2 Modeling the Mother 2.2.3 Love—A Discourse of Non-aggression 2.2.4 A Contradiction Between Experience and Discourse 2.2.5 Writing Women 3 Lu Yin: “Wimps Standing in Front of Life’s Diverging Paths” 3.1 Lu Yin’s World 3.2 A Narrow Zone Between Two Doors 3.3 The Floating Stage and Cultural Deadlock 4 Yuanjun: Rebellion and Sentimental Attachment 4.1 Love as a Path of Female Defiance 4.2 Sexual Morality 4.3 The Bond Between Mother and Daughter 5 Bing Xin: Fortune’s Favored Daughter 5.1 Born Under a Lucky Star 5.2 Holy Bond Between Mother and Daughter—A Moment of Bliss 5.3 “Lakes and Mountains Outside of My Heart”: Bing Xin’s Persona 5.4 The Daughter Who Never Grows Up 6 Ling Shuhua: The Feminine World Trapped in a Corner 6.1 Storms in the Boudoir 6.2 The “Tai-tai” Class 6.3 New Women and New Wives Part II (1927–1937) 7 The 1930s: Myths in the Crevice of Civilizations 7.1 Samsara 7.1.1 History Stuck in a Dilemma 7.1.2 The Deified Masses and the Political Patriarch 7.1.3 A Double-Edged Sword 7.2 Divisions of Darkness, Shadow, and Daylight 7.2.1 Women Deep in Loneliness 7.2.2 The Female Body of Others 7.2.3 “Women’s Sky Is Narrow” 8 Ding Ling: Vulnerable “Goddess” 8.1 Alienation and Loneliness 8.2 The Two Faces of Wei Hu 8.3 Resurgence and Obliteration 9 Marching Towards Battlefields and the Bottom Classes 9.1 Revolution Written in Blood and Revolution Written in Ink 9.2 Sacrificing One’s Minor Self for the Masses 10 Women in the City: On the Margins of a Glorious Page of History 10.1 Ideology of Aestheticism 10.2 Footsteps on the Debris of the “New Culture” Movement 11 Bai Wei: A Survivor of Ordeals 11.1 A Woman in a “Patricide” Scene 11.2 Bomb and Migrant Bird—Women’s Destiny from the May Fourth Movement (1919) to the Great Revolution (1927) 11.3 Tragic Life—Ten Years of Solitude 11.3.1 Love Ensnarled in the Discursive Pattern 11.3.2 Women’s Love-Oriented Loneliness 11.3.3 No “Truths”? 12 Xiao Hong: The Brave and Wise Pathfinder 12.1 Destiny 12.1.1 Father’s Home and Grandfather’s Home 12.1.2 Youth 12.1.3 Love and Writing 12.1.4 A Feminist Choice 12.2 A Woman’s Discernment of History 12.2.1 Nature—Way of Production and life—Ubiquitous Protagonist 12.2.2 Another Type of Rural Masses 12.2.3 In the Eyes of a Feminist 12.3 The Enlightened and Compassionate Part III (1937–1949) 13 The 1940s: A Divided World 13.1 The Combat Zone of the Dominant Discourse and the Liberated Areas 13.1.1 Rebirth or Wintry Night for the Nation? 13.1.2 The Goodness of the Asian Mode of Production 13.1.3 Genderless Gender 13.1.4 Accomplices Between Feminists and Individualists 13.2 Female—Woman—Feminine Discourse 13.2.1 Immurement and Freedom 13.2.2 End to the Phase of “Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman” 13.2.3 The Inception of Feminine Discourse 14 Su Qing: Women—“Civilians in the Occupied Areas” 14.1 Anomalies in the Calamity of War and Fragments of History 14.2 Femininity: Spatial Existence 14.3 Woman, Mother, Mothering 14.4 The New Women: An Absurdist Theater 15 Zhang Ailing: The Knowing Smile of a Desolate Beauty 15.1 A Vanishing “Country” 15.2 Birds Embroidered on the Screen 15.3 Civilization· History· Woman 16 Conclusion: Gender and Spiritual Gender—On the Liberation of Chinese Women Postscript to the 2003 Edition Further Words Bibliography Index