I just handed it in today. but still welcome critique, and I would like to share opinion with you.
Women’s History in Lu Xun and Ding Ling’s Literature
Introduction:
Lu Xun believed that, “A writer’s job is to give sensitive descriptions of society. If this is forcefully done, it will in turn influence society and bring about changes.” He also required that stories should reflect “real life… the actual, dynamic struggle… galloping pulses, passion and ideas.” Both Lu Xun and Ding Ling shared the same writing ideal that story writing is not for “pure entertainment.” Therefore, I regard Lu Xun and Ding Ling’s literary works as historical writings, and select some of their works chronologically. Through the analysis of these selected pieces and the women figures, I argue that their writings are “politicized” based on the identifying role of women at the time and their reaction to social forces that kept women in specific roles. In creating oppressed and awakening women figures in their works, Lu and Ding had a political objective. They wanted their writings to influence the educated youth. As writers, they wanted to bring about social changes. Their works are reflection of different historical periods; these literary works reveal the changing status of women in China from 1911 to 1949.
“When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’ and raise it specially?” Ding Ling opened her Thoughts on March 8 in 1942. Women’s right to be regarded as equal to men is still an ongoing goal throughout the world today. As early as the beginning of 20th century, writers such as Lu Xun and Ding Ling were aware of the miserable fates that women faced in the context of war and natural catastrophes. For instance, in 1933, Lu Xun published an article About Women in Shanghai Monthly. In this article, he points out that it is unjust to accuse ignorant and extravagant women as the origin of national calamity. He believes that what should be condemned is the social system that produced these women. Indeed, their fates are miserable, because besides pleasing their husbands there is nothing they can do.
Similarly, in 1932, Ding Ling expresses her sympathy on helpless women in her fiction The Flood. She emphasizes women’s lower status through the content of men’s sexually oriented curses, in which women are subjects in the curses. She perceives women’s dependence in the context of a flood. “Extreme panic dominates these pitiful women. What a piteous and ignorant world!” What these women fear is that the flood will seize their husbands’ lives, and thus their support. In their works, Lu Xun and Ding Ling realize that it does not matter that the women are rich or poor, in the city or in the village, they are perceived as dependent and ignorant. Through expressing their sympathy for women in their works, they hope to enhance women’s social status and have equal rights with men, since both women and men are equal creatures. Both Lu Xun and Ding Ling are prominent leftist writers from the May Fourth era. Their literary works successfully characterize many women figures, such as Xianglin Sao in the New Year Sacrifice and Miss. Sophie in the Diary of Sophie. Most of these characters were derived from real life, and were very convincing. Lu Xun and Ding Ling’s literary pieces inspired many educated youths during the May Fourth era to overthrow the “cannibalistic” feudal system that oppressed human beings, especially women.
Lu Xun and Ding Ling as Revolutionary Writers:
I believe that Lu Xun and Ding Ling’s life experiences had significant impact on their writings in both style and content. Lu Xun is good at characterizations satire and plot. He creates many piteous women figures, which reflect the “conditions of the Chinese villagers from the 1911 Revolution to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party,” and indirectly uses their unfortunate stories to attack the inhumane society. Ding Ling’s writing is based on her experiences and reflects the problems in reality. As an emancipated woman, she is good at describing women’s awakening souls. Most of her writings deliberate on women’s struggles for freedom and respect, and the way to eliminate sexual discrimination against women. In general, both of them ultimately chose writing as their careers and shared the belief that writing should have political objectives and to reflect social phenomena.
Lu Xun (1881-1936) was born in a gentry’s family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. Lu Xun commented on this experiences during the prosperity to the decline of the family in the autobiographical preface to his first story collection, Nahan (A Call to Arms), “Is there anyone whose family sinks from prosperity to poverty? I think in the process one can probably come to understand what the real world is like.” Lu Xun’s gentry’s family underwent dramatic changes in his early life, which enabled him to see the darkness of the Confucian social system. Leo Ou-fan Lee suggests that from Lu Xun’s statement, poverty was endurable, if it was not “accompanied by disgrace, the loss of family prestige.” To a certain extent, his grandfather and father were the victims of the Confucian system that had established and also ruined his family’s reputation (his grandfather was Jinshi, and was jailed for seven years on charges of receiving bribery while he was invigilate over the provincial examinations, which ruined his family’s reputation and wealth built upon Confucian system. His father was Xiucai who was frustrated by failed to attain any higher degree, and became addicted to opium). I believe this is one of the reasons that Lu Xun had a strong anti-traditional sentiment in his writings. In addition, Lu Xun’s life was closely bound to Chinese revolutions, which provided fresh-blood for his writings as “truthful reflection of the Chinese revolution,” although most of his stories are setting in the village towns and focus on the villagers.
Lu Xun grew up in the context of reform at the end of Qing Dynasty led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, which provided him an opportunity to embrace the new style of education. Lu Xun chose to study Western medical science first when he studied abroad in Japan in 1902, because he realized the pernicious effects of traditional Chinese medicine caused his father’s death. In addition, he wished to cure as many patients as possible after graduation. By doing so, on the one hand, he could feel better about his father’s death; on the other hand, his choice to practice medicine related to his growing nationalism—he assumed that a strong populace would form a strong country. However, in 1905, he viewed slides taken during the Russo-Japanese War and shifted his goal to become a writer. Despite other reasons that influenced Lu Xun’s decision to change his career from medicine to literature as Leo Ou-fan Lee suggests, Lu Xun himself confessed his reason was to cure his fellow people’s ill spirit.
… [B]ecause after seeing these slides I felt that medical science was not such and important thing after all. People from an ignorant and weak country, no matter how physically healthy and strong they may be, could only serve to made examples of, or become onlookers of utterly meaningless spectacles. Such a condition was more deplorable than dying of illness. Therefore our fist important task was to change their spirit, and at the time I considered the best medium for achieving this end was literature. I was thus determined to promote a literary movement.
This statement not only explained Lu Xun’s choice to be a writer, but also revealed his objective as a writer—to rescue the spirit of the ignorant populace, especially the “onlooker” and to save the nation.
Before being a writer, Ding Ling was active in student movements. She also tried to be a movie star, as a way to express herself. As she failed to be a movie star and was encouraged by the success of her first story Meng Ke, she finally chose writing. Tani E. Barlow comments on Ding Ling’s writings that, “Ding Ling’s literature and life experience pose, in other words, very contemporary, transnational questions of women’s writing, feminist theory, and sexual difference.” I believe that Ding Ling’s insight on women’s issues is closely bound to her experiences.
Like Lu Xun, Ding Ling (1904-1986) was born in a gentry’s family, but, in Linli, Hunan province. Her father died when she was four, and her family went into debt. From the age of seven, she lived in her uncle’s family, which endowed her with independence and sensitivity.
At that time I loved David Copperfield very much, because I also had no father and lived lonely life. Another foreign book which I like was named [Robinson] Crusoe, but I have forgotten the author, and also Gulliver’s Travels. Of Chinese literature I liked best Shuihu zhuan (The Water Margin) and The Seven Heroes and the Five Righteous Men.
As a child, Ding Ling was sensitive to feelings of loneliness and abandonment, and “about the basic injustice in society.” She was also a precocious child who knew how to seek comfort from book[1] [2] [3] [4] 下一页 |
网友评论：（只显示最新10条。评论内容只代表网友观点，与本站立场无关！）