s. I think she reveals her childhood’s memories vividly in her story New Year written in 1929. In this story, Ding Ling’s main character is a sensitive little girl named Xiaohan, who is attended by an inattentive servant girl, Ruyi (means as one wishes, which is the opposite), lives in a big room, her aunt and relatives treat her mannerly but distant, and who was constantly longing for mother and brother. Ding Ling writes:
Xiaohan was so happy with this kind of life. She hoped she could live like this forever, but the happy time seemed to reach an end. If all happened because of the New Year, then she wanted everyday to be the New Year. However, the New Year will soon end, and the Festival of Lanterns will soon arrive. Once it is the sixteenth of the first month, all the illumination will be gone … everything will be gone. And… How hard it will be to Xiaohan! … Mother and brother will return to school… The festival was meaningless! … She listened to the mice, and thought about the mice again, once mother is home, the mice never bothered her. Maybe the mice also know that mother is going to leave and have come to tease her.
Although her mother was constantly absent from her life, her mother’s experiences and educational aspirations influenced her profoundly.
There are three people greatly influenced Ding Ling’s career as a feminist and revolutionary writer. Her mother, Yu Manzhen, a widow possessed of independent and democratic thoughts; Xiang Jingyu, her mother’s intimate friend, also an emancipated woman; Chen Qiming, her teacher in First Normal of Hunan province. Yu Manzhen was a well educated woman, and continued pursuing her modern education after her husband’s death. She acted as Ding Ling’s “moral pedagogue.” For example, she indulged Ding Ling with the tales of revolutionary heroes, such as Madame Roland, and Qiu Jin’s. Yu Manzhen inspired Ding Ling with a revolutionary mind. Xiang Jingyu played a similar role as Ding Ling’s mother. Both Yu Manzhen and Xiang Jingyu ploughed the seed of feminism on Ding Ling’s soul. Chen Qiming is the person who led her onto the path of new literature and new thoughts. Ding Ling reminisced Chen’s influence on her in her corpus:
He [Chen Qiming] edited several outside magazines and newspapers, whose articles he underlined in red for us to read. Those we could not understand he would explain. Many of the articles in New Youth became transformed into teaching materials. Most of us paid very little attention to our other classes. We liked to debate problems, and opposition to the entire feudal system became the main topic of that hour. In such an atmosphere my ideas naturally changed a great deal and I also gained the courage to engage in battle all of the old teachings and mores.
Ding Ling moved to Beijing out of disappointment after her closest friend Wang Jianhong died in 1924. She had access to both physical and psychological freedom; however, this freedom took her nowhere. Under extreme stress and a failed attempt at a career in theater, she finally started writing stories. Ding Ling started writing under this pen name in 1927; she finished and published Meng Ke in that year and Miss Sophie’s Diary in the following year. There are many similarities between Ding Ling herself and these two characters, Meng Ke and Sophie. In these two works, Ding Ling focuses on the individual’s inner souls; however, her writing style varies in different periods of writing life. Earlier in 1923, Qu Qiubai predicted that her character would be like “a moth drawn to a flame and in the end was bound to perish.” In her career as a writer, Ding Ling was constantly challenging herself, thus her writings in different periods reflect different stages in history.
Their Writings in Chronological Order:
Lu Xun created various typical figures drawn from the real world, which held the interest of every class and served as a mirror for people to see themselves. Lu Xun wrote the New Year Sacrifice in the spring of 1924. He portrayed a tragic heroine, Xianglin Sao, in the satirical story. Although Xianglin Sao’s life ends in a miserable death, she provokes the thought of an intellectual “I” on the meaning of life and death.
“After a person dies, does he turn into a ghost or not?”
“Then, there must be a Hell?”
“Then will all the people of one family who have died see each other again?”
Xianglin Sao is constantly beaten down by cruel realities, but she always remains hopeful, although this time her hope is after death. In contrast to Xianglin Sao, the narrator, “I”, seems to be a coward. “May be… I think.” “…there should be too—but not necessarily…” As an intellectual, “I” am neither insightful, nor responsible for the answer. Lee believes that Lu Xun blames the intellectual to be a “passive spectator.”
In focusing on a peasant woman’s mental misery the story’s narrative structure also reflects negatively upon the intellectual’s crucial flaw… In a strange sort of role reversal, the narrator has become the passive spectator, whose position is not so different from that of the crowd.
In this story, Lu Xun successfully built his plot around a single character, Xianglin Sao, who is surrounded by a set of crowds, the villagers, both gentry and commoners. As a woman, she twice widowed; and as a mother, she loses her son. Xianglin Sao’s tragedies are merely “cheap catharsis” and “entertainment” for the villagers. After her son’s death (her son has been eaten by wolf), she returns to Lu Town and works as maidservant again for Lu’s family. She involuntarily repeats her son’s story and cries frequently. However, most of her audiences merely seek novelty and abreaction from her sad story. Lu Xun satirized the shameless spectators in the story:
There were some old women who had not heard her speaking in the street, who went specially to look for her, to hear her sad tale. When her voice trailed away and she started to cry, they joined in, shedding thee tears which had gathered in their eyes. Then they sighed, and went away satisfied, exchanging comments.
The novelty of Xianglin Sao’s story soon fades and people become impatient to her repeating the same story; they indeed mock Xianglin Sao’s weak effort to resist to her second marriage. In short, the villagers are ignorant and cold-blooded spectators. In addition to the villagers’ gossip and ostracism, the superstitious society forms a psychological burden on Xianglin Sao. She does not only endure tragic fate while she is still living, but also to be punished after her death, because she married twice and is considered unfortunate. In conclusion, the authority of tradition, the authority of superstition, the authority of husband, and the authority of clan, all these oppressions drive Xianglin Sao insane, and finally to a miserable death. However, in this story, the villagers may not be blamed or to bear the total responsibility of Xianglin Sao’s tragedy. Society should be blamed because of its traditional social and the superstitious belief systems. The villagers may also be the future Xianglin Sao if the society remains unchanged. Xianglin Sao serves as a heroine, she uses her death to warn the spectators and the watchers that the longer the old social and traditional systems exist, the more insecurity people would have to endure. Meanwhile, in the context of the time Lu Xun wrote this story, numerous women were victims of the traditional marriage and family systems like Xianglin Sao.
In 1925, Lu Xun published another fiction, Regret for the Past: Chuan-sheng’s (Chunsheng) Notes, also called Mourning the Death. In this story, Lu Xun creates Zijun, a half-emancipated woman figure from her boyfriend Chunsheng’s point of view. According to him, Zijun once bravely claimed: “I’m my own mistress. None of them has any right to interfere with me.” She then leaves her uncle to live with Chunsheng for the sake of her love for him. Her decision is novel to the close society, even to Chunsheng as an emancipated young man. Chunsheng writes,
These few words of hers stirred me to the bottom of my heart, and rang in my ears for many days after. I was unspeakably happy to know that Chinese women were not as hopeless as the pessimists made out, and that we should see them in the not too distant future in all their glory.
However, Chunsheng was too optimistic. The path leading to their conjugality is tortuous. Most people in the society still do not accept their free love; many people even have look down at a woman who falls in love. There are “searching looks,” “sarcastic smiles,” “lewd and contemptuous glances” around Zijun and Chunsheng. Even Chunsheng has to “summon all my pride and defiance to my support.” In contrast, Zijun is fearless to rejection of society. She loves Chunsheng, and just wants to share her life with Chunsheng, that is all! As a woman in the 1920s, Zijun is amidst many emancipated women who are pursuing their true loves.
However, Zijun ends上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] 下一页 |
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