Womens Role in Modern Chinese Literature - Essay Example

Women’s Role in Modern Chinese Literature The Chinese women in the twentieth century are represented as the ones who have undergone a transformation in Ling Ding’s Miss Sophie’s Diary. Sophie embarks on a heroic journey and manages to conquer males in her life. Chinese literature materials in the twentieth century presented the Chinese women as the ones who have undergone a shift and assumed a more superior gender role. Miss Sophie’s Diary proves that May Fourth Movement has gone beyond the utilitarian aspect of improving women’s conditions to strengthen the nation and has produced literary works which are concerned with the suffering of individual women. In Miss Sophie’s Diary case, women sufferings are as a result of discriminatory and corrupt social customs and by the status of their gender. Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie’s Diary reflects the pulse of the times. Ding (1985) presents the problems faced by women, especially young intellectual women. Ding uses the image of Sophie to disclose a woman’s psychological anxiety and inner crisis when gaining the self-awareness. In this sense, Miss Sophie’s Diary also proves that women were betrayed once again by the culture revolution of the May Fourth Movement. Before the story begins, Sophie has gone across the threshold of a family domain without engaging in a violent fight with her authoritative parents (Ding, 1985). Her journey in the public world is about recognizing her psychological contradiction and struggles, and this is the cause social oppression and sexual repression forced upon women. In other words, Ding internalizes and presents the outside environment as Sophie’s inner conflict. The description of Sophie’s most intimate emotions and sensations are entrenched in a social context which has produced some Chinese women who are searching for self-awareness and self-definition against the injunction of conventional morality. Through Miss Sophie’s Diary, Ding both criticizes the repressive sexual morality before 1949 and also sends a message of repudiation of bourgeois society of that time and the male representing it. Sophie is extremely sensitive, capricious, passionate, and cruel and this makes her estranged from her environment despite the fact that she has a few good friends who care about her. When she contacts tuberculosis, it makes her self-centered and full of self-pity (Ding, 1985). Illness not only represents the physical condition of the protagonist but also an indispensable part of her personality, a powerful source of much of the story’s romantic agony which sets her apart and reinforces her restlessness. Sophie is also going through interior turmoil. Despite this turmoil, Sophie is always conscious and audacious of her female subjectivity. Ling has created a female hero in Sophie, and this female hero violates the patriarchal assumption by being active rather than passive as a Chinese woman is conventionally supposed to be. She both manipulates Wei’s emotions using Wei’s loyalty and affection for her. Instead of playing the role of object, she plays the role of subject. Through Sophie, Ding overturns the paradigm of man-as-gaze and woman-as-sex-object. Ding transforms the role of Sophie making her woman-as-gaze. Ding makes Sophie a hero; however, she must go through the process of pursuit, resistance, and survival before she can attain her self-realization in her heroic journey. A female who conquers men instead of being conquered, who makes fun of men instead of being their plaything has been created. Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby is a representation of Chinese generation of women who were born in the 1970s. These women were seeking to manage the constant tensions between traditional values and more liberal Western influences. There re several issues presented in the book which are considered a taboo in the Chinese society and these include homosexuality and female masturbation. Shanghai Baby represents an incisive cultural turn in gender politics in China away from the gender neutering of the Mao and post-Mao eras. The style and content of writing in Shanghai Baby and the controversy it spurred has had important implications, both positive and negative, for women and for feminism in China. Shanghai Baby has been a controversial text which represents coming of age narratives in China. When Shanghai Baby got published it became an overnight sensation in China and abroad, before being banned in China. In banning Shanghai Baby, China appeared to be reinforcing censorship over women’s transgressive writing and their transgressive bodies. Through her book, Hui is celebrating the coming of age of a new generation of urban, globally connected, materialistic young women. Shanghai Baby’s deceptively simple plot follows the fortunes of Wei’s narrator, Nikki who has adopted the alias Coco and aspires to be a famous writer “to burst upon the city like a firework” (Hui, 1999). Coco adores the aura of Shanghai, the most feminine of cities, both past and present. Coco yearns for freedom and self-expression. Hui presents Coco as the one who is using her sexuality through freedom and self-expression. Coco is immersed in consumer culture and her aspirations to be a famous writer. At that time, writing in China was considered to be a fashionable profession. Coco is exposed as a lover of all things western and this is evidenced by the writer. According to Hui (1999), Coco knows everything ranging from fashion to western music, cosmetics, film, pop culture, and writing. Shanghai Baby is characterised by a surfeit of western markers which proliferates on virtually every page of the book. These markers include BMWs, Lancome cosmetics, Mickey Mouse, Quentin Tarantino, mobile phones, and trendy health clubs (Hui, 1999). Wei’s story expresses a Chinese woman frenzy to identify with the new exotic, global opportunities. The Chinese woman is presented in the book as the one undergoing a shift from the traditional ways of living to the modern way of living. Shanghai Baby presents Coco as the one who even travels with “a tribe of sons and daughters of the well-to-do” (Hui, 1999). She becomes endlessly fascinated with herself, her body, her possessions, her body, and her two boyfriends. Even her hair is styled to resemble those of models found in the latest issues of Elle magazine. In the idealized terms of Shanghai Baby, Nikki believes that the Chinese woman has become liberated and thus become one who possesses beauty and intelligence. Both women in Ling Ding’s Miss Sophie’s Diary and Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby engage in sexual seduction where they seduce the men in their lives. Both writers present their protagonist Chinese women as ones who have become liberated. References Ding, L. (1985). Miss Sophie’s Diary and other Stories. Hong Kong: Chinese Literature Hui, W. (1999). Shanghai Baby. Washington: Washington Square Press. Read More