Crossing Texts (Two-Pole Reading of 20th Century Chinese Literature)

Author: Wang Hui, Li Jun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-02-01
Features: The Dual Variation of Women's Culture – On Women's Liberation and Women's Literature
The establishment and research of women's literature saw significant breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Due to differing definitions, it encompasses varying connotations. Currently, academia holds several distinct views on this concept:
1. The "Female Image Theory": This posits that any literature reflecting women's lives constitutes women's literature, regardless of the author's gender. This definition has a broad scope but limited depth, failing to fundamentally demonstrate the independence and unique significance of women's literature. It also struggles to differentiate creative works depicting women across different historical periods.
2. The "Female Author Theory": This defines women's literature as the creations of female authors. While emphasizing the gender of the author, this stipulation is overly vague and hinders in-depth analysis and research of the works.
3. The "Gender Theme Theory": This refers to the portion of a female author's work that depicts women's lives. This definition narrows the scope but enriches the, offering a balance between emphasizing the author's gender and the independence of the work's subject and theme. It seeks "not to challenge traditional literature but to summon a new literary force—the women's writing collective—whose unique life experiences and female perspectives consciously enrich the traditional literary landscape dominated by male authors." This definition also carries historical and practical significance.
4. The "Gender Perspective Theory": Drawing from a more representative Western view, this argues that not all works by female authors on women's lives qualify as women's literature. It posits that female authors must "employ a different lens to clearly observe women's lives and use a distinct semantic system to express them." This perspective distinctly separates women's literature from male literature in terms of subject matter, themes, artistic creativity, and semantic expression, positioning it as a quasi-literary category in opposition to male literature. It is a product of Western women's liberation and the self-development of women's literature, yet it does not align with China's social realities and cultural traditions.
As is widely known, Western women's pursuit of independence and liberation from a male-centric society has been a long process. However, they now enjoy greater social equality, dignity, and freedom, with their concerns for societal and women's healthy development integrated. Combined with years of experience in women's literature, they have developed unique modes of thinking, ideological concepts, cognitive methods, and independent semantic expressions, showcasing distinctive characteristics in Western modern art. While this view does not fit China's literary development, it can serve as a reference and direction for the growth of women's literature in China.
Among the four views, only the third aligns with China's social and literary realities, holding full practical significance. The women's literature discussed in this article adopts this theory as its organic component.
In China's long literary history spanning thousands of years, female writers were scarce. Even when some women wrote, their works mostly expressed domestic grievances, lacking broader social significance and failing to form a trend or collective. Instead, they appeared intermittently in literary history. In classical literature, while numerous female figures existed and were often typical, they were largely the product of male authors' aesthetic and creative expressions. Only during the women's liberation movement did a significant number of female writers emerge, leading to the development of women's literature.
The true liberation of Chinese women progressed gradually as the Communist Party of China led the nation to overthrow the feudal autocracy that ruled for thousands of years and establish a new China. Humanity was originally composed of men and women in equality, but in class society, particularly in China's feudal era spanning thousands of years, women endured relentless oppression and humiliation. Feudal patriarchy confined them to lifeless "machines," bound by the "four powers"—political authority, clan authority, divine authority, and husband's authority—and stripped of their humanity and dignity. In the struggle against class oppression, women fought alongside men, achieving temporary social freedom and escaping class oppression. Yet, they remained tied to their families and male-dominated society, failing to secure full human dignity and character.
By the modern era, with the introduction of Western national consciousness and scientific spirit, guided by Marxism, women's liberation gained clear direction and content. Chinese women gradually secured social status and human rights, enjoying full rights in politics, economy, education, and other areas. However, due to their generally lower cultural literacy, the underdeveloped social productivity and civilization, and the lingering influence of feudalism and male-centricism, women's liberation in China did not advance in tandem with social rights and progress as it did in the West. They did not achieve complete liberation and development in physiology, psychology, or spirit. Instead, they gained sufficient rights and freedom to adapt to a male-dominated social structure, without securing the social rights and attributes of the "other" gender or altering the male-centric structure to accommodate women's full development.
As the economy and civilization progress, as women's social rights and personal safety are increasingly guaranteed by law, and as their cultural literacy improves—especially with the rise of women with modern consciousness—women's liberation has begun a journey dedicated to pursuing their own comprehensive liberation and development. Ultimately, it will break the male-centric social consciousness structure, address the shortcomings of a one-sided social structure, and grant women greater equality in human rights, economy, social status, and spiritual life.
Contemporary Chinese women's liberation is currently in this process. Corresponding to these stages of liberation, women's literature has also evolved through different phases, deeply intertwined with the development of Chinese society and history.
In ancient China, under the long of feudal patriarchal ideology, women's literature existed but developed slowly. Despite the emergence of numerous representative female writers—from Zuo Wenjun, Cai Yan, and Zuo Fen in the Han and Jin dynasties, Bao Mingyue and Mulan in the Six Dynasties, Wu Zetian, Li Yi, and Xue Tao in the Sui and Tang dynasties, Li Qingzhao and Zhu Shuzhen in the Song dynasty, and Ruan Lizhen, Wu Zao, and Zhou Yingfang in the Ming and Qing dynasties—their works, except for a few like The Eighteen Poems of Huja and Drunk on the Fragrant Shade, mostly lacked substantial social content, poor artistic expression, and little literary value, rendering them a dim page in the history of Chinese women's literature.
Modern women's literature emerged and developed alongside the rise of modern women's liberation movements, with over 70 years of history. It has gone through three stages: the May Fourth period, the post-1949 period, and the New Period, marked by two peaks: the May Fourth women's literary peak and the New Period women's literary peak.
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