Women and Writing in Modern China - Hardcover

Larson, Wendy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804731292 ISBN 13: 9780804731294

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Using a theoretical approach that utilizes work in literary studies, anthropology, feminist theory, and cultural studies, this book investigates how, in twentieth century China, the modern concepts of the new woman and the new writing developed into a protracted cultural debate over what and how women should and could write.

About this title

Synopsis

Analyzing the protracted cultural debate in modern China over what and how women should write, this book focuses on two concepts of great importance in Chinese literary modernization the new, liberated woman and the new, autonomous writing. Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, women s moral virtue, or de, developed as a physical ordeal that meant sacrifices in the areas of freedom of movement (seclusion in either the father s or husband s house) and the body (chastity, fidelity, widow suicide). While physical concepts of virtue existed for men, they were not canonized nearly as extensively as they were for women and did not constitute a marker of masculinity. Posed against de was cai, or literary talent, a male-gendered practice that contained a variable content of profound lyricism, deep intellectuality, and analytical skill.

From the Back Cover

Analyzing the protracted cultural debate in modern China over what and how women should write, this book focuses on two concepts of great importance in Chinese literary modernization - the new, liberated woman and the new, autonomous writing. The author argues that in many modernizing countries traditional constrictions of women became a focus of struggle, and improvements in the treatment of women were considered a sign of national health. In China, however, the traditional emphasis on female virtue and male talent led to protests by women writers against the virtuous woman. Their writings emphasized not the modernizing virtues of equality in love and marriage, nor the mother as educator of a generation of nation-builders, but unconventional relationships and the refusal to marry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0804731292
• ISBN 13: 9780804731294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 282