In the aftermath of May Fourth, women writer mushroomed to the center stage of literary creation. They were a new type of women themselves and they created new types of women in their stories, too. This paper discusses the types of new women in Ling Shuhua’s “The Embroidered Pillow,” “After Drinking,” and Feng Yuanjun’s “Separation,” and their voices that contest, question, or ironize the possibilities available to them in the new era. Starting from the common characteristics of the three stories, they all focus on a female protagonist of the upper-middle class of the old family. Yet they differ greatly in dealing with how they face the new world. Ling Shuhua’s two stories serve as an interesting comparison to each other. While “The
In this essay I will discuss and analyze the social forces that influenced American women writers of the period of 1865 to 1912. I will describe the specific roles female authors played in this period and explain how the perspectives of female authors differed from their male contemporaries.
In Amy tans short stories Rules of the Game, Fish Cheeks, and Two Kinds part of the novel the Joys Luck Club uses topics concerning the limits and connections in the relationships between mothers and their daughters. In an Asian society, especially Chinese society assumes a vital part in every one of the three short stories, giving the primary conflict an interesting plot. Amy Tans short stories for the most part depict the inconveniences and strain between Chinese immigrant moms and their Americanized daughters through their common experiences in a captivating way. The daughters disregard the Chinese part of their heritage and personality and grasp the American side. They ponder their adolescence up with solid order and desires that the greater part of them have not met prompting future blame. Presently as developed ladies with their own particular families, the Americanized daughters mirror the past with contradictions they had with their Chinese society. Every daughter in the story’s in the long run perceives how their tradition and generation had huge influence in forming their characters making them grasp their Chinese legacy.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.
Ever since the days of World War I, women have been seen as second rate to men. They had to live up to many social standards that men didn’t have to and had strict guidelines on how to live their lives. This all changed when modernism deliberately tried to break away from Victorian Era standards in which women were subjugated to a lot more scrutiny. Ezra Pound, who was a large figure in the modernist movement, captured the spirit of the era in his famous line “Make it new!” Consequently, many writers started to experiment with many different and wild writing styles, which led to the short stories and poems we have today. The stories The Wife of His Youth and Mrs. Spring Fragrance were all written in this era of modernism. While they are written in a more traditional style of writing, both these stories have strong implications on feminism from the viewpoints of both male and female writers.
In her short story "Two Kinds," Amy Tan utilizes the daughter's point of view to share a mother's attempts to control her daughter's hopes and dreams, providing a further understanding of how their relationship sours. The daughter has grown into a young woman and is telling the story of her coming of age in a family that had emigrated from China. In particular, she tells that her mother's attempted parental guidance was dominated by foolish hopes and dreams. This double perspective allows both the naivety of a young girl trying to identify herself and the hindsight and judgment of a mature woman.
In the novel A Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt, the readers are taken through a journey of one woman through her life’s highs and lows. Through the eyes of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, readers can truly understand the life of a working woman during this time period. Although life may not have been easy at times, Ning Lao shows the determination and passion she had for her family and for their lives to be better. The life of a working woman is never an easy life but adding in the social rules and opium addiction that effected each part of Ning Lao’s life made it much more difficult.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York, NY, Norton & Company, 1985.
American Literature has always been about men and for men. In this essay, we are going to analyze the women’s role in the book, as inferior and weaker gender.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel The Woman Warrior is a series of narrations, vividly recalling stories she has heard throughout her life. These stories clearly depict the oppression of woman in Chinese society. Even though women in Chinese Society traditionally might be considered subservient to men, Kingston viewed them in a different light. She sees women as being equivalent to men, both strong and courageous.
In Chapters Four and Five of A Room of One 's Own,, the focus on Women & Fiction shifts to a consideration of women writers, both actual writers and ultimately one of the author 's own creation.
In the early nineteen century, women were not explicitly part of literature. they were used male pseudonym to publish their works. However, later in the century, there was a shift in women’s implication in literature. women began to be publicly recognized as writers, and they were using their writings to advocate for women’s rights and to reject stereotypes that were commonly associated with them. For example, in the early nineteen century, books and novels were mostly describing “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” as attributes of a good woman (Fortin). Writings by women were describing women that where rejecting values of the patriarchal society; women that wanted freedom and independence. The writings of Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman exemplify the features of the Feminist phase of female literary tradition. Published respectively in 1892 and 1895, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin are the quintessence of feminist literature. They both used characterization, setting, ad irony to protest a misogynistic society and to request women’s rights and autonomy.
“Dagong” means “working for the boss” or “selling labor,” and illustrates the commodification of labor and the subordinate status of the worker, in contrast to socialist imaginations of work as liberating. “Mei” means little sister, often associated with young, unmarried women in contrast to “jie”, the older, mature sister . Thus, the term dagongmei symbolizes the subordination of female migrants, both as migrant workers under urban factory owners, and as women expected to work long hours, some sacrificing their education, in order to support their families. Pun articulates the very real struggles many dagongmei face, from the 1993 Shenzhen factory fire that killed over 80 migrant workers, all but two female, only then alerting China and the rest of the world of the human costs of China’s rapid development to one woman, Yan, who screams in her sleep after years of work despite being in deep physical and emotional pain. Such pain is unbearable, and to scream out is the only way to survive. Yet as Pun argues, their very survival is of itself a form of resistance. These migrant workers may not be organizing, staging mass strikes or protests against the state or factory owners, but they are resisting. By screaming out, Yan is forcing the world to hear her pain. By telling
Providing the two heroines with strong and engaging personalities, the novel portrays the life of two young Chinese girls, who because of historical events and family secrets, have to grow up faster than what they had planned. The book delivers emotional themes that are powerful yet familiar, and is written in a compelling manner.
Chinese Feminist Art is not only different from traditional Chinese female art as it clearly emphasises on female characteristics, but also distinctive from western feminist art in the way that it embraces Chinese culture to the greatest extent. Unlike Western Feminist Art which is tightly
Many female writers see themselves as advocates for other creative females to help find their voice as a woman. Although this may be true, writer Virginia Woolf made her life mission to help women find their voice as a writer, no gender attached. She believed women had the creativity and power to write, not better than men, but as equals. Yet throughout history, women have been neglected in a sense, and Woolf attempted to find them. In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and