Abstract
In 1934, Chinese essayist Huiqun declared “without women there would be no literature.”1 Her pronouncement joined other voices countering the male-dominated literary sphere, which defined Chinese culture until the twentieth century and which sought women’s vindication. Her statement reveals Chinese women’s contested relationship with literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some people argued that women lacked the ability to write anything that contributed to the literary field because they wrote from an emotional and subjective standpoint. Women, they argued, were better suited for biological rather than literary production.2 Conversely, other people admired women’s appreciation of beauty and meticulosity. Although such traits enhanced the quality of women’s embroidery, they were better employed in more useful ways, such as in painting, music, and literature. These people required modern women to get an education so that they could enhance their talents and, ultimately, make a living from the arts.3 In general, despite much press dedicated to defining women’s relationship with literature, Chinese women writers’ role in creating a modern China was far from certain.
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Notes
Huiqun, “Nüxing yu wenxue” (Women and literature), in Nüxingyu wenxue, ed. Huiqun (Shanghai: Qizhi shuju, 1934), pp. 1–9, 4. I have identified Huiqun’s surname as Li. She was friends with female authors Lu Yin [Huang Luyin] and Xie Bingying.
See, e.g., Zhu Yin, “Nüzi haomei shi buyong shuode” (It goes without saying that women love beauty), Funü zazhi 12:1 (1926), 167–170.
Tani E. Barlow, “Theorizing woman: funü, guojia, jiating (Chinese woman, Chinese state, Chinese family)”, in Body, Subject and Power in China, ed. Tani E. Barlow and Angela Zito (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), pp. 253–289.
Xiaojiang Li, “With what discourse do we reflect on Chinese women? Thoughts on transnational feminism in China”, in Spaces of their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China, ed. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 261–277, 262.
See Rebecca Karl, “‘Slavery,’ citizenship, and gender in late Qing China’s global context”, in Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, ed. Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002), pp. 212–244.
See Lydia Liu, TranslingualPractice. Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996);
Edward Gunn, Rewriting Chinese: Style and Innovation in Twentieth-Century Chinese Prose (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991);
and Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
See Wendy Larson, Literary Authority and the Modern Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).
Theodore Huters, “Ideologies of realism in modern China: the hard imperatives of imported theory”, in Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China, ed. Liu Kang and Xiaobing Tang (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 147–173, 160.
Ching-kiu Stephen Chan, “The language of despair: ideological representations of the ‘New Woman’ by May Fourth writers”, in Gender Politics in Modern China. Writing and Feminism, ed. Tani E. Barlow (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 13–32.
Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Evelyn Rawski, “The social agenda of May Fourth”, in Perspectives on Modern China, ed. Kenneth Lieberthal (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), pp. 139–157.
See Christina Kelley Gilmartin, Engendering The Chinese Revolution. Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), for a discussion of the May Thirtieth incident, which sparked a national revolution and deepened conflict between the ruling Guomindang (Nationalist) and Chinese Communist Parties. Japan’s encroachment on Chinese territory increased in the mid-late 1920s.
See Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow, ed., Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China; Xiaobing Tang, Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
Shi Guanying, “Mixing yanjiu de mudi” (Reasons for studying women), Funü zazhi 7:3 (1921), 1–3.
Ye Shaojun “Nüzi renge wenti” (The problem of women’s personhood/character), in Zhongguo funü wenti taolun ji (Discussions of Chinese Women’s Issues), ed. Mei Sheng (Shanghai: Xin wenhua shushe, 1923), pp. 149–156, 156.
Wang Pingling, “Xin funü de renge wenti” (The personhood/character problem of New Women), in Zhongguo funü wenti taolun ji, ed. Mei sheng (Shanghai: Xin wenhua shushe, 1923), pp. 156–165;
Li Li and Wu Rubin, “Wenxue yu nüzi” (Literature and women), Funü zazhi 14:11 (1928), 27–30.
In Chen Dongyuan and Zhang Youwan, “Nüzi yu wenhua” (Women and culture), Funü zazhi 8:1 (1922), 8–11.
Miao Ran, “Xin funü de xin daode” (The new moral virtue of the new woman), Xin Funü (New Woman) 1:1 (1920), 9–12, 9.
Ceng Qi, “Funü wenti yu xiandai shehui” (The woman question and modern society), Funü zazhi 8:1 (1922), 2–7, 3.
Zhou Zuoren, “Nüzi yu wenxue” (Women and literature), Funü zazhi 8:8 (1922), 6–8, 7.
Kang-i Sun Chang, “A guide to Ming-Ch’ing anthologies of female poetry and their selection strategies”, Gest Library Journal 5:2 (1992), 119–160, 141.
Katherine Carlitz, “The social uses of female virtue in late Ming editions of Lienü zhuan” Late Imperial China 12:1 (1991), 117–152.
Hu Yunyi, “Zhongguo funü yu wenxue” (Chinese women and literature), in Nüxing yu wenxue (Women and Literature), ed. Huiqun (Shanghai: Qizhi shuju, 1934), pp. 52–68.
See Yue Mingbao’s “Gendering the origins of modern Chinese literature”, in Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature and Society, ed. Tonglin Lu (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 47–65.
Ms. Wenna, Funü lunji (A Collection of Discussions on Women) (Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1927).
Wendy Larson, Women and Writing in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Chen Hengzhe, “The Chinese woman in a modern world”, in The Chinese Woman and Four Other Essays (Beijing: S.H. Chen, 1934), pp. 1–22, 16.
See Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Tian Han, “Disi jieji de furen yundong” (The fourth class of the woman’s movement), Shaonian Zhongguo (The Toung China) 1:4 (1919), 218–219.
Mao Dun, “Women gai zenyang yubeile qu tan funü jiefang wenti” (How we ought to prepare to discuss the woman’s liberation question), Funü zazhi 6:3 (1920), 1–5.
C.K., “Funü wenti yu zhongguo funü yundong” (The woman question and the Chinese woman’s movement), Funü zazhi 8:11 (1922), 55–56.
Sophia Zen Chen, “The Chinese woman in a modern world”, Pacific Affairs 4:12 (December 1931), 1070–1081.
Yang Songxian, “Xin jiu funü de bijiao” (a comparison between new and traditional women), Funü zazhi 15:9 (1929), 23–24.
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© 2005 Charles A. Laughlin
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Ferry, M.M. (2005). Woman and Her Affinity to Literature. In: Laughlin, C.A. (eds) Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981332_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981332_3
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