Self-identity And Gender Representation

This thesis provides a study of "feminine poetry" written by poetesses in 1980s from the gender perspective in order to trace and exhibit female self identity in the process of contextualizing it. In 1980s, Neo-enlightenment, by taking the stand of anti-feudalism, gave excessive stress to subjectivity, which made female regard "human"(人) as the beginning of self identity. However, "human" is neutral. Therefore, in a patriarchal society, female had to either submit to her gender role which was imposed to her by the patriarchal culture or "mask herself as male" to identify male values. In mid-1980s, Western feminism was introduced to China; the dominant national ideology began to decline in both power and influence in the trend of reform and opening-up. In such a background, the female individual subject, after noticing that female gender symbol had been encoded by the social symbolic order while being surrounded by Western feminism and Neo-enlightenment, showed her anxiety of "becoming the other". Female faced the issue of establishing her self identity in the relationship between male and female. To study feminine poetry in the cultural context of 1980s, we can see, in its imagination of love, body, and daily life, a doubt upon the existent gender order as well as the identification of the gender role enforced by the patriarchal cultural order; not only the pursuit of the individual's subjective spiritual independence but also the consciousness of gender dependence---a trajectory of conflicts, changes, complexities and growth of identity. Simultaneously, in the texts of the poetesses in 1980s, the gender issue does not come from nowhere; it reveals a special relationship between female and the subjectivity of the nation in its association with the social culture. Particularly, because of the influence of neo-enlightenment, female's imagination of body and love is to pursue anti-feudalist ethics and to construct the subjectivity of "human", rather than to rebel against the patriarchal culture. But, somehow, "feminine poetry" in 1980s has been reduced to the presentation of the unique feminine experience in a "confessional" and "collective" way in order to fight against the patriarchal culture. This mechanical and fixed way of reading "feminine poetry" covers the rich and complex gender imagination in "feminine poetry".