The Comparative Research On Jiang Jingai's And Xiao Hong's Novels

Comparability can be widely recognized in the time, personal experiences, creations and fate in Xiao Hong and Jiang Jingai's lives. The researches into their creation bear the same process: first-approval, cold reception and revaluation, which owe to the introduction of Western Feminism Literary criticism to China and South Korea. The paper have made parallel comparative research on the theme, social and cultural backgrounds, gender consciousness, selection of subject, portrait of characters, narrative structure, art of language, aesthetic style and the writers themselves by emphatically employing literary criticism theory such as comparative literature, feminism literary criticism, narration, aethetics and so on.With the emotion of humanism and realism, Jiang Jingai and Xiao Hong vividly describe the miserable existence and tragic fate of people: extreme poverty which leave diseases untreated, unbearable huger and widespread death. Meanwhile, by penetrating ethnic soul, the two writers reveal and criticize on the indifferent and morbid mindset, explore the unyielding living and struggling death of the under-class disadvantaged groups, extol people' s (especially women' s) dogged living consciousness.Both of Jiang Jingai and Xiao Hong' s lives are full of frustrations and miseries. Being in the under-class, they have deepfeltly experienced the humiliated childhood, the torment from hunger and disease, the unfortunate love and marriage and the loneliness so as to vividly and veritably plot out the masses' suffering and tragedy. Nationality and time—these two topics are tightly hold by the writers throughout their novels, in which national and class contradictions in 1930' s China and Korean society are palpably revealed by regions and settings.The northeast of China ( Long Jing and Harbin) is the place where not only Jiang and Xiao lived and were familiared, but contains many national contradictions and class oppression. Japanese invaders burnt, killed, robbed, plundered and ravaged women, while the masses enraged and revolted. Being the metaphors for the class oppression, the resentful pond and hillock scattered with tombs manifest themselves as the creative symbols and imageries of landowners' relentless exploitation towards farmers.As a mirror of sexual prejudice and discrimination, the red-glass kaleidoscope veritably tell the voiceless anguish, confusion and humiliation of women, who were regarded as bondmaids of families as well as tools of reproduction and lustful vent. Both of Jiang Jingai' s and Xiao Hong' s novels manifest intense female consciousness, however the gender consciousness differs due to the distincion of the two writers' vision angles. Jiang Jingai, based on remaining the traditional families, generally surveys women from male' s angle and expresses the independence and liberty in female consciousness, while Xiao Hong manages to destroy families—the fundation of conventional society mainly from female' s angle and demonstrate the profound contemplation of women' s tragedy. Feminism literary criticism attaches much importance on the objectiveness and disinterestedness towards women during reading, which provide the reserch on the distinction of two writers' gender consciousness with references. By poring over Jiang Jingai' s life, emotional experiences and novels, we can see that the edifying instillation of her docile and forbearing mother, the spirit of loyalty, filiality, chastity and justice in Chinese classical novels and the gentle courteous Confucianism imperceptibly but profoundly influenced her to abide by and inherit the conventional women' s ethics no matter in familial life or practical creation. On the contrary, having clearly seen the unequal reality under patriarchal oppression, Xiao Hong took pains to get rid of the shackles of patriarchy by studying, escaping marriage, divorcing, etc. It was in this process of successive resistance to the order of 'phallocentricism' that her gender consciouness gradually formed. Xiao Hong escaped from her father and husband, but never broke away from the traps and tangled webs laid by 'phallocentricism' . Tragedies as their lives are, the two writers show the great intensity of gender consciousness through the female characters they create and therefore become precursors of demonstrating female consciousness.On the selection of subject, Jiang and Xiao prefer describing farmhands than love and intellectuals. On the portrait of characters, they mainly choose the under-class (particularly women) in urban and rural area. However Jiang highlights the typicality of characters, on which the development of plot is based, while Xiao attaches more importance on a certain genre and attribute of people, on which the shaping of characters grounds. The two writers' portrayal of female characters are mostly similar, yet the images of mothers they create—the tender loving mother by Jiang and the harsh and stern one by Xiao - form a sharp contrast, which is closly related to the experience in their childhoods: Jiang had been growing with the sunshine of maternal love while little Xiao received nothing but the indifference and insidiousness from her mother.On the narrative structure, the longitudinal structure in Jiang' s novels can be manifested by the simple but intact plot(the causality) and the complete and developing characters (the chronology), which compose the traditional form of narration. Yet there seldom are dominating plot development or figures in Xiao' s novels for she integrates narration, lyrics, description and discussion into a whole and is free to break the order of chronology and causality so as to exhibit the open form of "prosified novel" , from which the transverse structure can be summarized. On the visual angles, both of the two writers inclined to use first person, but Xiao employs free indirect speech more.In terms of linguistic matters, dialects and slangs are numerously and widely employed. Jiang excels in using reduplicative onomatopoeias, while Xiao is fond of creative prose. In Jiang' s novels, characters are always affected by sceneries, that is to say, emotions vary with sights. On the contrary, by empathizing with decription in feelings, Xiao saturate scenes with characters' sensation. On the utilization of five senses, Jiang exquisitely and emphatically delineate all the smellings in nature and daily life while synaesthesia makes Xiao' s novels vivid and lifesome. On rhetorical devices, analogy, simile and personification frequently appear in Jiang' s novels. In spite of these skills, Xiao employs parallelism and antithesis. The excellent utilization of rhetoric greatly improves the infectivity of language.In terms of aesthetics, both Jiang' s and Xiao' s novels exhale the beauty of unsophistication, implicativeness, brilliance and mournfulness. But distinction are revealed by contrasting the certain imageries, styles and colors. To render disolation and pethetics, Jiang depicts tears and deplorable surroundings while Xiao satirizes with imagos such as pestilence, grave, disease, coffin and wreath, etc. Simpleness and elegance float in Jiang' s novels while weighty gloom and cadence reveal in Xiao' s. Furthermore, Jiang symbolizes the vigorous vitality and peace with natural colors like blue, green and white, which indicates the aspirarion and longing towards purity, peace, kindness and holiness of Korean nationality. Distinctly, accompanied with sharp contrast of green, red overshadows all colors in Xiao' s novels, which emblematizes Chinese people' s expectation of jubilance, blessedness and success.