Xiao Hong And Jiang Love Novel Comparative Study

Both Xiao Hong (Chinese,1911-1942) and Kang KyungAe(Korean,1906-1944) are brilliant female writers emerging in the literature arena in the1930s. Xiao Hong was born to a feudal landowning family in Hulan County, Heilongjiang Province, China. Xiao Hong’s representative works novels like The Tales of the Hulan River and The Field of Life and Death and she also authored short stories like "The Death of Wang Asao","March in the Town". Kang KyungAe, born in a poor farmer family in Hwanghae-do (Province), Korea, wrote novels like The Human Predicament and Mothers and Daughters and story stories such as "Salt" and "The Underground Village". Xiao Hong played an importantly active role in Chinese literary field and her life was legendary; Kang KyungAe also enjoyed a high reputation in Korean literary circles. In spite of the difference in nationalities, their life stories share great similarities, which lay foundation for the comparability between their literary creations. This thesis employs such literary theories as comparative study, feminism and narratology, emphatically explores the similarities and differences between the life stories, class consciousnesses and female consciousnesses of Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe, and make parallel comparisons between them from the perspectives of narrative structure, point of view and linguistic art. In chapter two, the relations between Xiao Hong, Kang KyungAe and their respective works are studied. Xiao Hong’s life is characterized by her relentless struggles against fate. In the pursuit of independence and freedom, Xiao Hong chose to break the tether of the feudal family she was from and underwent courageously the affliction of starvation and ailing until her life came to an end. She saw critically and reflected on misfortunes of the underclass in the light of her own miserable experiences and confronted the unreasonable world out of her wish for what she conceived to be an "equal world". Xiao Hong transcended class and gender and looked at herself at the high level of humanity; she also went beyond physical agonies, plunged herself deeply into people’s inner world and endeavored to find out true reasons for human existence. Different from Xiao Hong, Kang KyungAe began to taste the bitterness of life at the bottom as soon as she was born. With a keen understanding of how the exploiting class oppressed the common people and how they squeezed fruits of the populace’s labor, Kang KyungAe, in the light of the class consciousness of the proletarian, contended that women’s emancipation should start from class liberation. She opposed the unreasonable social system and tried her utmost to integrate all the ordinary people’s strength to counterbalance class inequality for the ultimate goal of the liberation of mankind. Both Xiao Hong’s and Kang KyungAe’s lives are full of hardships and sufferings, and great similarities can be found in their social backgrounds, personal experiences, and writing creations, which make the parallel study between them possible. In the1930s, China and Korea, suffering from the aggression from Japanese imperialism,witnessed the most intense national conflict and class contradictions and women in that era were subject to both class oppression from the ruling class and gender oppression from the feudal system. Under the double oppressions, Xiao Hong’s and Kang KyungAe’s class consciousnesses and female consciousnesses were aroused and finally found expression in their literary works.In chapter three, Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe’s class consciousnesses are compared. Both Xiao Hong and Jiang jingai once suffered from starvation, though the former did not starve until she left her feudal family whereas the latter began to be harassed by hunger as soon as she was born. Memories of poverty and sufferings gradually built up their class consciousnesses; by depicting the deplorable living conditions of people at the bottom, the two female writers criticized the unreasonable social system and phenomena. Unmarked burial mounds in The Field of Life and Death and the "Resentment Pond" in The Human Predicament are metaphors for class oppression, which reveal the sociogram of the opposition and contraction between the exploiting class and the oppressed class. Their works touch the themes of national survival and fight against imperialism, and the masses of the people in their novels also go through the development from unconscious resistance to well-organized fight.These two writers mainly focused on the characterization of life at the bottom, in particular female characters with no social status. Xiao Hong’s writings place emphasis on the description of wretched life of women under deep-rooted feudal oppression, their ignorance, and their resignation to or struggle against the exploiting class. Xiao Hong’s class consciousness is mainly manifested in her early writings while with the changes in her writing style, her later works attached more importance to people-oriented thought. Kang KyungAe, however, regards class liberation as the starting point and her works are concentrated reflection of the notions of overthrowing the ruling class and establishing an equal ideal society. Having lived in Dragon Well area, China for a long time, Kang KyungAe deeply understood that Korean immigrants were greatly victimized by the exploitation and oppression from Japanese imperialism, local feudal regime and the landlords. Therefore, she paid more attention to the depiction of the difficult life of Korean immigrants on foreign lands and the exploitation they suffer from landlords; she also writes about the national independence movement in Korea and Korean people’s hesitation and changes during the anti-Japanese war. Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe’s female consciousnesses are compared in chapter four. In Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe’s times, the view that men are superior to women prevailed and women were just tools to bear children and to meet men’s sexual desire. Therefore, the two female writers detested the social system in which women were unfairly treated. Xiao Hong’s and Kang KyungAe’s works, mainly the reproduction of their personal experiences, describe the tragic life of women. The female language they convey through these women characters is unique and poignant. Perhaps as female writers, they knew much better about female psychology, so they tended to observe their characters, especially female characters, from women’s perspectives. They excel in capturing their feeling towards things surround them and are able to express the feelings in euphemistic and tragically beautiful language; subtle emotions peculiar to women abound in their works.Both Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe portray female characters who were treated by men as dolls and as tools of reproduction or to meet their sexual desire:those selling sex to make a living; those valuing chastity over anything else; those undergoing great pains for the sake of procreation and carrying on the family line. However, female characters under their pen have their own distinct characteristics. Xiao Hong’s female characters mainly come into two categories:some of them are ignorant and resign themselves to the adversity while others are modern women who break with tradition and smash the yoke of feudal system. However, female characters in Kang KyungAe’s works not only possess traditional fine qualities but also begin to wake up in the new era. Xiao Hong contended that modern women were supposed to strive for freedom from the yoke of feudal family and must leave home just like Nora in Ibsen’s masterpiece A Doll in the House; however, most of her female characters fail to get out of the control of men. Kang KyungAe strictly adhered to the moral standards required for traditional women in family life and literary creation, and therefore she portrayed mainly traditional women who are kind, gentle and obedient. Kang KyungAe also regarded patriarchy as the reason for the inequality between men and women, but she did not choose to "escape" like Xiao Hong in that traditional thoughts hampered her "pace" to take action. Finally, she chose to endure and resigned herself to destiny though she tried to make some mental breakthroughs.Chapter five centers on the narratological analyses of Xiao Hong’s and Kang KyungAe’s writing styles. Their personalities in composition result in their distinct styles of their works. The writing styles of these two writers can be studied from such perspectives as narrative structure, narrative point of view and language art, etc. Xiao Hong’s writings differ from these of her contemporaries since she stuck to "unorthodox writing", as Lu Xun put it:she wrote freely without too much hesitation and cared little about the arrangement of her language. However, Kang KyungAe’s writings basically follow traditional writing mode.The narrative structure of Xiao Hong’s works is like a petal:there is no coherent plot running through the whole book; each chapter, with a style of its own, seems unconnected with others but all of them are actually closely related. The time sequence and spatial order in her stories are usually broken, which seem casual and unordered. However, Kang KyungAe adopted traditional narrative structure:the story develops with time around the core plot. Several clues were used to work for the theme, and the main plotline of Kang KyungAe’s novel is evident with all character useful and each plot indispensable.The narrative perspectives employed by Xiao Hong vary from omniscient view, objective view to first person point of view, just to name a few. Kang KyungAe, however, mainly utilized traditional omniscient view and sometimes shifted from first person view to third person perspective. The strengths of first person narrative lie in the sincerity and closeness that brings to the readers and the fact that the narrator is neither omniscient nor omnipotent enables equal talk with the readers. Besides, both Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe were adept in the employment of children’s point of view: they usually recounted their stories from children’s perspective or in children’s tones and the development of their stories are characterized by distinctive children’s mental traits. In terms of linguistic art, Xiao Hong uses simple plain language, and there is a pre-destined sense of desolation in her words. She does not pursue deliberately certain writing style; instead, her writing is natural and without unnecessary cut and polish, which renders her writing a special glamour and offers the readers unusual reading feelings. Between the lines, she seemed aloof and solitary. The liveliness of her language is hard to be concealed and her satire is unique, which reveals Xiao Hong’s insightful understanding of life. Kang KyungAe tended to use onomatopoeic and imitative language, thus providing the readers with a feeling of intimacy. Plenty of onomatopoeic and imitative words are used in her works, which vividly reflect the bitterness and hardships of the underclass. Her language suggests an obsession with hometown and faint pain. Besides, because most of her characters are awaking, the language she used is extremely provocative.The meticulous comparison of Xiao Hong and Kang KyungAe, two celebrated female writers in1930s in this thesis will further our understanding of the social background, views and values and economic structure in China and Korea and facilitate the development and perfection of the history of Chinese and Korean female literatures.