A Study Of New Changes On Female Images In Novels In The 1990s

With the further deepening of the market economy and the rise of popular culture,the literary creation in the 1990 s has undergone significant changes in terms of subject matter,value standpoint,aesthetic tendency,and narrative form.One of the important signs of new changes is the special attention to gender differences,female discourse and the female body.Since modern times,the construction of female images is not only about gender,the female code as an effective signifier also carries rich cultural connotations,the referential category of female images is often larger than the gender interface.Therefore,the research on the new characteristics of female image is an important prism for us to understand the sociocultural focus and sociocultural mentality in the transition period.From a vertical perspective,the evolution of modern female images is closely related to the turbulent social and ideological changes in the 20 th century.At the critical inflection point of each historical period,the "new" female image will invariably start with the highly symbolic action of "running away" as a metaphor for a choice to bid farewell to the past and welcome the new life,as a cultural mirror to convey the inspiration of the spirit of the times.By sorting out the genealogy of "new" female images in Chinese literature in the 20 th century,we can glimpse that the female subject identity has undergone a triple variation trajectory from "female" to "woman" and then to "sexual woman".From a horizontal perspective,the discourse of the times and gender expressions mirror each other through the ambiguous integration of narratives,and become an effective way to demonstrate the legitimacy of each other.The discourse of the times in the 1990 s is in a complex turn of politics,economy and culture,full of vitality and illusions.Among them,"daily life","personal discourse","consumer culture","folk standpoint" and the representation and construction of female images are the four basic dimensions for this article to cut into the scene of literary culture in the transition periods.At the level of literary creation,the "grand narrative" has retreated abruptly,and the aesthetics of daily life is increasingly emerging.The aesthetic turn of daily life not only affects the shaping of female image,but also means that the cultural rhetorical function of female image has undergone a new change.When people’s focus is no longer on social public events but on the lives,emotions and dignity of ordinary people,the female image has undergone a secular and daily sinking change.The paper mainly analyzes three gendered literary phenomena,one is the feminine "new realism" and the masculine "death of a poet";the second is the reappearance of the image of a good wife and a good mother,which combines traditional gender discourse and public psychological expectations;the third is the "girly spirit" of urban culture,nostalgia and citizens’ life.Female identity identification in personal discourse system is one of the focuses of female writing in this period.This article will focus on the female writing practice represented by writers such as Chen Ran,Lin Bai,Xu Kun,and Xu Xiaobin from multiple dimensions such as gender parody,construction and confusion of female identity,traumatic memory,and same-sex social desire writing practice.Among them,body awareness is the most iconic weapon of resistance in women’s writing.On the one hand,it subverts the negative view of women as passive and negative in traditional gender culture,and aims to give women’s autonomy through self-writing,but on the other hand,it falls into a trap of some kind of essentialism,and the over-promotion of personal discourse leads women’s writing to a bottleneck.In addition,the explosion of the "problem girl" image reveals that the personal writing represented by Wei Hui and Mianmian is different from the former’s "youth" characteristics.In their writing,the female body at the end of the century no longer carries the meaning of resistance or redemption,but is closer to consumer culture.Exploring the female body and female codes in the age of consumption is an important part of sorting out the new and changing characteristics of female images.Specifically,it includes the proliferation of sexual narratives based on the decadent atmosphere of the transition period,the female body that encounters sexual objectification,the gendered shaping of urban-rural relations,and the imaginative connection between consumer culture and femininity,etc.The images of "working girls" and "city white-collar workers" are the main research objects of this chapter.The evocation and desire to consume of sexual/gendered subjects are regarded as key factors in the construction of such emerging images of women.The declassification of the image of migrant workers and other women at the bottom has become a natural shelter for the unequal relationship between urban and rural areas and between classes.As a result,the depraved story of migrant workers was transformed into a gender story of being lost due to greed.The image of white-collar workers from the perspective of consumer culture carries a certain general sense of modern urban imagination,which is mainly manifested in the commercialization of women and the feminization of commodities.The reintroduction of the folk position not only means the expropriation of folk resources and folk aesthetic characteristics by literature,but also represents a conscious cultural attitude and spiritual dimension."Folk Standpoint and Female Image Creation" mainly discusses the female image under the triple standpoint of unofficial history folk,rural native folk and land folk,mainly focusing on two issues:one is how the folk standpoint affects the shaping of female image;the other is how writers convey the folk position through the shaping of the female images.All in all,this article mainly starts with the complex relationship between female images and the literary and cultural scene in the 1990 s,analyzes the cultural context and social gender culture in the transition period that affect the new changes in female images,pays attention to the situation of women,and explores how the female image as a cultural mirror conveys sociocultural focus and sociocultural mentality.It may play a complementary and expanding role in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from the perspective of gender.