Reconstructionen Of Femininity In The German And Chinese Literature-Re-Imaging Of "Bad Women" In Medea. Sounds And The Reincarnation Of Golden Lotus

In the Chinese and Western traditional literature, there has been no shortage of "bad woman" images. With the rise of the feminist movement and the awakening of female consciousness, many women writers began to question and reshape the images of women who earned thousands of years of notoriety in the male-dominated society. The significance of this image reconstruction projects found not merely in rehabilitation for the "bad woman", but as a way of exploring the gender power system based on the reflection of the situation of the women themselves.The present work deals with the reconstruction of woman images in the German and Chinese literature, focusing particularly on Medea. Sounds (1996) by Christa Wolf and The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (1989) by Bihua Li. With the help of gender theories, the comparative analysis on the two works of two famous contemporary female writers is carried out on both content level and the narrative level, focusing on the reconstruction of Medea and Pan Jinlian (Golden Lotus), famous "bad women" in traditional Chinese and Western literature respectively. Through comparison in the Sino-German Context, it is attempted to explore the causes of this treatment of the "bad woman" in the social system of power and to find the way to get rid of being slandered.The first part of this thesis introduces the basic idea of gender theories. According to the research focuses of gender theories in the field of literature, it is determined that the analysis in this thesis will focus on the following four aspects:the reconstructed new image of the "bad woman"; the power mechanism of gender construction; the way to get rid of being slandered and narrative strategies. In the next section, which is the main body of the thesis, is followed by a detailed analysis of the reconstruction of female image in Medea. Sounds and The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus. The paper shows that two female writers in the new Stories challenge and subvert the bad image of Medea and Pan which is shaped by the male writers:the former is no longer the brutal revenge goddess, as the Greek tragedy master Euripides described. She neither betrayed his father and the motherland, nor poisoned her rival, killed her brother or her own children, she is only an innocent scapegoat, an almost perfect woman. The latter is no longer "the first dissolute woman", as Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng described, but a poor women, whose basic needs can’t be met.In addition, both Wolf and Li reveal in the works the power mechanisms of gender construction. In this power mechanism of discourse, the two heroines are in a weak position to be excluded from public discourse. They incurred being slandered, because they break the social norms and moral principles to be followed by women in patriarchal society. The manifestations of the power mechanism in the two novels have their own cultural features. The mechanism in Wolfs novel is in the form of the scapegoat mechanism, a literary theme originally found in the bible. In Li’s novel, it is manifested in the form of the karma-mechanism, inherent in the Buddhist theory of reincarnation. The reason why they are finally made to be bad women is derived from the male fear and exclusion of distinctive women. However, there is one difference between the two kinds of mechanism. The victims of the scapegoat mechanism are not limited to women, but all vulnerable groups in one society which are regarded as being "others". So Wolfs novel goes beyond women’s theme, the focus of attention extended to "others" in general and the collective pursuit, a common phenomenon in all cultures und civilization where people are not viewed as "normal".Besides, the two women writers made efforts in different degrees to address the slander of women in their literary traditions. They expressed the will for peace through the heroine. While Medea, from beginning to end, believes in the power of reconciliation, Pan Jinlian at the end regretted her retaliation and realized that what she wants is not revenge but something deeper. And Wolf expressed her yearn on a between-world, a Utopian vision.The analysis of the narrative strategies revealed that two women writers used different narrative techniques in order to achieve the purpose of reconstructing female image. Wolf abandoned the single narrator, and made use of a variety of sounds, while Bihua Li combined the omniscient und personal narrative perspective.