The Other’s Watching And Writing:a Study Of Women’s Travel Writing In British Author Lady Hosie’s Portrait Of A Chinese Lady And Certain Of Her Contemporaries

Portrait of a Chinese lady and Certain of Her Contemporaries（1929）is wrriten by Dorothea Soothill Hosie（1885-1959）,the daughter of the British sinologist William Soothill（1861-1935）,about her travels in China.It is an account of the author’s travels during her visit to China with the Sino-British G.P.expedition.She was one of the more unusual of the group of women writers who travelled to China in the late Qing and early Republican periods,having been born in China,having a deep knowledge of Chinese culture,and having lived for several months as a guest in a Chinese official family.She wrote travel literature from 1924 onwards,almost exclusively based on her experiences in China,and her books were instant bestsellers in Britain and America.However,to date,there is a dearth of research on Xie Fuyun’s travels in China,both in China and abroad.Therefore,this thesis proposes to start from the perspective of women’s travel writing,placing the writing of Portrait of a Chinese lady and Certain of Her Contemporaries in a specific socio-cultural context and analysing how the author sees and writes about the foreign ’other’ as the ’other’."It also discusses the gender consciousness and colonial discourse embodied in the text of this book,with a view to enriching the study of Xie Fuyun and her work.The thesis is proposed to be divided into six parts.The first is the introduction,which introduces the significance of the topic chosen for this thesis and the current state of research at home and abroad.This is followed by the main body of the thesis,in which the first chapter will provide an overview of Xie Fuyun’s life and creative career and a brief introduction of this book,and,as Xie Fuyun belongs to the group of Western women writers in China’,the first chapter will also analyse their cultural identities within and outside the colonial empire,with a view to understanding the specific context in which Xie Fuyun wrote her Chinese texts.The second and third chapters are devoted to the textual detailing of the text.Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to a closer reading of the text,analysing the qualities of women’s travel writing in Portrait of a Chinese lady and Certain of Her Contemporaries from the perspectives of gender consciousness and imperial discourse,respectively,and examining how Xie Fuyun portrays the foreign ’other’ in her writing and unconsciously presents the colonial perspective of the imperial traveller.Chapter 4 attempts to identify the cultural origins that influenced Xie Fuyun’s travel writing,exploring the reasons that influenced her cultural perceptions from the perspectives of Protestant women missionaries’ views on gender and Western intellectuals’ admiration for Chinese culture after the First World War.After completing the analysis of the content and context of the text,the concluding section of the thesis will summarise the characteristics of Xie Fuyun’s travel writing of women as presented in Portrait of a Chinese lady and Certain of Her Contemporaries,and give briefly reflection on the research of this paper.