An Imagination Of Modernity: The Emergence Of The “New Woman” In The Field Of Modern Chinese Literature (1918-1928

The discourse/image of the New Woman emerged in British and American society at the end of the nineteenth century,and a media debate about the issue of the New Woman at the end of the nineteenth century brought the term New Woman into the mainstream of social discourse.From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century,the New Woman was mainly reflected in literature as a strong individual spirit,emphasizing women’s independence and rights as individuals,and presenting a new way of shaping women.Under the influence of western feminism,modern women’s rights awareness and advocacy also began to emerge in Chinese society during the late Qing Dynasty.At that time a number of discourses/images that could be described as Quasi-New Woman appeared in cultural and literary scene,namely the New Virtuous Wife and Mother,the Mother of the Nationals and the Female National.Although there are differences in the constructive ideas and connotations among them,their ultimate aims are to emphasize women’s responsibility for the modern country rather than their own rights and development,reflecting a dimension of nationalism.During the May Fourth period,the Enlightenment intellectuals vigorously advocated the spirit of individualism.To this end,they quoted the Western discourse/image of the New Woman with strong individuality,attempting to construct a new individual subjectivity by shaping the New Woman and exploring a new way to build a modern country with a sense of individual independence.Since then,A number of New Women who left home appeared in the literary works during the period of May Fourth.These New Women were essentially continuation and variation of Nora in China.In 1924 the National Revolution swept the country,so the individualism discourse of the May Fourth Movement gradually retreated,and revolutionary and collective discourses took a prominent place in the cultural arena.At this time,the image of the New Woman in literature shows a shift from the individual to the collective,reflecting the transition and transformation of the new intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement from individualism to collectivism.From the Quasi-New Woman of the late Qing Dynasty who aimed to serve the country,to the New Woman of the May Fourth Movement with their strong individuality at the beginning of the New Culture Movement,to the Woman of the Times who were active in the collective during the National Revolution.The emergence and transformation of the discourse/image of the New Woman in modern Chinese literature is fundamentally a process of the emergence and retreat of individualism in relevant literary works and cultural practices,which reflects the transmutation of the different ways of imagining China’s modernization path from the new intellectuals of the late Qing Dynasty to the new intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement.In this process,the new Chinese intellectuals used the foreign symbol of the New Woman to construct an imaginary of China’s modernised society by reshaping the image of Chinese women.In this sense,the New Woman is not only a literary discourse/image,but also a symbol and a carrier of the modernity imagination,which carries the vision and exploration of the new Chinese intellectual class for the path of Chinese modernisation.