On "Female-Hero" Discourse In Literature And Ideology At The End Of Qing Dynasty And The Beginning Of The Republic Of China

The heroic culture was essentially a kind of masculine culture in ancient times of China, but at the and of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the so-called "the extreme revolutionary age" , it underwent great changes for "female-hero" discourse had sprung from the historical horizon. From then on, through the entire 20th century, gender female-hero assignment had indissoluble bond with the Chinese females. In view of this, the paper will focus on the construction of "female-hero" discourse at the end of Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, that is, the issue of the genealogy of "gender female-hero assignment".The introduction examines the concept of "hero" in ancient times from the perspective of gender, and points out that the heroic culture in ancient times was to a large extent the product of male-dominated gender system. Besides, on the one hand, the concept of "hero" was characterized by many "de-feminization" features, on the other, it is also a dynamic and developing historical concept, which helps to leave much space of utterance and practice for female's entering into the ranks of heroes in the period of "mutation" and "openness" in history. In fact, "the unprecedented great change within 3000 years "that Qing Dynasty encountered is indeed the period of "mutation" and "openness" in history. Therefore, the concept of "female-hero" sprang from the historical horizon, and soon became one of the representative discourse patterns of revitalizing the Chinese nation and promoting feminism at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China.The first chapter discusses how male, as the subject of "female-hero" discourse, helped to construct the "female-hero" discourse. This chapter consists of four parts. The first section analyses the context in which "female-hero" discourse came into being. It points out that saving the nation from subjugation, Reform and Modernization, the Platoon Full Revolution, Enlightenment and so on constitute its "macro-context", while the promotion of feminism, male elites' political anxiety and their gender replacement performance in the frame of world wide nations, along with male's meditation about the role of female in the same frame also play a part in the appearance of "female-hero" discourse. The second section reviews the concept of "female-hero" and relevantconcepts, analyzes its logical elements, and highlights its significance as "concept tool" and " ideology resources " . The third section expounds the essence of "female-hero" discourse, and stresses that the "female-hero" should meet the requirements of possessing both integrity and ability, and pursue female's right as "individuality", aiming at the great goal of becoming "female citizens". At the same time, female-hero discourse centers on the cultivation of "soldiers' physique" and "chivalrous swordsmen's spirit" . Accordingly, "male and female advance together" as the feature of the times embodies romantic feelings of love and marriage between "male patriot" and "female hero". The fourth section depicts the guiding effect of female-hero utterance in enabling female to step on the "path of female-hero" through re-constructing the "myth" in historical memories, on the basis of outlining the history of biographical literature of "female-hero" in Chinese and western history produced by male writers.The second chapter analyses how female, as the subject of social practice of "female-hero" discourse, accepted, manipulated or resisted "female hero" utterance. This chapter first introduces all the fresh factors in female's ideology at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, which laid the social foundations for "female-hero" practice. The second section reveals female elites' identification with female-hero utterance from the aspects of literary creation, revolutionary ardor, brave deeds of female heroes, and etc. The third section illustrates some features of female's attitudes toward female-hero utterance in the field of complicated relationships between discourse and power—displaying the subject's ideology in identification, adopting strategies of introspection and manipulation in approval, subverting and negating in construction, and revealing complex psychological motivation in individual practice. The fourth and fifth part carry on the case study of two typical female heroes — "military female-hero" QiuJinand "scholar female-hero" Lv Bicheng respectively in the hope of further elaborating on multi-dimensional perception and rich and complex historical facet of female-hero practice.The third chapter takes some novels at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of Republic China as imagination carriers of female-hero discourse. Through the analyses of representative "female-hero" novels, it expounds how novels create the character of "female-hero" and enrich the construction of "female-hero" discourse through the channel of "imagination". The first section starts with the relationship between fiction theories of the time and "saving the nation" , and discloses theinevitability and significance of the appearance of "female-hero saved the nation" novels. The second section elaborates the basic elements of the construction of "female-hero", and points out three ways and features of the construction of "female-hero"—"speed-up female-hero", "female-hero with immense power" and "eloquent female-hero". The third section holds that representative novels of feminism which calls for "Chinese female-hero" at that time mainly takes on two imagination operating models: moderate feminist reform and radical feminist perceptual experiment. Then it elaborates on the two case studies of Yellow Silk Ball and Female Prisoner. The fourth section elucidates the "gender politics" complex in female-hero novels. It argues that the narration of "passion" and "sex" is mostly confined to exclusivism frame of national revolution and destiny. Hence, "passion" and "sex" in political and historical background is exceedingly given prominence, and the power of national revolution restricts strictly the connotation of "passion" and "sex" within the given situation of "saving the nation".The fourth chapter summarizes the process and significance of the development and change of female-hero discourse in the 20th century. The first section reviews the developing tendency of female-hero discourse and summarizes the gender female-hero assignment undergoes the change from pluralistic assignment of female-hero discourse to mono-assignment of republic hero discourse. The second and third sections discuss the significance of development and change of female-hero discourse from two typical perspectives—"female-hero discourse and nation" and "social gender female-hero assignment and modem social gender relationship". The first feminism movement in China containing female-hero discourse is "the national feminism" , to some extent, it is within political reason. As a result of this, the tradition of "power bestowed by country" and "power bestowed by females themselves" initiated by female-hero discourse develop unevenly. Besides, the male plays an important and complicated role in the appearance and development of female-hero discourse and gender female-hero assignment in China, which is fully expressed in modem gender relationships such as "male and female advance together" and "male and female are equal". It is noted that in the long course of propaganda and practice of gender female-hero assignment, the female has already formed a kind of modem psychological experience structure, which results in the fact that the female can enjoy equal right as the male does in modem society.The paper concludes that "female-hero" is a concept with breakthrough significance in Chinese heroic culture, female-hero literature and gender relationships. Thecharacteristics of "female-hero" discourse are the combination of demands for the nation and feminism, the combination of male desires and female desires, and the combination of military female-hero and scholar female-hero. Female-hero discourse broadens the space for meditation on complicated relations among female and nation, female and country, female and revolution, female and male, and among female themselves, thus provides a new perspective of mode of thinking and literary imagination for constructing gender concept which is necessary for modern nations and revolutions, and to some extent longed for by the female as well. The appearance and development of female-hero discourse is an unprecedented phenomenon in history of Chinese female ideology and history of Chinese literature before modern times. With its own modern features, female-hero discourse has exerted tremendous, complex and pluralistic influence in the course of Chinese national construction and formation of modern gender relationships in the 20th century.