From The May Fourth Movement To War: The Male Image In The Novels Of Chinese Women

The creation of novels by Chinese feminine writers had achieved great accomplishments from the May 4^th Movement of 1919 to the Anti-Japanese War. The masculine images in those novels reflected the representing shapes and the dispositional connotations of the male in different historical stages from the perspectives of the female. Meanwhile, the feminine writers also showed their understanding, imagination, reflection and criticism on men, which reflected the historical process of the female consciousness of sex from awaking to disappointing and finally to independence. These days, the academic circles have achieved considerable success in the study and comment of feminist novels. Yet there is also an obviously seen unbalance existed at the same time. Namely, they have paid too much attention to the female characters of the novels, such as the female images and female problems, etc. However, they have ignored male characters depicted in the feminine writings. This thesis aims at the compensation of this vacancy in feminine literature, trying to put emphasis on the male characters depicted in the female novels during the 30 years from the May 4^th Movement of 1919 to the Anti-Japanese War, discussing the male appearances, characters, mentality and behaviors of the novels, which reveal the different features and the track of evolvement, as well as the feminine writers'observation, criticism and expectations towards the male.The female novels had successfully portrayed a group of female artistic images for Chinese modern literature during the period of May 4^th Movement. Yet to compare to the achievements, there were a lot of deficiencies on the shaping of the male characters in the female novels. The reasons were, on one side, those female writers' understanding and judgments about the male at that time were not quite deep-going. On the other side, the creative methods taken by the female writers had great limitations. Therefore, the male characters created by them at that time appeared to be obscured andthe male images in these novels lost their artistic values contrast to those brilliant female characters depicted. The female writers wrote their works from the narrative angle of the first person and usually took the narrative structure in the form of letters and diaries. Furthermore, they laid emphasis on the depiction of feelings and emotions instead of the shaping of the characters, which resulted in the extreme subjective attitude of the male characters in the novels. But generally speaking, the male characters in the female novels during the May 4^th Movement still contained the understanding, criticism and expectations of the female writers towards the men, and it symbolized the female writers' consciousness of independence and freedom.At the beginning of 1930s, the creation of the female novels experienced a change from the sense of pursuing the liberation of individuality and the freedom in marriage to the sense of pursuing rationalism and engaging in revolutionary practices under the influence of the social transformation. Female writers exposed the dark reality of the society by showing sympathy to the male victims at the bottom of the society and by accusing the males' violent behaviors. What was more important was that the female writers depicted many male characters as revolutionaries and expressed their hope and trust in them. The images of the male characters in their novels included the following types: the first ones are the weak from the bottom of the society who deserve sympathy; the second ones are the abnormal who are contorted by the society and are subject to criticism; and the third ones are the revolutionaries from whom the ideals and hopes are embedded. The significance of these male characters is that, on one hand, the female novels carry on the tradition and spirit of criticism from the May 4^th Movement period in a certain degree, and on the other hand, they show a much more stronger tendency of finding and following the male revolutionaries.During the period of anti-Japanese war, the sense of independent females, which was once diminished, grew up again. The female novels changed the sense of dependence and pursuits of the male in the 1930s and began to doubt, to criticize and to resist the authority of man again. Female novels in this period returned back to the standing of criticism towards the male and showed general despair and disdain in the man. Female writers denied the traditional concepts of man with the negative description of the selfishness, the hypocrisy and the cowardice of male images, which signified that the female came to the consciousness of their independence once more. Female writes in different regions showed the same characteristics in their works. For example, Ding Ling' When I Was In Xia Village, Xiao Hong' Ma Bole and Zhang Ailing' Devoted Love and Golden lock, all those show that male characters are impotent, incapable and shameless. The depiction of the suspicion and the challenge towards the authority of man became the chief contents of the female novels created in this period of time.