Gender, Power And Social Transformation

(E|')mile Durkheim arrived at a conclusion that the number of male suicides is more than female and suicide is a male phenomenon in his famous book "Suicide: A Study in Sociology". But this conclusion is not fit for China. In my research, I will introduce my conclusion that female suicide's rate is greatly beyond male suicide's in Shanghai during 1927 to 1937. However, I will not stop on the compare of suicide rate, but think it as an awareness of question and continue to study female suicide itself. I think suicide is a meaningful behavior and cultural phenomenon so that suicide becomes a subject of history. Hereby, my dissertation tries to find out the social meaning of female suicide.In my dissertation, I keep an open mind to the choice of historical materials. On the one hand, my dissertation is on the base of analysis lots of files, newspapers and periodicals; on the other hand, I make good use of literatures, for example, essay, movie, fiction, drama, cartoon, proverb, Zhuzhici (竹枝词) and so on. Espicially, I will use images which are deserved to be as representation and reflection.My dissertation is directed by gender theory. Though there exit female suicide in ancient society, Shanghai' female suicide has not only a product of the times but also a symbol of the times. I examine the cultural mechanism in the special social context and think that female suicide may not be born, but the results of social and cultural construction. At the same time, I have a intersectionality examination, that is to say, I generally examine the gender together with identity, position in the family hierarchy, class, city and country, age, nationality and other analysable categories which contruct various differences among people. Female suicde is one of the forms of cultural representation of these various differences.Accordingly, this dissertation can be divided into seven parts:In my introduction, I will introduce its process of choice of topic, recent situation of suicide research, the choice of historical materials, theory used for reference, and overall framework. In the chapter one, I mainly narrate the general Status, characteristics and pattern of Shanghai's female suicide during 1927 to 1937.Chapter two mainly narrates female suicide in love. After briefly analyzing each class in love, their views to love and female suicide because of love affairs, I choose a Ma Zhenhua (马振华) case to analyze her suicide experience. From this case, I find out that unilateral virtue is deeply rooted. Amativness and love are both contructed by social gender culture and suicide is extreme behave because those females adore love.Charpter three mainly narrates female suicide in marriage. Firstly, I briefly analyze the situation of marriage of Shanghai at that time, secondly I choose Ruan Lingyu(阮玲玉) case and narrate her suicide experience on the method of life history. From this case, I can watch her life contradiction that is "her life likes a drama" and "drama likes her life", "fear what people say" and "human nature is feared", "love is a problem" and "marriage like a city encircled ". Lastly I get a conclusion that conflict between love and marriage maybe leads to female suicide.Charter four mainly narrates female suicide in family. Shanghai's family was in a condition of period of transformation from extended family to nuclear family which rapid changing was due to serious problem of family including spouse' conflict, quarrel and disputing, dissension between generations and so on. Female kill themselves because of this. Lastly I think gender inequality of famlily is main cause of female suicide in family.Charter five mainly narrates female suicide in society. In this chapter, after narrating some difficulties which Shanghai's women faced from public sphere to private sphere, I will discuss a process in which female may be meet social oppress. So I think what is the female suicide' mainly social reason is inequities in gender division of labor.In the last part, I will briefly summarize and conclude. I think that Shanghai's women, who committed suicide, are victims because they are obsessed with "myth of Love" and "patriarchal culture", instead of simply escapees of family and society, "women of virtue martyrs" who are educated by feudal female morals, martyrs of a sense of religion and culture, even not those people of a purely social awareness significant who are insulted and injured, and also not those heroes of spirit who lay down their life for a just cause and die to achieve virtue in national discourse. What's the most important, "myth of Love" and "patriarchal culture" are both contructed by gender.