The Gray Adam

The male nature and image had been depicted and even defined by man themselves inChinese traditional culture until “May Fourth Cultural Movement” took place since whentremendous amount of female writers rooted and sprouted in China. While these female writerswere telling stories of women, they also contributed their unique perception on male, bringingimpact to the prevailing knowledge of the male nature and image shaped by male themselves.Consequently, the publicly recognized profile of male gradually changed after the “May FourthCultural Movement”.In fact, in the long history of Chinese civilization, other than its sex icon, the word male hasalso been dressed with different outfits for all walks of life, i.e. a gentleman in the Confuciusculture, a sophisticate and powerful figure in political struggles, in daily life sometimes avulnerable pursuer or a rentless cheater in relationships with ladies. These outfits reflected man’sself-construal consciousness under the masculist discourse. Notwithstanding the “May FourthCultural Movement” launched strong opposition against the Feudal traditional culture, it stillexisted. Some deep-rooted cultural sediment, especially the masulist culture lurked in the soul ofthe Chinese people, waiting to explode in the ripened time. Based on the aforementionedobservation and understanding, the dissertation analyzes male nature and image based on thetraditional acknowledgement and the modern female writer’s interpretation of it, other than solelylooking for evidence from the female writers’ work. By this means, it attempts to discover themodern female writers’ understanding and perception of masculine image deep-rooted in thetraditional culture, which is provide from a point of view of an opposite gender. Other than makingisolated analysis on the male image only from the female writers’ work, this dissertation puts itinto the traditional culture context to analyze the change in the writing of the modern femalewriters and point out the feminine consciousness reflected by their writings. This approach is ableto enlighten a logical and chronicle path to trace of the variation of male image in the femalewriters’ work. While comparing the female writers’ perception with the traditional view, thedissertation also tries to disclose the difference in their perception by reference to the male writers’work. It is ostensible that the female writers’ perception of male is tremendously helpful to realizethe male existence in the social context. In brief, the dissertation has made several novel attempts as follow: adopting new approach ofputting into the traditional culture context the analysis of male image in the female writers’ work,conducting the argument by turning the traditional perception of male into masculine Narrativesubjects, selecting new angle for analysis, utilizing most updated data, etc.