Between The Marriage And Career

Ginling College was founded in1914, by the united efforts of5American mission boards:Baptists, Disciples, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians. It officially opened in1915and4years later the first group of female Chinese undergraduate students got their bachelor degree home. It was the biggest and most famous women college in China on those days and had great reputation and influence both home and abroad. In its36years,1000students graduated from Ginling College. The reasons for choosing this college as the focus of this study based on these:firstly, it is a missionary college which was experienced some very important turns happened in the missionary education. The main target group of missionary education turned from the poverty to the students from the elite families. And this elite character was very obvious in Ginling College; secondly, because of the development of the Student Volunteer Movement in America, the new generation of the missionaries were different to the early ones in their professional quality and academic will; thirdly, the gender ratio among the missionaries in China changed, the number of the female missionaries raised and surpassed the male’s. It gave them more gender consciousness as well as influence among the whole missionary group. These changes would deeply affect the students in Ginling College and made them a very special and important female group in Chinese practice of modernity.This study analyses4students of this college. Among them, Wu I-fang and Y. T. Zee were the first group of students graduated from Ginling. One of them chose the career while the other chose the marriage after graduate. Their tangled later lives and deep friendship, to some extent, seems like they completed each other’s life in the field where they can’t do their own and together, they fulfilled a life with the whole "values" a completed women’s life was believed to have. Mao Yan-wen, another students who is studied here was affected by the May Forth Thoughts very much Her life especially her romantic experiences consist of a lot incoherencies which showed the conflicts inside the modernity even after she chose the marriage. Wu, Blanche Ching-Yi, the other girl of the four, chose be single deliberately for here career-oriented life. Her life shows the social reality on those days in which most high educated women faced the dilemma between marriage and career which made them to be single. Besides, this study also suggests that even the male who agitated women liberation would like to use the discourse of nationalism or social duty to legitimate their desires. Because of this, women had to faced the moral demands from tradition and modernity both and suffered the pressure from multiple discourses.Besides the introduction and conclusion, this study consists of six chapters. Based on the time line, it focuses on the four women’s life experience as well as the changes in the society and college happened around them. The chapter one is mainly from the late19century to the first group of students graduated from Ginling College. In this chapter, two of the first generation Ginling students’early lives and their family background will be discussed. The time range from1919to1927in chapter two and three in which the new generations of Ginling students are the focuses. Chapter two is mainly about1919to1923while the chapter three is about1923-1927. Both of them will focuses on the situation of the college and one student’s early life. Chapter four is from the time Ginling changed its president to the war beginning. In this chapter, the movement of restoring the educational tights, Nanjing Event, registration and the changes caused by them, the life experience of the four students after graduation and before the war will be discussed. Chapter five studies the war time experience of the four women and the college also. Chapter5focuses on the Ginling’s situation after war and the four women’s life after then.Generally speaking, this study uses Ginling College as the background, focuses on four students’personal histories and tries to show the dilemma the high educated women faced between marriage and career by analyzing their personal life experience.When the modern society destroyed the traditional value and old ethics, the modern women began to face pressure in marriage and career both. The previous studies on female liberation after May Forth mainly emphasized the conflict between the old and new while, more or less, ignored the inner power conflict in "new culture","new thoughts","new moral" and "new women". Thus the pressure to the women caused by the liberation discourse was underestimated. By analyzing the four female students’different "modern" life, this study tries to reflect the May Forth discourse, rethink the gender role and concept in the modern blueprint and understand those days highly-educated women’s choice in real life practice.