New Researches Into The Ending Of Twice Destined In Marriage

Twice Destined in Marriage, a voluminous Tanci, was written by a Hangzhou authoress named Chen Duansheng in the Qianlong Period. Chen Duansheng left the book unfinished. Later on many writers attempted to complete it. In their endings, husband and wife are reunited. Moreover, everybody in the story is satisfied. These endings consider Chen Duansheng's original intention of the plots in some way, but are very poor in creating Meng Lijun's character. A few scholars in the educational circles such as Guo Moruo and Wang Yaqin have inquired into the ending of Twice Destined in Marriage, but their viewpoints are against Chen Duansheng's original intention in the plots. So some of the viewpoints are open to question. In view of the circumstances, it is necessary to make a overall and thorough study of the proposition (here referring to the ending of Twice Destined in Marriage). On the basis of existing studies, in this thesis, I try to guess Chen Duansheng's original ideas of the ending from four sides at some length. Then I attempt to conceive the most suitable ending for the work. In the first part, I will analyse Chen Duansheng's ideology, which is a mixture of rebellious ideas and feudal ideas. According to the limitations of her rebellious ideas, I infer the argument: it's possible for Chen Duansheng to imagine such a plot that Meng Lijun will be married to Huangfu Shaohua when her woman identity is revealed. Afterwards, I investigate the law of development in Meng Lijun's character in the second part. In addition, in this part I disclose Meng Lijun's character goes through a development process like this: from willingly telling her true identity to absolutely not taking the initiative in revealing her identity then to accepting the fate of living again as a woman under coercion. In the following part, according to some important clues in the version, I will conjecture about the assumptions of the ending that Chen Duansheng probably has in her mind in her dynamic course of creation. In the final part, I guess the major reasons why the writer didn't complete the work. I also separately inquire into the possibly conceived endings in Chen Duansheng's mind in her girlhood and at the age of thirty-four.