Confusion In The Reconstruction Of Personal History: Study Of Mei Niang

Mei Niang had been a well-known writer in Japanese-occupied territory.However, in the past half-century, she and her works had seldom been noticedfor some reasons. She was found and acknowledged again as a writer fromthe latter half of 1980s'and her works were republished. From then on,researches and studies about her and her works were carried out gradually. In present thesis, I begun my study with the self-narration of Mei Niang,about which I did a lot of researches and investigations, especially into whathad been ignored in previous studies. I found out the confusing parts of herself-narration and bibliography, and then tried to scrutinize the ulteriormotives. With characteristic down-to earth approach to the problems, I cameout with my own opinions on the basis of evidence and also of my analysis,questioning carefully the writer's reconstruction of personal history in theway of self-representation with great respect to history actuality and thewriter. In the special circumstance of the occupied area, works could never beunderstood thoroughly without an apprehension of colonial contexts. Someearlier works of Mei Niang were regarded as proper descriptions of labors'life, which were commended greatly by many critics. Most of her works,however, were focused on marriage and daily life of women, which wereglorified by feminism studies. In my thesis, I discussed the association of thetwo different types of works for the one on female life was also intermingledwith the colonized history of the so-called Manchuria, even in thosehistory-absenting fictions, through which I tried to talk over the significanceof Mei Niang's female writing. It will take a long period of time for colonials to decolonize frompsychological state even after they had realized decolonization in politicalmeanings. In the past many years, the leftmost policy impaired objectivecomprehension of colonized history and people are still heavy-heartednowadays while mentioning that. Mei Niang was such a case. After shebecame well-known again, she revised/rewrote many of her former works,through which she tried to obtain her purpose of decolonization. In fact, shedidn't reach her aim by revising but concealed historical actuality on thecontrary. In my thesis, I quested and tried to make clear her intentions andmotives of revising by comparing former works with the revised ones,connecting with her self-narration and bibliography.