A Brief Account Of Mei Niang's Novel Writing

Mei Niang, who is still living and in good health, is an important female writer in the 40sin the enemy-occupied region. Her long writing career spans two periods: before the foundingof the PRC and after its founding. Most of her novels were completed before the founding ofthe PRC, and were published or printed in the enemy-occupied region. After the founding, shegave priority to the creation of prose and essay.Although Mei Niang's novels haven't describe wars in a direct way, they actually havegiven concern to the difficulty of survival of an individual life in the war, but in an unobviousmanner. Mei Niang's characters concern about the mankind and the society in the wartimejust like ordinary female writers do;moreover, they present Mei Niang's unique observationand thought over her life in the enemy-occupied region, especially over women's fate. This isreflected in the two major themes of Mei Niang's novels: Care for women and Care forhumanity. The former theme best embodies the uniqueness and value in her creation of novelswhile the latter theme is an enrichment and further development of her consciousness towardsfemale identity under certain historical condition.Thanks to her "profound and obvious pity to mankind", her novels still arouse attention.This can not be done without her narrative strategy——"Asking for Help" Narrative Pattern,Imagist Narrative Function and Female Narrative Point of View. The skillful and uniquenarrative strategy deepens the connotation of her themes: while caring about the society andcommon people, she gives more concern to women's fate in the flux of times;whilecriticizing the male-centered social reality, she also criticizes the problems existing within thefemale itself.Mei Niang's novels have inherited and enriched the tradition of "Man's Literature" in the"May 4^th Period", representing the vivid phase of multi-literature after the breakthrough fromnovels' love-centered-theme restriction in the enemy-occupied region. This is complementaryto the mainstream "social and national standard" war experience and literary representationmanner in the 40s. Mei Niang's literary creation is of unforgettable position and value in thehistory of modern China's female literature.