The First Stagger Step

Women's consciousness is motivation of activating women to pursue independence and self-determination and exert initiativeness and creation. This article analyzes the awakening of women's consciousness from the perspective of the marriage and family after the May 4th movement period .Inquirying women's consciousness not only contribute to completely understand the history of women's liberation today , but also women's theory construction and promoting women's development can draw lessons from it.The May 4th movement was like spring thunder,awaking the women's consciousness. The change current of thought of the marriage and family was the catalyst of the women's consciousness,stimulating their enthusiasm of pursuing the freedom of marriage and arousing women's the awakening of women's consciousness.During this period, women awakened had began to free oneself from the shackles of the old traditional ideas. In the marriage and family, they tried to express their will independently. They endeavored after rights bravely as human beings, striving against arranged marriage and pursuing self-determination of marriage and amativeness. In divorce issues,they abandoned the old traditional ideas. Once their marriage was not satisfactory, they resorted to divorce. In their family life ,they was not contented with independent status any longer,advocating sexual equality and that couple should have common rights. Even some women had the courage to discard the old traditional ideas and choose the road of the celibacy.In a word ,in the marriage and family life that were closely related to women ,they had taken the first stagger step to carry out self—value .Women during this period couldn't walk into social intercourse smoothly and comprehend the connotation of freedom of marriage corretly as they lacked scholarship and certain experience and were shackled by thousands of years of feudal ideas and feudal ethics,hence, a lot of women's ideas and behaviors seemed very extreme.Awakening didn't mean that the future was bright, because women awakened couldn't determine their own future and destiny. They still needed to face various fetterses, such as deep-rooted traditional social ideas and the various reactionary decrees of government...etc. The consciousness of pursing self-determination of marriage and amativeness seemed to be very weak and thin.Women awakened had have experienced hardships and sufferings, so the road to awareness of women's consciousness was very difficult.