Images Of Women In Love-a Comparative Study On Pu Song-ling's Supernatural Tales And Poe's Gothic Stories

This Dissertation attempts to conduct a comparative study on the images of women in love in some of Pu Song-ling's Supernatural Tales and Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic fictions. This topic is full of challenges, for the research of the women images in Poe's Gothic fictions by Chinese scholars is believed to be inadequate and the study of women images of the Chinese supernatural tales is far from sufficient; let alone to conduct a comparative study of the two literary types and explore their cultural significances.The present thesis will adopt some of the feminist theories, mainly the theory in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and carefully examine some characteristic fictions of the two distinguished authors with an attempt to find out the similarities and dissimilarities of the images of women in love created in their respective works.Many of Pu's love stories have been the topic for study by previous scholars, especially the love stories between human and spirits. While stories about the love between human hero and heroine are in want of sustained research for, on the one hand, they only constitute a small portion of Pu's love stories, and on the other hand, they have not been placed in the center of research because the characters' normal powers do not wholly reflect Pu's uniqueness in description of the supernatural. So the author of this thesis attempts to take these love stories about mortal men and women in Pu's works ("A B ao"《阿宝》, "Chen Yun-qi "《陈云栖》and "Wang Gui-an"《王桂庵》into research and shall try to account for them as compared with the love stories about beautiful ladies by Poe ("Berenice", "Morella" and "Ligeia").A research on this topic finds that women in Pu's and Poe's stories share many similarities: there are in the two fictional worlds angel-like ladies with unparalleled beauty, faithful ladies with great persistence in love and pure ladies with endless pursuit for true love. They all conform to the perfect women images in the authors' ideals. Dissimilarities can also be found. Compared with Pu's tough women images, ladies in Poe's works appear to be more fragile and vulnerable. Ironically, when facing any difficulties, those strong women in Pu's works who could successfully handle housework and take charge of household affairs, would sometimes succumb to the pressure and be prone to put an end to their lives. While in Poe's love stories, though being portrayed as fragile and feeble, those ladies would behave extremely strong in fighting against death, with the hope to live and to love. This dissimilarity reveals the two authors' different judgments on what women perceive as important in life. Pu, who had been greatly influenced by the stereotyped idea that women were the accessories to men, appreciates those women who wholly follow the husbands in any circumstance even in death. In it, we can also discover women's passive and dependent role in feudal society. Contrary to the ladies who view the husbands as the core in life, women in Poe's love stories are holding different attitudes. For them, life is the most meaningful and important. They cherish the precious life and make every effort to live and love. This conveys Poe's special appreciation for those ladies who maintain positive attitude and cherish life.Under the guidance of Beauvoir's feminist theory, we can find that, influenced by long-constructed idea of women as passive objects of men, both Pu and Poe portray these perfect images of women from their own aesthetic judgment as a male. Still, women's struggle for true love found in their works, to a certain extent, shows the authors' respect and appreciation for the actions done by these women. Therefore, we can discover that the respect shown for women in the works by the two authors is at best a biased one, marred by a prejudice against them conditioned by the stereotypical masculine ideology.To sum up, women images are shinning under the fantastic description of Pu and Poe. However, these perfect images of women though reveal women's seeking for change to a certain degree, only suit the desire of men. Women's passive and inferior role still exists in the works of the two authors.