To Obey Or Not To Obey-A Study Of Women Characters In Moment In Peking

Moment in Peking is one of the most well-known novels of Dr. Lin Yutang, who was a great introducer of the Chinese culture and value system to the Western society and who enjoyed international prestige during the 20th century. However, little attention was paid to him and his works until the 1980s in mainland China due to various reasons. Since the 1990s there has been a trend to reread and rediscover this author and his works in literary circle in China, but compared with the researches and studies on other important writers of similar significance, there is still a lot of work to be done.Like many other classical Chinese novels, Moment in Peking has a lot of characters, especially women. As a female reader, this author adopts a feminist approach and mainly focuses on several typical women figures and their characterization in this research so as to add a new perspective to the study of Lin Yutang. The paper first analyses the social and historical context of the women in the novel. Then it accords centrality of the research to Yao Mulan and Sun Mannia. Mulan is know to be a perfect female image in Lin Yutang's eyes. A deep study of this Mulan shows that there are a variety of contradictions in her personality: tradition vs. modern, old thoughts vs. new ideas, ideal vs. reality, individual consciousness vs. social convention, etc. Essentially, she is a perfect"angel of man's desire"created according to the feudal patriarchal criterion. This paper also attaches great importance to an"idealized figure of angelic submission"—Sun Mannia, who is a victim of feudal Confucianism and feudal patriarchy. Her conversion to Buddhism and her lifelong virgin widowhood exemplify the submissiveness of this type of women to the feudal patriarchal society. The thesis moves on to such characters as Silverscreen and New Suyun who challenge the feudal patriarchy. The first is a bondmaid who pursued the equality between the different social classes and the freedom of love. After several failed struggles, she was finally installed in the Yao family of spirits after her death. The second rebel was a rich family daughter dissatisfied with her marriage and relations with her parents-in-law and sisters-in-law. Fundamentally, her barrenness made her unfavorable in the eyes of her parents-in-law. But instead of being obedient to the elders and sticking to the virtues of a good wife, she pursued her own way of life with determination and established her own identity in the society through the sacrifice of her life for the nation. The life and fate of these four typical female characters in this novel explain the dilemma that Chinese women faced with under the feudal patriarchy—to obey or not to obey? While the conformists may have peaceful life, they lose freedom and identity, the nonconformist get their freedom and make their voices heard but at painful prices of livelihood and security. Finally, through a feminist reading of Moment in Peking, the paper tries to provide a new understanding of the women in Moment in Peking so as to add a different perspective to the research of Lin Yutang.