Female Experience: Written On The "home" "country" On The Edge

This thesis mainly studies Xiao Hong’s three most influential works, the Field of Life and Death, Ma Bole and the History of Hulan River, mentioning in passing her other relevant novels. When it comes to the interpretation of Xiao Hong’s novels, national state and feminism are two representative perspectives and my study intends to adopt the merits of these two perspectives and digs out Xiao Hong’s thoughts on the fate of women, national character and national state identification.The first section of the paper concentrates on the analysis of the Field of Life and Death. The main success of this novel is its deep description of the traditional rural society’s existence in the cycle of life and death, especially its revelation of females’painful body experience which exposes the crucial aspect of traditional civilization. The novel doesn’t separately reveal the gender oppression females suffer, but to combine gender oppression, class oppression with national oppression together under the background of national liberation war, implying that the liberation of females are inseparable from the liberation of the oppressed classes and that of the whole nation. A great number of facts prove that the liberation of females is a more difficult and long revolution. On this, Xiao Hong, by her deep experience of female life, acquire more insights than her male counterparts.The second part of the thesis focuses on the interpretation of the novel Ma Bole, mentioning in passing other three short stories a Wild Yell, North China and the Locus Pond. The aim is to analyze the author’s thoughts on national subjectivity. Ma Bole is the typical of the generation who grow up after May Fourth. He is exposed to the Five Fourth atmosphere, but misses the essence of May Fourth; as a result, he shows a sort of weak national subjectivity. By the description of the characters like Ma, Xiao Hong demonstrates her rethinking of the national subjectivity under the new situation of national war, continuing the inner spiritual tradition of Five Fourth literature.The last section of the thesis reinterprets the history of Hulan River, implicating that the author expresses her nostalgia in her recollection of her childhood. The novel appears to be the family without country; however, in her very narrative of the people, stories, customs of her homeland, Xiao Hong has vividly portrayed a country and a spirit of civilization. The mixture of childhood focalization and adult focalization renders the expression of the feelings more implicit. The colorfulness and multi-meaningfulness of the feelings demonstrated by the History Hulan River shows that the author has switched from his previous purer enlightenment standpoint to a more inclusive compassion.