Chinese Women In The Early 20th Century Fiction Writers

It is well-known that the early period of the twentieth century (1900-1919) was a fiercely reformed era. Under such a circumstance, a crowd of female novelists appeared in China. Having been influenced by the new ethos, they wrote generous novels with popular and refined writing style. Depending on contemporary newspapers, magazines and other new spreading medium, a batch of women set about going in for writing novels from then on, which led to the first "Chinese female novelist boom" in the 20th century, and set an example for female novelists after the "May Fourth Movement" to some extent. However, the modern literary history and novel history works have not studied this historic literary phenomenon which ought not to be neglected. Based on the collection of information from many sources, the thesis attempts to make an overall inspection, research and review on their life and their works, which try to find out the significance upon the Chinese literary and cultural history.The thesis consists of two parts. Chapter one in the Part one analyzes the social and cultural causes of their emergence in the early 20th century. Chapter two generalizes their life and their novels. Based on the study of the previous chapters, chapter three discusses their art achievements and significance upon Chinese literary and cultural history. Chapter four, chapter five and chapter six in the Part two have made detailed research and introduction of 37 female novelists and their works in time sequence (1900-1913, 1914-1915, 1916-1919).The materials about Chinese female novelists and their novels in the early period of the twentieth century are the first-hand information, which cost me a great deal of time to turn up many newspapers and magazines covered with dust in the library. I have attached some of their photographs and book images to my thesis on Chinese female novelists and their novels, because these information is hard to obtain.