From The Altar To Decline

It is discussed in the thesis that the evolvement about father's right in China. It includes three chapters.In chapter 1, the author expounds the discovery of father on the base of ancient literature text such as myth, legend and so on.The confirmation of father's status in the blood derives one hand from people's exploration about origin of human beings; on the other hand, and more important reason consists in the hard struggle between father (man) and mother (woman) for the right of procreation. On the foundation of intuitionistic procreation of women, that totem induced myth may be regarded as the foremost effort ancestors made about enquiring origin of life. As possible father, now the status of totem's father is vague. The status of father is not affirmed until father defeats mother in the struggle about the right of procreation.In chapter 2, the author dissertates the rise of father's right taking ancient China thoughts text as the example.The rise of father's right and discovery of father is almost isochronous. The confirmation of father's status is the result of the society turned from the matriarchal side to the paternal line. In order to administer the society centered on father's blood, the fathers commence their course of building civilization of fathers from all kinds of aspects, such as social culture, ethic criterion, political system etc. All these bring out the rise father's right. In the long feudalism society of China, the combination father's right with regality made it dominate main place in the society all along. Father's right did not decline until the Xin Hai revolution overthrew Qing Dynasty. From then on it is declined and never comes back.In chapter 3, the author discusses the decline of father's right, taking the May 4th literature text as the evidence for the statement.In the course of Chinese enlightenment campaign from late of the 19th century to early of the 20th century, the enlightening ideologists emphasized the enlightenment of the country character on criticizing the traditional Confucianism. Then system and ethic of household as the foundation of Confucianism became the aim that the enlightening ideologists criticized inevitably, however, the system and ethic of household just is the shelter, in which the father's right could survive. As the corresponding literature, a mass of literary works, whose contents mainly focus on young people striving for freedom of marriage, appeared in The May 4th literature overthrow and revolt to father's right with literary form and artistic style of writing.