Kafka’s View On Women

The paper is divided into four parts. The first part is a brief back-dating on the researching of Kafka. It tries to set up a background of this paper and express the aim and topic of this paper.The second part summarizes what Kafka’s view on women is and explains the formation reasons of it which mainly focuses on Kafka female emotional experiences, Chinese ancient culture and western civilization. Kafka lived together with many women such as mother, sisters, lovers who are the realistic reason of Kafka’s view on women.Kafka liked ancient Taoist culture, studied the philosophy of Zhuangzi, and also loved Strange Tales of a Lonely Studio.Obviously, in the Chinese classic literature, writers’female consciousness also affected the formation of Kafka’s view on women. Kafka was born of Jewish family and accepted the modern German teaching in University which meant Kafka female view also combines western ancient Jewish culture with modern civilization.The third part of the paper discusses Kafka female view, focusing on the following two aspects:The ideal of view of women and "Jewish" feminism. The most notable feature of Kafka’s view on women is to retort Female " object" status in the Patriarchal society, worship female virtue and appreciate traditional cultural character appeared in women:filial piety, virtuous, sincere, gentle, virtuous, tolerance and praise the spirit of women in the pursuit of free love and sex. With the Jewish humanism, Kafka sympathized the low status of women, lashed social injustice, supported women’s revolt, admired the female personality, economic independence, the pursuit of freedom, and respected women’s rights.The fourth part mainly discusses progressive view of Kafka’s view on women and its limitations. Kafka thought women should have personality, economic independence, freedom, and should accept education, accept knowledge, search for the ideal of love. However, influenced by the traditional culture and writer’s own subjective cognition, Kafka’s view of women does not completely beyond the patriarchal perspective, and traditional women’s aesthetic view still exists. Women in Kafka works have incomplete personality and economic independence, and love they pursued is not perfect.