Xiaohong Local Novels’ Cultural Aesthetic Space

When vitality is under a general pressure, the yearning for freedom of the folks is normally reflected by aesthetic modalities, hence the folk class is the original source of literature. Writer Xiao Hong’s literature is a comprehensive aesthetic process of the folk class. Xiao’s folk writing is actually a manifestation of rustic literature, which is also known as rustic novels. Thus the manifestation of rustic literature has to include not only a particular custom but also the reflection of universality and a common struggle for the fate of the folks.The origin of rustic literature can be chased to the famous writing Home by writer Lu Xun in the1920s. During that period a group of young writers who were close to the rural areas appeared in Chinese contemporary literatus. Their works were generally influenced by Lu’s writings. Therefore the themes of those writings were always around rural life and the weal and woe of the farmers and these formed the concept of rustic literature.With a clear Weltanschauung and philosophy, Xiao Hong shows her audiences a veracious narrative of the rustic folk class, which reflects her understanding and an enlightening attitude of the culture in her writings. Xiao’s writing restores a real Hulan town in North China during the1920s and the1930s and records the most natural living of the land. Due to her solicitude of the folk class, Xiao’s novel is examining the people, the society and exposes the suffering of the civilians from an endless darkness of the society.If Xiao’s rustic literature is an aesthetic object, the process of analyzing it is a process of aesthetic activity. Meanwhile, in order to control the aesthetic process on a comprehensive perception of Xiao’s novel, taking rustic awareness as the main line is a perfect means to guide the aesthetic taste of her rustic literature.Therefore, Xiao’s rustic novel can be re-analyzed from the outside to the inside by examining her rustic novel from an external aesthetic process (natural environment) and an internal aesthetic process (mentality and psychology of the forks). Thus this method of re-analyzing Xiao’s literature can reveal the crux of the matter of that era in her novel as a whole from a substantial perception and highlight the internal relations between people’s destiny and the society. In her rustic literature, Xiao Hong tried to rouse the society from a numb and pedantic predicament:she discovered the inherent surge of will of resistance in the folk class; she gave a rational concern for the sufferings of the people; at the same time, her censure pointed directly at the malady of the society; and she incisively reprehended the decadent social system. Her literature reflects her enlightenment to the society and her outstanding ideology as an illuminati in the decadent era. Hence, Xiao Hong’s enlightening writing specializes her unique aesthetic processing and meaning of her rustic literature.