The Comparative Study On Marguerite Duras With Chinese Contemporary Female Writers

This dissertation researches into the similarities and differences between the themescreated by the celebrated French female writer Marguerite Duras and those created by thecontemporary Chinese female writers represented by Hong Ying, Lin Bai and Anne Baby. Thelatter ones arise in such writing genres as “Autobiography Writing”,“Private Writing” and“Petty bourgeoisie Writing”. Through intensive reading and analyses, it can be achieved thatDuras and her Chinese counterparts have endowed the life courses of female and the fateshared by all human beings with special literature construction and aesthetic interpretation interms of Existentialism, Feminism and Postmodernism.The major concern of this treatise is to explore the influence of “existence on earth” onChinese and western female writers with respect to the relationship between the moderngeneration, especially females in the twentieth century, and the era, region, war, colonialism,love, desire and growth. Meanwhile, the issue of whether or how the feminist consciousnessis consciously applied to address the lives of female individuals and fates of groups is alsodiscussed here. Factors like the historical background of postmodernism, ethnics and regionsare taken into account and being verified while investigating into Duras’ impact oncontemporary Chinese literature as regarding the definition and misreading analyses of“pettybourgeoisie” and “white-collar” and while making comparisons between Duras and AnneBaby.The thesis is composed of five chapters as follow. The first chapter is introduction.Drawing on Existentialism Philosophy, the second chapter stresses analysis on andcomparisons between the autobiography works of Duras and Hong Ying, inquiring thoroughlyinto that how the writers exhibit females’ struggling to survival, searches and growth throughattaching importance to the means of female existence. How Duras accomplishes “patricide”after her failure in dream pursuing, and how Chinese females represented by Hong Ying seeksfor “father surrogate” during their searches, besides, how the various figures present as “father”or “lover” as well as how their utterances influences female independence and dependence arediscussed in this chapter as well.Then the third chapter conducts studies on how Lin Bai, a representative of contemporary Chinese female writers, utilizes “utterance challenge” to subvert masculinehegemony; together how western female writers represented by Duras use actions to constructfemale authority. Such analysis illustrates constraints on traditions, ethnics and regions arealso applied with a view to establishing the independent spiritual territory of women. FemaleChinese writers have only achieved destruction of male “sexual rights” on a level ofdiscourse, but western females with Duras as representative have succeeded in buildingwomen’s authority in relationship, in concepts and even in actions.The forth chapter mainly probes into the similarities and differences between the contentand style of Duras’works and that of Anne Baby’s.The thesis finds the variation duringinheritance of Anne Baby’s works and attempts to analyze its cause. Judging from the themes,it is evident Anne Baby uses Duras’writings as references. The most commonly depictedthemes by Duras are “destruction” or “despair”, and constantly seeking for sense of beingduring the process of destroying love and life. Anne Baby, though insistently intensifies theloneliness and hopelessness of modern urbanite who desire for independence but have no wayout, the images of “outsiders of times” in modern cities are mostly of features addresses byNihilism as transitoriness and insignificance, which distinguishes greatly from Duras’ revealon th“eabsurd”of life, and particularly distinguishes from her“construction”consciousnessafter “destruction”.