Tranxcending Differences:Man-woman And West-East Relationships In Han Suyin’s A Many-Splendoured Thing

In1952, Han Suyin published her A Many-Splendoured Thing, which soon became a hit in the world literary circle. This novel is a concentrated representation of Han Suyin’s fine and delicate female emotions and feelings as well as her profound trans-cultural insight. However, there have been relatively few studies on Han Suyin’s A Many-Splendoured Thing both abroad and at home. And most of the current researches have been focused on the legendary life experience of Han Suyin and on her tremendous contributions to the East-West cultural exchanges. Given such a situation as well as the unique identity of Han Suyin and her literary features, the author of this thesis thinks that it would be illuminating to conduct a research on the novel A Many-Splendoured Thing through a gender-cultural double perspective. Thus the author of this thesis would like to start the paper from an introduction to Han Suyin and the literature review on A Many-Splendoured Thing, and then make further studies on the man-woman relationship and the West-East relationship in the novel. The whole thesis would be divided into five parts, including three main chapters. The Introduction part introduces Han Suyin’s life experiences and writing career and the literary review on Han Suyin and her A Many-Splendoured Thing. The first chapter "Man-Woman Relationship in A Many-Splendoured Thing" consists of three sections. The first section "Inferior Woman, Superior Man" mainly applies the feminist theories and discusses the gender relationship in the novel, pointing out that the inferiority of women and superiority of men described in the novel has been originated from the essentialist traditions in the gender dichotomy. The second section argues how Han Suyin has presented women’s struggle in the novel and expressed her admiration and expectation for women in her writing. This section emphatically analyzes the female body writing by the author, pointing out that women have spontaneous consciousness to rebel against gender inequality. The third section uses Judith Butler’s "performative theory" of gender identity, analyzes the love between the heroine Han Suyin and her British lover Mark Eliot, and argues that the author Han Suyin has projected onto the two lovers her hope for the construction of a harmonious man-woman relationship, and that the free and mature love between Suyin and Mark has been what the author believes to be an ideal model of gender relationship which could be seen as the reconstruction of the non-essentialist transcending gender identity. The second chapter "West-East Relationship in A Many-Splendoured Thing" is made up of two sections. The first section employs Edward Said’s theory of "Orientalism" and studies the fictional writing of the western world’s imperial activities and colonial domination over the East. The second section makes an analysis of the West-East exchanges and integration in the novel. The third chapter "The Construction of a Harmonious World" is an exploration of the complicated connections between the man-woman relationship and the West-East relationship as reflected in the novel. It consists of two sections. The first section discusses the similarity and inter-connectivity between the two relationships, proving the point that in order to achieve a better future, we have to deconstruct the essentialist traditions binding and hindering the people from establishing equal and healthy relationships. The second section, by connecting Stuart Hall’s theory of cultural identity and diaspora with the fresh example of Suyin and Mark in the novel, argues that the construction of man-woman relationship in A Many-Splendoured Thing is of great significance in our building up of a free West-East relationship, in which people also have the possibility to transcend the differences and essentialist identification. The last part is the Conclusion. This thesis shows that A Many-Splendoured Thing is a novel of profound significance. It analyzes how Han Suyin has successfully expressed thoughts and ideas about man-woman relationship and West-East relationship, and shows how she creates a love in her novel which transcends the essentialist binary opposition and brings guidance and hope for the construction of a sound West-East relationship in the real world.