Romance rapscallions on the cusp of modern: Male courtship in four eileen chang stories

In recent years in Mainland China, a significant portion of the scholarly discussion surrounding Eileen Chang's romance stories presented in academic journals has taken a black-and-white, conveniently superficial approach that shirks dimensionality and varied, subtle contrasts, which Chang herself once stated as her true intent and style in writing. Long maligned by readers who sympathize with the ill-treated female protagonists, the men under Chang's pen in her romance fiction have especially taken the brunt of much of the aforementioned simplistically harsh criticism. Without consideration for gradated differences and nuanced depictions, rash and negligent analyses have pigeonholed these diverse male characters into a single group of bad men who are just all bad in the same way. The purpose of this thesis, thus, is to revisit the very issue of how to analyze the men under Chang's pen in her classic romance stories. The focal lens through which this thesis delves into the complex, intricate Eileen Chang's world of romance is the male courtship of female. Specifically, this thesis hones in on two salient factors pertaining to male courtship: the man's level of modernity and his level of courtship. Using four classic romance stories penned by Chang during her early productive years, this thesis argues that the male characters all differ in terms of both level of modernity as well as level of courtship. These two gauges also share a positive relationship as the more modernity a man embodies the higher his courtship goal or desire is. In addition, the "bad" deeds of some of the male characters should be attributed not to intentional malevolence but rather a lack of modernity in these men's environment and psychological formation.