The Foolish Mother,the Wicked Mother,the Earthly Mother

The figure of the widowed mother is a unique type of character in the history of Chinese literature.Because of their special family status,this type of figure is a more concentrated reflection of the influence of the traditional family system and family culture.As a result of the changing times,the image of the widowed mother in twentieth-century Chinese fiction has taken on new cultural characteristics.The introductory section introduces the origins of the topic,the current state of research and the significance of the study.This section will review the current state of research from the perspectives of motherhood and mother-son relationship,grasp the development of the image of widowed mothers,and determine the general direction and main ideas of the thesis.The first part focuses on the image of foolish mothers in the novels of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period.They can be broadly divided into three categories:widowed mothers who do not distinguish between right and wrong,widowed mothers with feudal superstitions,and widowed mothers who spoil and indulge their sons.On the one hand,they use the power of the traditional family system to control their children,and on the other hand,they lose themselves and their rationality due to their belief in the family system,to the detriment of others and themselves.The foolish mothers of this period reveal the strange status quo in the traditional family and expose the shortcomings of traditional family culture.The second chapter focuses on the image of the wicked mother in modern fiction.The w icked mothers of this period are characterised by their power over their sons and their jealous y and bullying of their daughters-in-law.Due to the changing times,the power of money has i nvaded the traditional family system,thus causing the image of the widowed mother to mutat e.At the same time,the penetration of modern civilisation has made perverted psychology a p oint of view for writers,revealing the sexual repression and child-loving complexes of widow ed mothers.The image of the wicked mother in modern fiction thus shows the modern mutati on of the traditional family system,both on the external capital and internal psychological lev els.The third section focuses on the image of the earth mother in the novels of the new period.As the family system gradually receded in real life,the portrayal of widowed mothers by the writers of the new period became less extreme than before,and the duality of widowed mothers as earth mothers was thus more fully revealed.The duality of the widowed mother as a mother of the earth is thus more fully revealed.These earthly mothers,with their hardships and hidden dirt,both symbolise the traditional image of motherhood and bear witness to the development of history.The duality of the traditional family culture is also revealed when exploring the duality of the image of the wicked mother in the novels of the new period.The evolution of the image of the widowed mother in twentieth-century Chinese fiction from foolish mother to wicked mother to earthly mother not only implies the trajectory of the transformation of traditional family culture,but also reflects the novelist’s deeper reflection on this issue,which has a rich historical and cultural connotation.