New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction

Front matter

Comparative Cultural Studies

Jin Feng

The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction

CHAPTER TWO Books and Mirrors: Lu Xun and “the Girl Student” 40

CHAPTER THREE From Girl Student to Proletarian Woman: Yu Dafu’s Victimized Hero and His Female Other 60

CHAPTER FOUR En/gendering the Bildungsroman of the Radical Male: Ba Jin’s Girl Students and Women Revolutionaries 83

CHAPTER FIVE The Temptation and Salvation of the Male Intellectual: Mao Dun’s Women Revolutionaries 101

CHAPTER EIGHT The Revolutionary Age: Ding Ling’s Fiction of the Early 1930s 171

Feng, Jin. New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. E-book, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.5703/128828431 7627

EPILOGUE Ding Ling in Yan'an: A New Woman within the Party Structure?

Appendixes Chronological List of Fiction Discussed in Each Chapter Glossary

Index

Feng, Jin. New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. E-book, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.5703/128828431 7627 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

199 203

209 227

Acknowledgments

Many people have helped me in the writing of this book. My parents have always encouraged my intellectual exploration, even as it led me to half a world away. My mentor, Professor Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker at the University of Michigan, has remained a constant source of inspiration and support. Special thanks go to Matthew Fryslie, friend and former classmate, who has read various chapters and versions of my manuscript with an eye for style as well as substance.

The Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan awarded me a fellowship for 1999-2000, enabling me to complete the first draft of my manuscript with minimum distraction and hassle. Grinnell College has offered generous funds for my archival trips and conference presentations during the subsequent revision of my manuscript. I would also like to thank the class of my “Chinese Women” course at Grinnell in the fall of 2001: Mike Abel, Lura Barber, Jon Cell, Bridget Lavelle, Ilana Meltzer, Jessica Schmidt, Sylvia Techavalitpongse, and Jennifer Wheeler, for keeping my enthusiasm alive with endless questions and challenges.

I would also like to thank my editor Steven Tétésy de Zepetnek, who initiated the project of comparative cultural studies, and therefore provided an intellectual home for my book. Last but not the least, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of my book for their most useful and encouraging comments and suggestions. As readers will find out from the following pages, I study early twentieth-century Chinese fiction not as a pure “form” existing in a historical and cultural vacuum, but from the perspective of its dynamic interaction with both other forms of cultural products and with the authorized metanarrative of Chinese modernity. Whether my apparently backward-looking inquiry has provided some insights into the present time is for you to decide.

Feng, Jin. New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. E-book, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.5703/128828431 7627 Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Feng, Jin. New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction. E-book, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.5703/1288284317627. Downloaded on behalf of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor