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GRAFTED IDENTITIES: SHREWS AND THE NEW WOMAN NARRATIVE IN CHINA (1910s-1960s) by SHU YANG A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2016 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Shu Yang Title: Grafted Identities: Shrews and the New Woman Narrative in China (1910s-1960s) This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures by: Maram Epstein Chairperson Alison Groppe Core Member Roy Chan Core Member Bryna Goodman Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2016 ii © 2016 Shu Yang This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Arribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Shu Yang Doctor of Philosophy Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures September 2016 Title: Grafted Identities: Shrews and the New Woman Narrative in China (1910s-1960s) My dissertation examines the unacknowledged role of negative female models from traditional literature in constructing the modern woman in China. It draws upon literary and historical sources to examine how modern cultural figures resuscitated and even redeemed qualities associated with traditional shrews in their perceptions and constructions of the new woman across the first half of the twentieth century. By linking the literary trope of the shrew, associated with imperial China, with the twentieth-century figure of the new woman, my work bridges the transition from the late-imperial to the modern era and foregrounds the late-imperial roots of Chinese modernization. The scope of my dissertation includes depictions of shrews/new women in literary texts, the press, theater, and public discourses from the Republican to the Socialist period. Although there exists a rich body of work on both traditional shrew literature and the new woman narrative, no one has addressed the confluence of the two in Chinese modernity. Scholars of late imperial Chinese literature have claimed that shrew literature disappeared when China entered the modern age. Studies on the new woman focus on specific social and cultural contexts during the different periods of modernizing China; few scholars have traced the effects that previous female types had on the new woman. My research reveals the importance of the traditional shrew in contributing to the construction and iv reception of the new woman, despite the radically changing ideologies of the twentieth century. As I argue, the feisty, rebellious modern women in her many guises as suffragette, sexual independent, and gender radical are female types grafted onto the violent, sexualized, and transgressive typologies of the traditional shrew. My research contributes to the studies of Chinese modernity and the representations of Chinese women. First, it bridges the artificial divide between modern and traditional studies of China and expands the debates about the nature of Chinese modernity. Second, it brings to light the underexamined constructions of the new woman as an empowered social actor through her genealogical connections to the traditional shrew. Third, it provides a methodology for rethinking the contested depiction of women in Chinese modernity. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Shu Yang GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, East Asian Languages and Literatures, 2016, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Comparative Literature, 2009, Beijing Normal University Bachelor of Arts, Chinese Language and Literature, 2006, Beijing Normal University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies Gender Studies PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, The University of the South, 2016- Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, 2009-2016 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Research Support Fellowship, Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon, 2012-13 vi PUBLICATIONS: Yang, Shu. Review of: Wendy Larson, From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 12, no. 1 (2012): 179-81. Yang, Shu 楊書. “Wusa ji 1920 niandai guonan wenxue” 五卅及 1920 年代國難文學. In Zhongguo bainian guonan wenxue shi (1840-1937) 中國百年國難文學史 (1840-1937), ed. Wang Xiangyuan 王向遠, pp. 142-78. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2010. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor Professor Maram Epstein. She is always there to listen to my ideas and give me helpful advice. She is a careful reader and insightful critic whose comments on my writings have always inspired me to revise or rethink ideas and put them into better language. From her, I learn to be a positive person, a strong woman, and a diligent scholar. Special thanks go to Professor Bryna Goodman, Professor Alison Groppe, and Professor Roy Chan. As a rigorous historian, Professor Goodman teaches me how to treat my sources meticulously and objectively. Her own researches and courses on the new woman and Republican Shanghai broaden the scope of my exploration and enable me to consider my topic from an interdisciplinary perspective. Professor Groppe and Professor Chan encourage me to explore ways and means of discussing China’s modernization and to bring my discoveries into the classroom. I am also grateful to Professor Tze-lan Sang, now at Michigan State University, for her guidance and suggestions at an early stage of my dissertation project. I sincerely thank all the UO librarians for their constant patience and support over all these years. A special thanks goes to Kate Ball and our great Chinese Studies Specialist Xiaotong Wang, who are so resourceful in helping me locate materials through Interlibrary Loan. I also thank Ms. Lotus Liu and the staff at the Gateway Document Delivery Services at University of Pittsburgh, East Asian Library. My friends in China have also provided significant help with the delivery of primary sources in Chinese. I thank Zhou Bingxin at the Central University of Finance and Economics and Sun Wenbo at Renmin University of China. Without them, I would not have had a rich body of viii material that really assure me of the significance of this project. I also thank the Oregon Humanities Center for its funding. I thank our Dissertation Workshop members Monica Zikpi, Qing Ye, Xian Wang, Lindsey Waldrop, and Clay Yuchih Chou for their feedback and revision suggestions for my chapters. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Wenhuan Wang, for taking over the household chores which allowed me to research and write on these compelling, empowered women or wives in Chinese history and literature. ix To all the new women. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: IN SEARCH OF A GENEALOGY FROM THE SHREW TO THE NEW WOMAN ........................................................................................... 1 The Shrew .............................................................................................................. 2 The New Woman ................................................................................................... 5 Claiming a Genealogy ............................................................................................ 8 II. TO BE OR NOT TO BE A SHREW: EARLY CHINESE SUFFRAGETTES AND THE DISCOURSE OF FEMALE VIRTUE ...................................................... 18 The Public Woman in the Political Realm ............................................................. 20 A Different Public Woman .............................................................................. 21 A Different Public and Gender Order .............................................................. 25 Gender Difference and Gender In/equality ...................................................... 33 The Shrew in the Mainstream Male-Dominated Media ........................................ 42 Shrews as Violent ............................................................................................ 43 Shrews as Obscene ........................................................................................... 55 Shrews as Unconstrained ................................................................................. 66 A Battle of Typologies: Chaste Victim versus Shrew ........................................... 80 III. I AM NORA, HEAR ME ROAR: THE REHABILITATION OF THE SHREW ON THE MODERN STAGE ...................................................................................... 95 Nora as Shrew: Pofu and Huijia yihou .................................................................. 102 The Shrew as Nora: Pan Jinlian among Other Historical Nora Plays ................... 111 Flower and Cowpat: The Male as the Base and the Ugly ................................ 114 xi Chapter Page From Transgression to Virtue: from Shrewish Rebellion to Nora’s Heroic Escape .............................................................................................................. 125 Feminine and Feminist Utterances: Shrew’s Tongues, Nora’s Speech, and Martyr’s Accusations ......................................................................................