User:AbRoseD98/New Woman

The New Women of China began to emerge off of the pages of Chinese literature beginning mostly in the 1920’s. However, ideas surrounding feminism, gender equality, and modernization began in China far before the 1920’s New Women emerged from its context. The New Women of China and the movement itself went through various incarnations along, changing with the social and political landscape it emerged from.

Fall of the Qing (1911) to pre-May Fourth Era/Late New Culture Movement (pre-1920's)

It was during the early years of the New Culture Movement and pre-May Fourth era that the term "New Woman" first emerged in China. This term, used by Hu Shi (1891-1962) during a 1918 lecture, suggested that women were more than just "good wives and wise mothers" and instead pushed for women's freedom and individuality in the larger national framework. However, Hu Shi along with a handful of other male intellectuals, were the minority pushing for women’s involvement in society.

Influenced heavily by the New Culture movement, which emphasised condemning the “slavish Confucian tradition which was known to sacrifice the individual for conformity and force rigid notions of subservience, loyalty, and female chastity," the New Woman who emerged in the 1910’s were far less progressive than their later 1920’s counterparts. New Women during the early Republican period had to contend heavily with the ‘woman question’ a question regarding how to "address issues of modernity and the nation" and women's role in both. During this period, women's education was promoted, but as a tool to create women who would be equipped to “raise healthy and morally sound sons”, who would then help build a new China. So even though education was encouraged for women, it was not for their personal benefit but instead for the state and nation. Early New Women such as Hu Binxia, an early editor for The Ladies Journal, promoted in her articles the ideas of education to learn how to support a family and participate in the cult of domesticity.

However, like minded male reformers to Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu promoted a very different kind of women for China’s changing political, social, and economic landscape pre-May Fourth era. Founder of the New Youth journal, Chen Duxiu called for gender and family reforms and pushed for the emancipation of women and the dismantling of the restrictive Confucian family system. Chen, like other radical-minded male intellectuals of his time, believed “women’s equality to be the hallmark of a modern civilization” and the strength behind a nation. Thus “customs of concubinage, foot binding, widow chastity, and female seclusion”, from these male intellectual's view points, needed to be eliminated to allow women to freely participate in the nation's rebuilding.

While Chinese men at this time backed the idea of the dismantling the Confucian system, they did not do so solely for women to be freed from it. Chinese male intellectuals backed women's emancipation from the system, but not their emancipation as individuals. The hope was that women could be freed from Confucianism's confines and then mobilized for the cause of nationalism. This can be seen by such reformers as Liang Qichao who believed that the "future strength of the nation was the ultimate goal, and that women's rights were only a means" to meet that goal, not the end of it.

Furthermore, the New Women of China during this time drew heavily on American and European literature, feminist movements, and female missionaries along with Japanese feminists and New Women too. Both Chinese men and women looked to the United States, which was believed to be the most advanced in regards to women's rights, as a source of inspiration. Education and economic opportunities, such as those that Chinese male intellectuals of the time promoted for women, were considered to be the hallmark of a free and independent women. These ideas of economic independence and educational opportunities were promoted by both the male and female intellectuals of the time, but both promoted them for different reasons as noted above.

Post-May Fourth Era (1920's) to the early 1930’s

Changes to the New Woman and their ideals began after the May Fourth Movement. While the movement emerged from the context of World War I (Treaty of Versailles), its new ideas regarding the economy, education, politics, and gender roles had a profound effect on the New Women in China and the direction of the movement. Where previous New Women during the early twentieth century had been influenced by women in the United States, Europe, and Japan, the New Women of China began during the 1920's to using their own stories and ideas as their inspiration. In this, while Western literary figures and writers such as Nora in Hendrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) still had massive popularity and influence, male and female writers of the time used these writings as templates but applied Chinese societal problems and themes to the storylines and characters. So while they had a connection to these original works, they featured both larger global struggles of women, such as free love relationships, and more individual problems for Chinese women, such as dealing with the Confucian family system and filial piety.

The New Women in China, both as women living in China and literary figures in books, still faced pressures in the 1920's and 1930's to "exemplify familial and national devotion" however. With that said though, not everyone shared this sentiment. For example, during the late 1910's and early 1920's, the Ladies' Journal promoted ideas of individualism and romantic love relationships and marriages instead of arranged. Other writers believed a strong Chinese nation would arise only when "education, suffrage, social freedoms, and economic independence" were granted to women. Thus, while women seemed to gain more freedom in their choice or marriage partner and the possibility of working outside of the domestic realm, the rhetoric and meaning behind these new choices for women, hidden behind modernist vocabulary, remained the same: establishing a family or devoting oneself to the nation.

An important lecture, "What Happens After Nora Leaves Home", was given at Beijing Women's Normal College in 1923 which discussed women in Chinese society and their inability to become truly independent from both the family and from their male partners. This talk given by Lu Xun, a revolutionary writer concerned with women’s issues amongst many other things, cautioned women against idealizing Western female literary figures such as Hendrik Ibsen's Nora in A Doll's House (1879) . Lu Xun noted that while her actions were bold, Nora did not have any means to support herself once she left home, leaving her with limited options of survival. Lu Xun was not against women seeking independence, he was however, pointing out the limited access women had to economic self-sufficiency and social welfare.

Nora's Influence in Early to Mid Twentieth century Chinese literature

Regardless of Lu Xun's warning, Western literary figures, like Nora in A Doll's House (1879), came to be seen as great examples of New Women to female and male readers of the time. Nora, the heroine of A Doll's House, who leaves her patriarchal marriage and ventures out into the world alone, was used as an ideal archetype by female and male Chinese writers in their own stories and essays.

When looking at female Chinese writers of the time, Ding Ling and Chen Xuezhao were both heavily influenced by the New Women and their message. Chen Xuezhao, a Chinese feminists of her time, advocated for women to be liberated from the patriarchal system allowing them the ability to contribute more wholeheartedly to society. Her 1927 essay published in the New Woman magazine, noted how women wished to remain single and thus able to “pursue their own personal fulfilment and livelihood”, becoming “active participants in civic life”.

Another New Woman writer, Ding Ling, by using fiction, wrote about the lives of women, their sexuality, and the “complications they faced making a life for themselves in a modernizing society”. Influenced by her single-mother, Ding Ling presented herself as the epitome of a New Woman as she was starkly against foot-binding, chopped her hair into a short bob cut, went to male and female schools, and refused an arranged marriage. Her most influential work, Miss Sophia’s Diary, inspired by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, details a New Woman’s journey with “sexual and emotional frustrations of romantic love as a ‘liberated’ women in a patriarchal society”. Ding Ling's writing focused on criticizing the patriarchal family, the marriage system, concepts of female chastity, and the double standards women faced.

Male writers of the time too, used Ibsen's story as inspiration for their own versions to the Nora tale. For example, Hu Shi's play Zhongshen dashi (The greatest event in life; 1917), stars a Nora-influenced character whose story highlights the idea of free love relationships for both men and women, moving away from the idea of arranged, loveless marriages.

Lu Xun was another male writer of the time who created literature using these New Women characters. As mentioned above, Lu Xun gave a speech in 1923 noting how Nora had no economic means to turn to when she left home. His talk and subsequent story on the topic, demonstrated that in Chinese society, women lacked the economic funds needed to be able to survive outside of her family and husband. As Nora did not have any means to generate an income for herself once she left, and because she lacked an education, she was left with few options of survival. His story, New Year's Sacrifice (1924), while not explicitly about the New Women of China, went on to criticize the idea of monitoring women's chastity and virtue. However, his story Regret for the Past, whose female protagonist is modelled after Nora, shows his female lead leaving her family home to be with her lover, only to eventually return to her family home in the end due to a lack of economic independence. Demonstrating Lu Xun's belief that China had not created ways for women to survive outside of their family or husband's homes.

Characteristics of the New Women in literature and in Chinese society in the 1920’s-1930’s

While not from the 1920's and 1930's, an incredibly early example of the archetype of the Chinese New Woman was Ida Kahn/Kang Aide/Kang Cheng (December 6, 1873—November 9, 1931). An early New Woman in the context of the Chinese New Woman movement, Ida Kahn, originally born in China, was adopted by an American female missionary who took her in 1892 to the United States to receive a college education in medicine. There are a few reasons Kahn stands out as an early archetype of the eventual 1920's New Woman. The first is the education she received. Kahn received two degrees. The degree she received was in medicine, which she put to work back in China when she became a doctor in the early nineteen hundreds. The second degree Kahn received was a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1911. What is unique about this, other than the fact that she received a degree in medicine in the first place, was that this second degree was done solely out of personal interest for the topic. While later New Women were encouraged to receive an education, it was not for one's personal benefit but instead to become better wives and mothers, so this early example of a Chinese woman receiving an education out of interest is an anomaly of the time. The second is marital status. Kahn never married and instead devoted her life to the cause of medicine and healing others. Kahn remained single her whole life, breaking away from the tradition of marrying and establishing a family. Lastly, Kahn worked as a physician for the majority of her life. Kahn devoted her life to the Chinese state and its people. Kahn was later turned into a symbol of national reform by Liang Qichao who, noting the anomaly she posed as a female figure in China, morphed Kahn into a "central image of modernity".

The 1920's to 1930's New Woman in China from the page to real life shared similarities and differences both with each other and with the early New Woman, Ida Kahn. For example, Ding Ling, the female writer, exemplified the ultimate New Woman both in her visual appearance and in her ideas and stories. As noted earlier, Ding Ling's physical appearance aligned with other New Women as she "had her long, braided hair cut short", a typical style of the New Woman. Her ideas and literature also aligned with 1920's New Woman as her stories depicted female sexual desires and women's liberation from the patriarchal family.

New Women, according to Barbara Molony, emerged in the late 1920's, out of the New Culture Movement and were viewed as the "educated, patriotic embodiment of a new gender order working to overcome the oppressions of the Confucian family system and traditional society". New Women were usually female students who in appearance wore eyeglasses, had short bobbed hair, and unbound feet, and in practice usually lived on their own, had open, casual relationships, and aimed to be economically independent from their family.

However, the Modern Girl, who also emerged in the late 1920's and early 1930's, came to signify "commodified, glamorous, and individualist women". Each of these two types of women in China came to exemplify very different styles and beliefs. The New Woman both in literature and in real life were "associated with leftist and progressive intellectuals, equated with positive aspects of modernity" and seen as educated, political and nationalistic in her view points. The New Woman was all things positive in relation to modernity and "symbolized the vision of a future strong nation" but with aspects of modernity and revolution. So while the New Woman expressed the positive changes that came with modernity, the Modern Girl "expressed men's disillusionment with modernity and their fears of female subjectivity". While neither of these two women were necessarily beloved by males wishing to keep the status quo, the New Woman was more accepted as she was believed by men, even though she advocated for free love and economic independence, to still uphold family and national values.

Suicide and the Chinese New Women

Even with these apparent new found freedoms (ability to work outside the domestic domain, economic stability, and choice in marriage partners), some New Women still felt constricted by the system and thus, unheard. To make their opinions about this system heard, some New Women followed the old Confucian tradition of female suicide as a means to get their message across to the general populace.

According to Margery Wolf, women's suicide in China was less about “Why?” and more about “Who? Who drove her to this? Who is responsible?”. This can be seen with the case of Xi Shangzhen, an office employee who in 1922 committed suicide for reasons that are still contested. Xi was an unmarried office employee who, disgruntled at her boss hung herself in her place of work. There are two possible reasons for her decision that are known. The first is that her boss lost her money on the stock market causing her to be put in a hard financial situation. The second reasons, which Bryna Goodman believes to be most likely was that Xi's boss, whom she was having an affair with, asked her to be his concubine.

As Margery Wolf points out, “suicide was considered a proper response for women whose honour had been tampered with”. This also relates to virtue, chastity, or rumours about either. In this case, Xi who was an educated women working a job, felt her virtue had been infringed upon and insulted, and thus made a bold decision to make her case of insult known to the general public. The death of Xi was shocking as it showed a conflict between the modern and Confucian value systems. As noted by Barbara Molony, Xi embodied the typical New Women as she an "educated, unmarried woman and supporting herself with an independent career". Xi was viewed as a New Woman who through her job, was able to obtain economic independence but through her actions of suicide, demonstrated a very long tradition in Chinese history of female suicide for the sake of virtue.

Bibliography/References

Chien, Ying-Ying. “Revisioning ‘New Women’: Feminist Readings of Representative Modern Chinese Fiction.” Women’s Studies International Forum 17, no. 1 (1994): 33–45. 10.1016/0277-5395(94)90005-1.

Chin, Carol C. “Translating the New Woman: Chinese Feminists View the West, 1905-15.” Gender and History 18, no. 3 (2006): 490–518. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00453.x.

Feuerwerker, Yi-Tsi. "Women as Writers in the 1920's and 1930's." In Women in Chinese society, edited by Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, 143-168. California: Stanford University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-8047-0874-6. OCLC 1529107.

Hu, Ying. 2001. “Naming the First New Woman.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 3, no. 2 (2001): 196–231. doi:10.1163/156852601100402270

Hubbard, Joshua A. “Queering the New Woman: Ideals of Modern Femininity in The Ladies’ Journal, 1915-1931.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 16, no.2 (2014): 341–62. doi:10.1163/15685268-00162p05.

Molony, Barbara, Janet M. Theiss, and Hyaeweol Choi. "New Women in the Interwar Period." Gender In Modern East Asia: An Integrated History, 224-268. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8133-4875-9. OCLC 947808181.

Molony, Barbara, Janet M. Theiss, and Hyaeweol Choi. "Nationalism and Feminism in the Interwar Period." In Gender In Modern East Asia: An Integrated History, 179-223. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8133-4875-9. OCLC 947808181.

Wolf, Margery. "Women and Suicide in China." In Women in Chinese Society, edited by Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, 111-141. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-8047-0874-6. OCLC 1529107.

Yang, Shu. “I Am Nora, Hear Me Roar: The Rehabilitation of the Shrew in Modern Chinese Theater.” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 18, no. 2 (2016): 291–325. doi:10.1163/15685268-00182p04.