User:Joyce Siwa00/New Women
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[edit]The Portrayal of New Women
[edit]Movie Summary
[edit]In the movie, women are seen to be making strides toward being independent. Women take the public transit on their own and have hardworking jobs. The main character, Wei Ming, works as a music teacher at a girl's high school and is an aspiring writer. However, it is still a man's world as Wei Ming's work is only accepted after it is revealed that she is a beautiful woman.
Wei Ming's life has been hindered by men in more than one way. Misfortune finds her as she is left to the whims of the rich principal of her school. He vies for her but she rejects his advances, fearing the slavery of marriage. It is then revealed that she has been in a previous marriage and was left penniless and with child. Wei Ming, unable to care for her daughter, sends her to stay with her aunt. The child and the aunt come to find Wei Ming but the daughter is struck with pneumonia. Wei Ming, being fired from the school under influence of the principal, is left with no choice but to sell herself for one night. An act she finds degrading and what she has tried to avoid. Even toward the end of her life, men were stull trying to profit off of her. From unfair royalties to a fake memorial service, her life is a tragedy but a comedy in men's eyes. The last words of the movie shine true: "The New woman is born through hardships, The new woman is born through awakening"
Historical Background
[edit]In New Women, we are able to see the life of a new woman, one of the new tropes of women that arose in the early 1900s. The other trope of women that came around at the time was the Modern Girl. Where the New Woman was empowering for women; having jobs, being independent, and striving for their own happiness, the Modern woman was a sensual woman made for men. New women were about equality and finding independence from men while the Modern women were sexual beings that relied on the money and leering of men, a delusion and a hint of modernity. Both tropes of women were found largely in literature and both opposed the conservative Chinese culture at the time.
Connection to Other Feminist Media
[edit]References
[edit]Sarah E. Stevens. “Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the Modern Girl in Republican China.” NWSA Journal 15, no. 3 (2003): 82–103 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4317011.
Edwards, Louise. “Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China.” Modern China 26, no. 2 (2000): 115–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/189430.
dong, madeleine. “Who Is Afraid of the Chinese Modern Girl?” In The Modern Girl Around the World, 194–219. New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822389194-010.
Freedman, Estelle B. “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s.” The Journal of American History 61, no. 2 (1974): 372–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/1903954.
Feng, Jin. "The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 6.4 (2004): https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1251.
HERSHATTER, GAIL. Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnb9j.
Ho, Felicia (2002). Review of "Review of Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1899-1918," Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature: Vol. 3 : No. 2 Available at: https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/vol3/iss2/8