Women's Subjectivity in Love/Marriage--A Study of Huang Juan's 1960s Fiction

Autor: Hsiang-Chun Liu, 劉香君
Rok vydání: 2011
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 100
Huang Juan devoted herself to writing when Taiwan confronted social transformation from an agricultural to industrial society in the 1960s. The changes in social patterns affected people''s lifestyles and concepts. Huang Juan started her writing at the age of 28, the age that love and marriage concerned her. She drew her attention to women’s love marriages in many of her stories. She particularly dwelt on the psychological transition of those who confronted difficult problems in love and marriage. Her stories revealed the awakening of women’s self consciousness. There is certainly a close correlation among literature, life and society. Focusing on the theme of love and marriage, my thesis discusses Huang Juan’s writing of women’s subjectivity which underwent transformation in accordance with social changes in the 1960s. This thesis explores several themes: the effects of patriarchal culture, the changes of economic and education conditions in the 1960s, traditional marriage, women’s sexual desire, and women’s psychological struggle for love marriages. This paper takes the approach of cultural and gender criticism to explore women’s situations and the awakening of the female subjectivity in the process of dealing with their love and marriage. Huang Juan’s short stories such as “Dumb Marriage,” “Lost Shadow,” “A Wife,” and the novel, “Girls in Aisha Gang,” exposed various difficulties that women encountered in the 1960s, e.g. arranged marriages, blind dates, and marriage for love. Through the discussion of Huang Juan’s writing, this paper probes into the author’s styles of writing love marriage, the influence of traditional marriage on both men and women, and various manners of how women assert their self consciousness, socially and psychologically. This study not only gives us insights into women’s psychological change and self awareness when they were allowed to receive education and access job market, but also lets us understand the influence of social transformation on gender relationships in the 1960s.
Databáze: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations