Is there a distinct women’s voice in the May Fourth genre of literature?

Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2013

 Fears of China ceasing to exist and becoming dismembered, at the same time analytical tools
for China’s plight made available by spreading popularity of Social Darwinism (p.279)
 Hebert Spencer’s adaption (‘survival of fittest’ also applied to social evolution), then Huxley
modified these, then Yan Fu translated Huxley in 1896 – gave it new nationalist emphasis
(p.279-280)
 SD led Chinese to ponder problems of race and racial strength, many Chinese combined new
Western theories with writings of 17th c anti-Manchu nationalists
 However, WWI showed that people weren’t civilised, pessimism (p.281)
 Mao Zedong: read Mill, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Spencer, Chinese political philosophers,
and Kant
 First approach was that the Chinese were weak physically, so had to build up physique –
trouble was that Chinese traditionally hated violent exertion (p.281-282)
 Mao combined thinking on need for collective struggle with reflections on women and their
rights that were advocated by Qichao, Qiu Jin, and others in late Qing = harness energy of
Chinese women to strengthen the state, “On the Suicide of Miss Zhao”
 For young men and women of Mao’s generation the problems were baffling, but had to
somehow come up with programme for solving difficulties if China wasn’t to succumb to
despair (p.283)
 Little interest in Marxism before 1917, but gradually Russian Revolution began to attract
more attention
 Li Dazhao, at vanguard of attempt to draw lessons from Russia for China’s society –
established semiformal study group as Marxist Research Society (p.284)
 Chen Duxiu ran a special issue of New Youth on Marxism, Li’s article was very influential
 Sympathy for Soviet Union when announced that new government was relinquishing tsarist
imperialist policies, Union appeared to be China’s truest friend
 Also had to reformulate basic Marxist premises to apply to China, e.g. idea that all of China
was the proletariat (p.285)
 Peking Uni youth travelling out to the countryside to transform the area, did this by early
1920 – saw devastating famine, learned about the desperation and poverty in their own
society in context of governmental corruption and incompetence, began to wonder about
alternatives open to them personally and the country (p.285-286)
 Peking students: established student union, this included women and gave formal support to
coeducation (first female students admitted to Peking uni in 1920) (p.287)
 Influence of the West: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House printed in 1918 issue of New Youth,
fundamental criticism of bourgeois hypocrisy and advocacy of women’s emancipation – Nora
became cultural and personal symbol to Chinese women (p.293)
Prasenjit Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of Middle-Class Women in
Modern China”, Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh),
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000

 Iconoclastic modernism of May Fourth wasn’t the only vision of modernity in Republican
China – should look at social history of these alternative views (p.342)
 Urban, middle-class social dorms in Republic dominated by models of modernity obscured
by narrative of radical emancipation (little place for tradition in ideal of emancipated
individual) – discussing the construction of women’s identities within middle-class milieu
 Reconceptualisation of morality and spirituality in this milieu had profound implications for
identities of women
 Another discussion of these redemptive societies, combining East with West – religious
universalism in which Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity all embodied
same universal spirituality, in their conception human society would evolve to moral
perfection through Eastern spirituality (p.343)
 Societies also premised upon the outer versus the inner – inner realm of selfhood focused
on producing self-cultivating subject, ranging from strict disciplinary regiment to cultivating
habit of close moral and spiritual introspection – in essay, centrally concerned with
production of interior space in which self is constituted in Louis Althusser’s terms (p.344)
 “All nations and societies that see themselves as subjects progressing or evolving through
linear time need to constitute an “unchanging core” in order to recognize themselves in
their ever-changing circumstances” – overlapping between Easternness, national or cultural
essence, and space of authenticity (p.345)
 Many redemptive modern societies emerged in last years of 1910s or early 1920s, and Sun
Yat-sen’s valorisation of Chinese traditional virtues within nationalist rhetoric took place at
around same time as May 4th: 2 different representations of women emerged in China
(p.346)
 1) May 4th representation of radically anti-Confucian, anti-familial nationalist woman
 2) More conservative constructions of woman as the representative of the soul of tradition
 After KMT/Communist split in 1927, thousands of ‘modern’ women killed for participating in
free love or having bobbed hair and unbound feet
 Image of modern Westernised woman associated with promiscuity and impurity, conveyed
through stories of Mao Dun and others (p.346-347)
 Lu Xun wrote bitter denunciations of modern Confucianists like Kang Youwei who made
traditional image of self-sacrificing woman more concrete, perpetuating their domination
over women – satirises middle-class Confucianists disturbed by modern Western influences
in “Soap” (1924)
 Conservative view of women wasn’t a throwback or resistance to modernity – rather, being
constructed was trope of woman embodying ‘tradition within modernity’
 Women to participate as modern citizens in public sphere, but also personify essence of
nation or civilisation
 Wangjingwei’s lecture in 1924, encourages women to build progressive nation whilst
preserving self-sacrifice – sees woman as locus of unchanging authenticity by redirecting
virtue of self-sacrifice to the nation
 Examining views of Morality Society about women and narratives of its women lecturers
during early 1930s in Manzhouguo (p.347-348)
 At time that Morality Society encountered Manzhouguo regime, was remarkable
convergence of ideological interests between it and certain currents in Japan – similar
‘redemptive’ societies in Japan had begun to grow in strength during the 1920s (p.349)
 Morality Society perhaps the most elite society in Manzhouguo, activities in schools and
their lectures – propounded strong idea of reaching out to all, rich and poor, men and
women (p.350)
 Emphasis upon virtuous girls’ schools developed with the spread of female education in
public institutions
 Lu Xun records and satirises anxiety among gentry men about coeducation in “Soap”
 Virtuous girls’ schools represented core institutional means to manage generalised anxiety
about loosening of morals and fundamental values, anxiety increasingly focused upon bodies
of females – one woman claimed only understood what it meant to read after being
transferred to a virtuous school
 20th c discourse on female virtue continuous with cult of chaste widows and virtuous wives
of late imperial times
 Model men and women who established virtuous schools inspired by chaste women’s
biographies and personal examples of chaste widows and virgins
 Shift in the meaning of female virtue: figure of woman became site for reconstructing
tradition
 Nationalists sought to preserve national essence in evolutionary process, Morality Society
sought to preserve East Asian essence while acknowledging necessity of material evolution
(p.351)
 Oral Records of Morality Seminars of Third Manzhouguo Morality Society, 1936: over 300
pages of personal narratives and testimonials of leaders and teachers, life stories of 25
women and 25 men – will try to construct image of how woman is constituted as a subject
 Gap between the constituted subject and the enunciating subject, who negotiates
interpellative gap even as she derives meaning, spiritual sustenance and identity from the
constituting ideology or pedagogy
 Goals of nation-state fulfilled only when family strong, husbands righteous and wives
obedient – ideal moral roles for men and women – men with self-restraint, not hitting their
wives, women with following the three obediences: should obey first father, then husband,
then son (p.352)
 In pedagogy of Society, pedagogy on part of women didn’t necessarily entail confinement to
household – ideal woman shaped by virtues of family and by reproduction of virtues in
righteous schools and Morality Society
 In representation of family and special role of women and repositories of essence of all that
was good in tradition, that new middle-class patriarchy made common cause with
Manzhouguo state – woman as upholder of ‘new family’, which was morally pure, selfless
and committed to moral regeneration of world through ‘kingly way’ – should be frugal
 Morality Society organised many family research groups in which role of model wives and
mothers investigated, was from these that righteous girls’ schools received knowledge to
improve women’s service to family and nation without having to leave the home
 Wasn’t just historical image of ideal Confucian woman, was representation of woman that
was neither abject nor liberated in way of the ‘Western woman’
 Women’s education necessary both from state’s perspective of improving family and home,
and Society’s perspective of having them understand morality
 Reconstructed tradition mobilised image of woman that redefined her in accordance with
modern discourse even while claiming pristine traditionalism and nation-building project
(p.353)
 Many of the women lecturers had much grief in their lives, many were devout Buddhists and
found Society to be compatible with their faith, Morality Society offered rationalisation or
justification of their fate and a means of coping with their difficult lives, and often spiritual
solace
 Were also various strategies by which women manoeuvred the goals of the society to secure
advantage for themselves and other women, was hardly easy because constituting activity
was form of objectification
 Counterrepresentations of Westernised, modern women readily available to these women,
Manz newspapers debated issue of women’s liberation and until 1941 carried positive
images of liberated, Western and Westernised women
 Often unacknowledged elements of discourse of liberated woman into their own that
enabled some of their manoeuvres, but also clear that accepted virtue of filiality and even
obedience to patriarchs
 Most of all, derived inspiration and strength from spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice
 We have to see how they could be true to subjectivity inscribed by Society while recovering
agency as enunciating subjects (p.354)
 Important difference between redemptive societies and historical discourse on women:
rhetoric of confining women to the home balanced by valorisation of public or social service,
women who participated in societies as members were involved in activities outside the
home
 View of society as positively evaluated sphere of human interaction represented departure
from earlier discourses containing women within domestic sphere
 Many men acknowledged importance of service to society but confining women was best
way for society to develop, so regulate girls’ behaviour through virtuous schools and control
women’s activities outside home through the Morality Society
 However, not everyone in Society accepted this pattern of containment, and girls and
women sometimes reacted against efforts at it
 Positive evaluation of realm of social or public in modern discourse, together with
ambivalence of leaders, created opportunities that these women seized and utilised to the
full – women can follow men and devote themselves to social good (p.355)
 Mrs Chen: lishen, the ability to establish oneself – in earlier periods referred to feminine
bodily comportment within domestic sphere, close connection between personhood and
bodily comportment didn’t disappear during Republic
 But not how Mrs Chen uses it – personhood for her depends on material independence, best
route to lishen is to set up livelihood of one’s own (p.356)
 First look at ease with which she transfers meaning of lishen in home to society, and
secondly note appropriation of rhetoric of Manz state – many women purposeful in use of
state rhetoric and seized any rhetorical openings to advance condition of women, finally
there is conflation of service in outside world and moral purification of this world
 Interweaving of these 3 elements (appropriation of rhetoric, the act of carving out a space,
role, and basis for independent social action; and the employment of this autonomy to
achieve the moral and religious goals of the Society) is recurring theme in women’s
narratives
 Idea of moral autonomy within lishen sometimes interpreted in such radical way that
subverts very basis of pedagogy, family values – also see a kind of feminist filiality
overcoming patriarchy (p.357)
 Mrs Chen’s narrative: has grasped importance of outside service and financial
independence, and perception of continued importance of filiality, but most struck by
thought that source of strength and resolve for her derives from ideology that constrains her
in so many other ways (p.358)
 Is by knowing her mind and cultivating her resolve that she establishes independence from
husband despite constraints
 Doctrine invoked most often as a constraint is that of the three obediences, Mrs Chen picks
her way around them but not true for many other women – Mrs Chen acknowledges
 importance of obediences but doesn’t dwell upon them – invokes expanded community of
moral service to elude constraints
 Goal of societies was to attain level of moral and spiritual commitment that would enable
individual to transcend walls of nationalist and ethnicity, Manz government constructed a
space for them
 Can’t deny reality of women’s subjugation within Morality Society, have cited constraints on
women but is impressed by extent to which enunciating woman able to carve out an
autonomy within modern patriarchy (p.359)
 Were divisions of opinion among men of Morality Society that gifted women could exploit
 Idea that discourses and representations that structure reality of the individual can’t prevent
other elements from other discourses into their language, in this case from the discourse of
the modern women and the ideal of universal public service and economic independence
 May 4th view of nation had little place for tropes of past, but there was discursive split in its
imagery of woman – in wartime writings and propaganda of many May 4 th activists, nation
depicted in historical figure of chaste woman raped by aggressor – invasion of both past and
contemporary, conservative representations of woman and nation into May 4 th’s vision of
modernity
 Women’s enunciation of rhetoric of Society shouldn’t be mistaken as purely instrumental
manipulation, were people who manoeuvred the language in the same moment they were
constituted by it
 Moral and spiritual goals enabled defiance of pedagogy even while limiting behaviour and
identities of these women (p.359-360)
 As spirituality and filiality reinforced in deeply personal ways, authentic space continued to
inspire and constrain subjects, its inviolability not challenged but its meaning was changed
Tse-tsung Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, Harvard
University Press, Massachusetts, 1960

 Students and new intellectual leaders promoted anti-Japanese campaign and vast
modernisation movement to build new China through intellectual and social reforms (p.1)
 Used primarily Western ideas of science and democracy, traditional Chinese culture and
institutions fiercely attacked
 Aims of May 4th protest won sympathy from new merchants, industrialists and urban
workers, Peking government forced to compromise in foreign and domestic policies
 Widespread effect of movement, new vernacular literature established and popular
education greatly facilitated (p.2)
 Movement accelerated decline of old family system and the rise of feminism
 Authority of Confucianism and traditional ethics suffered fundamental and devastating
stroke and new Western ideas exalted
 May Fourth Movement in many cases interchangeable with term May Fourth Incident
 Should term May 4th Movement embrace social and political activities of students and
intellectuals, and also the new literature and thought movements? Some people say these
are different, although culture movement somewhat facilitated May 4 th
 Disagrees, says this overlooks relation between students’ actions and the development of
their thought
 Adoption of vernacular in writings one of most prominent achievements of the movement,
but literary revolution only one aspect of great general advance in this period (p.3)
 May Fourth Movement has to many Chinese intellectuals a broader mean, often implies
both student and new culture movements – includes all aspects of period of intellectual
ferment before and after f (p.4)
 Wider use of the term justified, May Fourth demonstration was logical conclusion of new
thought movement which began two or three years earlier (p.4-5)
 M4M can be defined as complicated phenomenon including ‘new thought tide’, literary
revolution, student movement, merchants’ and workers’ strikes, boycott against Japan,
social and political activities of new intellectuals, all inspired by patriotic sentiments after
Twenty-One demands and Shantung resolution, and by spirit of Western learning and desire
to reevaluate tradition in light of science and democracy to build a new China
 Also the time span of the movement – in his study it is treated as variable and not fixed, but
most important events took place from beginning of 1917 to end of 1921 (p.6)
 This period divided into 2 phases by May 4th Incident: 1) some new intellectuals
concentrated on instilling their ideas in students and youth of China 2) all out attack on
tradition and conservatism launched mainly by students, movement carried beyond purely
intellectual circles
 Summary of major issues discussed in New Youth prior to May Fourth: opposed double
standard of chastity for men and women, favoured Western small family system, equality
and independence of women, freedom of choice in love and marriage (p.58)
 The Chinese woman’s achievement of a life of independent personality was initiated by New
Youth, and May Fourth provided the key to the achievement (p.257)
 Chinese women harshly treated in previous centuries, were a number of women poets and
painters in Chinese history but traditional view of Chinese ethics was that lack of learning
was a credit to women’s virtue
 Tao Meng-ho’s article on the position of women and Western views of the women’s
movement published in New Youth in 1918, in the same year Zhou Zouren published
translation of article by Yosano Akiko opposing one-sided chastity: constituted ideological
preparation for women’s emancipation (p.258)
 After May Fourth, girls started to join student movement and its social and political activities
 Coeducation established, before incident were very few girls’ schools of higher learning, in
1922 28 universities and colleges had girl students
 Women taught to be independent citizens instead of dependent beings in the family, after
the incident women were allowed to teach in boys’ schools, professional opportunities
increased, free marriage practiced more often, concept of birth control introduced
(Margaret Sanger)
 Chinese girl students developed great interest in political affairs in latter stages of May 4 th
Movement, women’s suffrage movement made great advances
 Literature was the major profession of traditional Chinese intellectuals, which is why literary
revolution played so significant a role in May Fourth – led by the intelligentsia (p.269)
 Only poetry and nonfictional prose considered serious literature, fiction and the drama
regarded with contempt (p.270)
 New literature movement started in 1916, new reformers claimed that literary Chinese a
dead language because no longer spoken by the people and the spoken living language was
the only fit medium (p.271)
 Revolutionised written communication, so literary revolution was crucial part of May 4 th
reforms and of great significance in changing Chinese way of thinking (p.272)
 Hu Shih’s article “Some Tentative Suggestions for the Reform of Chinese Literature”, written
in early 1917: regarded as first trumpet call of literary revolution (p.274-275)
 Attacked existing 3 literary schools, immediately attracted attention of other new intellectual
leaders (p.276)
 After 1917, revolution moved to ‘construction’ – reformers began to experiment with writing
in vernacular (p.277)
 After success of literary revolution through joint efforts in 1919 and 1920, new intellectual
leaders began to separate into natural groupings according to their special interests (p.283)
 Earliest liberal or independent view of the movement was that it was a “Chinese
Renaissance”, and then the idea of it being an emancipating movement (p.338)
 Movement created new literature chiefly in sense that vernacular thereafter recognised as a
major medium for all literature and as a national language, and the subject matter of
literature changed (p.340-341)
 Chen Duxiu at end of 1923: says that vernacular literature created and established in order
to meet needs of recent industrial development and population concentration of China,
would never have happened 3 decades ago (p.357)
 Hu Shih: rejected the attribution to economic “first causes”, in 1935 answered claim but
elaborating other causes such as historical, social, political and international factors
 Social transformations the movement brought: traditional family system declined, marriage
based on love more frequently demanded, social status of women began to rise,
coeducation established, women began to be emancipated from traditional ethical, social
and political shackles (p.364)
 Movement nurtured more active woman’s suffrage movement and brought women into
political and social activities
Rana Mitter, A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2004

 The rise of women workers, among professionals women lawyers and teachers emerged for
the first time – entry of women into the working sphere was a major social shift (p.72)
 Zhu Su’e: learned the word nüquan (women’s rights) from reading new magazines after May
Fourth Movement, left home to study so that nobody could control her (p.76)
 Rise of westernised ‘Romantic’ love and sense of being passionate and self-centred, created
in large part through western templates which were then adapted (p.78)
 Miss Sophie’s Diary: even the name is symbolic, is westernised and brings to mind Russian
anarchist revolutionary Sofia Perovskaya
 One of first pieces of modern fiction by a woman to achieve fame in China
 Story suggests that Sophie’s capriciousness is a product of difficulty of dealing with concept
of ‘love’ which faced all Chinese youth (urban and cosmopolitan) at that time
 Story deals with sexual longing in a way that hadn’t been publicly discussed before (p.79)
 Fantasies show the cosmopolitanism of the era, speaks of Ling Jishi combining European
knight with gentleness of the East
 Ding Ling joined Communists, in crackdowns on ‘bourgeois thought’ angry commissars
disapproved of what they saw as character’s individualism and self-obsession
 The character summed up many of the complications of an era where individual desires
came into conflict with still-evolving cultural framework
 Even school-level education was still a privilege, especially for women (p.80)
 ‘Readers’ Mailbox’ section of Life magazine, Zou Taofen was the advice columnist
 Women writing into the magazines with their issues, Zou’s answers generally liberal-minded
but tinged by realistic pessimism (p.82)
 Before advent of mass literacy and modern periodical publishing, something like ‘Readers’
Mailbox’ wouldn’t have been possible – park incident shows misunderstandings that new
culture brought in its wake, not sure about what form gender equality now took (p.85)
 Clear that pious declarations of ‘female liberation’ led to real difficulties in practice, e.g. Lu
Xun’s essay on A Doll’s House, asking what happens after Nora leaves home (p.87)
 Letters from correspondents are full of anxiety (p.88)
 There was a significant feminist movement in the era, were in a new world where Confucian
norms could no longer operate (p.146)
 Majority of the writing on the ‘woman question’ in journals such as New Youth was by men,
and there were real difficulties in women gaining or wishing to gain “independent
personhood” in the context of May Fourth humanist liberalism which didn’t necessarily
choose to emphasise differences as opposed to similarities in liberation of the sexes (p.147)
 There was a powerful autonomous feminist voice during this period
 Nationalist government regarded feminist movement as part of wider social turmoil that
would lead to anarchy
 Clear that feminism in China has repeatedly been sacrificed for other goals – even during
Mary Fourth era, feminism didn’t become a necessary dominant theme (p.148)
 Writers as different in tone and purpose as Lu Xun, Zou Taofen, and Ding Ling all came to
grips both with gender relations and with what was then known as the ‘woman question’,
but for all of them the goal of gender equality seemed to slip away
 Lu Xun: wider lack of confidence he felt for Chinese society as a whole
 Zou: over-willingness to assume that patriarchy couldn’t be tackled too quickly and later turn
to Marxism
 Ding Ling: stuck to feminist cause even after joining CCP, but received public criticism from
Maoist party in 1940s for concerning herself with such bourgeois, urban matters
 Zou and Du Zhongyuan were commercial publishers and writers as well as activists, perhaps
during downturn of 1930s felt that stress on feminist issues would alienate core readership
of men
 Female characters in their journals from the mid-1930s are shriller and more one-
dimensional than complex voices that appeared in ‘Readers’ Mailbox’ of 1920s
Ding Ling, Miss Sophie’s Diary (trans. W.J.F. Jenner), Panda Books, Beijing, 1985

 “I can say that if I had not been influenced by Western literature I would probably not have
been able to write fiction, or at any rate not the kind of fiction included in this collection.”
(p.7)

Straw Sandals (ed. Harold R. Isaacs), The MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1974

 Ding Ling’s “One Certain Night” reads like a crude and not very skilful attempt by a fledgling
writer, but the story is true – five writers and 19 others were executed and one of them was
her husband (p.xxxvii)
 “Diary of Miss Sophia”: her heroine scorns the shy timidity of the conventional Chinese girl,
looking for a more satisfying role that she cannot find for herself (p.lviii)