Spiritual Subject's Mangling And Conformity

Zhang-Ailing is a dissenter in New Literature. Though having suffered from being ignored, she received just evaluation in the end with her unique, diversified and tensile literary individuality. Taking cultural conflicts as the starting point, this thesis deals with her literary individuality from three levels. Firstly, it is a speech of modernality and its deconstructure. Putting morality aside, Zhang-Ailing, pitilessly describing the young and old characters with the stodgy habits and attitudes of the old society in Shanghai and Hongkong from the modern angles of desire, sex and subconsciousness, got to the innermost of man' s heart and pried into the shadow deep in human nature, which resulted in penetrating and omnipresent loneliness deriving from the pessimism and despair of human nature. On the other hand, having the oriental spirit of emphasizing realistic life in the depth of her heart, Zhang-Ailing attempted to soften the pessimism and despair from the speech of modernality by obtaining temporary enjoyment and pursuing the subphysical true feelings of existence in the passionate embracement of minor matters of life and in the extreme enthralIment of sensory world. The two go hand in hand and interweave with each other to such degree that it gets to a perfect state. Secondly, it is a blend of noble and plain temperament. Being a descendent of one of the chief officials of the late Qing Dynasty and having been influenced by the culture of feudal aristcrats, Zhang-Ailing was possessed not only with delicate tastes of appreciation but also with a distance of appreciation towards life of the common people by nature. However, the materialism and utilitarianism in the modern western civilization make her agree on the commonpeople' s enterprise in life at the same time. The two blend with each other; the noble temperament enjoys the substantial worldly colour of the plain temperament while the plain temperament enjoys a tint of poetry instead of a complete vulgarity with the noble temperament. Finally, it is a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic narration, Bringing Chinese tradtional romance and worldly fictions together in terms of form and spirit, Zhang-Ailing narrated the common and wordly life, namely, extrinsic narration; meanwhile, in bringing into the writings her own experience of the civilization of modern society or even the whole human beings, a deep narration was formed, namely, intrinsic narration. The two interact with each other like an elegant pas de deux: the extrinsic narration restraints the intrinsic in some way, but on the other hand, it gets further development from the intrinsic. In conclusion, her diversified literary individuality derives from its hidden cultural conflicts. It is a way of existence for the spiritual subject in the field of literature.