A Gendered Revolutionary Narrative

In the revolutionary literature of 1920s and 1930s, a large number of masculinized female images which were unusually eye-catching have formed a distinctive female image group. This thesis, through the analysis of the revolutionary literature, further studies the masculinized female images of the revolutionary literature in both diachronic and synchronic manner. The first chapter, places the masculinized female images in the diachronic context, and compared the similarities and differences between the modern women in the revolutionary era and women in the May Fourth Period, thus analyzes the distinct character and performance features of the masculinized female image group.In the second chapter, the causes of women's masculinization of the revolutionary literature are explored. First, with the consideration of the women of the new generation seeking their own liberation, the intrinsic motivation is discussed as why women writers chose masculinized strategic narratives for their gender remodeling module. Secondly, by exerting the masculinized women phenomenon in the particular historic era, this chapter analyzes the restriction of Revolutionary Discourse to gender remodeling through such external angles as social, class, and revolution and so on.The third chapter focuses on the gender liberation paradox concerning the masculinization of female images in the revolutionary literature. On the one hand, through the masculinization, revolutionary women gained unprecedented liberation, and thus became the subject of the revolution the same as men did. On the other hand, due to the particularity of women themselves, new gender-blindness was formed as women considered men as a standard to reinventing women themselves. Some women writers who continued the Leftist Literary Spirit, such as Ding Ling, had some introspection for the above mentioned gender blindness in Early Yan'an period, but the introspection was to very limited scope.The last part studies the phenomenon of women's masculinization in the revolutionary literature from the perspective of the whole modern history of women's liberation, thence to analyze the dependent nature of women's liberation upon the nation and the country, and thus the formation of the revolutionize narrative pattern of women's liberation.