Traumatic Memory,Tribulation Consciousness,Gender Experience Edge Mentality

As an important Chinese Literature writer,Hong Ying’s novel writing and inspirations used to come from her memory,personal experience and imagination of China,but her creative writing is highly supported and inspired by the worldwide concept after her immigration into Britain in 1990s.the two above factors become the basic inner drivers and inexhaustible inner resources to support her literature writing,which forms four subjective mental dimensions:traumatic memory,tribulation consciousness,gender experience,and edge mentality.These four dimensions not only fundamentally determine her writing theme,spiritual content,and artistic personality,but also are regarded as the criterion for measuring her writing achievements.All of Hong Ying’s works so far can be analyzed,interpreted and valued within these four dimensions.Within the above-mentioned four dimensions,based on the fully study of Hong Ying’s life and her creation road,the thesis uses textual analysis as the fundamental methods,and uses theories of classical Bildungsroman,biography criticism,Feminist Criticism,and etc.to make a deep,systematic and comprehensive study of Hong Ying’novels,in order to reveal the genesis and themes of her novels,and make a comprehensive evaluation of her works’ ideological value,art feature and creation achievement.The thesis is composed of introduction,the main part(five chapters)and conclusions.The introduction part summarizes the research status,main achievements and inadequate research of Hong Ying’s novel writing both at home and abroad.Chapter one studies Hong Ying’s life and her creation road.On the one hand,the paper focuses on her secret of birth,grow path and emotional experience;on the other hand,it studies her literature development systematically:from the early exploration to the mature and well-known stage.Meanwhile,the paper tries to make a phenomenal observation on the public issues and disputes caused by this famous "topic writer" in the literary world both at home and abroad in order to present and evaluate her personal life and varies sides of her temperament.Chapter two starts with the dimension of traumatic memory,exploring the theme of growth in her novels and studying her objective observation of kinsfolk ethics in her relevant works.Daughter of the River is Hong Ying’s first well-known piece and wins her a great fame in the literary world both at home and abroad;the following Good Children of the Flowers together with the other short stories are all written on Hong Ying,s personal growing experience and her real family background.Thus,her novels are self-exposure novels with a distinctive autobiography sense which is most important and valuable part in her writing.First,these works reappear the heroes’ growing experiences like traumatic childhood memory,the hunger followed them physically and physiologically,the rebellious first love,the confusing of birth,the searching for "father",fleeing from"home" and etc.,which fill with the unforgettable pain of a young girl and convey the writer’s profound understanding of life.Second,Hong Ying’s works reveal the darkness and the humiliating memories which are traditionally regarded as "domestic scandal" in a daring and shocking way.She talks about the parent-child relationship,kinsfolk ethics of her bottom grassroot family in an extremely harsh and crude living reality;she uses a lot of vivid details in daily life to give a realistic view and exposes the stained and complicated reality.Third,Hong Ying regards some of her works as "absolute autobiography" directly like Daughter of the River and some as autobiographical fiction indirectly like Good Children of the Flowers.In neither case,Hong Ying shows a huge courage like "White knife go in,red knife come out" in her novels.Her daring uncovering skeletons both challenges traditional ethical taboo and breaks through the traditional boundary of literature;she pushes the writing tradition of "self-exposure" in centennial Chinese Literature to a new level and represents the breakthrough of autobiographical fiction in Chinese Literature.the unique value of this autographical writing cannot be overlooked in Contemporary Chinese Literature according to its depth of realism,the depth of human nature,the intensity of torture along with the shocking artistic appeal.Starting with the dimension of tribulation consciousness,chapter three mainly discusses how does Hong Ying narrate tribulation from historical reflections and realistic consciousness and reaction according to her own suffering life experience.In this regard,Hong Ying depicts human misery caused by poverty,hunger,wars,political unrest and social unrest in deep sense of performance in novels like Daughter of the River,The Peacock Cries,"Shanghai Trilogy"series,Good Children of the Flowers and stories like The Green Sleeves,The Crane Halts,The Field of The Year.First,Hong Ying restores the pain of poverty and hunger in 1950s to 1970s in a slum area in Chinese city from her upbringingShe starts from her memories of scenes of daily life like street,hall,attic,public toilets to present the true picture of poverty in order to preserve the unique space portrayal in that abject poverty age.Moreover,she leaves a clear time clue for the memory of hunger by depicting history of suffering of individuals,families and cities.She ruminates poverty and hunger from her personal small narrative position and the delicate feeling of the woman’s physical experience in order to "resume the forced lost memories".Next,Hong Ying depicts the pain of the unrest and violence according to her personal upbringing and historical experience in order to show her historical reflections to realistic crisis.In her works,it is easy to find issues like the campaign of "anti-revolutionaries","great leap forward" and "Cultural Revolution",which depict the disastrous damage to the individual and the pluralistic forms of human sufferings under the choice of historical utilitarianism in that absurd struggle logic and irrational violence in political turmoil era and drive the historical reflections to the troublesome reality.Finally,Hong Ying tries to present the pain of War and chaos in her legendary historical imagination narration based on the tragic men and women’s meet and forced wandering,unstable destiny.Brothels,hotel ballroom,underworld,intelligence front and secret agents along with cities and wilderness under the shadow of war are the best stages for Hong Ying to interpret the fate of the characters and create legends of chaos.With her deep insight,Hong Ying gives us a vivid picture with rich historical sense and vivid imagination of the existent suffering of a humble individual in that turbulence background.Chapter four discusses Hong Ying’s rebellious writing of women’s consciousness and desires based on the dimension of gender experience;novels like Daughter of the River,Good Children of the Flowers,"Future Fiction" trilogy,K,Lord of Shanghai and stories like The Green Sleeves,Research on Yu Hong in recent years are important books involved in this chapter.First,Hong Ying’s feminine consciousness is deeply influenced by Beauvoir who regards herself as a feminist with a presupposition of fate and a feminist in action.In her works,females usually have a deep sorrow in the male dominated society because of the dilemma of "the other" and their subsidiary fates.Through frightened plots like Electra complex,examining father,patricide-killing husband,and castration of men,she conveys her extreme rebellious and fierce resistance to the tradition of phall centrism.Moreover,with the daring concept of "writing beyond Gender",she tries to constructing the main position of women in the Legendary writing.Second,desire narration is an important content in Hong Ying’s novel.The word"Rainbow" has a special meaning in her works:it is both a metaphor of Hong Ying herself(the pronunciation of rainbow in Chinese is Hong Ying’s family name)and a symbol of female desire:like rainbow,it is a beautiful temptation,a fatal danger,and a rebellious vitality publicity.She casts the metaphor of self and the symbol of desire over her beloved heroines to unfold her specific desire writing and love narrative:against the tradition of phallus centralism from a feminist standpoint,using the female body experience and the deviant "body writing" to present the female beauty fearlessly,and regarding the perfect sex as the high spirit of the soul and the extremes of life.In this way,Hong Ying finally forms her own writing style of love narrative which is enthusiastic,magnanimous and smooth.Third,K,Hong Ying’s most controversial book,is mainly talked in this part.The thesis tries to analyze and review her female consciousness and desire narrative in depth.Some popular viewpoints regard K as a sample writing of Orientalism from the perspective of post-colonial criticism,which is questioned and analyzed in this part.It restores to the field of gender conflict,and regard K as a typical narrative sample representing her female consciousness and desire—a female "daydream":In K,she depicts a rare Chinese female who dares to against some desire repression and moral taboos,dares to practice,dominate and enjoy perfect sex,which present Hong Ying’s bold rebellion and subversion to the tradition of phall centrism.However,it is obviously a big defeat for her to rest the female’s desire call on the absurd and fabricated Taoists sexual practicesStarting from the dimension of edge Mentality,chapter five discusses the image of marginal men in Hong Ying,s works.The so called "marginal men" refers to people alienating from the mainstream of the society because of a variety of subjective or objective reasons or having to stay out of the daily life order because of the interpretation of the dialogue between others and society.It is Hong Ying’s own multiple marginal situation that determines the image of marginal men an important character in her novels creation.In specific,this chapter mainly discusses four typical images of marginal men in her works like Daughter of the River,Shanghai Trilogy"series,The Green Sleeves,The Crane Halts,Trafalgar Square,You Have Been a Gentle Compromise,etc.The First is about the marginal men of "home",in which mainly discusses the pain of homeless people and their desire of home,the impulsion of searching for father and the redemption of "Love" and misery fate.The second stanza is about the marginal men of "nation",in which mainly talks about the dilemma of identity and emotional choice in the national politics context,and the conflicts,dialogues and mingling they faced in cross-cultural communication.The third is about the marginal men of "society",mainly including the urban poor and wandering performers.The last one is the marginal men of "gender",mainly including figures of lesbian and Gay.In the conclusion part,the thesis mainly studies how does Hong Ying gain both greater freedom to deal with "Chinese experience" as a "Diaspora" writer,and "World Vision" to enhance the value and significance of her creation.The unique and global significance of the novel has also been highlighted.Meanwhile,an objective review and reflection about her "Chinese Experience" and "World Vision" were carried out in the end of the thesis.