The Depiction Of And Her Look Towards Man Of Zhang Ailing's Novel

In perspective of Zhang Ailing's novels, she depicted a huge number of handicapped, vulnerable and ugly men, some physically-disabled, some mentally-challenged. Scatted in most of Zhang's works, their life attitude and disgusting habits of these irresponsible men, under Zhang's emphasis, has exposed the nonsense and erosion of the traditional fatherhood society. In Zhang's novel, the men's world is a collapsed ruin, full of isolated humanity. Starting this essay by the analysis of the man, the author has discovered Zhang's untraditional look towards the man. Then deeper analysis of the reason for such look is elaborated by the author, who ends this essay by pointing out the realistic significance of Zhang in contemporary literature.The first part is the depiction of men in Zhang's novels. The main depiction methods used by Zhang is to castrate men's body and authority both physically and mentally, which is also the basic idea of Zhang's untraditional and radical attitude towards men's power.1. The physiological depiction of man. Zhang's writing strategy has reflected her gender stand of weakening and subverting masculine by castrating the man physiologically. In achieving this, Zhang used as much as vivid depiction of the disabled and ugly men. Here, disabled men are referred to those who are immature, short, handicapped, sick men with no healthy and typical body in the religious society. Zhang has chosen the most direct and acrid way for her depiction of subverting masculine by analyzing the traditional requirement of man in the religious society. Meanwhile, Zhang also used much depiction of the ugly image of man to subvert masculine. Zhang's arid and ironic depiction of men's appearances demonstrated her general attitude and emotion of the man's world, which is also another depiction strategy of subverting men's supremacy, denying men's self-egoism and promoting feminism.2. The mental depiction of man. Zhang's writing strategy has reflected her writing stand of weakening and subverting masculine by castrating the man mentally. Men's authority is mentally castrated by Zhang through her vivid depiction of different kinds of mentally-challenged men and their words and deeds. These mentally-challenged men are referred to the moral-decayed, dejected, incapable men who are in counter of the traditional and positive image of man. Besides, Zhang also used a lot of depiction of trivial movement and simple words, and catch the exact mental status of character's thoughts, thus exposing it to readers. Through the depiction of words and deeds of the disabled men, Zhang has deeply explained the dejected and obscene mind of the men characters, and denied the right image of man in the religious society, thus exposing men's weakness and evil of humanity, which is self-centered, foppish, despicable and cheeky.The second part is Zhang's look towards men. Zhang boldly challenged the traditional outlook of man, exposed men's disgrace, selfishness, incapability, lack of love, irresponsibility, and cynical nature, thus reflects her unique look towards men.1. Severe lack of masculine elements. Men's physical characteristic featured by Masculine is exhausted. In Zhang's novels, different men, from the lazy city dweller to dissolute and wealthy youngster, as well as the old and young of the declined families, are decrepit and muddle-headed, incapable and unambitious. With their lives fully corrupted, they are just like the walking corpse with no spirit remained. All day, they just fool around, addicted in cigarettes, prostitution, and theatres, wasting their lives drinking, wandering and whoring. Physically healthy as they are, they can do nothing to resist rickets as it has prevailed in every corner of their blood and soul, affecting them generation by generation.2. Severe lack of emotion and love of man. Zhang exposed the extermination of men's affection by defaming the traditional image of father, traditional protocols of father and son, and traditional brotherhood. And through the depiction of love and sex of modern society, Zhang has also disclosed that only sex but love exists as the result of the selfish and degenerated man.The third part is the reason for Zhang's unconventional look towards men. As literature work comes from daily life, Zhang's such look has the inside and outside reasons. The formation of Zhang's look towards men is a result of her experience and feelings about man's world. The men that Zhang get along with are mainly her father, brother and lover. In fact, it is these three men that had ruined Zhang's desire of men. And this is the inside reason. But Zhang's look towards men is also attributed to the social, historical and cultural aspects as most of the men in Zhang's works lived in Shanghai during the 1930-40's when the whole society was in a transitional period with the invasion of foreign economies and collapse of the feudal system. In this process, the steady and peaceful feudal society was corrupted by the economic invasion of capitalism, with the collapse of the old father-son and emperor-general protocols, thus accelerating the variation of feudal and religious system featured by consanguinity and localization. Such distorting men in Zhang's novels are the product of foreign colonialism and feudal vestige, which is the inevitable result of social and cultural development.The value of Zhang's depiction of man and look towards man is that by her unique way of writing and outstanding talent, she has portrayed the dejected and confused image of man in old Shanghai where urbanization was in progress, thus setting up a historical latitude of probing the existence of man's world. We can say that Zhang's depiction of man and her look towards man is of great value for us to deeply understand her novel as well as the old society in Shanghai during the 1930-40's.