Study On Xiao Hong And Zhang Ailing's Novels

In the literature history of the 20th century, Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing were unique. In that particular period of time, when most writers were writing the theme about history and war, Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing stuck to their own writing styles. Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing focused on the writing of female's tragic fate. They wrote about women's common life to present their miserable living conditions. Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing also concentrated on the writing of humanity. Their works are full of concerns about human nature. Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing wrote the same theme, and they had many similarities in their works, but they also had quite a few differences. Using methods of comparative literature, this paper analyses the similarities and differences of Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing's writing themes—female and humanity. This paper consists of three chapters:Chapter One: About the leading themes in literature at that period of time, and Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing's writing angles.Chapter Two: Comparison of Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing's theme of female. Discuss the history, society and personal backgrounds in forming of their female consciousness in their novels. Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing thought that females' tragic fate was due to both the Chinese traditional cultures and women themselves. Xiao Hong focused on the poor labor women, writing about their animal-like living conditions and unconsciousness of life, whereas Zhang Ailing wrote about the women who lived in middle—class families in big cities like Shanghai and Hongkong. Xiao Hong mainly wrote about women's body experiences and their miserable living conditions, while Zhang Ailing wrote more about women's contravention, inhibition and self conflict in mentality. They thought women suffered from traditional male cultures, but meanwhile women transferred this suffering to other women. In Xiao Hong's works, she described a group of such kind of women, they murdered other women unconsciously. In Zhang Ailing's works, she mostly wrote about individual women who persecuted other women. Xiao Hong's writing attitude to women was sad and pitiful, but Zhang Ailing's was sad and aggravated.Chapter Three: Comparison of Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing's theme of humanity. Xiao Hong and Zhang Ailing both wrote about common real life, they concerned more about human being, which was rare at that time. In their works, there were no true loves in marriage; their notion about marriage was against the traditional culture. Xiao Hong criticized the phenomena that ignored humanity and human's dignity. Zhang Ailing showed us a group of aristocrats' life and their evil nature: selfishness, pretence, worshiping to money and irresistible force of desires.