On The Transformation Of The Rural Image Of Women In The New Century Novel

The ever-changing Chinese rural society and peasants have proven to be new literary resources for contemporary Chinese writers in the context of globalization and modernization. There're plentiful literary constructions which are about the industrialization and commercialization drive in rural China and about a kind of value crisis which is caused exactly by the process of modernity-seeking. Within these literary texts, the depiction of the experiences of Chinese rural women serves as significant clues and perspectives for us to explore this very cultural and spiritual shock in the transitional period since 1980s. In Chinese rural society which has been commercializing, the rural women are more vulnerable and inferior both materially and spiritually compared with their urban counterparts. Their frustrations and tragedies in this transitional period are both vivid manifestations and profound effects of the social transformation. This article, which has two main parts, is a review of the images of Chinese rural women in Chinese local-color fictions created in the new century (2000-2006). In the first part, I would like to explore the cultural crisis which led to the quest for reconstruction of value systems by examining the characterization of fate and lives of rural women by Chinese intellectuals. Chinese rural women themselves are the object I will examine in the second part. I will probe into the development of their growing personality as well as their consciousness of both gender and sex. I'll explore how rural women can round into authentic modern women by overcoming both inner and outer obstacles and how the construction of feminist discourse challenged the andocentric and distorted views of women.