The Mother Image In "the Sixty Kinds Of Opera"

As for character research of "The Sixty Kinds of Opera", images of young scholar, miss, maid have already been studied, but few people pay attention to mother image. I study it from the views of history, sociology and femaleology, and analyse it by the methods of graph and classification, and discover a new horizon for research. Using dialectical method of Marxism we can get that the image of the mother is not static, changeless, it changes with the evolution of society, the idea and character of mother reform with changing age and environment. So it is needed to use a three-dimensional view to study mother image. In fact, mother image is the carrier of society, culture and national psychology. Therefor we should with the tentacles explore deeply into the depths of the social and cultural structures if we begin to study it.From Yuan Dynasty to Qing Dynasty, ethical operas declined gradually while love dramas were rising. Confucianism was dominant from Yuan Dynasty to Jiaqing, and the mother image was always a good wife and loving mother. From Jia to Wanli, commercial economy impacted on the feudal moral, that turned a biological mother into a bawd, made treasure the most important thing invisibly in the people’s mind, desalinated ethics.In Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, mother, in essence, was of no significance, who was only a symbol affiliated to the father to perform her social responsibility and historic mission. They can be divided into biological mother and adopted mother according to the kinship. Most mother beared responsibility of helping the husband and teaching the children on the basis of Confucianism and Taoism culture, demanded themselves strict behavior for chastity, worked in the interests of the prosperity of her country, longing for her son to pass the imperial examinations, selecting her child’s mate based on social status. Part of the biological mothers dehumanized and degenerated into bawd who compelled their daughters to prostitute, while she fell into the habit of laziness living on her daughter’s work. The surge of this kind of mother image was concerned with social ideology and trend:confucianism, which advocates self-sacrificing spirit, requires women’s social and moral responsibility, and gives the respect to the mother in their family. The mother was inferior to men, but also honored by their children, they even had the right to destroy the life of her children. With the development of society, the great mother depraved into a biological person, even became a bawd. Then money overwhelmed the ethics, and pearl and agate defeated chaste arch. The mother image changed from an understanding wife and loving mother to a bawd, which was inseparable with the development of social economy and culture. Of course, not all of the adopted mother were vicious and mercenary, there were also great mothers who were better than biological mothers, who cared for their children with great maternal love, who could give her life for justice, who were shining brilliantly with a touching image.The mother image played a variety of roles:young and old female characters, female supporting characters, clown,"painted face" characters. The roles matted up the plot, caused shift and resistance in the play. The function of the mother image was to produce conflicts and contradictions and intensified them, so as to achieve the goal of creating typical characters in the typical environment. The clown and "painted face" characters performed amusingly and humorously, contrasting ugliness with beauty, it made the effect more visible, enhanced the look of the drama, deepened the story, explored the plot, and enriched the connotation of the character.Drama can teach through lively activities. Understanding wife and loving mother as a positive image could be accepted willingly by the audiences, although their position in the family and society were very low. they cared about the rise and fall of the country, worried about the future of their children, raised a number of heroes, and carried forward the national prestige. So they were looked up to by us. But afterwards, they fell to be bawd to deceive whoremasters’money. They pursued nothing but benetit by selling their daughters’body, that had a educative effect to admonish the world, and had a great influence on the society in Ming dynasty.From the macroscopic perspective, the entire history of mankind was a history of male and female, Yin and Yang, and mother was the framer of human history, shouldering the responsibility of producing material goods and reproducing human. From the microscopic view, mother teached by personal example and verbal instruction and brought up many filial and loyal sons. From ancient times to the present, mother has been playing an irreplaceable role in the development of material and spiritual civilization; and in building a harmonious society mother is a coordinator.