The Female Image And Gender Ideal In The Novel Of The Modern Female Journals (1904-1917)

In1903, Ma Junwu introduced feminism into China. This concept is highlyconsistent with the national social reality at that time. Later on, the found of women’snewspaper became the important garden of women’s liberation. According toincomplete statistics, there were about50kinds of women’s periodicals published from1898to1917. Beside Women’s Newspaper, there are also many other influential workssuch as Women’s World, Chinese Women’s Newspaper, The New World of ChineseWomen, Eclectic Magazine, Women’s Magazine. Although the number of theseperiodicals is not so much, they played important roles in many aspects such aswomen’s liberation, equality between men and women, establishment of women’sschool, women’s participation in social activities. On the study of the modern journal,academia paid more attention on the aspect of politics, history, news media andbiographies. However, the novel part in these journals received little attention.Therefore, taking more than150novels from11kinds of modern women’s journal from1904to1917as the research samples, this study analyzed the different appearance offemale image around the Revolution in literature creation and then it revealed the wakeof female’s consciousness full of modern connotations in the late Qing Dynasty.This study consists of three parts. It discusses the image of female hero, the femalein family novel and the initial awakening of feminist consciousness respectively. Fromthis, it can be seen that the involvement of gender issue into the Chinese political lifeand its radiation in various fields is the product of Chinese modernization. Although thecreation of the heroine image in the early20thcentury possessed more traditionalsociety’s spiritual essence, through the way of revenging, the author constructed theideal of the female changing their fate and performing the male’s duties in order toestablish their new status in family and society. This factor has certain significance. QinJin is a famous representative of the heroine image who assumed the important task ofthe nation and completely changed the identity of women who depended on men previously. The novel creation of modern female journal reflected this phenomenonfrom the aspects of politics, society, history, ethics and culture. At the same time, theyrevealed the trace of the gradually awakening of female self-consciousness through thecreation of various female images which had distinct modern flavor and meaning of thetimes...