Sakura Novel Research

Mrs. Chen Ying published five collections of short stories, most of which primarily focus on the subject matter of women’s marriage and love, while a few of which occasionally involve themes of revolutions and social reforms. As a significant aspect of social life, marriage does reflect the great changes taken place in social life and human relationship, as well as the profound shift in the domain of social and cultural psychology. However, after the May Fourth Movement, Mrs. Chen moved her perspective to themes of revolutions and social reforms, such a turning of writing concerning showing the process in which a new generation of women began to pursue achievements of personal values.By re-reading several pieces of Mrs. Chen’s novels, already published or just scattered in newspapers, which have been ignored until now, this essay attempts to locate her within the historical framework of literature, to associate with the background of literary and society in the early thirties of the last century, and to start from the standpoint of a feminist’, in order to systematically sort out and analyze Mrs. Chen’s novels. Referring to analyzing, this article mainly includes interpretation and argumentation about Mrs. Chen’s individual experiences, the major characters from her novels, writing concerns turning from marriage to revolutionary affairs, and the feminist’ narrative style and perspective, which exploratively reveals the distinctiveness of this literary woman in the end of1920s from her creative thinking to effective writing strategy.