The Study On Females In ’xingshiyan’and Comparison With ’San Yan’and’Er Pai

In Chinese feudal society, perfect characters of women can be divided into three types, chastity, filiality and virtuousness, which are used by the author of Xing Shi Yan to set examples. This thesis is going to analyze female’ s role definition in various relative networks by analyzing the female characters in Xing Shi Yan, and find out why these typical female characters came into being and their influence. It is true that the female characters in Xing Shi Yan contribute to the social consciousness, but it suppresses the independence and free mind of women. This problem will be more obvious after Xing Shi Yan is compared with Sanyan and Erpai. And it reveals that the author is catering to the needs of the ruling class at that time and advocating the Neo-Confucianism to set models of the women’s virtues.This paper consists six parts. The first part is an introduction of the importance of this thesis. The second part is a briefly introduces of the creating background of the Xing Shi Yan and the writer’s purpose——setting an example for the society. The third part turns to the method of analyzing the typical characters, grouping the females in this masterpiece into six different kinds which belongs to two ranks. the fourth part investigates the female’s relative network and role definition in this novel, aiming to finding out the social reasons why these typical female characters came into being and have existed. The fifth part compares the female characters with those in Sanyan and Erpai. By comparing these two novels, this thesis means to point out the difference between Xing Shi Yan and Sanyan and Erpai in aspects of content, importance and writing techniques, and then pointing out the significance and shortcomings of Xing Shi Yan. The sixth part explains the reason and influence of this lack in female characters. This thesis believes that Xing Shi Yan is a work created to advocating Neo-Confucianism for the ruling class. The author creates female characters in the perspective of "principle of feudal moral conduct" and "the three obediences and the four virtues" and set models for women, which suppressed women’s personality development. Though Xing Shi Yan is not better than Sanyan and Erpai in both, its progressive significance in advocating the moral rules and the function in praising virtue and punishing vice cannot be ignored. In particular, its achievement in art is worth approving.