Spirit Course Of The Female Images In Zhang Jie’s Novels On Love And Marriage

Zhang jie, an important female writer in Chinese contemporary literature history,focusing her writing perspective on those women under the surface of history, createsa series of novels on love and marriage. Chinese women were concealed by thesystem of social power and lost their power of discourse after our entering thepatriarchal society. Even the establishment of our democratic system since1949hasnot altered fundamentally their subordinate status. Taking advantage of her uniquefemale experience, Zhang Jie tries to explore a way to the female self-liberation in hernovels on love and marriage, in order to achieve women’s real equality.This article attempts to sort out the images of women in Zhang Jie’s novelsaccording to her attitude towards marriage and love, and summarize the numerousfemale images in order to clarify the development track of Zhang Jie’s exploration offemale liberation. The three kinds of attitude towards women in Zhang Jie’s love andmarriage novel—aspiration and keeping watch, lostness and reflection, despair andsalvation—present a progressive relationship of gradual disappointment to love andmarriage. This article, from perspective of feminist literature，sociology and history,analyzes these female images and explores women’s consciousness of liberation,which Zhang Jie implies behind them. With the humanitarian spirit, her early love andmarriage novels are full of optimism and confidence. Along with the advancement ofsocial reality, she gradually presents a kind of despair for love and marriage. In theend, she deconstructs love completely. Zhang jie always combines women with socialreform and progress, trying to subvert the concealment and distortion towards womenin the male-centered culture by means of writing women themselves, so as toconstruct human bi-sexual culture. The series of her novels on love and marriagereflect the author’s efforts on the exploration of women’s liberation. Nevertheless,they expose at the same time her incomplete thought of female liberation.