Military Women Writers Since The 1990s Novel's Hero Narration

Our country’s military literature can date back to "17years" ago, but the worksof female military writers are clearly not dominant both in quantity and quality.Fortunately, in the new era especially since the1990s, a group of female writers beganto rise abruptly, making their works greatly improved in both quantity and quality, andhence the literary circles have paid more attention on and given more concern forthem. These female writers break the situation with their own voices in which malewriters are predominant in the military literary world, thus making up for thedeficiency of rare female perspective in military literature. In the age of femaleconsciousness awakening and pluralistic context, they describe army life in theirspecial sensitivity and perspective, and write down, with a delicate brush strokes andstrong emotions, images of their own true heroes.This thesis is divided into three chapters:Chapter one mainly discusses the heroic narrative, that is, female military writersintroduce different types of heroes. This chapter is divided into three sections, namelynarrative of hero’s deep human nature, narrative of returning to daily life, andobjective narrative of downplaying subjective emotions. Through analysis of thischapter, we can find that heroes that female writers describe have some moredisadvantages compared with "tall strong wholehearted" hero image of17years ago,but compared with contemporary male writes whose heroes have characterdisadvantages, they go into deep human nature of thought morality and moralpersonality of hero figures, shaping more full and detailed hero images, anddeepening a concept of "hero is a person". At the same time, the female writers alsocarefully create heroines who suffered spiritual and physical trauma in wartime,which is rare in the previously male-dominated military literature group.Chapter two makes an analysis of patterns and aesthetic characteristics of heronarrative. This chapter is divided into three sections, namely, personal writing,warmth and compassion, and aesthetic style of softness and delicacy. Unlike male writers who shape heroes in grand historical events of the revolution, these femalewriters, from the micro and personal vision, cover soldiers’ work, emotions, dignityconflicts and so on, describing a wealth of life experience and specific and sensiblelife process. Female writers have soft feelings, so no matter when they describerevolutionaries in the brutal war or emotionally frustrated soldiers in peacetime, theynever bring things to a desperate situation, thus giving a warm feeling. At the sametime, behind the sentimental narrative we can see a feeling of compassion, especiallywith regard to portrayal of military family kinship and pursuit of true love. Otherfemale writers with their delicate and sensitive characters, not only describe humanfeelings and human nature in wartime, but are keen to explore the feelings andmarriage of soldiers, focusing on their rich inner world. They make novels take on agentle, touching and delicate aesthetic style with fresh writing and a wealth ofemotion.Chapter three focuses on cultural contexts of female military writers’ heroicnarrative. This chapter contains three sections, namely relaxed political context,pursuit of secular aesthetics and the awakening of female consciousness. In1990s,china was in transformation period of all-round modernization, in which literature wasgradually commercialized entertained and marginalized and diverse ideologiescoexisted. Therefore writers could create their images in a free cultural context. At thesame time, people’s aesthetics was gradually secularized, so female writers removedheroized and deified image from figures. Meanwhile, female consciousnessawakening also gave birth to authenticity of the heroic image. Although China hasthousands of years of patriarchal cultural tradition, but with the development of thetimes, women are increasingly aware of their subjectivity and rights, and educatedwomen also express wishes of equality between women and men. There is little imageof female consciousness awakening in the former17years of military literature, sosince1990s, female military writers have taken over the arduous task, shaping a seriesof heroines who revolt against the feudal arranged marriage and suffer too muchphysical and spiritual trauma for dedication to the revolution. The final chapter summarizes the viewpoints of this thesis. The author makes,from perspective of literary history, an objective evaluation of female military writers’hero narratives, overall grasps their status in the creation of military literature, andstrives to provide useful reference for development in the field of literary criticism.