Bai Juyi’s Feminist Poetry

During the feudal society, the male power occupies the dominant status, and the femininestatus receives constrains with the limit. But seen from the literature development course, thefeminine theme literary work is actually well-established, from the "Poetry" time to Tangdynasty, the feminist poetry has been in continuously tortuous development. Until the TangDynasty, the development of the feminist poetry has welcomed the peak.In Bai Juyi’s literature, there is a large number of feminist poetry, which divide into thepalace female, the work woman, the prostitute entertainer, the wife and daughter according toits main character types. Bai Juyi worked out Wang Zhaojun, Yang Guifei, frustrated maid asthe representative of the Royal women of tragedy, which described the lower level workwomen’s difficult life, and unfolded the prostitute entertainer technique excellent and destinypitifulness. To the wife and daughter, he show true kindness and tender affection forindefinitely. He has given the sincere attention and the infinite sympathy to the female. Thusthe creation of female poems also show the beauty of personality, emotions, tragedy, image. Ithink the esthetic characteristic manifests in the praise of the filial woman, the chaste wife, thevirtuous woman; memories of the first love, and women’s emotional world writing;compassion for women’s living conditions and spiritual needs; images of flowers, spring,beauty lady and so on.Bai Juyi’s attention to the female in the feminist, causes his feminism to presentprogressively, but also unavoidably has certain biased and backward one side as a feudalscholar-officials’ awareness classes. However, the primary cause which the Bai Juyicontradictory female observes is the general mood of society changes, the literature creationprevailing custom, and Confucian thought. His feminist poetry all has the reflection to theTang marriage culture and the society political issue, and has the profound influence to thelater generation literature creation.Finally, Compaired to the feminist poetry of Li Bai, Du Fu, Yuan Zhen, and Li Shang-yin,Bai Juyi’s feminist poetry has unique characteristics. The Bai Juyi’s feminist poetry presentsindividual emotion and the political mood, and the feminism has the contradiction. But Inlove marriage view, Bai Juyi is firm and progress. Seen from the creation characteristic, he pays great attention to the excavation of the real world female, his language is popularstraightforward and cultural mind is gentle and open-minded.