Eileen Chang’s Female Aesthetic On Her Literary Creation

Eileen Chang is one of the most prominent female writers in the history of Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature. Her novels on the surface depict pictures of daily lives of people who lived in the same era. Under the common and usual scenes of daily lives, however, there lie hersentiments in gender and her consciousness in creation, expressed as acute observation and deep consideration on the survival situations and psychological activities of female who suffer a lot under the oppression of powerful and overwhelming Patriarchy culture. This thesis discusses Eileen Chang’s ideas of literary creation from the perspective of “female aesthetic”, emphasizing on the detailed depiction ofthe living experiences of female and the expression of female subjectivity on one hand. On the other hand, this thesis reveals the uniqueness of aesthetic attributes in Eileen Chang’s “female discourse” in the mainstream of male writing. Specifically, from the angle of Eileen Chang’s feminist consciousness, this thesis explores the darkness and desolateness of human nature excavated through vivid and precise descriptions of people’s daily activities via her close observation on secular world. Living in the era full of war and suffering, Eileen Chang’s life consciousness is thoroughly despaired and empty; her pessimistic view of life makes her work present a kind of desolateness. Through compared with LuXun’s work which takes “enlightenment” and “reformation” as main purposes, this article illustrates the unique value and significance of Eileen Chang’s “non-enlightenment” creation in the realm of modern Chinese literature.