Degenderizing Modernity in Ling Shuhua’s Boudoir School Writing: With a Comparison to Virginia Woolf

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See Tze-Lan D. Sang, The Emerging Lesbian Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 150. Yi Zhen first used the term to describe Ling Shuhua in “Jiwei dangdai zhongguo nüxiaoshuojia” (“Selected Contemporary Chinese Women Novelists), in Dangdai Zhongguo Nüzuojia Lun (Contemporary Chinese Women Writers), ed. by Huang Renying (Shanghai: Guanghua Shuju, 1933).

² Jingzheng’s education was mainly concerned with the training of virtuous wives. Then in 1844, the first girls’ school in China was founded by British missionaries. One of the main objectives of the girls’ schools run by churches was to train staff for churches, with most of the majors being religion and English language. See Jing Shaoli’s “Nüxing zhuyi shiye xia de jiaoyu jundeng” (Equality of opportunity in education within a feminist perspective) (unpublished doctoral dissertation, East China Normal University, 2006), pp. 180–81.

³ Judith Stacey, in her Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), and Kay Ann Johnson, in Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), both hold this argument.

⁴ Biographer Sasha Su-Ling Welland wrote the stories of her grandmother, Ling Shuhao, and great-aunt, Ling Shuhua, in A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).

⁵ For example, by analyzing the similarities and differences between the images of the little girl in the English and Chinese versions, Jeesoon Hong reveals how international power profoundly influences the shaping and dissemination of a literary image. “Stereotyping and the Translation of Subjectivity: The Image of ‘The Little Girl’ in Ling Shuhua’s Chinese and English Translations,” Translation Quarterly, 51/52 (2009), pp. 70–99.

⁶ “High modernism” refers to the highly experimental work of the early twentieth century. Some of the most relevant and celebrated high modernists include Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot . They generally followed their ideas and had little regard for readers or the market, so their modernism was confined to high culture.

⁷ One representative autobiography is Hu Shi’s Autobiography at Forty (Sishi zishu) which first appeared in 1931. As one of the most influential leaders of the New Culture Movement, Hu Shi started to call for new Chinese literature and culture based on “Western standards,” including elements of modern European autobiography.

⁸ One example is the “modern girl” in Shanghai neo-sensationist literature. This image can be traced to Franco–Japanese literature. The Westernized modern girl can be seen as a type of new woman who is active in the metropolis. She has a higher degree of agency and autonomy and often takes the initiative in relationships. See Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 198–99.