Elizabeth Janway pointed out in "American Contemporary Literature Female Literature": Because female literature comes from the life experience of the erased "other half" of human beings, it is necessary to "see them clearly with different degrees of lens". [1] That is to say, if the "degree" of this "lens" matches the reality of female literature, it must start from the birth of female literature.

In both eastern and western languages, words such as human, human and history do not include women, and they are absent in the category of people and history. The humanistic thoughts of Renaissance and Enlightenment rationality are abstract people, but if they are concrete, they only refer to people. The declaration of human rights in the French Revolution was only a declaration of male rights. Alempo de Jyugo, who discovered this, published the Declaration on the Human Rights of Women and Female Citizens in 179 1 after the French Revolution, and she was later guillotined for it. The Napoleonic Code clearly stipulates: "Minors, married women, prisoners and mental patients have no right to exercise the law." Only in the liberation movement did American women realize that they were in a helpless position like black people, so they actively participated in the liberation movement, and in 19, they launched the feminist movement in the 1920s-40s, and in 1848, they published the Declaration of Women's Independence, which was similar to the French feminist declaration. In this declaration, they changed the word "people" to "@ ①". [2] It can be seen that women's awakening begins with the realization that the abstract concept of "people" masks the actual inequality between people, and begins with women's pursuit and exploration of the full realization of their own value as human beings. In 1960s, the second wave of American feminist movement, known as the mother of modern American feminist movement, was described and reflected in detail by betty friedan in her Feminine Myth and The Second Stage. The mystery of women is the name she gave to a wrong trend of thought about women in 1963, which means that women are only defined by "sex" and biological motherhood. [3] She called the struggle of women going out of their homes for the same working rights as men in the two feminist movements in the United States an "impassioned journey" with the aim of "seeking new identity" and "strongly rejecting the definition and identity of women. They tried to prove:' Women are human beings' ". All these show that the ideological motive force of the western feminist movement is also from the awakening of human discovery to the awakening of women's discovery, which shows that women's discovery and awakening are the deepening and concretization of the ideal of humanistic value, which is the female humanistic thought I named here.

Women's literature in the world can only appear in the period of transition from agricultural society to modern industrial and commercial society after modern industrial revolution, democratic revolution and religious reform, and in the process of modernity in which modern humanistic thought is deeply rooted in people's hearts. The specific time varies from country to country, but it generally became a worldwide literary trend in the19-20th century. Especially in the second half of this century, driven by the feminist movement of western women fighting for human rights, female literature spread all over the developed and underdeveloped regions of the world. Although the 17 and 18 centuries in France were called "the age of women", there were very few female writers before the 20th century. Even in Italy and Greece, the cradle of the Renaissance, a large number of female writers appeared at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century. [4] In this regard, the19-20th century can also be said to be the century of women's literature and the gorgeous sunrise of women's literature in the world.

In China, there are similarities and differences between the birth of women's literature and other countries in the world. In the foreword of Nora's Speech-A Journey of Modern Women Writers in China (Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1993 edition), I specifically analyzed the major reforms of the education system at the beginning of this century, such as the introduction of western learning to the east, the establishment of girls' schools, the prohibition of women in universities, the recruitment of female students, and the spiritual achievements of the May 4th ideological enlightenment (the discovery of people, the discovery and awakening of awakened women, and the birth of female literature). Without such modern knowledge, there would be no female literature in China. My preliminary conclusion is that female literature "shares the fate with humanity and individuality" and "shares the fate with historical progress in the true sense". What can be added now is that women and women's literature share the same fate with the perfection of human nature, the liberation of personality, democracy, freedom, equality, civilization, progress, peace and development, and the full realization of women's humanistic values.

The difference is that in western countries, the time between human discovery and female discovery is generally 200-300 years, while in China, before and after the May 4th New Culture Movement, some pioneers put forward the proposition of human liberation:

Before women, who make up half of mankind, are not correctly recognized, fully free and unable to participate in cultural undertakings, they will always wither no matter how human beings evolve. [5] (emphasis added)

China people's liberation and women's liberation were put forward at the same time on the same time plane, which shortened the long waiting period of western women, but also made the road of women's awakening particularly tortuous and long, so that they often had to bear the sadness that there was no way to go after awakening. In the works of early female writers Lu Yin, Shi Pingmei and Feng, a strong sense of confusion, hesitation and sadness stems from the contradiction between the ideal of women's liberation and the dull and backward reality of ancient feudal countries. As an anti-feudal ideological fighter, Lu Xun was also a staunch advocate of women's liberation, but he soon realized the ambiguity of the future of women's liberation and put forward the question of "what will happen after Nora leaves", which forced the brave zijun to die alone and sadly.

Women's literature in China began in the May 4th New Culture Movement, precisely because women's collective awakening to their values and ideals as human beings appeared in the works of the first batch of modern women writers, although this awakening inevitably brought about the hazy confusion and immaturity of the awakened ones. Some critics think that the May 4th New Culture Movement is a Eurocentric theory, so the May 4th women's value recognition of Nora, the heroine of Ibsen's A Doll's House, is also included. This is an exogenous historical development theory, which ignores the social reality of our own nation. As Mr. Yan Jiayan pointed out, "It is true Eurocentrism to regard scientific rationality, industrialization and modernization as patents monopolized by European countries." /kloc-the rise of women's literature in the world during the period of 0/9-20 century fully illustrates the attraction of modern humanism, which is that "people and their values are of primary significance". This is the spiritual wealth of all mankind that transcends nationality, region and time, and it is more attractive, affinity and sense of identity for China women who are oppressed by class and gender. Nora's "First of all, I am a person, just like you" comes from the mouth of a white European woman, and also expresses the desire of China women for liberation, because women all over the world are in the same situation and yearn for freedom.

The above description and analysis of the birth of female literature in China can confirm the historical and modern connotation of the concept of female literature. In other words, it is a new female literature with modern humanistic value under specific historical conditions. Elizabeth Janeway's "lens of different degrees" is necessary for reading and analyzing women's literature. Specifically, it refers to modern concrete women as human beings and women as human beings. The former defines "a woman is a person" and the latter defines "a woman is a person with a natural gender". This also unifies the "sameness between men and women" that ignores natural gender and the "difference between men and women" that emphasizes gender differences under the value goal of female humanism, that is, the "dual consciousness of being a man and being a woman" put forward by the May 4th thinkers.

The two concepts of gender and sex, which have been established by western feminist scholars with great efforts, are developed according to Simone De Beauvoir's basic theory of "women are not born, but are transformed into women". They have revolutionary insight, deconstruct gender domination and gender discrimination in a patriarchal society, and make women aware of their status as "the other" and "the second". But when women realize all this, they also demand change and transcendence, and change themselves and surpass themselves towards the goal of being a complete and sound woman. This persistent exploration is the ideological motive force of China women's literature in the 20th century. The concepts of "social gender" and "natural gender" and the concepts of "female consciousness", "gender consciousness" and "gender standpoint" commonly used in the study of women's literature in China are not enough to fully grasp the essence of women's literature. Therefore, the two prepositional structural phrases "as a person" and "as a woman" are essential. Only in this way can we unify women's natural gender and social gender, and unify the fact world and the value world under the ideal goal of modern humanities.

Female Literature: Women, Feminism and Feminism

For more than half a century, people have been accustomed to literally understanding that female literature is a kind of gender literature classified by gender, just as young literature is classified by age, while western literature is classified by region, and female literature is just a gender dialect that specifically marks the writer's gender. If so, women's literature will not only lose its theoretical significance, but also strengthen the status of women's "secondary sex", so that those born as women can feel some invisible and unspeakable gender discrimination in a tolerant form. This is the psychological reason why some female writers refuse to identify with the names of female literature. Moreover, the stronger self-confidence and independent consciousness, the more female writers who have a deep experience of gender inequality refuse to put themselves under the name of female literature.

The paradox that female literature is neither gender literature nor gender literature can be explained by semiotic theory of modern linguistics. Conceptual symbols are different from the objects they refer to. Compared with the object, language is both enlightening and shielding. It means temporary, yet to be discovered. No symbol can completely exhaust all the meanings of the object it refers to. Therefore, the meaning of concepts (especially those of humanities) often contains paradoxes and needs to be discovered, filled and updated. [8] The aforementioned American Declaration of Women's Independence changed the word "male" to "@ ①", and the female students in China changed the word "he" to "@ ②" in the handout. American women have created a history beyond history, which is a symbolic embodiment of women's demand for equality between men and women in the human category.

Saussure believes that the meaning in language is only a matter of difference, and the meaning of each symbol is only because it is not the meaning of other symbols. In order to define the meaning of a symbol relatively stably and accurately, it is necessary to exclude similar or specious meanings, that is, to start with what a symbol is not.

What is not women's literature?

The paradox of gender literature mentioned above means that although female literature is branded with the gender concept of "women", not all female writers write female literature. The writer's natural gender is self-evident, but the aforementioned modernity of women's literature excludes women's classical poems before the May 4th Movement, including works that showed distinct demands for women's liberation before and after the Revolution of 1911, represented by Qiu Jin, and should be regarded as the bud or pioneer of China's women's literature in history. How to summarize the modernity connotation of female literature? When western feminist criticism and China began to discuss this concept in the mid-1980s, it was generally believed that it should be a work that embodies women's consciousness. Elizabeth Janeway believes that it depends on her experience and her understanding of what she wrote about life. In view of the fuzziness of the two concepts of female consciousness and gender consciousness, I think it should be defined by the word "modern" in front. This excludes the works written by modern and contemporary female writers that reflect the traditional male-centered consciousness. 〔9〕

Female literature is not a thematic concept. Human life is shared and maintained by men and women. Although history has stereotyped the roles of men/women and society/family, it is difficult to completely divide any field of life into pure men or pure women. Any woman's problems are related to men, and vice versa. The essence of thematic determinism is thematic hierarchy, that is, the binary opposition mode of hierarchy, such as public/individual, collective/private, etc. The former seems to be the domain of men, while the latter seems destined to belong to women. Lu Yin and Xiao Hong were criticized for this. In recent years, this phenomenon of belittling women's literature based on the level of subject matter has obviously warmed up, and various names ("Little Women's Prose", "Private Novel" and "Women's Sketch") with "Small" and "Private" as the central words have appeared. In fact, the theme itself has nothing to do with value. What matters is not what to write, but how to write and how to write. The difference between female writing and male writing in this respect lies not in the theme, but in women. Generally speaking, they are used to dealing with the themes of various life ranges from the internal perspective, personal memory and personal survival experience.

Now we can discuss what form and category China female literature has appeared in the process of modernity. Women's literature is closely related to the history of China in the 20th century. It is impossible to get rid of all kinds of historical resultant forces and make different choices under different historical conditions, thus showing the richness of the process of modernity. As Terry Eagleton said, "Language is not a structure with clear rules and boundaries, it contains a symmetrical unit of the performer and the subject. It looks more like an infinite spider web now. Online ingredients are constantly exchanged and circulated. None of them is absolutely limited, and everything is restricted and influenced by other things. " [10] On this "infinite cobweb", some components have developed, some components have disappeared and reappeared, some new components have appeared, developed or disappeared, and some components have mutated into something that is not its original. "Woman", "woman" and "feminism" are three important knots in the development of women's literature. In the process of modernity of female literature in China, we can only sort out three forms: female literature, female literature and feminist literature.

"Woman" is the core concept of female literature and female literary criticism. Is it synonymous with the concept of "woman" and interchangeable? Actually, these two concepts are basically used as synonyms here. The confusion of women and women reflects the indifference and indifference of female literary criticism to the modernity of female literature from a small aspect.

According to the textual research of American post-structuralist Bai Lu, the concept of "female" did not appear in China until the late Qing Dynasty. The mainstream discourse in China society does not transcend the concept of women in social interpersonal relationships. All the words referring to women refer to women in specific family relationships, such as daughter next to son, wife next to husband, mother next to father and so on. Only when everyone acts according to his own role norms stipulated in kinship can he achieve the socially recognized role norms and status. The word "female" and personal pronouns such as "he, she, Tā @ ③" appeared in the May 4th New Culture Movement, which is one of the themes of modern vernacular literature, a revolutionary and rebellious symbol that transcends the category of kinship and the traditional patriarchal ideology, and [1 1] is also a concept to be developed and improved. From some papers and literary works in the 1920s and 1930s, we can see the concept of "women", which is different from the traditional subordinate status of women. In order to distinguish it from the old traditional women, some texts often add a word "new" before the word "woman", and "new woman" becomes synonymous with "modern woman". The Millennium also pointed out the negative meanings of the word "female", such as passivity, weakness, mental and physical imbecility, etc. This is precisely the meaning that male prejudice adds to the vague and unstable concept of women in the application process.

The Millennium also investigated the change of the concept of "woman". In traditional discourse, women are generally referred to as women, women, women and women, all referring to traditional women. The concept of women analyzed in the Millennium was added after the May 4th New Culture Movement. She pointed out that women in European socialist political theory were translated by * * * people in the early stage, emphasizing the relationship between social production and women. The translation of Baerbel's book "Women and Socialism" established the political significance of the word "women", which was mainly used in rural base areas, Soviet regimes and even Mao Zedong-era countries, women's federations and other political institutions in the 1930s. "Women hold up half the sky" is used in the sense of productive labor and political function.

It can be seen that although the two words "female" and "woman" both refer to the gender of "woman", their connotations are not the same and they are not in a discourse system. The former is essentially different from the subjectivity of old-fashioned women, while the latter is an ideological discourse politicized by state power discourse. In Japan, the concept of women generally refers to the old-fashioned women who have not yet been liberated; Women generally refer to new women who have been liberated to a certain extent in modern society. [13] Generally speaking, there should be such a general difference between the two words we use today.

The connotations of "woman" and "female" are isomorphic to the historical evolution of female literature during the ten years from the May 4th Movement to the Cultural Revolution, that is to say, the different connotations of the above two concepts correspond to the basic connotations of two different types of female literature. China's female literature and the word "female" appeared at the same time in the May 4th New Culture Movement. In the late 1920s, with the politicization and functionalization of women's ideas, women's literature was divided and gradually formed corresponding to the new connotation of women's ideas. In the1940s, female literature and female literature coexisted in different discourse spaces. After the founding of New China, the literature of workers, peasants and soldiers in the liberated areas was identified as the common direction of literature and art in New China. Women's literature and May 4th literature were suppressed at the same time, and women's literature advanced by leaps and bounds with the literature of workers, peasants and soldiers in the way of conforming to the trend of the times and leading ideology, until it was pushed to the extreme and went to the opposite in the decade of the Cultural Revolution. In the early 1980s, with the revival of the May 4th new literary tradition, women and female literature reappeared, becoming modern female literature which is different from both male literature and female literature. However, female literature has gone into decline. In the development of women's literature, a new type of feminist literature appeared in the mid-1980s and 1990s, and more women's literature continued to develop.

As far as the relationship between these three kinds of female literature is concerned, female literature and feminist literature are two branches derived from female literature under different historical conditions and discourse environments. It should be admitted that even female literature, at the beginning of its emergence, is still the product of the modernization process based on women's struggle for human rights and values, but the ideological resources are different. The ideological resources of women's literature come from the socialist concept of women, which advocates that women should devote themselves to the torrent of social revolution, class struggle and national struggle and liberate themselves in the liberation of society/class/group, so they pay more attention to women at the bottom of society and advocate that workers, peasants and soldiers in love women should learn knowledge and transform their world outlook, so their protagonists are mostly heroines in various social/class/group struggles. As for whether this model of "social liberation and self-liberation" can liberate women, and to what extent, that is another question, which is a major theoretical issue of women's studies, and this article will not discuss it for the time being. The ideological resource of feminist literature is obviously the western feminist literary theory translated and introduced in the mid-1980s. However, as far as the ideological content of these works is concerned, China's feminist literature has absorbed more female humanistic thoughts from feminist theory, such as Virginia Woolf's My Room, Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, betty friedan's Female Myth and The Second Stage. However, they adopted a cautious attitude of agreeing with and reserving the radical and academic "sex politics" and "Leishmaniasis" in the West, as well as the gender confrontation line based on the binary opposition thinking mode between men and women. Some novels by Wang Anyi and Tie Ning have made serious artistic explorations on these theories, thus distancing themselves from western radical feminists. [14] In a short period of about ten years, Chinese feminist literature has made silent and arduous explorations on the spiritual growth and subjectivity construction of women in China, especially the intellectual women and professional women in China, such as Zhang Jie, Zhang Xinxin, Can Xue, Lu Yimin, Sama (Cui Weiping), Wang Xiaoni, Yilei, Yongming Zhai, Ye Zhang, Zhang Zhen and Ye Xue in the 1980s. Some writers here have explored the two categories of female literature and feminist literature at the same time, just as Ding Ling left two important works of female literature and female literature in modern literature. The difference is that the former is basically out of their conscious choice, while the latter is a helpless move in the complicated historical trend of the times, and some well-known female literature texts have been criticized many times. However, after all, times have changed. Jiang Zidan and Xu Kun, who are much younger than Ding Ling, no longer have no choice, but have gained the right to choose independently within a certain limit.

Some critics criticized that the study of women's literature in the 20th century had serious deviations and theoretical misunderstandings about women's literature and women's literature, and thought that such criticism widened the distance between the two texts. [15] I'm afraid this statement deviates from the reality of these two texts to a considerable extent. Female literature, which is isomorphic to mainstream ideology, stands out from female literature, which in itself illustrates the difference between the two. In addition, politics, as a powerful discourse of power, controls and interferes with the original reasonable female literature, fundamentally changing the modern connotation of the concept of women, leading to the double loss of women and women in life and literature, and at the same time losing their value as spiritually independent people. The rebirth of female literature in the new period cannot but reflect on the politicized female literature. This is not a woman writer's personal problem, and the difference between the two texts cannot be eliminated by any critic's subjective will. Critics classify Ding Ling's Sun Shines on the Sanggan River, Water and Tianjiachong, and the war works of Zi Han, Ru Zhijuan and Serina Liu in 1950s as "political texts", which means "direct narration of political ideology". Xiao Hong's Biography of Hulan River and Zhang Jie's Heavy Wing are also unfortunately classified as "political texts". As for what kind of politics was vague, not to mention even these dominant works at that time (no matter how inaccurate the generalization was for these works), many of them were not allowed by the politics at that time, such as Serina Liu's The Movement of Heroes and Sister Chun, Ru Zhijuan's Lily and Quiet Maternity Hospital and Zong Pu's Red Bean. Here, the value standpoint of female writers and female literary critics is not irrelevant: is it from the value standpoint of women as human beings or from the vague political standpoint? Critics have classified Lu Yin, Bing Xin, Ling Shuhua, Su Qing, Zhang Ailing and Ding Ling's When I was in the Village, Zhang Jie's Ark, Zhang Xinxin's On the Same Horizon and Liu Xihong's You Can't Change Me as "gender texts", that is, "literary writing that exaggerates gender consciousness and criticizes male chauvinism". Does this "gender text" refer to women's "sex" or "gender"? And "gender consciousness" does not include women's consciousness as human beings? The definition of "exaggerating gender consciousness and criticizing male consciousness", even if it only refers to the above feminist literature, basically does not conform to the ideological and value orientation of these works. Xu Kun's Nu Wa, Runaway and the Kitchen, Jiang Zidan's For Who's the Mulberry Smoke, Juesheng, Waiting for the Dusk, Chastity Game, and Tiening's Rose Gate, Opposite the Door, Haystacks and Cotton Piles. Famous feminist literary works such as Sama's Father, Wang Xiaoni's Should Be a Producer, and Ye Zhang's Ghost have all discussed women's living conditions and spiritual liberation from the height of humanity and human value. Their distinct gender consciousness as human beings, whether reflected in the criticism of male-centered consciousness, the understanding of women's own body, the re-understanding of motherhood and love, and the examination of human nature, are all based on the value standpoint of women's humanistic ideal of perfecting human nature and women's growth and liberation, which is also the reason why women's literature can surpass the times, gender, timeliness and utilitarianism and have long-term historical and aesthetic value.

Woman: person-woman-person

The qualitative stipulation of women's concept is women's subjectivity as human beings, and the qualitative stipulation of women's literary concept is women's exploration of their subjective position as human beings in literature as creative subjects and speech subjects. This is an epoch-making event in the literary history of the 20th century. The modernity of women's concept is reflected in the fact that women have changed and surpassed the mandatory naming and shaping of themselves by feudal traditional culture based on human awakening, which is manifested in the change from the identity of the other and the second to the subjective requirements of being a human being. It is manifested in the difficult transformation of female spirit from dependence to independence.

The subjectivity of women and women's literature is a complicated and thorny theoretical issue in women's literary criticism, and it is also an important issue that cannot be avoided. The ideological resource of female subjectivity is female humanism, and "women are people" is her starting point. All the difficulties, all the complexity and unspeakable in the exploration and construction of female subjectivity are condensed in this sentence similar to tautology. No one can say clearly what a woman is as a person. A woman who awakens to her humanity can tell me what I am not (not a slave, vassal or doll of a man ...) but it is hard to see what I am from the front.

This may be why deconstructive feminism limits the practice of female literary criticism to the categories of "complete negation" and "deconstructing everything and refusing to construct anything", which is also the original intention of Kristova when she said that feminism "does not compromise with what already exists, and we can say" this is not "and" that is not "[16]. This kind of thought gives full play to the revolutionary and rebellious connotation of women's concept, and its ideological edge is sharp in the face of the inhumanity and paranoia of male domination and male center. But unfortunately, it pushed this revolutionary and rebellious to the extreme, and pushed the requirement of female subjectivity and the active exploration and construction already reflected in female literature to the extreme. It exaggerates the antagonistic position of male/female oppression since patriarchy, exaggerates the male prejudice in discourse, and leads women's natural and reasonable struggle to change their own destiny and fight for human rights and values to skepticism and nihilism, which has become a practice without its own solid theoretical foothold. In the way of thinking, it also violates postmodernism's reflection on "pseudo-universalism", treating women and men as a unified "class" without difference, and treating extremely rich and complicated women and men as individuals with a generalized way of thinking. " Because it denies the existence of a concrete subject in the epistemological sense, it makes it impossible for feminism to have its own criticism. " 〔 17〕

Fortunately, women's literature, especially that of China, is not written according to this theory. From the May 4th female writers' exploration of the meaning of life and Where is the Way Home to the female poems, essays and novels in the 1980s and 1990s, women's self-awareness and self-worth are explored, such as the flowing water of thoughts. This is the increasingly clear "woman: person-woman-individual". That is to say, China women's exploration of their subjectivity as human beings has generally experienced a tortuous and difficult process of "people (like men)-women (different from men)-individuals (promoted independently and in different ways, and unified as men and women). This is also a basic and penetrating internal logic of China women's literature.

Very intriguing is that the western feminist movement has generally experienced: