Female consciousness in contemporary Chinese women's writing

Abstract

Contemporary Chinese women writers re-emerged after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). This thesis investigates a selection of stories by Chinese women writers published between 1979 and the end of 1990s. The investigation argues for an oppositional female consciousness and endeavours to demonstrate its various expressions in women writers' texts, covering such themes as love, family, career, intellectuals, working class, the female self, and social manners. Apart from the thematic concerns of female consciousness, the thesis also explores its expressions in unconventional narrative styles of representative women writers' texts. In conclusion, the thesis points out that female consciousness provided women writers, who live as women, a vantage-point from which they may view the self as well as others and society. In so doing, they write differently (from their male peers) and subversively.