Strict Gender Roles in Modern Chinese Literature

Over the past century in the United States women have had incredible success fighting for equality in the workplace and the voting booths. The stereotypical view of a woman has transgressed from one who stays at home and takes care of the family to one who exists as a contributing member in the workplace and who shares familial responsibilities with her significant other. One could say that stereotypical gender roles in the United States have disappeared. This is in steep contrast to the portrayal of female characters in modern Chinese literature where the gender roles of men and women are strictly defined and vastly different.

Females in Chinese literature are often described primarily according to their familial role.  In the cast of characters of Tian Han’s play The Night a Tiger Was Captured, all of the male characters are referred to by their occupation such as a hunter, a farmer, and the headman of a village.  The women, however, are referred to only by their relationships to the men, be they a daughter, mother, or wife.  I think this is very interesting.  Tian Han completely neglects to inform the audience of Liangu’s significance to the story; she is simply referred to as the only daughter of Wei Fusheng. 

The marginalization of women in the literature carries important historical implications for the time as well. From Lu Yin’s Autobiographical excerpts in the May Fourth Women Writer: Memoirs, “The following year, my uncle hired a tutor for my brother and male cousins. As for me, I was to have my aunt as my teacher. Although she had never once set foot inside a school, Auntie had been taught by her husband to read such things as The four Classics for Women and was therefore more than adequate to teach an ignorant student who could not recognize van a single character.” (Pg. 101) From this quote it is evident that males and females were not treated equally in China at the time.  Formal education was a luxury afforded only to the males in the family.  This perpetuates these strict gender roles of men and women in China because presumably the educated individuals will be the breadwinners for the family, while those who remain uneducated (i.e. the women) will take care of matters at home.  The problem was also greater than a family’s desire to educate only the males. From the same story, “There were no women’s colleges at the time and other colleges were not yet accepting female students, so I didn’t have many paths to choose from. “ (Pg. 110) Women in China did not have to opportunity to participate in formal education even if they had the means and desire to do so.

Although these women are not expected to seek employment they still work very hard as emphasized by the following quote from The Night a Tiger Was Captured: “They have to wake up early, and they don’t get to sleep till late.  And they spend all their time spinning thread, serving tea, cooking, and washing clothes- not to mention planting yams up on the hillside and harvesting the fields. They work so hard all year long that they damn near drop.” (Pg. 14) 

Other than working hard at home and remaining uneducated, women in modern Chinese literature also have other stereotypes cast upon them.  Female characters are often portrayed as helpless or stupid.  For example, Lu Yin stated in her autobiography that upon her father’s death her mother was “a helpless widow” and “not a capable woman”.  She further points out that due to her mother’s inability to cope with his death, their family “plunged into a sea of despair” implying that women are incapable of coordinating and leading families in the absence of men.  Furthermore, a recurring element in Chinese literature is that of arranged marriages.  This leads to one of two conclusions: either women are an object used to tie families together through marriage or women are unfit to pick their own lover.  Given all of the talk of the other daughters-in-law by the mothers in Tian Han’s The Night the Tiger was Captured as well as the conversations regarding the prominence of the husband-to-be’s family, one could argue in favor of the first conclusion.

While analysis of modern Chinese literature may lead one to a dismal outlook regarding the equality of the sexes as well as an overarching abolition of gender roles, there were in fact women in powerful political positions in China during the turn of the 20^th century.  A prime example is Empress Dowager Cixi who is believed to have controlled the Qing dynasty for forty-seven years. There is also an upside to the roles played by women in modern pieces of literature exported from China. In many cases, the female characters, usually younger, disobey the wishes of their parents to instead pursue their own dreams or desires.  This is a relatively recent phenomenon. In The Night the Tiger Was Captured Lian-er wants to be wed to the fool, Huang Dasha, rather than following through with her arranged marriage to a member of the Chen family.  Similarly, in Wu Jianren’s novella Sea of Regret, one of the protagonists, Dihua, fights the traditional societal view of a girl’s responsibility to obey her parents in order to do what she thought was necessary and dutiful to pursue her love with Bohe.

Despite Chinese literature traditionally characterizing women as being dependent and subservient to men, many modern pieces have begun to show women as having opinions of their own, typically to create a life for themselves different from that of the stereotypical Chinese housewives. One could argue that as women fight to achieve more in their lives, opportunities for all Chinese women will increase.  For example, if enough women attempt to attend a college, perhaps the college will begin to accept female students.  Eventually, social norms will change so that women are expected to experience a formal education and break the gender roles of the past.