A Comparative Study of Female Images Created by Dickens and Chinese Realistic Writers

Jilin Institute of Chemical Technology,Jilin,China Email:893942145@qq.com

[Abstract]In recent years,great achievements have been made in the study of Dickens and his literary works,but there are not many academic researches on the comparison of female images in Dickens’works.This paper analyzes the creation sources of the three typical female images in Dickens’works,compares these three kinds of female images with the same type of female images written by Chinese realistic writers,and further sums up the differences of women’s temperament in different times and with different identities.This paper discusses the reasons for their personality formation and concludes that Dickens and Chinese realistic writers have formed their unique views on women because of the differences in the background of the times,the cultural soil and the family environment,so that they all have strong characteristics of the times and personal preferences when describing women’s images and outlining the fate of characters.Studying the female images described by the writers is conducive to enhancing our ability to appreciate their works and create our own.

[Keywords]female images;comparison;realism;analysis

Introduction

In the past decade,there have been many articles on the study of the female images in Dickens’works.These articles mainly analyze the female images in Dickens’works.From these female characters,they reveal Dickens’views on women under the patriarchal system.They adore the image of an angel woman who is gentle and obedient,willing to give and be obedient to her father or husband,such as Enis inDavid Copperfield,Sissy inTough Timesand Biddy inGreat Expectations.In the meantime,there are many articles on the study of women’s images written by Chinese realistic writers.In the history of modern Chinese literature,writers pay more attention to women’s fate.They extend their strokes to women’s life and create a large number of various female images.From these female characters,they expose the writers’views on women in the period of May 4th movement.In the old age,the female images can be divided into Cuicui,Sansan and Yaoyao,which are described by Shen Congwen.They are either gentle and amiable,or industrious and simple.As for the comparative study of Dickens and some other foreign writers,most of the themes focus on the comparative analysis of religious ideas,children’s heroes,and the expression of humor.However,there are few comparative studies on the female images written by Dickens and Chinese realistic writers.This paper will help readers to improve their ability of appreciating works,broaden their writing thinking,analyze these female images,help women establish their own views on their own lives and values.

Female Images in Dickens’Novels and Sources of Three Different Feminine Temperaments

In the 19th century,Britain was in the wave of industrial revolution and gradually stepped into a modern industrial country.Dickens lived in the Victorian era,which was the peak of British modernization,changes in the economic field led to changes in social and family structure.At this time,there are three types of women with different temperament in literary works,angel women in family,revenge women,and independent women.These three types of female images are created by Dickens under the influence of social change,cultural tradition and life experience.

Social Transformation

The Victorian period was a period of growing middle class in Britain.Britain was the first country in the world to establish the capitalist society at that time.With the further development of industrialization and the acceleration of urbanization,the middle class increased rapidly both in quantity and economic strength.With the growth of the middle class,the fate of middle-class women has changed a lot.People regarded economic stability and family happiness as the two major goals of life,and they had made a clear division of roles according to the status of men and women in the society and family.In Victorian times,middle-class women were placed at home.They were separated from the social and economic activities,and these activities were limited to family areas.People of middle class regards“home”as a place of peace,a haven and a warm place for them to get a sense of security.In addition,in the eyes of the middle class,the phenomenon that the wife is at home,serving her husband and children and managing housework is also a sign of the success of men’s career,and it indicates that men have enough material basis to enable a family and live a comfortable life.In this way,the family has become a harbor for men to stay away from reality.The wife must be good at and willing to do housework at home,be gentle and considerate to her husband,and become the spiritual pillar of men(Zhao,1995).

Cultural Tradition

Since the 18th century,there have been more and more books about women.There are dictionary entries,philosophical papers and publications helping to promote the idea that“a woman’s place should be at home,with her children,which is the result of her nature.”These works indicate young girls be a family angel,keep good qualities such as obedience,humility and selfless dedication.These so-called moral standards of women are imposed by men’s will,and the roles of men and women are planned,which requires women to be always passive,obedient,and focus on family,while men are rational and positive.In addition,most Victorian works put women in the position of“housekeeper”,whose main task is to make women become“ideal”wives and mothers consciously.In the whole 18th century,women’s social value was ignored.The traditional women’s education was just to train women into a good wife and a good mother.In the Victorian period,most women had the experience of receiving education.They were educated to be housewives.The only responsibility of a woman was to maintain family harmony and provide warm harbor for a man.A woman has become the steward of a family and the right assistant of a man in life.

Personal Family Life

In the process of Dickens’growing up,he was greatly influenced by his mother.Dickens’mother was not good at housework,and she had too many children,so she didn’t care about her children.It is no doubt that Dickens,the eldest son,was seldom caressed by his mother(Chen,2008).Influenced by his childhood experience,Dickens,as an adult,tries to establish an ideal image of his mother.In Dickens’works,many women are the image of Virgin Mary(Chen,2008).They are selfless to their husbands or fathers and take care of them.They often help them get rid of difficulties in time when they are confused and in trouble.Dickens met his first lover Maria Bodnell in the early stage.In order to win her favor,he wrote desperately to improve his status.Just as he began to emerge in the literary world and prepare to go to the marriage hall with his beloved,he was betrayed mercilessly.Dickens later became infatuated with Catherine and set up a family with her,after marriage,his wife became more and more lazy and indifferent to everything.Later,he met a young actress,Esther Turner,and began to fall in love with the beautiful actress.Esther Teman not only shows the traditional female temperament under the patriarchy,obedience and dependence on men,and is in a subordinate position in the relationship with men,but also shows her independence,strong courage,strong initiative in life.Dickens was fascinated by the unique charm of this woman,which was the original shape of independent female image in Dickens’novels late.

Female Images in Chinese Realistic Writers’Novels and Sources of Three Different Feminine Temperaments

Social Transformation

Under the influence of the feudal society,most people in ancient China had feudal ideas such as“three obedience and four virtues”and“women’s incompetence is virtue”,which made Chinese women firmly imprisoned in small families,and their self-consciousness of independence gradually died out.With the outbreak of the May 4th patriotic movement,Chinese women showed unprecedented patriotic enthusiasm and unswerving fighting spirit.In order to pursue women’s equal status and rights in society,get rid of all kinds of constraints,and realize real free and comprehensive development,most of the young women suddenly woke up,broke through the shackles of feudalism,and actively plunge into the flood of mass movement.In the new culture enlightenment movement at that time,the publication ofThe New Youthplayed a very good role in promoting the women’s liberation movement,with the participation of female students from all over the country.Inspired by the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal situation,the interests of men and women are closely linked with the national interests and the future,which shows that women’s ideological awareness is constantly improving,The society has a new definition of female image.

Cultural Tradition

The Chinese female culture in the traditional culture has formed a kind of deep-rooted traditional cultural connotation along with the formation of the long patriarchal feudal society and cultural form in China.From the birth of a woman,her role assignment has been doomed:in the Lord,to be a daughter-in-law,wife and mother.Before that,she must receive a complete set of women’s moral education in her mother’s home(during her daughter’s period),and prepare carefully for playing these roles in the future.Therefore,in the feudal society of China,as women,their highest value in life and virtue is to be a filial daughter-in-law,a virtuous wife and a good mother.They will be greatly praised by the patriarchal society and recorded in the books of men’s dictatorship.From the late 1970s to the early 1980s,with the opportunity of China’s accelerating modernization,the western modern thoughts including feminism and the climate of world cultural exchange have poured into China,which has brought a fuel for the ideological and cultural circles to eliminate the old and welcome the new.In a loose and active cultural environment,Chinese cultural women begin to face men’s sexism and gender oppression.The writer began to present this problem and think about it in his literary works.The connotation of the role of“filial daughter-in-law,virtuous wife and good mother”has been questioned and analyzed unprecedentedly in the historical level of sexual relations.

Personal Family Life

Shen Congwen,born in Fenghuang County,Hunan Province,is located in the Yuanshui River Basin in the west of Hunan Province,where the scenery is beautiful and the environment is comfortable.Green mountains and clear waters formed his special temperament,and also made him rich in imagination.Influenced by Chu culture since childhood,he has a reverence for nature.He advocates the beauty of human nature,which the pure combination of man and nature and this kind of spirit with ecological consciousness is what he pursues all his life,which he thinks is the most ideal life form of the highest realm of life.

More than one third of Lu Xun’s twenty-five realistic novels are about women’s miserable life and women’s liberation struggle.He has created a series of vivid images of women,such as Shan Si’s sister-in-law,Xianglin’s sister-in-law,Aigu,Zijun,etc.Lu Xun lived in the countryside and was familiar with it.Rural areas are the areas with the longest remaining time and the strongest influence of feudal consciousness in China.Their tragic fate aroused Lu Xun’s deep concern,for instance,Yang Er’s sister-in-law in Hometown,Aigu in Divorce.However,it is Xianglin Sao in Blessing that reveals more intensively and profoundly the oppression and persecution of rural women by feudal forces.Lu Xun not only wrote about these women’s miserable life,but also wrote about their resistance and awakening.

Zhang Ailing was born in a once distinguished family in Shanghai.Her great grandfather was Li Hongzhang,a famous figure in modern history.Zhang Ailing’s father was a typical young master of the old society,deeply influenced by the old society’s atmosphere and tradition,while her mother was a rebellious woman influenced by western culture,and she went to France with her little sister-in-law several times(Cui,2015).Zhang Ailing’s thinking and questioning of women’s desolation reflects her spirit of facing up to women’s weakness and criticizing and reflecting on it.

The Comparison of Female Images Created by Dickens and Chinese Realistic Writers

Image of Angel Women Praised by the Writers

In Dickens’s autobiographical novelDavid Copperfield,the three girls get involved in the communication with David(Dickens,1980).They are little Emil,Dora and Enis.They all have some Victorian characteristics of women--gentleness and dependence on their fathers or fathers’substitutes.Among them,Enis is regarded as an idealized woman,she is brave,strong,beautiful and kind,which accurately and truly reflects Dickens’praise and pursuit of family angels(Yang,1996).While in Shen Congwen’s Border Town,Cuicui,a pure and beautiful girl from western Hunan,grew up in the remote town of Chadong in Western Hunan.She lives with her industrious and simple grandfather on a ferry.Cuicui is a naive,lovely and beautiful girl.At last,Cuicui alone on the ferry and waiting for her lover to comeback.No matter Enis inDavid Copperfieldor Cuicui inBorder Town,they are both praised by writers and liked by readers as angel girls.They are kind,beautiful and filial.This is the ideal female image in the author’s mind,and also the ideological trend at that time.

Cuicui inBorder Townis a young girl growing up in the beautiful natural landscape of Western Hunan.She is naive,kind,simple and lively,reflecting a "beautiful,healthy,natural and not against human life form".However,her love story ended in a sorrowful tragedy.The people around her died or walked away,leaving Cuicui alone waiting for on the ferry,and looking forward to the return of NuoSong.This result has a lot to do with Cuicui's character weakness.Her temperament is reserved and shy,but if it exceeds a certain limit,it will become autistic and blocked.This kind of character has a direct impact on her happiness.

The Female Image of Revenge Denied by the Writers

In the middle and later period of Dickens’creation,there are some female images of revolt and revenge.Estella is a typical character of them in Great Expectations(Dickens,2003).Her life experience is extremely poor.Her father is a prisoner,and her mother is severely punished for herself fault.She was taken in by Miss Havisham when she was young,and trained by Miss Havisham to be a tool for revenge on men.She is a perpetrator as well as a victim,a victim in a dual sense.Similarly,there is a similar female image in Zhang Ailing’s works,but the object of her revenge is not men,but her children.Cao Qiqiao was originally the daughter of a sesame oil shop owner,and she was shrewd and charming.Unfortunately,Cao Qiqiao was married to a rich family by his greedy brother and sister-in-law.She was discriminated against and excluded by others because of her humble background.What the two women have in common is that their images do not conform to the social norms for women,and they do not conform to people’s expectations in terms of morality and ethics.They lost their reason because of revenge,and became selfish,greedy,and inhuman.

Besides,both of them lost the loveliness that women should have.They are both the perpetrators of others and the victims of the society.On the one hand,Estella has been adopted by Miss Havisham since she was three years old,and she was trained to be a tool for tormenting men and breaking all men's hearts.Her previous outlook on life and values were instilled by Miss Havisham,which did not represent her personal choice.On the other hand,Cao Qiqiao is a young girl of humble background.She is shrewd but lovely.She could have married a family of similar background,and obtained a common and poor happiness.But the greedy brother and sister-in-law married her to a rich family,which was the tragedy of all women under feudalism and patriarchy,so as to restrict their personal freedom and marriage freedom.

Independent Female Images Supported by the Writers

The Mystery of Edwin Droodis the last work of Dickens.In this unfinished novel,the writer describes Helena,a woman who has not only the soft dependence of traditional women,but also the strong independence and thought.She is brave,strong,intelligent and decisive,which is the fundamental reason why the author choose Helena to take the responsibility of revenge.WhileSad for the Pastis a tragedy of Lu Xun’s narration of Chinese intellectual women,and Zijun is a typical image of young female intellectuals who dare to resist and pursue independence.Zijun is a petty bourgeois intellectuals with bourgeois democratic thought who grew up under the influence of the new trend of thought in May 4th Movement.She struggled with feudal ethics and feudal forces in order to pursue personal freedom and freedom of marriage.Helena and Zijun both show the characteristics of traditional women,which are passive,obedient and loyal to their husbands.In addition,both of them embrace the qualities of independence,self-discipline and brave personality.But Helena and Zijun are different in some aspects,which lead to their different fates.

In the struggle of liberation and the fight against feudal ethics,Zijun once showed courage without fear,when her behavior was strongly opposed and obstructed by her family.But Zijun was still a young lady who grew up under the feudal orthodox education.Her thoughts had a strong color of feudal nature.Her resistance may be resolute,but is not thorough enough.With the passage of time,Zijun gradually shows her true face.So many traditional thinking kidnapped her,such as dependence,weakness,compromise,and the saying of"woman host family while men work hard outside".Therefore,she dedicated to doing housework and serving her husband every day,and finally forgot the essence of life.After losing the ability and courage to fight,she was abandoned by her husband,while she did not resist,but quietly accepted.In the end,Zijun returned to the feudal family she had once betrayed,and died in despair.

Conclusion

Through the comparison and analysis of the female images in different periods of Dickens and the same type of female images in the works of Chinese realistic writers,this paper sums up that the writers praise the family angels,advocate that women must be gentle and kind,be good at running a family,be beautiful and reserved,and deny those female images who are licentious,mercenary,selfish and greedy,and finally make them tragic In the end,the writers tend to those women who are gentle,kind,independent and strong.In this paper,the causes of women’s character in different times are closely related to the final fate.The analysis of the impact of the incomplete personality on their fate can stimulate the improvement of women’s self-consciousness.Women should have their own thoughts and independent and strong personality,so as to obtain happiness in the society and family.This paper studies the different female images written by Dickens and Chinese realistic writers.It is conducive to enhance our ability to appreciate works and broaden our creative thinking.

Acknowledgements

This article is one of the research results of the projectA Comparative Study Between Dickens and Chinese Realistic Writers(2018B21)of Social Science Foundation of Jilin Province.