ISSN:
0305-7410
Source:
Cambridge Journals Digital Archives
Topics:
Linguistics and Literary Studies
,
History
,
Political Science
,
Sociology
,
Economics
Notes:
In Chinese Communist literature, men and women are primarily seen in their likeness as workers rather than in their sexual and emotional unlikeness as human beings. Women, as much as men, are praised for their socialist zeal and heroic capacity for work and condemned for being socialist sluggards indifferent to production. But despite its repudiation of “human interest” as a symptom of capitalist or revisionist decadence, even this supremely practical literature cannot begin to exist without some superficial attention to personal problems, and these problems, inevitably, attest to the persistence of biological instincts and immemorial habits of human civilisation. Until the techniques, Communist or otherwise, for dehumanisation are perfected, men and women will remain subject to irrational passions, and if circumstances permit, they will fall in love, get married, bring up children, and in other devious ways contrive for pleasure and happiness. In tracing the lot of Chinese women under Communism, I will therefore take for granted that the primary purpose of their earthly existence is to contribute to and assist in production and examine rather their residual personal problems in the context of the overriding importance of socialist construction. The results of niy investigation, if my women characters, drawn invariably from short stories, are at all typical, will show, not surprisingly, the pathetic adjustment of their feminine instincts and interests to the jealous demands of Party and state. The exceptions that I will take notice of—sympathetic victims and challengers of the impersonal Communist bureaucracy—are all heroines of revisionist fiction that has been subject to vehement attack by the press.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000009760
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