Gendered writing, the women's press, and modernity : the making of Chinese new women, 1898-1918

Abstract

The burgeoning of a new print form—the women’s press—in early twentieth-century China signaled a radical transformation in the ways of women’s literary and cultural production. This dissertation focuses on the discursive and imaginative space afforded by the women’s press. It explores in the women’s journals the processes of knowledge production and circulation that re/formulated the notions of gender and national identity. I examine writings by women and also by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity. In addition, I include writings that deploy “woman” as a trope through which authors express concerns of national salvation, social transformation, or Chinese modernization. The dissertation shows how experiences and expressions of “modernity” intersect with women’s print culture, and how the women’s press mediates a mixed gendered space for both women and men authors to bring into light a wide range of concerns at a critical historical juncture as Chinese modernity unfolded. How and why did women collaborate, reconcile, or contest with men in their writings or debates on themes related to feminine literary tradition, nationalism, feminism, ethnicity, and the female body to envision and construct “modern” Chinese women? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines in the women’s press the multifarious writings by various groups of women, including “traditionally” literate women, “progressive” feminist activists, “ethnic” Manchu women reformers, “new-style” urban professionals, and “modern” female students. By reexamining prevailing assumptions regarding the relationship between Chinese feminism and nationalism, the “modern” production of women’s literature, and the masculinist formation of the New Woman, this analysis seeks to both highlight women’s agency and subjectivities in their political and cultural engagements and to illustrate the complexity and multivalence in the imaginings of modern Chinese women. Throughout, I argue that the women’s press provides a productive site for us to understand gender, women’s writing, and modernity in late Qing and early Republican China.