Chapter 33 Section 2 The Writing of Family Novels on Women's Life and Spiritual World

A very important aspect of the progress of a century of literature is reflected in the display of women's life experience. Women, as a huge gender group of a nation, their joys and sorrows of existence are an indispensable part of national life, and their spiritual world is also An important mirror of the national spirit.Many negative aspects of the national soul are deposited in the male ideal world. On the contrary, the natural, authentic, beautiful and noble side of the national soul is mostly reflected in the female image.Therefore, the exploration and excavation of the spiritual world of women is integrated into the theme of the discovery and recasting of the national soul in contemporary literature, and has important and unique significance and value.

Entering the 1990s, women's writing appeared with a fresh breath, with a self-consciousness to show personal experience, and a few traces of romance unique to women.These texts have added a gorgeous landscape to the literary world with their delicate texture, soft characters and brand-new aesthetic character.As a wonderful flower in the garden, female family novels show the unique charm of female writing in terms of artistic perspective, narrative standpoint, characterization, theme conception and language use.Works in this category include "The Prisoner of the Oak Tree", "The Feathered Snake", "Red Red Danzhu", "Women in Our Family", "Heroes Without Speech", "A Hundred Years of Marriage" and so on.The reason why the above works are classified as female family novels is that they are all written by female writers, composed of three generations of writers, old, middle-aged and young.Although their writings have distinct individual characteristics in terms of subject matter selection, theme excavation, characterization, language use, etc., their artistic perspectives are surprisingly similar, that is, starting from a distinct female consciousness and criticizing the male cultural order. From the point of view, examine the existence of the family and the historical destiny of women, describe the vivid life course of women, show the complicated inner world and spiritual pursuit of women, see women's ardent desire and bold pursuit of love with their own eyes, and sing praises Their devotion to family affection and infinite yearning, their selfless sacrifice to the family and their brave responsibility to their historical destiny.That is to say, they try to reveal women's true living conditions in a female-specific way of speaking, publicize their distinct self-awareness, and leave a striking and profound mark on women's existence that cannot be ignored in the long river of history.

There are two narrative threads, one is the present, that is, the life scene and emotional experience of the writer Wu Wei from middle age to old age; , The journey of life formed by the link of Zen and Moon.Whether it is Wu Wei's life experience or other figures in the matrilineal family, the life scenes are full of strong tragic color.During Wu Wei's "root-seeking" process, she discovered the hypocrisy and ugliness of traditional culture and value rationality with the sensitivity and delicacy of women, the sway and snobbery of the male world, and the illusory and sad love that she devoted her life to.As a result, Wu Wei went crazy, and her final ending showed the failure of women's love idealism, and also showed women's powerlessness in fighting against their fate.The work conveys a kind of deep sorrow of women at the cultural level through the collapse of the protagonist's spiritual world and physical damage, and shows the author's complete deconstruction of the love myth.What needs to be specially explained is that the characters in the work are like a lotus that is independent of the wind, Mohe is the root, Yelianzi is the leaf, Wu Wei is an empty shell without fruit, and Zen Moon is the moon separated from the lotus.Connecting their life courses, the illusory life and the nothingness of love are clearly revealed.If it is said that Mo He and Ye Lianzi, as ancestors, are still unaware of the traditional concept of love, Wu Wei and Chanyue's mother and son have truly penetrated the true meaning of love and become sober and conscious women.However, the sober suffer more deeply than the numb, and they are destined to bear greater blows than their ancestors.In short, full of classics, romance, interweaving and fusion of reality and modernity, it has established its position in women's family writing with its strength penetrating the back of the paper. It is a rare masterpiece of women's writing.

"The Prisoner of the Oak Tree" is a novel full of symbols.With different sad and poignant brushstrokes, and from the perspective of "family", it depicts a series of women's temperament and personality pursuits in "Pu Yuan", and conveys their real experience of the suffering of life and fate. , revealing their struggle and sacrifice under the confinement and bondage of patriarchal cultural order, and examines the hidden essence of patriarchal culture.Grandmother Chen Guihua is praised by the author as "the son of nature". Her purpose of life is to "make free flight the most beautiful form and totem of life." The withering of the flower of life has shown the dignity of life and the value of freedom to future generations; Duan Jinchai, the daughter-in-law of the Fan family, who is "as plump as an apple and as bright as a sunflower", inherited the inner spirit of her grandmother and devoured it after a series of fatal blows. She died of opium, and she also showed her determination to life and desire for freedom with the fall of the flower of life; Guan Yunyu, as Duan Jinchai's successor, had a happy nature and the courage to fight against fate, but after all, she failed to withstand the turmoil of the times. The shock of the family and the discord within the family hanged himself.The author described her death in this way: "The last woman in our family who committed suicide hanged herself. She hung on the beams of the Westinghouse, slender as a tree." Regarding the fate of the above-mentioned women with romantic feelings and noble temperament, the narrator of the novel Tianju sums it up like this: "I think of the women in our family. How many of them have preserved their dignity in life through death. They are some beautiful and fragile trees that constitute an important landscape of our family's forest. And we, the survivors and the survivors, are the shrubs and cattails growing under their feet. We don’t have the thousands of styles they wear in the colorful clouds, and they are not as tough as us.” Duan Jinchai’s daughter-in-law He Liandong should be regarded as destiny Awakened and escaped from patriarchal culture.Although her beautiful, kind, noble, and romantic disposition has won the family's true inheritance, her sober and decisive manner makes her another unique scenery different from other members of the family.What is embarrassing is that no matter how consciously she rejects the selfishness and despicableness of men, and how she maintains her own independence and nobility, she still cannot get rid of her status as a "resident" and falls into an extremely bleak situation.Su Liu, a beautiful girl with a bow tie, is more unfortunate than the women of the Fan family. Because of the family history, she has experienced huge physical torture such as criticism and struggle, and finally went mad due to a mental breakdown.Although she is born with the fragility and beauty of the women in "Pu Yuan", she does not have their bravery and strength. Under the impact of the times, she can only babble with "my hands are clean and my body is clean". To resist external persecution and disaster.In addition to the above characters, other women in "Pu Yuan", such as Minsheng and Fenzi, also described their miserable life trajectories with different experiences.To sum up, although the status and experience of a series of women in "Park Garden" are different, their fate is very similar, that is, none of them can get rid of all the spiritual connotations and sufferings given to them by the "family" Destiny, the freedom and dignity of life can only be maintained by death.They are a dazzling, noble and romantic group, but also creatures who have gone through hardships and lived humble lives.Their history is a picture intertwined with blood and tears, and the soul of their lives will be embedded in readers' hearts in a unique and eye-catching form.

Among the numerous women's family novels, "The Feathered Serpent" is undoubtedly the most unique.It is unique in the following three aspects: First, it narrates an absolute history of women in the form of a fusion of fantasy and reality, with a slightly paranoid posture and a strong classical sentiment.Different from "The Prisoner of the Oak Tree", the women in "The Feathered Serpent" are pure in body and spirit.They are noble and independent, beautiful and fertile. Although they have gone through the turbulent changes of history, they never change their own characteristics. Set off, and walk towards the end of life without hesitation after completing the spiritual journey.Xuanming is the spiritual model of this matriarchal family. She sets an example for other women from emotional and material aspects, so that they can live independently.Ruomu is the continuation of her mother's spirit, and she has been living according to her inner impulse, refusing the assimilation and traction of history and maintaining her independent personality.Ruomu's three daughters, Ling, Xiao and Yu, all inherit their mother's blood, and outline their lives with an undisciplined attitude and the call of inner life.Among the three, Yu is the most outstanding.She is an elf who looks like a human being, a fairy, and a ghost, created by the author based on the pure concept of women.She only lives in her own life, relying on fantasy to keep her distance from the world.Her many surly behaviors, such as killing her brother, tattooing, jumping off a building, narcissism, etc., show her serious opposition to the real world.Her voice embodies a kind of weird beauty, a kind of clear and elegant beauty that does not eat other people's fireworks.The second is to examine the family and blood relationship at a deep level, and through a history of female self-identification and self-alienation with rich meanings and deep-seated conflicts in consciousness, it represents the repulsion, hostility and confrontation between mother and daughter, and between women, and deconstructs the story. Divine motherhood in the usual sense.This kind of deconstruction not only reflects the oldest human experience, but also reveals the problems that human beings may face now and in the future, which is a very valuable artistic thinking.At the same time, "The Feathered Serpent" also reveals a strong mystic tendency and pious religious salvation thoughts through the pure history of women.In Yu's subconscious, God's will often appears, as if there is an inner divinity guiding her thoughts and actions, and Yu also escapes the pain and misfortune of the world because of indulging in it, and becomes a person living in pure spirit. women.The third is to transplant the ancient myths and legends of "Resurrecting the Soul from the Corpse" to the real world, so as to examine and sink the spirit of the gods that have been forgotten by people, so as to complete the symbolic meaning of the work.This point can be confirmed from the "preface" of the work: "the feathered snake symbolizes a kind of spirit, a kind of spirit that supports human beings from ancient times to today but is gradually forgotten, ----- in the myth of the ancient Pacific Ocean According to legend, Feathered Serpent removed fire for human beings, threw herself into the fire, shattered her body, and turned into stars. The relationship between Feathered Serpent and Sun God Bird Jinwu, Sun God Shu Ruomu, and Vulcan Candle Dragon constituted her whole life.” So, In reality, there are Yu, Zhulong and Ruomu.They entangle and restrain each other, wandering and tearing apart in the spiritual world, and completing their real life together.This artistic technique of interweaving ancient mythology with the real world and illuminating the hearts of human beings with the spirit of ancient gods is extremely successful.The analysis of the above texts shows the variety of styles of contemporary women's family literature and the establishment of a new artistic aesthetic character different from the male perspective.

Looking at contemporary women's family writings, we find that they present the following characteristics: First, they focus on women's living conditions and reveal the theme of eternal love.The above women's family writings all exaggerate their pursuit of true love and the misfortunes caused by it in different ways.The results of cultural anthropology tell us that women put love at the top of their lives. When a woman loses love, it is like a plant without water, its life will dry up and wither.No matter which era, women are the bold pursuers and full defenders of true love, as Jenny summed it up: "For thousands of years, love has not only been a special field of life for women, but in fact has always been a field that women can practice. The only or important channel for all their desires.” [6] However, almost all women are the biggest victims of love, because in a patriarchal society, women are always discriminated against and oppressed, and few people It will take into account the true feelings of women and all the sacrifices they have made for the true love in their hearts. Therefore, their life course of pursuing love is destined to be extremely sad, and their fate will be bleak and miserable.Female writers with deep understanding grasped this point with keen artistic feeling and expressed it vividly.This kind of expression incorporates the female writers' own experience and perception, so it has great artistic appeal.

Secondly, tell about family changes and show the vicissitudes of history from a purely female perspective.The above female family novels resolutely put aside the previous male point of view, relying on female intuition and epiphany to poetically care for and express the meaning of existence, and tell the stories of families that are irretrievably falling into ruin from a purely female perspective. history.This novel angle not only marks the establishment of female narrative standpoint and narrative attitude, but also the publicity of poetic female spiritual characteristics, and enriches the methods of telling history in contemporary literature.Their writing through women's independent consciousness shows the inner spirit of women's family novels, which is to completely subvert the mainstream consciousness constructed from the male perspective for a long time.Todorov said, "It is true that the point of view is of primary importance. In literature, what we have to study is never the original facts or events, but the facts and events that have been described in a certain way. From two Observing the same fact from different perspectives will produce two different facts.” [7] From the establishment of the female perspective, we feel the new changes in artistic creation methods, and feel the establishment of women’s self-consciousness and the liberation of women’s self-emotions.

Thirdly, focus on revealing the historical changes of the matrilineal family lineage.Since female writers care about history and reality from a unique female perspective, their focus must be matrilineal family blood, because such writing can truly reveal the connotation of female life, the profound contradictions in female cultural pedigree, and the resulting human conflicts. current and future problems.At the same time, the publicity of matrilineal family blood has also established women's independent consciousness and status at a deeper level, providing people with the greatest possibility of penetrating into women's inner world, understanding the history of women's self-identity and their true spiritual journey, The prominence of this kind of matrilineal family blood also reveals women's strong desire to get rid of the historical myth that men create the world, and to stand independently in human social life without hesitation.

Fourth, group portraits with female characters as the main characters.In the above women's family novels, the female characters are the center of the work, and the male is almost illusory and absent.The female images they create have the following types: Weak and helpless.Their common feature is that they agree with gender differences and the arrangement of fate.This category of characters is represented by Mo He, Ye Lianzi, Chen Guihua, Duan Jinchai, Guan Yunyu, He Liandong, Fan Tianju, Zhu Xiaoling, and Fan Suliu.They also fought against fate, but they all ended in failure.Their fate is tragic, and their living conditions are the epitome of the living conditions of Chinese women in the 20th century, and it is a strong evidence of women's suffering and loss of individuality in a patriarchal society.Women's family writing highlights them, making them the center of the text.Firm and tenacious.These characters exist in the world with their independent personalities, independent actions, independent thoughts, and independent spirits. No matter how the world changes, their spirits will never change. All external infringements will not hesitate to lose their lives for the faith they hold in their hearts. They are the true embodiment of women's spiritual character and the true sustenance of the writer's soul.Representative figures such as Xuanming, Ruomu, Wu Wei, Ling, Yu and so on.Although they have experienced earth-shaking changes of the times, they have their own unchanging pursuits and their own unique history that cannot be changed.They have become the soul of every family with their noble and romantic spirit and temperament, and they have become the true representatives of non-mainstream culture in the long historical changes.Looking at the contemporary literary world, although the clear and profound themes in the 1980s have become "variations without themes" in the 1990s, many writers still make their creations present a certain meaning, and the writing of women's families is an example.With their frail bodies, keen feelings, and fighting spirit, they explored and expressed their hearts in their weeping singing; they completed the shaping of the unique image of women by looking back at history and family. The depiction of women's historical fate restores the original ecology of women's existence, shows women's complex and subtle mental journey, and publicizes women's inherent noble and romantic temperament and indomitable spirit. While completing the deep questioning of women's survival history, It has opened up many new aesthetic paths for the contemporary literary world.Turning through each of their works, we see beautiful faces and sad eyes, bleeding hearts and tragic pictures.These women's family writings tell people that the entire magnificent Chinese history has a distinct and heavy stroke of women. It is precisely because of the survival of women crying blood that the historical picture will be colorful and brilliant like flowers, and "family history is The history of women's life is just like a tree of women's life, every tiny branch is a poignant and tragic story, a journey of life poured with blood and tears." [8] In short, contemporary women's family writing fully demonstrates that contemporary women writers control the grandeur. The ability of family themes shows their identification with the family narrative tradition, demonstrates their extraordinary artistic talent, and provides a new artistic experience for the literary world.