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Xiao Hong (1911-42)
Biography:
-famous female writer from the Northeastern part of China
(Heilongjiang)
-studied up to middle school in Harbin and then rebeled against
her arranged marriage, left home and led an itinerant life
-met Xiao Jun in 1932 and began writing
-spent years the mid-30s in Shanghai where she and Xiao Jun befriended
Lu Xun, now the star of the leftist literary world
-1935 saw the publication of her best know works:The Field
of Life and Death, and The Tales of Hulan River (both
available in English translation); beautiful, interesting novels,
written in a kind of minimalist fragment style
-moved around during the war years and died of illness in HK
in 1942
"Hands" (1936)
by Xiao Hong
Introduction:
-reflects growing class consciousness of the times, typical
of Ding Ling and other women writers in the 30s
-seem to subordinate women's issues to class concerns (as more
pressing for national salvation)
-in the context of a desparately poor nation suffering from continued
Western and Japanese imperialism, we can certainly understand
why this might be the case
-very rarely in China do we see true feminists, in the Western
sense, of people who see the world primarily through the prism
of gender and gender politics
Questions:
1. What is the story about? Who is Yaming and how she is treated?
Why? How is imagery used in the story to reflect class and social
stigmas?
2. What is the importance of education to the story?
3. What is the narrative mode of the story? What is the attitude
of the narrator to Yaming? Does her attitude change?
4. So in the story we have a women writer, using a female first-person
narrator, writing about another woman. Are the writer's concerns
feminist ones? Or other? Can we find any feminist meaning here?