论文总字数：70371字

摘 要

Introduction 1

Chapter One Female Aphasia in the Real Order 6

1.1 Obedient Western Women and Phallus Centrism 6

1.2 Chinese Women as Victims of Male Superiority 9

Chapter Two Female Disillusionment in the Imaginary Order 14

2.1 Desolation of Western Women after World War One 14

2.2 Narcissistic Chinese Women after the May Fourth Movement 17

Chapter Three Female Self-Realization in the Symbolic Order 21

3.1 Marginalized Women Breaking Through Identity Crisis 21

3.2 New Chinese Women in a Multicultural Context 24

Conclusion 28

Works Cited 30

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Zhu Litian, for her warm-hearted encouragement and valuable advice, especially for her insightful comments and suggestions on the draft of this paper. Without her help and guidance, I could not have completed this paper.

My sincere thanks also go to all the English teachers at the School of Foreign Languages in Southeast University. They have unfolded the charm of English to me, and provided me with fundamental and essential academic competence.

Last but not least, I am deeply indebted to my family members and friends for their affection and inspiration. They are always giving spiritual support to me.

Abstract

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is a contemporary novelist in English literature, the majority of whose works are categorized as psycho-analytical novels. Ling Shu-hua (1900-1990) is a main representative of “New Lady” writing genre during the 1930s. Famous for her stories themed by female life and mentality, she is dubbed “Chinese Katherine Mansfield” by well-known Chinese scholars of her time.

Striking similarities in the characters, themes, writing styles and techniques can be found in the short stories of Mansfield and Ling. Both writers accomplish their stories in a time of unprecedented changes, when new ideas clash with old values. Female characters in their stories, voluntarily and involuntarily, hover between the long-held social mores and the newly-emerged trend of freedom and ingenuity. Traditionally confined women struggle painfully during the process of their mental growth, before finally forming their self-identity and female consciousness. This process roughly corresponds to Jacques Lacan’s three orders of human psyche: the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

This thesis attempts to analyze the three phases of women’s psychological development and explore the underlying context and driving forces. Chapter One examines female aphasia in the Real Order by comparing western and Chinese women, who respectively fall victims to Phallus Centrism and male superiority. Chapter Two focuses on female disillusionment in the Imaginary Order and discusses the influences of World War One on western women and May Fourth Movement on Chinese women. Chapter Three deals with female self-realization in the Symbolic Order with regard to both writers’ own life experiences and mentality. It can be concluded that both writers exploit their own feelings so as to create a delicate female world in their stories, which unfold their similar styles and unique perspectives towards female problems. Most importantly, their writings lead to further reflection on women’s role and identity and their possible way out.

Key words: Katherine Mansfield, Ling Shu-hua, female consciousness, Jacques Lacan

摘要

凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德(1888-1923)是二十世纪英国作家，擅长创作心理写实小说。凌叔华（1900-1990）是中国现代女作家，为“新闺秀派”主要代表人物。凌叔华因创作以女性生活与心理为主题的短篇小说而得名，被同时期的中国学者称为“中国的曼斯菲尔德”。

无论在人物设置、主题表达还是写作风格和技巧上，两位作家的短篇小说都有惊人的相似之处。曼斯菲尔德和凌叔华的作品分别被置于不同的时代背景下，但相同的是，她们都经历了社会环境的巨变。在这个变化的环境中，新旧思想观念激烈碰撞。她们笔下的人物，尤其是女性角色，常常徘徊于社会固有道德观念和自由开放新趋势的边缘。这些被压抑的传统女性在心理成长的过程中苦苦挣扎，终于获得了自我身份认同，具备了现代女性意识。这个过程与法国心理学家拉康关于精神分析的三界理论大致对应，三界包括：实在界、想象界、象征界，分别对应女性意识丧失、萌芽和完备三个阶段。

本文将分别分析两位作家作品中女主人公心理成长的三个阶段，并探讨各个阶段驱使女性发展自我意识的动因和社会环境。第一章着眼于实在界中女性的失语处境，并比较菲乐斯中心主义和男尊女卑思想对西方和中国妇女的毒害。第二章进一步探讨想象界中女性理想的幻灭，并与作品中的相关时代背景相结合，阐释第一次世界大战和五四新文化运动对西方和中国女性分别的影响。第三章从两位作家异中有同的生活经历和心理状态入手，挖掘其作品中女性进入象征界、勇于追求并实现自我突破的个人动因。通过以上分析大概可以得出这样的结论：两位作家的作品风格温婉细致；她们以丰富的内心情感创造了清雅隽永的女性世界，同时以独到的视角关注女性问题，对当时女性的角色和身份进行深刻思考，也为这些问题的解决提供了可行的出路。

关键词：凯瑟领·曼斯菲尔德；凌叔华；女性意识；拉康

Introduction

Born in New Zealand, Katherine Mansfield is a prominent English writer in the twentieth century, best known for her story collections Bliss (1920) and The Garden Party (1922). In her literary works, she employs modernist writing techniques including psychological description, plotless story, symbols as well as some impressionistic elements. Mansfield helps shape short fiction as a modern literary genre that grows to gain popularity in England and the world.

Mansfield’s feminist views, as reflected from the language and style of her works, earn her the reputation of “feminist pioneer” and her short stories are often associated with the development of feminism in England in the twentieth century. As an avid observer of women’s psyche, she is adept at portraying female characters with their unique female experience. The varied images of her female characters indicate her in-depth exploration of women’s inner feelings and the development of her own feminist ideas.

Overseas scholars have conducted systematic studies on Katherine Mansfield and her literary works. Early studies are macroscopical ones focused on Mansfield’s biography, her stylistic features and literary influences. During the 1960s and 1980s, new criticism and detailed analysis of her specific fictions become the mainstream. From the 1980s and onward, scholars delve into Mansfield’s works in light of psychoanalytical criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism and postcolonial criticism. Also, a “radical Mansfield” has been uncovered due to her focus on forbidden topics such as “child abuse and neglect, prostitution and procuration, murder within marriage, wife beating, sexual deviation and child sexuality”(Dunbar ix). In contrast, in China, studies on Mansfield did not commence until the 1980s, and most of them are explorations about the themes, characters and writing techniques or general introduction of Mansfield. During the recent years, more studies have been carried out, including Jiang Hong’s research on the contradicting identities represented by Katherine Mansfield, Xu Han’s analysis of the modernistic features of Mansfield’s literary works, Gao Ke’s exploration of the symbolic images in Mansfield’s short stories.

Ling Shu-hua is a Chinese modernist writer and painter who enters the Chinese literature world after the May Fourth New Cultural Movement commencing in 1919. Born into a noble family, Ling received decent education that paved the way for her later literary creation. Ling is among the representatives of the “New Lady Genre” (Chen 44) as a newly-emerged literature genre in the 1920s in China, playing an active role in experimenting with modernist writing techniques and introducing western literary works to China. Mansfield’s fictions, among all, are cited as a great influence on Ling’s work and she is dubbed “Chinese Katherine Mansfield” (Su 223) by many famous Chinese writers including Xu Zhimo, Shen Congwen and Zhu Guangqian because she too, is adept in the realistic approach of writing and exploration of female thoughts.

The past two decades have seen only a few English studies on Ling Shu-hua. Rey Chow’s 1988 essay “Virtuous Transactions: A Reading of Three Stories by Ling Shuhua” provides readers and researchers with a new way of studying modern Chinese women writers and their writing. Janet Ng’s “Writing in Her Father’s World: The Feminine Autobiographical Strategies of Ling Shuhua” (1993) is focused on Ling’s autobiography, Ancient Melody. Apart from that, Shu-mei Shih includes half of a chapter about Ling in her 2001 monograph The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937. The majority of the studies on Ling Shu-hua are domestic ones. With the introduction of feminist and postcolonial criticism, rapid progress has been made in the studies on Ling regarding her literary style, artistic features and writing skills. A considerable number of studies are about female characters in her creation. These include Li Qizhi’s 1991 essay on the female world created by Ling, and Yu Wenbo and Chen Zhuo’s 2006 essay exploring Ling’s feministic stand shown in her works portraying female characters.

Due to the similarity of the characters, writing styles and themes in their literary works, many scholars have attached great importance to comparative studies of the short stories of Katherine Mansfield and Ling Shu-hua. These studies compare the two authors regarding their feminist views, tragic keynote and characterization by focusing on their stories, including Yang Chunhong’s 2006 essay on the comparison between Mansfield’s Bliss and Ling’s Flower Temple. However, Yang Hui talks about more general aspects where the two authors share in common in creating female characters in her 2006 essay, “Speaking Women from Noble and Wealthy Families----A Comparative Study of the Novels by Ling Shu-hua and Mansfield”.

During the recent years, psychoanalytical criticism emerges as a new form of literary criticism under the influence of Sigmund Freud. It involves the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature, which has also been used to explore the works of Katherine Mansfield and Ling Shu-hua. Examining the articulation of the most private female anxieties as well as meanings to culture, it introduces a new way to probe into the marginalized identity of women in the works of the two female writers. Thus, it is significant to discuss the similarities and differences of the female characters in the works of Mansfield and Ling Shu-hua from the perspective of psychoanalytical criticism.

This thesis attempts to analyze women’s mental growth and the development of their female consciousness in both authors’ stories from Lacan’s theory. From the perspective of structuralism, Lacan put forward three concepts, need, demand and desire, and the corresponding orders of human psyche: the Real (birth to 6 months), the Imaginary (6 to 18 months) and the Symbolic, from which babies grow into adults. To be more specific, the Real is the state of nature, in which there is nothing but needs and the satisfaction of needs. For a baby, it is a time of completeness with no separation between itself and the world of others, and it is subsequently lost through the entrance into language. The Imaginary is closely tied to Lacan's theory of mirror stage, in which human subject creates fantasy images of both himself and his ideal object of demand. The Symbolic is marked by one’s acceptance of language laws which control both his or her desire and the rules of communication. In this order, the baby becomes a speaking subject and grow up to be an adult member of the society. These three phases roughly match the process of women growing from staying silent and not realizing their underprivileged state at all, to being cruelly disillusioned and detached from their ideal self, before finally breaking through identity crisis and pursuing their life goals. Despite their increasingly developed female consciousness, women in these three orders facing the same indictment in the context of an unfavorable social environment. However, their self-realization is the first step away from women’s tragic fate.

Chapter One compares the heroines in Mansfield’s story “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” and Ling’s work “The Fate of Women is Too Cruel”, analyzing the main causes of their staying silent in the Real. For Chinese women at that time, their aphasia is attributed to the influence of male superiority which remains one of the most distinct features in traditional Chinese society. However, as for their obedient Western counterparts, the tragedy is caused by the underlying effect of Phallus Centrism. Both kinds have not yet developed any female consciousness because they are unaware of their aphasic situation and are not willing to make any change.

Chapter Two focuses on the comparison between the two female characters in “Pictures” by Mansfield and “Drinking Tea” by Ling. In these two stories, new social environments trigger some degree of self-consciousness in the heroines, and they feel the emerging demand for their lack and seek self expression. They gaze at themselves and start to have wonders about their image in the mirror. It is the confusion about the concept of self that marks them entering the Imaginary Order. However, due to incomplete understanding of SELF, their fantasies are soon disillusioned and they suffer from even more confusion.

Chapter Three discusses the protagonists of Mansfield’s “Revelations” and Ling’s “Qi Xia”. The characters’ intense desire to be the center of their own life and break away from the restrictions and boundaries marks their entrance into the Symbolic Order. This desire, to a large extent, derives from the author’s own life experiences and marginalized identities. Mansfield’s identity as a stranger with colonial anxiety, an outsider in a foreign country and an adult with childhood trauma and Ling’s struggle and her hovering between the old and new culture in a multicultural environment catalyze them to create images of courageous and hopeful new women in spite of their own helplessness and uncertainty.

To conclude, although Mansfield and Ling created short stories against different cultural background in England and China, their personal experiences by no means similar, the female characters they portrayed all undergo psychological growth and develop their female consciousness. Mirror, as a frequently appeared image, also witnesses the mental growth of women in a new era.

Chapter One Female Aphasia in the Real Order

The Real order is the period from the birth of an infant till at least six months old before it enters the Imaginary order. According to Lacan, at the very beginning of life the infant is something that is inseparable from its mother and this blob cannot make any distinction between itself and other. As a result, the infant is completely unaware of its body as a “unified whole” (Lacan 286). In fact, it is driven solely by need – the need for food, security, coziness as well as clothing and washing. Whenever the need appears, there comes an object to satisfy the need and the infant can sense only the presence of need and the objects to meet its need, which produces a state of nature, the Real. In the Real, “there is no language because there is no loss, lack, or absence; there is only complete fullness, only needs and the satisfaction of needs” (Klages).

In the patriarchal world men are usually the absolute dictator and the subject of society. Women are the silent object without a say. Beauvoir uses the term “second sex” to describe women because she claimed that they are an oppressed and marginalized group dominated in every aspect of society (Beauvoir 673). The protagonists in “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” by Katherine Mansfield and “The Fate of Women is Too Cruel” by Ling Shu-hua are both silent victims of patriarchal society and they stay in the Real, being satisfied of themselves, just like an infant.

1.1 Obedient Western Women and Phallus Centrism

“The Daughters of the Late Colonel” is a 1922 short story by Katherine Mansfield, included in The Garden Party and Other Stories. It tells the story of two spinsters, Constantia and Josephine, especially their mental status after they lose their father.

The story happens at the time of the death of Colonel Pinner. It has only been a week since he passed away and the sisters are preoccupied with his posthumous affairs. No background information given about the two heroines, the story begins with the sisters’ discussion about giving their late father's top hat to the porter. However, their bizarre behavior confuses the readers:

The giggle mounted, mounted; she clenched her hands; she fought it down; she frowned fiercely at the dark and said “Remember” terribly sternly (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 211).

Josephine acts like a child struggling to control the laughter but fails to do so; the childish gestures trigger assumption of her actual age. From the very beginning of the story, the description conveys a sense of ridiculousness, in regard to the sisters’ neurotic characteristics together with their slightly morbid psychology.

As the story unfolds, it can be gathered from some fragments that Con and Jug, as they call each other, are two middle-aged sisters who are still unmarried. As a matter of fact, ever since they lost their mother in childhood, they have lived with their authoritative and bullying father, who used to be a colonel. The early death of their mother urges them to take over all the household chores and act as full-time servants of their father. During the long-term care they take of their father, the sisters give up their freedom as well as their pursuits of life. However pathetic it may sound to live like this, the two sisters fail to manage a life without their indifferent father.

As a tragedy of two incompetent, aimless and submissive spinsters, this story aims directly at exposing the profound influence of phallus centrism that has long existed throughout generations in the western culture.

The term, Phallus centrism, also known as phallogocentrism, has its origin in the Bible. In Genesis, God creates man in his own image and took one of the ribs from Adam, with which he made the first woman. From then on, women have been viewed as a part of men. “This is now bones of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Bible, Genesis 2: 23).Women are thus inevitably attached to men and the western civilization (from the Hebrew Bible and Greek philosophy to the present) has long been male-centered. It is conducted and organized in a way to subordinate women to men in all cultural and social domains and women gradually lose their female subjectivity in such a context.

Phallogocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning. This idea is formed under the influence of Sigmund Freud, who relates Phallus centrism with the psychosexual stage when libidinal drives of young children focus on genitalia (Yin 101). In this stage, women’s lack of male organ makes them inferior to men. In fact, this largely results from the aftermath of the castration complex in the masculine unconscious and of Penisneid (penis envy) in woman's unconscious (Lacan 686). However, this idea is later criticized by feminists.

In “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”, phallus centrism is the underlying cause of Constantia and Josephine’s staying in the Real and their mute tragedy, which is shown in two aspects: fear for their father and unwillingness to make changes.

On the one hand, although not explicitly expressed, the extent of the sisters’ fear for their father can be felt through their actions and words. As a matter of fact, “what would they say” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 216) to their father is a keynote of their lives, implying that nothing can possibly be correct unless it is approved by their father. In the face of their father, the sisters are completely unable to voice their own idea. The colonel, an old manipulator, has instilled such a sense of guilt into them that they panic when they realize they have buried him without his permission. On top of this, they do not even try to shake off this absurd idea. Instead, they are burdened with the fear that “father will never forgive them for this—never!” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 217)

On the other hand, the sisters are so used to their old lifestyle that they are reluctant to make any change—or to be more precise, they are incompetent in making plans or decisions. As the house owner, they do nothing in defense of themselves as a respond to Kate, their servant’s rudeness and irresponsibility. They have made up their mind for many times that they will dismiss her,—“And this time, we must come to a definite decision” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 225).—however, each attempt ends in vain without exception. They will never make an actual change, in that their every single decision is postponed. “We can decide tomorrow” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 211).

However unpleasant their lives may have been, they seem lost without their father: “their life experiences have been extremely limited, their lives quite sheltered, and their actions censored by him”. (Kaščáková 96) Such “protection” is the reason for their incomplete personality and under-developed mentality, making them act like infants still staying in the Real with no self-consciousness and leaving them unable to live independently after his death. In their minds, the word “father” represents their supreme interests and their father’s sense of satisfaction is what they are solely after. What is more, their best comforts are always accompanied by father’s recognition and dependence on them. Driven by this unconsciousness of themselves, they are deprived of their voice in their own lives, ending up the silent victims of their father’s tyranny.

In the end of the story, the sisters finally seem to realize that something is wrong and are about to step forward for some changes. They talk about their future, but cannot remember what they wanted to say. Once again, they are lost in silence.

1.2 Chinese Women as Victims of Male Superiority

“The Fate of Women is Too Cruel” is the first vernacular short story by Ling Shu-hua, published in the literary supplement of Chenbao in 1924. This story, as suggested by its title, is about the tragic fate of boudoir women from a decent family.

It begins on the morning of a fine day in March, the best time in the year to fully appreciate the charm of spring and also a perfect time for marriage. Then, it unfolds with a conversation between Wan Lan, a traditional Chinese lady with a fondness for classical verse and ancient melodies, and her more modern female cousin, whose name is not given. Trying to persuade her cousin to take the matter of arranged marriage seriously, Wan Lan shows her cousin the photo of a promising young man, who is the eldest son of a well-respected family, and said to her:

“Auntie told me to try to persuade you, don’t always have your mind set on talking about equality and freedom. Freedom and equality are things that are not only irrelevant to women; even the young masters cannot talk about such things… You said that auntie is curtailing your freedom, selling you off in marriage, and making you lose face. Oh! My cousin… There are no parents who don’t care for their children, they are even more careful than you are with regard to your future” (Ling 105-106).

In this conversation, Wan Lan is talking her cousin into the idea of arranged marriage and warning her against the new-style social engagement between men and women, including dancing at parties, drinking at teahouses and going to the theatre. Apparently, she is an old-fashioned boudoir woman and by all means a defender of traditional values. Even her name Wan Lan suggests her decency and appropriateness—the character “Wan” means graceful in Chinese and “lan” is the flower orchid symbolizing elegance and gentility. As a conservative woman who is brought up in a decent traditional family and who has received conventional education, she has been taught to be quiet and mild. Undoubtedly, Wan Lan regards the public intermingling of sexes as socially unacceptable for “proper” women like her and her cousin.

In contrast, her cousin is among the prototypes of the “new women” and one of those who dare to speak. She is deeply suspicious of the merits of old-style arranged marriage and elaborates on its negative aspects to Wan Lan. She reveals that Wan Lan’s fiancé, the third son of the Li’s, has apparently had an affair with one of the household maids, who is already four months pregnant with his child. Despite her devastation upon this revelation, Wan Lan is nevertheless unable to speak out her dissatisfaction, let alone break away from the engagement.

Then, it is not surprising that Wan Lan sticks to her unfaithful husband and suffers inevitably ever since their marriage, in which she becomes even more silent bearing the humiliation and unfairness. In order to earn the recognition of being a good wife, she persuades her husband to marry the pregnant maid as his concubine and even collects the love tokens which her husband, the boulevardier, receives when he enjoys himself in the brothel. Despite her selfless efforts, her mother-in-law blames it all on Wan Lan, instead of her own unsavory son, who should be responsible for his behavior in the first place. She, out of both the mother’s biased love for her own flesh and traditional values of male superiority, complaints about Wan Lan’s incapability in seeing to her husband. Her constant gossip and slander put Wan Lan in long-term sufferings—she “barely passes a day without crying for several times” (Ling 110).

Examining the root cause of Wan Lan’s marital tragedy, the negative effect of traditional values, especially the idea of male superiority in the patriarchal society, is top on the list.

Boudoir women is a unique group in the female world that Ling Shu-hua creates, which is deeply influenced and dominated by the Patriarchal Clan System in Confucianism culture (Chen 23). Historically, the increasing importance of men’s role in production and war catalyzed the gradual transition from the traditionally matriarchal society to the patriarchal one. In the spring and autumn period, the Confucianist rituals set rigid restrictions on the words and behavior of women as subordination to men. In fact, Confucianism has firmly taken its root in the traditional patriarchal society upon its presence. Doubtlessly, Confucianism, the core of which is male supremacy, works in favor of husbands and fathers in a male-dominant society. Women brought up in this culture have always been oppressed and belittled; the feudal moral principles and rules have broken their wings and trapped them in their boudoirs. Large volumes of Confucianism classics make them insensitive and numb, so they become content and submissive. Compared to underprivileged women or those from distant rural areas with limited means, ladies from noble families tend to suffer even more from the negative impact of this inhumane tradition.

Wan Lan is among the typical boudoir women portrayed by Ling Shu-hua, who is from a respectable family, the members of which lay extra emphasis on feudal patriarchal traditions. However, her elegance and talent never ensure her a bright future as her family had expected; they only serve as an asset for her marriage, which leads to an even sadder life. Her tragedy is a result of the oppressive society as well her own personality.

Being complaisant, meek, polite and obedient, Wan Lan possesses the makings of an eastern fair lady. However, she, as well as the majority of boudoir women, suffers from her frailty and inability to make herself heard. Despite the unhappiness and torment she feels in her marriage, she actually depends on this marriage to endow her with a meaning, which all women must live up to in her age. In this sense, she is more or less satisfied—at least she can hide all her pains and appears to be a happy married housewife who is considered decent and virtuous. She is an excellent wife and mother, so she is unwilling to make changes to her current marriage. Therefore, she stays mute and takes bad things without even complaining to anyone in the duration of a whole year. Finally, she can no longer bear it and pours it all out to the third concubine of his father on a day when all the others have gone out.

“Humans are the spirit of all things—are women not humans? Why am I willing to allow myself to be compared to fallen flowers and drifting pollen?” (Ling 113)

Here, instead of a feminist message of her final empowerment, it is more of a pathetic predicament in which Wan Lan finds herself: Despite the awakening female consciousness and doubts of the inferiority as a woman, she is still prevented by traditional values from making different choices; and apart from sharing it with the weak ones like herself, she refuses to be strong and speak out by confronting directly the crux of her tragedy.

Foucault argues that discourse in itself is the track on which power and authority operate. Without the producing, accumulating, circulating and functioning of discourse, power relations cannot be established in the first place and can neither be consolidated (qtd. in Yan 228). The powerless are doomed to be aphasic. In the two stories, the protagonists suffer from the same failure of the construction of female discourse and speech. “Speech confers a meaning on the functions of the individual” (Lacan 214). The status of women’s being mute in this situation prevents them from realizing their female power and finally leads to their tragic fate in the Real.

By creating aphasic female characters, both Katherine Mansfield and Ling Shu-hua direct their target at exposing the harms of patriarchal society on traditional women. They employ various writing techniques to shape their aphasic syndrome: Mansfield uses symbolic images in the story like the father’s stick, and depicts the sisters’ anxiety by broken syntax, dashes, repetitions and ellipses, and Ling makes a contrast of Wan Lan’s submission to patriarchal representatives including her husband and mother-in-law and her honesty with victims of her own kind.

Another similarity is that both Mansfield and Ling allow the opportunity of self-realization for their characters in the stories. Nevertheless, they at last refuse to make changes and choose to remain the same. “Woman enjoys that incomparable privilege: irresponsibility” (Beauvoir 793). In fact, women rely on men for shelter, sustenance, opinions, conversation topics—in short, for a reason to live. Their psychological needs are satisfied—Constantia and Josephina maintain their identity as “the daughters of the colonel” throughout their whole life, and Wan Lan continues to be the obedient wife and daughter-in-law in her family.

Chapter Two Female Disillusionment

in the Imaginary Order

The Real is featured by a primitive sense of ignorance and disorder, in which people experience a chaotic state of mind outside their own thoughts and language. It is beyond the power of speech. Once it can be pictured and expressed, the subject enters the Imaginary.

According to Lacan, the Imaginary is the phase of demand. It is created and maintained by connecting the alienated relation of self and its own image. In his Mirror Stage Theory, Lacan points out that an infant of six to eighteen months develop its primal consciousness of itself when it looks at itself in the mirror. From this act, the idea of “other” is created and the infant can perceive itself as a whole-being separate from the mother. “It is also the register of rivalry, deception, and ego defenses” (Stroud 204). However, the infant fails to distinguish the image from its actual body because it still does not have a coherent sense of “self”. Based on visual perception, the Imaginary is prelinguistic, in the sense that there exist absence and loss in this stage, which results in a demand to be expressed.

In Mansfield’s “Pictures” and Ling’s “Drinking Tea”, different demands drive women to gaze themselves in front of the mirror, either consciously or unconsciously. The confusion about the concept of self marks them entering the Imaginary order. However, their self-consciousness is largely based on false perceptions, which finally leads to the disillusionment of their fantasies.

2.1 Desolation of Western Women after World War One

“Pictures” is a short story written by Mansfield in 1919, one year after the First World War ended. It tells the story of a mournful jobless woman who finally becomes a prostitute under the impact of the Great War.

In this story, Miss Moss is one of the post-war unemployed, who struggle to “have a good hot dinner in the evenings” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 92). Like many of her compatriots, she wanders about in the city in the hope of landing a job that will provide her with a warm shelter and “a sensible substantial breakfast” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 92). However, each time when she hopefully goes out in the morning, she comes back disappointed, and feeds herself on fancies of “a pageant of Good Hot Dinners” passing across the ceiling.

As a writer who lived through the span of the war, Mansfield herself was deeply influenced by the war and illness. She wrote in her diary, “I think if I don’t work here, I will go mad because of the war and anxiety” (Mansfield, “Letters” 98). In dealing with the theme of war in her stories, Mansfield uses a more implicit and mild approach. Throughout the whole story, there seems no indication of war—the readers cannot spot direct conversations about it or descriptions about soldiers, officials or bayonets. However, traces of the influence of the war permeate in the whole passage and readers can clearly feel the post-war sufferings of people though not directly pointed out. In the very beginning of “Pictures”, the landlady’s pressing Miss Moss for rent tells the truth about the underprivileged situation of common citizens after the war.

“Why should I, Miss Moss, I ask you, at the time like this, with prices flying up in the air and my poor dear lad in France? My sister Eliza was only saying to me yesterday —‘Minnie,’ she says, ‘you’re too soft-hearted. You could have let that room time and time again,’ says she, ‘and if people won’t look after themselves in times like these, nobody else will,’ she says” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 93).

In the above paragraph, “at the time like this” and “in times like these” have certain implications, and they refer to the time after World War One.

Despite its undesirable influences on people, the Great War serves not only as a catalyzer that urges women step out of their family to make a living, though the job they finally get may not be as decent as they had imagined, but also as an opportunity for women to first look into themselves and develop their self-awareness. In “Pictures”, Miss Moss is one of those post-war women who first form a rough idea of themselves and recognize their own underprivileged position in the society. This recognition is closely related to the image of herself as reflected in the mirror.

For several times, Miss Moss has taken notice of her image in the mirror. The first time is after her dispute with the landlady. The woman in the glass “gave a vague smile and shook her head” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 94). Then she “made an ugly face” at Miss Moss, and this is followed by another face before she goes out for job hunting. Then she says to herself,

“You silly thing,” scolded Miss Moss. “Now what’s the good of crying: You’ll only make your nose red. No, you get dressed and go out and try your luck – that’s what you’ve got to do” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 94).

In the story, Miss Moss speaks to herself for a couple of times like this as an encouragement and this kind of women’s self-conversation, which is a crucial part of female consciousness, is a symbol of her entering the Imaginary Order. Under this particular circumstance, the facial expressions of Miss Moss in the glass are reflections of her thoughts and feelings and the indication of her helplessness and frustration. However, she manages to overcome these negative emotions by inspiring self-talk, after which she goes on searching for a job:

At the North-east Film Company the crowd was all the way up the stairs. Miss Moss found herself next to a fair little baby thing about thirty in a white lace hat with cherries round it.

“What a crowd!” said she. “Anything special on?”

“Didn’t you know, dear?” said the baby, opening her immense pale eyes. “There was a call at nine-thirty for all attractive girls. We’ve all been waiting for hours. Have you played for this company before?”

…

“Well, I’m not an actress by profession,” confessed Miss Moss. “I’m a contralto singer. But things have been so bad lately that I’ve been doing a little” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 97).

The conversation between Miss Moss and the baby shows their difficult situation, especially for Miss Moss, an artist who has received professional training in a music academy, now has to compete with so many job applicants for a possible position in an acting company. She is not favored by chances in such a time when real artists can not realize their full potential, their top priority being providing themselves with sufficient means. As much as she wishes to make a living on her talent in the field of music, her dream is doomed to be disillusioned in such a hard time. The huge gap between her expectation of herself and the reality overwhelms her and almost makes her fall apart.

Miss Moss then takes a walk in the park, and this is when she sees herself in the mirror for another time. “The person in the pocket mirror made a hideous face at her, and that was too much for Miss Moss” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 98). She has a good cry—the person in the mirror is no other woman than Miss Moss herself, the wretched and pathetic women without a family or a job. After this, she decides again to pull herself together and engage in the battle against her miserable life. Except for this time, her illusions of being valued by some gentleman are dashed like usual and she finally embarked on the one-way track of selling her body so as to feed herself.

The story of Miss Moss is a microcosm of post-war society in which people suffer from poverty and hunger as well as loss of hope. The changing social environment drives them out to make a living and they are forced to reevaluate themselves in this new context. Despite their rough female consciousness which calls upon female independence and courage, undue self-judgment and self-deception lead to their disillusion and their final tragedy.

2.2 Narcissistic Chinese Women after the May Fourth Movement

“Drinking Tea” is included in Ling Shu-hua’s short story collection Temple of Flowers published in 1928, telling the story of the heroine’s disillusionment of her fantasy of a romantic relationship.

In the story, Fang Ying the protagonist, another Chinese boudoir woman, seldom comes in contact with young men, to such an extent that she feels embarrassed even when being around her cousins. However, in the new age, her traditional values are shaken by the emerging trend of men and women having social activities together and becoming friends. At such an outing, she becomes acquainted with Wang Bin, the brother of her friend Shu Zhen, and thus attracted by his solicitous gestures:

“Shu Zhen’s brother whom I met last night is so good-looking and elegant in style. He very attractively spoke to me…He poured tea for me, got me the playbill, picked up the handkerchief I dropped. Before we left the theatre, he even helped me with my coat. Oh, so solicitous…When we left the theatre, after he helped me into the car; he even took off his hat and stared intently at me for a little bit…” (Ling 142)

Wang Bin is a decent young man who has just returned from a western country. Having received Western education and steeped in western etiquettes, Wang Bin acts like a real gentleman during their first outing. For someone who has never been treated like this, Fang Ying shows signs of Xiangsi bing, the typical symptom that a woman suffers from pining for her lover. She becomes listless and distracted all day, looking back on the details of the night of their outing:

“He paid special attention when he translated the line ‘love conquers everything, love never dies,’—words that the young man in the film spoke to his lover when they parted. He was afraid that I might not understand this and explained to me: the western idea of love does not equal to that in China; affection may well be more proper. When he said this my face turn red immediately…Fortunately the cinema was so dark and no one noticed this” (Ling 142).

Fang Ying has never talked about love or affection in public, so the experience of hearing about these words directly from a young man makes her excited yet blushing. Ever since that night, Fang Ying has been drowned in fantasy about her relationship with Wang Bin. She withdraws from those around her, constantly gazes herself in the mirror and recites love poetry to herself. Sitting in front of the mirror and appreciating her emaciated appearance, she feels pitiful for herself and becomes sentimental.

As might be expected, her hopes are dashed upon receiving the invitation to Wang Bin’s wedding ceremony and Shu Zhen’s asking her to be the bridesmaid makes it even worse. Fang Ying, completely disillusioned, awaken from her misplaced affections when Shu Zhen talks about the Huang family, who sends someone hinting that Wang Bin should propose just because of his solicitous gestures towards their crippled second daughter. Shu Zhen asks Fang Ying if she finds the Huang family ridiculous for mistaking his brother’s courteous behavior for his affection for the girl. Actually, it is just a Western custom for men to assist women. Noticing only the fallen flowers and setting sun, Fang Ying gives a bitter smile and then murmurs, “Foreign…customs…” (Ling 147)

As a matter of fact, the story is written in the context of the New Culture Movement, or the May Fourth Movement in a broader sense. It is a turning point in the development of China, especially in terms of social culture and values, and it is often referred to as the Chinese Renaissance because there was an intense focus on science and experimentation rather than superstition and tradition.

Meng Yue pointed out, China, after the May Fourth Movement, witnessed a period overthrowing the feudal moral order. It marked in real sense the birth of the concept of “female” in China. During that period, people started to develop their consciousness of equality between men and women, and this was the very beginning of “the revolt against patriarchal society” (Meng 27). What is more, the overwhelming wave of democracy leads to the popular social trend of new-style marriage, which is based on mutual affections between young men and women. This trend has affected boudoir women without a doubt; however, they are not fully equipped with modern visions that help them form correct understanding or act accordingly.

Ignorance of the outside world leads to Fang Ying’s disillusionment. Disappointment and remorse almost cause fainting, and she “could not help shedding tears” (Ling 146). Her natural feelings by instinct out of the yearning for youthfulness fail to bring her the expected sweet love. On the contrary, she suffers from irreparable mental wound due to the absurd misunderstanding. Even her name Fang Ying, meaning pretty countenance or beautifully—fantasized image, becomes a joke and an irony.

The sorrow of such sentimental and timid young girls is highly pitiful. Admittedly, they send out sheer scent of traditional women. As traditional women bounded by conservative values, they are all passive in interpersonal relationships, waiting solely to be pursued by men. Although the enlightening new environment has provided them with a shred of female consciousness in the curiosity they show about their times as well as themselves, they are nevertheless fragile in their competency to be the master of their own fate. Instead, they can only survive in their fantasies. In turn, their ignorance as well as conservativeness brings about further confusion about this changing time and fear to be left out by it. These female characters in Ling Shu-hua’s story seem to convey a message to the readers that, women must make a breakaway from the restrictions of feudal mores, embrace the new values and equip themselves with updated minds so as to achieve happiness as an independent thinking individual.

Unlike in the Real when all needs are satisfied, women in the Imaginary order shift form having needs to having demands, which are not satisfiable with objects; rather, they are for recognition and love. In the two stories, new social environment drives women to step out from their private room and put an end to their sole role as “the angel in the house [the perfect wife]” who is “intensely sympathetic, immensely charming, utterly unselfish and above all, pure”, and who “excels in the difficult arts of family life” (Woolf 285). They look into themselves with curiosity for the first time—that is when there comes the awareness of separation, or the fact of otherness, which causes anxiety and a sense of loss. They begin to realize that there are things that they demand for themselves which can not be satisfied if stay unchanged. Therefore, they demand for fullness and completeness that will make up for the loss, so as to make themselves a functioning cultural being.

Similarly, both stories are set in a changing era in which women undergo the psychological change as a first step of developing their female consciousness. Katherine and Ling alike fully explore the weakness and frailty of conservative women in a new social environment. Ignorance of the outside world and false knowledge about themselves put these women in an awkward situation. In “Pictures”, Miss Moss’s continuous self-degrading and her sense of inferiority drive her astray, while Fang Ying in “Drinking Tea” is so narcissistic and drowned in fantasy that later becomes her worst nightmare. Eager to fill in their demand, they both ask for recognition from women in the mirror, which is their own image, and take this image as “the other” which will reflect their true selves and respond to their doubt.

By portraying these female characters with their clear imperfections, both authors strive to tell the readers that vague self-consciousness and false perception are far from truly setting women free. Only by taking the strong initiative with a thorough and proper understanding of themselves can women shake off their old selves, live for themselves as an independent subject, and share with their male counterparts the splendidness and excitement of the world.

Chapter Three Female Self-Realization

in the Symbolic Order

Having acquired the prerequisite and formed the concept of otherness in the Imaginary, the subjects express themselves by speaking out, thus entering the Symbolic order characterized by speech. Lacan argues that the concepts of “Law” and “Structure” are unthinkable without language – thus the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension (Lacan 414).

While the “little other” illustrates for the infant the idea of lack and loss in the Imaginary, the Other (capital O) serves as a structural position in the Symbolic. It is the center of the system, to which everything relates. The Other, in this sense, creates an ever-lasting lack, which is desire, the desire to be the Other. However, accompanied by this desire is full realization of themselves, which in many cases can lead to disappointment, loneliness and desperation rather than mere confusion.

No longer satisfied with their current life, the heroines of “Revelations” by Katherine Mansfield and “Qi Xia” by Lin Shu-hua grow into the Symbolic order, the psychological period of the adulthood in which they should have entered. Their craving for freedom in both cases drives them to full self-realization and further action to be the Other. These women become the “new women” at their times, courageously pursuing their life goals regardless of others’ opinion and breaking away from the fixed restrictions and boundaries.

3.1 Marginalized Women Breaking Through Identity Crisis

In “Revelations”, Monica is a 33-year-old housewife in a seemingly happy family. With her husband providing all she needed for her material life, she doesn’t have to worry about going out and making a living like Miss Moss in “Pictures”. However, Monica still suffers from her nerves, and “suffers so terribly that these hours were agonizing”. (Mansfield, collected stories, 151) She is on the brink of a mental breakdown.

In Katherine Mansfield: A Critical Study, “Revelations” is referred to as a ruthless study on neurotic ladies, painting a jittery and irritable woman in her married life (Berkman 121). However, Monica’s misfortune is not only a result of her paranoid and hot-tempered personality but also to a large extent an inevitable outcome of her marriage: her husband does not care for her except for “the way her lip lifts” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 152)—he claims to adore her very much but probably only marries her for her charming Arabian smile and has been treating her like his toy ever since their marriage. As a result, Monica feels insignificant in the face of her husband, and asks him to take her seriously.

In the story, Monica’s anxiety and uneasiness aggravate because of the windy weather—her mind goes wild like “the tearing, rocking wind” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 153) blowing outside. She desires to be free just like the wind of that day. Sitting down before the mirror, she suddenly gets her revelation:

As she stared at herself in the blueish shadowy glass she suddenly felt—oh, the strangest, most tremendous excitement filling her slowly, slowly, until she wanted to fling out her arms, to laugh, to scatter everything, to shock Marie, to cry: “I’m free. I’m free. I’m free as the wind” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 153).

Long repressed, Monica finally makes her call for freedom, getting strength from the wind, which is an indication of her anxiety as well as the driving force of her stepping outside the house that is caging her. She is more relieved than in any time of her life—“now all this vibrating, trembling, exciting, flying world is hers” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 153) and she feels like the master in her kingdom. By making this declaration of freedom, she separates herself from the patriarchal mores and restrictions and is no longer a toy of her husband. Gaining this full self-consciousness and psychological independence, she now belongs to nobody but life. Her new self desires to be out—“she must be driving quickly—anywhere, anywhere.” (Mansfield, “Collected Stories” 153) Monica’s revelation is one of a bitter truth under a surface happiness.

This nearly crazy behavior gets its origin and evidence from the author herself. As a matter of fact, Mansfield spent her entire life lingering on the edge of life. To be more specific, her marginalized identity can be concluded into three aspects. First of all, as a kid, she was unwelcomed by people who were supposed to be the closest to her. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been neglected by her family members, especially her mother, who apparently loved other kids much more. She was by no means one of those who her family and teacher would expect to grow into a writer. Love and attention were something that remained absent during her whole childhood. There was not much improvement for this situation when she became an adult.

Secondly, in twentieth century England, she was viewed as an outsider because she came from New Zealand, which was then a colony of England. She was never regarded the same as the native English writers of her time. During her stay at London Royal School for Women, her professor once called her “a little savage from New Zealand” (Mantz and Murry 190). In London, Mansfield had always been a stranger and was treated differently as she did not belong there.

The third aspect of her marginalized identity concerns her being a non-mainstream writer. The then popular Bloomsbury Group was completely unfamiliar to her although it was once the core group where the most influential literatis of her time gathered to talk about literature topics. Mansfield felt uneasy being around the group, not because theses writers embarrassed her with their more developed mental faculty, but because of some ill words spread by some unkind members concerning her personal life. This kind of prejudice was more of their discrimination against her social position and financial status than a mere difference in literary taste.

In effect, Mansfield was always sensitive to her complex identity and others’ hostility towards her. All the above factors contributed to her confusion about herself and her anxiety of losing the important sense of belonging in a foreign environment. Moreover, her poor physical condition also deprived her of the integrity of life, exercising great continuous influence upon her literary creation. She confessed that she suffered from constant tension and depression about her divided self so tended to write about individuals beyond any regional and cultural boundaries.

Mansfield was always playing the role of someone else in her life, probably because her real self can only be found in her books. As time went by, this masked life became a normality for her. Also, the roles she was playing became part of her life as well as her personality. “Inevitably the chameleon pays a price for acceptance bought with counterfeit coins, for safety obtained under false pretenses. The price is a profound confusion about one’s identity, a pervasive anxiety about what to believe and whom to trust” (Rosen 16-17). Indeed, when a person tries so hard to appear someone else, he or she ends up finding it difficult to return to his real self. Katherine Mansfield is such a writer whose real self is hidden in the lines of her books. The characters portrayed by her are inevitably related with her own female experiences and unique inner feelings as a marginalized foreign writer.

3.2 New Chinese Women in a Multicultural Context

“Qi Xia”, written by Ling Shu-hua, is a short story about a married woman called Qi Xia. Compared to tragic women suffering from boudoir sorrow, Qi Xia is a relatively happy woman with a satisfying marriage. Her husband loves and values her, and they share a happy family life together until Qi Xia realizes what is more important to her than marriage later in her life.

One afternoon in mid-autumn when Qi Xia is appreciating the branches and leaves of a tree through the window in the room where she is doing laundry, she suddenly notices that her violin, which has been faithfully accompanying her for over ten years, is badly wormed.

“It is all my fault. Ever since I moved here more than one year ago, I haven’t even take a glimpse of you—it is certainly not because of loathing. It is only that I have a family, so not much time is left for me to keep you company” (Ling 120).

Here violin, a symbol of Qi Xia’s old dream, serves as a reminder to Qi Xia of her past. Although she is seemingly happy and content in her marriage, she is actually deeply confined and restricted by her role as a wife and its corresponding responsibility without her knowledge. Ever since she gets married, she has been deprived of the right to make choices and decisions for herself. Abandoning her love for violin is a part of her wifely duty. However, she has not realized where her real passion lies until she meets one of her old acquaintances:

“Any new songs you composed lately?” Fu Ren changes the topic.

“The violin has been wormed for quite a long time!” her face blushes as she says so, feeling a little sorry.

…

“Qi Xia, you really take your family too seriously.” Fu Ren says in a slightly sarcastic yet sincere tone. “Now taking care of your lord is your top priority, for that you even give up playing violin. You used to be such an avid player. Don’t you look down on yourself. You must not blame me for saying this but you do have a talent. Think about your previous effort and the expectations of your father, teacher and friends! ” (Ling 122)

Fu Ren’s words hit Qi Xia and remind her of her former life as well as her passion for music. She starts to have wonders and desires to make a return. Having realized that her pursuit for art and music means more to her than her monotonous marriage, she finally decides to break away from it and becomes a violin instructor. She has gone through strong mental struggle yet determined in her self-confirmation:

“I love Zhuo Qun. However, I cannot just put down the violin.” She says to herself, leaning against a wardrobe (Ling 128).

By arranging the desire for freedom of the female character in her novel, Ling Shu-hua displays a significant progress of the development of her own feminist ideas. She makes it clear that for women, the desire for freedom as a living individual comes top of anything else in a woman’s life. However, the not-so-happy ending for Qi Xia also indicates Ling’s doubt about this idea and her own struggle towards women’s independence.

“Perhaps more than any other writer in her generation, Ling Shu-hua epitomized the complicated position of the emerging modern women writer” (Cheng 332). Looking back on her life, the collision between Chinese and western culture that she experienced at her time urged her to write from a more mature female perspective compared with many women writers then.

Ling began her life with her mother within the boudoir of a traditional family in 1900 during the late Qing Dynasty. Ling Shu-hua, ever since her childhood, had been greatly influenced by her father, who was then a magistrate serving the royal court, as well as the family tutor, who attached great importance to Confucianism mores and values. Within the confines of an old-fashioned family, she grew into a fair lady, who was extremely polite and amicable, and also talented in many fields including poetry and painting—it is not exaggerated to say that Ling Shu-hua has all the makings of a traditional “Cai nü” (talented women) in the Chinese culture. As a child brought up by a typical large family, from the observation of the relationships of her father’s wives and concubines, Ling came to realize from an early age the relative power and weakness of women with different personalities, which later inspired her boudoir writing.

However, one of the first generation of women to receive a Western-style education at the English Department at Yanjing University, she was at the same time heavily influenced by new ideas as well as literary forms. A talented painter well proficient at classical arts and literature, she was also a pioneer in experimenting with writing modern vernacular fiction and bringing forth western literature to China. She had achieved significant success in writing as her profession, which was naturally against the wishes of her parents for her to be a good daughter, wife and future mother minding her own business, because wifely submission and virtue at that time was still prevalent in traditional families. As a modern woman, she married once again of her own choice, became a newspaper editor dealing with words and letters and later became known as “Chinese Katherine Mansfield” and her works were published abroad (Lin 8).

Yet, despite her critical denunciation of classical poetry as an outmoded form of expression, her vernacular short stories are inflected with the aesthetics and conventions of boudoir poetry. These stories receive harsh criticism by critics as being “easeful, leisurely, idle”, “lack of depth” (Chen 47), and “ignorant of actual social tastes” (Shen 212). On top of this, many argue that she is never clear about her feminist assertion in her works, nor is her idea on the standard of a “new woman” explicit enough. Admittedly, the female characters portrayed by Ling are endowed with Heideggerian poetic romance. In fact, her giving up on strong confrontation of opposite sexes and intense condemn against the patriarchal system are an indication of her attempt at the exploration of a milder existence of women themselves as well as a more harmonious relationship between men and women. In this sense, Ling Shu-hua’s literary works and the female characters in these works offer us an inspiring alternative in seeking ways for women to shake off their current dilemma.

The Symbolic order is the structure of language itself in which desire is the key concept. “The moment at which desire is humanized is also that at which the child is born into language” (Lacan 262). In the two stories, both characters have to enter it as speaking objects. The success of their self-realization liberates them from their old lives in which they suffer as slaves of their marriage. Getting out of the Imaginary realm, Monica in “Revelations” realizes that she has to “go out”, her potential power triggered by the windy weather. Also, Qi Xia in Ling’s story confronts elements of her old life and decides to pick up old pursuits, which she thinks is more important to her. In this stage, they are no longer the same as infants of the first two orders and grow into adulthood. They see themselves from their own perspectives and not through anyone else’s eyes—they find the virtues and all the good things in them that are not there for others’ sake, especially their husband. Having gained full self consciousness, they are finally independent and confident in psychology as well as able in action.

The courage for the characters to break away from traditions and become new women can, to a large extent, be attributed to the authors’ own wishes and desires. It is widely acknowledged that literature is a form of human expression and it is about human experience. The authors of literary works often drew inspiration from their own lives or those of people around them. In modernist novels, readers tend to feel strong sympathetic mental response and be overwhelmed by the subtle description of the characters’ inner world, as a result of the authors’ combining their own thoughts and feelings in the stories so as to make them more genuine and real.

In both Katherine Mansfield’s and Ling Shu-hua’s works, we can perceive strong and distinct features of their own times and the respective social environments placed unique stamps on the authors’ psyche, which is in turn reflected in their literary creation. Their own marginalized identities are integrated into the characters and these characters are to some extent their ideal selves whom they themselves once failed to be.

Conclusion

Katherine Mansfield and Ling Shu-hua, despite their geological distance, frequently draw the attention of domestic and overseas scholars due to the similarities of their themes, characters, writing styles and techniques. This thesis tries to probe into the female characters in the two authors’ short stories in light of Jacques Lacan’s theory of Three Orders, and explore the mental growth of these women as well as the development of their female consciousness. In the Real, the characters are satisfied with their lives and unwilling to change their current situation, so they remain silent as the victims of patriarchy. When their satisfiable needs are replaced by demands to make up for their lack, either love or recognition, they enter the Imaginary, in which they form primal sense of themselves as thinking individuals, though these perceptions often prove to be unrealistic and misplaced fantasies. Finally, with full self-realization, their strong desire to be the center of their own life and break away from the old system brings them into the Symbolic, where they grow into independent cultural beings with their own pursuits.

The similarities and differences in their writings can be concluded as follows. To begin with, both writers reveal women’s sufferings by adopting the theme of women’s family life. It is worth noticing that Mansfield and Ling often set their stories in an old society dominated by decayed values. Female characters in these stories are usually unaware of their oppressed situation. Subjecting themselves to their father and husband, they never think about making a change as long as they are fed and sheltered. By portraying these characters, Mansfield and Ling express their empathy and reveal the negative impacts of Phallus Centrism and male superiority on western and Chinese women. However, when women are put in a new context where new ideas clash with old values, they undergo confusion and doubt. In a sense, the fates of female characters are closely related with the times.

Secondly, in characterization, both authors attach great importance to the speech and thinking of character. They devote themselves to depicting the psychological reality of their female characters. Through detailed description of women’s psyche and their mental growth, they convey such a message to their readers: women have to shake off the shackles of traditional values that are restricting them and making them suffer; they have to equip themselves with updated thoughts and independent personality. In spite of the time, women have to be the one to take the initiative and be the master of their own fate. They should never be stuck in silence or misery—instead, they are supposed to save themselves by developing the courage for reconstruction and the resolution to “give it up and step out” (Wang 83). Female characters in Mansfield’s works tend to complete their self-realization on their own by reflecting on themselves and courageously pursuing freedom and happiness. In contrast, Ling’s female characters resort to their surroundings—the outside world, to realize themselves. They are more vulnerable due to a longer tradition of old social mores placed in a transitional period of China turning into a modern society.

Thirdly, both writers are good at adopting an elegant and graceful style in their writing. Despite the tragic theme of their stories, they employ peaceful narration, using humanism to decrease sentimental atmosphere. Their novels are frequently enriched in their symbolic meaning by poetic images, and they alike, produce peaceful, implicit and poetic atmosphere. Comparatively, Mansfield exploits the truth in trivial everyday life, and discloses profound reality in this finite and ordinary world; while Ling expresses her lament for society and culture in the sorrows of people’s life. Nevertheless, they both get inspiration from their own life experiences and express themselves through their characters and stories.

By and large, the two authors both take women’s sufferings as a main theme in their works which fully reflect their similar styles and unique perspectives towards female problems and their concerns for women. Their writings are of significant value at their times because they lead to further reflection on women’s role and identity and their possible way out. The similarities and differences of their literary works also leave plenty space for scholars to carry on researches.

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