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The role of women in Chinese culture
The role of women in Chinese culture
The role of women in Chinese culture
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In Pearl S. Buck’s novel, The Good Earth, a humble Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, starts out as a poor man; nevertheless, he overcomes many struggles in order to become a rich and prosperous man. Although, Wang Lung is the main character of the novel there is an equal importance in the women presented. The novel focuses on the major roles of women in China. In the traditional Chinese society, women were oppressed and disrespected. The roles of women were arranged on the home, where they were expected to serve their families. Each female character shows a distinctive perspective of the common women in China. The author not only illustrations the different roles of women, she also displays the struggles women had to overcome in order deal with the injustice during this time. The importance of these female characters is fundamental to the theme of the novel.
The first female character that the book introduces to the reader is, O-lan. When she was just a young girl her parents sold her off to the Great House of Hwang, in order to reinsure their survival. Many poor families in China had no c...
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on the land, their family structure, and their local conflicts.
Pearl S. Buck was the “Link between China and America.” (Spurling, 109.) Her rich childhood, filled to the brim with inspiration, led her to a career writing books about her homeland of China to her fellow Americans. After large success, she also became an active member of the civil rights movement and also had her own adoption agency. Persevering through opposition from Christians and Communists alike, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck was one of the most influential women in United States history.
According to Jin Feng’s book entitled New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Ling’s works can be divided into three sections throughout her career. While all of her stories focus around the struggles of women during the modernization of China, Ling used different methods to address their reality. The first method portrayed the social lives of women without giving a direct method of addressing the difficulties that they faced. The second involves women who renounce their current life to pursue Marxism and the revolution. The third romanticizes the lives of women after joining the revolution.
The article “Feminism and Revolutionary Struggles in China” explores that many ways that china was colonialized and faced gender inequality. Women should be treated just like any other man but they have a lower status in society; and they will never have full equality in the society. China develops a case study that tries to associate feminism and socialism during the revolutionary change Jayawardena, 1986, p. 167). An investigation of the advancement of woman 's rights and women 's activist action in China in which the Chinese experience diverges from that of different nations gives numerous lessons and knowledge to those intrigued in the examination of such issues as the impediments of middle class woman 's rights, the part of women 's
The Good Life by Father Richard M. Gula emphasizes the importance of the moral vision of the “good life” with our Lord and Savior by our side. Throughout the book, Gula raises important themes that are crucial in understanding how to well a life well spent with God in it. He begins by introducing the Lord by giving examples of his image or imago dei and love. Next, Gula introduces the idea of the covenant. The covenant is a set of rules and agreements between our savior and us. He uses the covenant as one of the key elements by living a fulfilled life. We must understand boundaries and listen and obey the rules and practices that God placed on front of us. Then he introduces the Son of God, Jesus, and how he is portrayed. Jesus is just like
Wang Lung needs a wife so saves up the little money he has and buys a woman who is a slave named O-lan. O-lan is sold to Wang Lung so she can take care of the home, cooking and bear children. Wang Lung is disappointed when he first sees O-lan because she does not have bound feet which was a desirable quality at that time but he does enjoy when O-lan has the food ready when he comes in a night from the land. Wang Lung is very proud when O-lan makes cakes that no one else in the village knows how to makes and when his family comes to feast for the new year at their house.
O-lan was obviously a very bold and important woman in this novel yet never knew it. She would do what she was raised to do and try her best to make her husband happy. Through all her marriage, she helped Wang Lung to be one of the wealthiest men in his city. While O-lan endured many difficulties, she continued with her duties as wife through thick and thin. Whether it was her begging on the streets for food and money, or putting up with Lotus, her husband's concubine, O-lan remained a strong woman with good qualities until the day she died. While she usually had little to say, O-lan's impact on the Lung family is one that wont be forgotton. She accomplished all of her goals in life and fulfilled her marital duty in making Wang Lung very happy. Even after all this, O-lan still was a very modest woman.
Poor people are always the victims. And through these two novels, we see that the leading female characters are both victimized because they came from poor households. I feel that Eileen Chang’s writing style has made her female characters seem too unrealistic. These situations are unfathomable. Her novel does not seem to depict the true struggle of traditional Chinese women.
Gender roles continue to be an ongoing issue in modern society. The Good Earth displays how gender roles in Chinese culture affected men and women drastically. The radical difference between Lotus and O-Lan make a great example for the contrast. O-Lan and Lotus had extremely different relationships with Wang Lung on both sides of the spectrum ranging from a work force and luxury.
Simply put, O-lan had a rough childhood. During O-lan’s childhood, her parents sold her as a slave to the House of Hwang. O-lan became a very skilled cook over the course of her childhood because she worked in the kitchen at the House of Hwang. As a child, O-lan also became a skilled beggar, she learned where to beg and who to beg to. When her family fell on tough times during the drought, she taught her children the skills she picked up as a child. These skills that O-lan learns while enslaved, reveals O-lan’s heavy reliance on her past. O-lan’s slavery did not end after she got married, her slavery continues on, into her marriage. “At night he knew the soft firmness of her body. But in the day her clothes, her plain blue cotton coat,
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
The novel The Good Earth is a story of a man living in Chinese society around the time of the Chinese Revolution. Though the story is a work of fiction, some of the events in the story were actual events that the author, Pearl S. Buck, witnessed or experienced during her life while in China. The area of China that the story takes place in is based after the town Nanhsuchou where Buck lived for a period in her life.
In the book, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, the Chinese characters from the 20th century are very different from women in the U.S. today. An example of a typical chinese character is O-lan. She is a loyal and hardworking wife to Wang Lung. Prior to become a wife the Wang Lung, she was a slave for the House of Hwang. Slaves were very common to 20th century China. Nowadays, there are no longer slaves and it is not legal. This is just one of the reasons why the roles of chinese women are of so much more distinct from American women in the 21st century. Another common 20th century chinese woman is Lotus, who is a prostitute. Most Americans today believe that prostitution is very discriminating and offending for women. But back in the early 20th
The novel is made up of thirty-four chapters and falls into two main parts. The first fourteen chapters establish Wang Lung's commitment to the land and depict his solid family relationships with his wife and father. His achievement of modest prosperity is followed by a sudden reversal in the form of poverty and famine which drives him and his family to the city to beg and perform hired labor. Chapters 11 to 14, which take place in the city, provide a striking contrast to the earlier depiction of country life and its traditional values. The climax of the first part of the book occurs in Chapter 14 when city unrest leads Wang and his wife, O-lan, to join a raid on a rich man's house. The money and jewels they steal enable them to return to the land. The illegal gain proves the turning point of Wang's life and fortune.