Sexuality and Gender Formation in Modern Chinese Literature

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Sexuality and Gender Formation in Modern Chinese Literature
Chinese civilization history has always neglected the topics associated with sexuality and gender. However, parents, writers, philosophers, ordinary people have left reams of the historical evidence on the subject. Furthermore, the late imperial government of China has been mainly concerned about sexuality and gender in its subjects compared to other modern countries. In the ancient, Chinese people viewed sexual activities and desires as distinctive human needs, essential for the well-being and health of the body.
The “Miss Sophie’s Diary was published in 1927 by Ding Ling. The novel denotes the period when gender ideas were negotiated. The story served as commentary when patriarchal structures that represented the sexual freedoms of women in China, and how the privileges were manifested in writing and reading. An in-depth, exploration of Ding’s novel portrays how the association between gender and literature identifies the historical experiences of both men and women.
In the 1920s, theoretical and linguistic comprehensions of gender in China were in negotiation and change state. It was much dissimilar from the understanding in western countries, which had identified gender based on sex. However, in China, gender was primarily based on the hierarchical and social relations of power. For instance, it was until the 1900s when biological female and male ideas were adopted. As such, the ‘he’ and ‘she’ pronouns and how they related to a person were perceived as linguistic categories. Male authors specifically used the linguistic groups as used in modern literature to explore the personalizing and transforming identities. The ‘she’ representing a woman was often sexualized and was deprived of being the protagonist by the writer.
Ding used the “Miss Sophia’s diary” to portray the significance of women trough the eccentric. He used a modern form of writing used by other male writers to reflect their ideas. The diary is very significant because it portrays Sophia as the main character who attempts to gain an intimate picture of a woman struggling with modernity and identity. In the novel, Sophia represents the reader, the subject, and the writer combined as one individual. The picture also depicts the relevant inadequacy of the subjective technique of writing to describe the main character. As seen, the narcissistic, masculine, and modernist linguistic tropes that had succeeded in reflecting Chinese manhood, had failed to designate a clear image of women self-hood. Sophia attempts on several occasions to express her identity, which is constrained by a similar technique she uses to express herself (Ding 5). The reflection scene, which introduces the diary, displays the inadequacy. For example, in page 5, Ding writes, “glancing from one side, you have got a face a foot long; tilt your head slightly to the side and suddenly it gets so flat you startle yourself.” The self-interrogation, ambivalence, and narcissism process permeate the text to describe the protagonist as an independent female subject, who could not exist in the Chinese tradition.
Ding depicts that Sophia’s attempt to establish her self-hood does not succeed. Initially, Sophia writes the diary for her lover ‘Yun” to read and understand. However, Wei, her new lover, does not comprehend the envisioned meanings of the diary and develops the perception that Sophia is in love with another man, Ling. Therefore, Wei’s gendered and superficial reading of Sophia’s diary showcases Ding’s inadequacy to describe Sophia. On the contrary, the allegory of tears in Ding’s work is an expression of release. Sophia names the diary “sum of my tears.” The allegory of cracks in the text symbolizes female signature that was alienated from the use of ink and pens used by men in their writing. However, the tears expressed in the book do not create a satisfying alternative. It also has no outstanding meaning to the language dominated by men. Ding attempts to reject the form of writing used by men that have always described the female and self-desire, although he does not have a valuable alternative.
The diary is significant in the contemporary world because it illustrates that successful and legitimate writing techniques are not always established in stone, but represent historical and social processes. As Ding’s novel depicts, the methods still identify the gender roles and experiences that human being in the ancient had assumed in society. For instance, the incapability of Sophia to articulate her self-hood indicates that the hegemonic and successful writing techniques always fail to express specific types of identity. In the modern world, the gender differentiation of academic results between women and men at higher learning institutions such as Cambridge denotes that in the current society, academic success is also determined by successful and legitimate self-expression forms. However, such expressions do not usu...