大地与生死场中的女性意识摘要《大地》是美国女性作家赛珍珠的小说作品，而《生死场》则是中国女性作家萧红的小说作品，赛珍珠和萧红虽然国籍不同，叙事语调不同，但她们的这两部作品都描写了二十世纪初中国农村妇女在父权制社会下的悲惨命运，同时也都刻画了在传统压迫下的女性人物的反叛精神。
对农村妇女悲惨的遭遇和对父权制的反叛的描写都是对妇女觉醒和解放的关注和思考，表现出了赛珍珠和萧红的女性意识。
关键词：《大地》，《生死场》，女性意识The Feminist Consciousness in The Good Earth and The Field of Life and DeathAbstractThe Good Earth is a novel written by American woman writer Pearl S. Buck, and The Field of Life and Death by Chinese woman writer Xiao Hong. Although Pearl S. Buck and Xiao Hong have different nationalities and tell stories in different tones, they both depict the miserable destiny of the Chinese rural women of the early twentieth century who suffered tremendously in the patriarchal society. These two writers both portray the female characters’ rebellious spirit, which displays their focus and concerns on women’s awakening and liberation, and also their feminist consciousness in these two novels.Key Words: The Good Earth, The Field of Life and Death, feminist consciousness1. IntroductionPearl S. Buck was the first American woman writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and famous for her novels set in China. Though she was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, the United States, “she was brought to China by her missionary parents when she was only three months o ld”[](p.2) and then spent almost 40 years in China so that she was greatly influenced by Chinese culture as well as Chinese traditional novels. Her novel The Good Earth, the most famous and beloved novel by Nobel-Prize winner, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. And she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in Chinaand for her biographical masterpieces.”[] However, since then, she has become one of the most controversial writers in the history of American Literature.After the news, The New York Times published a profile interview speaking highly of Pearl and her works. But in the American literary circle, the majority of writers took negative reactions. The famous poet Robert Frost said that if she could win the Nobel Prize for Literature, then it was not a problem that everyone could win it. Luckily, with the communication between the Chinese and western culture, this classic and historic novel has begun to exert its huge influence again. Since 1940s, among those American writers, Peter Conn and his work Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography have contributed the most to its study. “Conn convincingly portrays her as an extraordinarily committed and passionate woman who spoke out bravely on subjects oth ers of her generation preferred to ignore”[] and his aim is to reestablish “her place in American literary history, as well as to acknowledge her contribution to the social causes which she espoused”[3] “through his narrative account for her eventful life and extensive writing.”[] In 1992, Macon Women’s College held an international symposium on Pearl S. Buck’s centenary birthday including Asian, European, and American scholars, which promoted the development of the research of Pearl and her works. While since the 1930s, Chinese scholars has shown great interest and attentions on her and her works. But, because of historical, political and other reasons, domestic research on Pearl and her works has experienced ups and downs, which is mainly divided into the following three stages. In the first stage, from the 1930s to 1940s, her works were translated into Chinese and Chinese scholars took two opposite views. Some of them, represented by Ye Gongchao and Zhuang Xinzai, thought that her works were objective and realistic. By contrast, the others, represented by Lu Xun, Hu Feng and Mao Dun, claimed that her works misrepresented the image of China. In this stage, the research only focused on the social and political functions of her works rather than on the more deeply cultural aspects. In the second stage, from the 1950s to 1970s, because of the ideological differences, Pearl and her works were thoroughly denied by domestic scholars and the research on her works had been stopped for several decades. In the third stage, fromthe 1980s to nowadays, domestic research on the foreign literature has attached great importance to this field and begun to deeply study her works in different aspects, such as the cause of Pearl’s literature phenomenon, her view of literature an d art and the significance of her works. In 1989, the Chinese mainland first published the translation work of Good Earth, Sons and A House Divided by Wang Fengzhen and other scholars, which has been loved deeply by readers since then. Besides, scholars began to study her works from different and new perspectives, the feminist literary criticism and postcolonial theory and orientalism. On the other hand, scholars also focused on the universal significance of her works since, to a great extent, she was considered as a bridge of cultural exchange between China and the West. Therefore, scholars not only explained the Chinese characteristics in her novels, but also explored her strategies for cross-cultural communication. All in all, although there are already many studies on Pearl S. Buck and her works, there is no doubt that the studies on her and her works still have more room for development because her works are classic and alive and should be studied more deeply with the development of our society.Xiao Hong is a famous female writer after Bing Xin and Ding Ling in the history of Chinese modern literature. Her works attracted many writers’ attentions at her time like Lu Xun and Mao Dun, who all spoke highly of her and her works. During her short nine-year writing career, she created more than one million words of literary works including novels, proses and plays. In 1934, with the help of Lu Xun, she published her novel The Field of Life and Death, which was the beginning of her fame. As a woman, she experienced the formidable oppression of the patriarchal culture at an early date, so feminist thoughts became an important theme of her works.Therefore, there are many studies mainly on feminist consciousness in her works, of which the influential one is Nora’s Speech: The Psychological Course of Chinese Modern Female Writers by Liu Siqian, a pioneering book on Chinese feminist literary criticism. The author reveals Xiao Hong’s mental process in her novel creation from a rational and unique perspective of feminist criticism. Another influential book is To the Surface of the History: The Study of Modern Chinese Women’s Literature byMeng Yue and Dai Jinhua, which deeply explains Xiao Hong’s feminist consciousness from three aspects of fate, female insight, awakening and sympathy. Besides, there are many articles on Xiao Hong’s feminist consciousness. For example, “On Xiao Hong’s Feminist Thoughts” by Huang Changhua focuses on those women’s miserable fate in Xiao Hong’s works. Zhou Xiaoying compares the images of Chi nese villages between Pearl S. Buck’s The Mother and Xiao Hong’s The Field of Life and Death, which also talks about the rural women’s tragic fate and sufferings. As for the foreign studies on Xiao Hong and her works, The Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River were translated into English by Howard Goldblatt and Ellen Yeung. Then, there are some reviewed works of this translation version.This thesis focuses on the feminist consciousness in The Good Earth and The Field of Life and Death, which consists of four parts. The first part mainly introduces the domestic and foreign studies on the two writers and their works. The second part is the main part of this thesis which elaborates the feminist consciousness in The Good Earth and The Field of Life a nd Death by analyzing the Chinese women’s sufferings and their rebellious spirit in the two novels. The third part states the differences in conveying their feminist consciousness in these two novels. The last part is the general conclusion on this thesis.2. The Feminist Consciousness in The Good Earth and The Field of Life and DeathPearl S. Buck and Xiao Hong both focus on Chinese rural women’ life in the patriarchal society and they are aware that women belong to a subordinate group, which made them suffer a lot and dominated by men. Depicting Chinese rural women’s sufferings and rebellious spirit, Pearl S. Buck and Xiao Hong show their feminist consciousness in these two novels.2.1 Chinese Rural Women’s SufferingsIn The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck mainly displays the sufferings of O-Lan, the wife of the farmer Wang Lung; while in The Field of Life and Death, Xiao Hong describes that of different women like Old Mother Pockface, Mother Wang, Yveh-ying and Golden Bough. Yet despite all that, they still have a lot in common interms of the miserable sufferings.2.1.1 The Scenes of Chinese Rural Women’s ChildbirthIn The Good Earth, the most impressive scene of women’s childbirth is when O-Lan’s first child was born. With great agony, she still worked in the h arvest field with her husband before she gave birth. Her husband didn’t ask her to take a rest, and even felt impatient when she “cut more and more slowly.”[](p.36) Only when she felt that the hour came did she go back to their house alone, and when her husband came back, he found that she had prepared them food. Without a midwife, O-Lan had to give birth by herself. She asked her husband to give her “a newly peeled reed”[5](p.36) to cut the child and not to come into the room until she called him. Pearl di dn’t depict the process of the childbirth directly, but readers could imagine that through O-Lan’s husband. He gave her the reed and “stood listening at the door to those heavy animal pants,”[5](p.37) but she didn’t make sound aloud. How brave she is to cu t the child from her own body even without loud screams! However, when the child was born, her husband didn’t care about her at all who just suffered a lot of pain of giving birth, and the only thing that he wanted to know was whether the baby was a boy or not. After knowing that it was a boy, he didn’t ask her how she was doing and he just shared the good news with his old father and then began to eat at the table. O-Lan cleaned the room just after giving birth, and “the next day after the child was born,”[5](p.39) she prepared the family food as usual. After a short while, she was back in the fields beside his husband and worked all day, with the child lying on the ground.While in The Field of Life and Death, there is one chapter mainly depicting women’s childbirth, which was named “Days of Punishment” by Xiao Hong. In her novel, “the fates of farm animals both herald the inevitable sufferings”[] of those rural women. She compared women’s childbirth to the animals’ giving birth because there were nothing b ut pain to those women. Fifth Sister’s elder sister was the first one to give birth in this chapter whose childbirth didn’t go smoothly. With the help of the midwife and other women of the village, “the punishing child just would not come out.”[](p.53) The midwife was so superstitious that she thought that the womancouldn’t give birth on the straw or they would never get rich. Therefore, the naked woman crawled “on the K’ang like a fish.”[7](p.52) What’s worse, the woman’s husband coming in the room drunkenly shouted at her menacingly and flung the tobacco pouch at “the corpse-like figure”.[7](p.53) As a result, the child died instantly as soon as it came into the world. “The woman lay in her own blood, soaking it up with her body,”[7](p.54) of which the sc ene was so horrible that one could hardly bear seeing it. Golden Bough, a poor young woman who also took her punishment, began to work as usual just after ten days or so. After Mother Wang helped Old Mother Pockface and Second Aunt Li give birth, she found that somebody’s sow was also doing that when she returned. Those women were “much worse off than beasts.”[] It is obvious that Pearl and Xiao Hong both show Chinese rural women’s courage and the punishment that they have taken. Those women lived in the patriarchal society just like animals, where they had to bear sons to carry on the family line. Not only did they have to suffer the huge pain of giving birth, but also they had no time to heal their bodies as they had to work as soon as possible, which would definitely do great harm to their health.2.1.2 The Death of Chinese Rural WomenO-Lan spent all her life in working and tending the family, and gave birth to many children for Wang Lung, but she had a miserable ending dying bitterly with excruciating di sease. Wang Lung didn’t realize her disease when she moved more and more slowly. When her face turned “grey with some inner pain,”[5](p.241) she still “stooped to sweep the brick floor.”[5](p.241) Only at that moment did he tell her to lie on her bed and go to find a doctor to see her. But she was so seriously ill that the old doctor couldn’t save her. Her “heart barely moves and doubtless there are worms in it.”[5](p.242) While in her opinion, her life was worth less than the land and she was so ugly that she “cannot be loved.”[5](p.247) So even at the end of her life, she didn’t complain about her sufferings and the unfair treatment to her.Yveh-ying, who was once “the most beautiful woman in the fishing village,”[7](p.37) also died of disease. “She had no t been able to sleep lying down”[7](p.39) for a whole year because she was paralyzed. Her husband disliked herbecause she was ill so that she couldn’t bear children for the family. The man put bricks around her body to prop her up, which eventually made her buttocks rotten and her teeth green. And then she died bitterly and her death didn’t mean anything to the living people who “still had to plan how to stay alive.”[7](p.41)In the patriarchal society, women lived and died like animals, as nobody cared about their life and death. They were more like machines which had to work and bear children for their families. Even their death didn’t matter to their families because the men could remarry other women to do the work after they died.2.1.3 Chinese Rural Wo men’s Unfortunate MarriagesBesides the pain of giving birth, those women didn’t get any happiness in their marriages at all. O-Lan once was a slave girl in a great house, the House of Hwang, before she married to her husband, Wang Lung. She was sent out by her Lord like a gift and the couple didn’t meet each other before. On that day, Wang Lung went to the House of Hwang to take O-Lan home and then they got married. The only reason why Wang chose her as his wife was because he and his old father just wanted a woman who would do the housework and bear children and also work in the fields. She was not pretty and didn’t speak too much, and Wang was disappointed that her feet were not bound. Although she had many traditional virtues and contributed a lot to their family, Wang still didn’t love her. It was she who by her living experience in the House of Hwang took the jewelry from the rich man’s house which Wang sold to buy lands so that he could become richer and richer. However, he didn’t treat her better as s he had done all this for him. What’s worse, he spent a large sum of money to take a woman, Lotus, home from a tea shop as his concubine. He built new rooms for Lotus who had little feet and she even had a slave girl to take care of herself. While O-Lan still had to do all the housework and never had a servant even when they got so much money. Wang didn’t want to look at O-Lan’s face and never cared about her until she was dying. Wang thought that it was not his fault if he had not loved O-Lan as one loves a concubine, “since men do not.”[5](p.241) O-Lan lived a hard life and never felt the love from her husband in her lifetime, even though he did feel remorseful when she was ill lying in the bed, yet not out of love.。
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