Literature, Sexual Violence, and Female Bonding: How does Fang Siqi's Paradise of First Love Explore the Possibility of Women's Writing Through Its Language?

Journal: Arts Studies and Criticism DOI: 10.32629/asc.v3i1.685

Ruimeng Qi

United World College Maastricht, Netherlands

Abstract

This essay provides a new way of understanding Fang Siqi's Paradise of First Love, a novel that recently sparked heated discussion on Chinese social media. Highlighting this piece as an ingenious example of women's writing, this interpretation focuses on the connection between literature and sexual violence: literature manipulated by male discourse serves as a form of seduction and control and undermines female subjectivity, but women's writing can still construct bonds among the female characters and potentially help them to resist the dominant discourse. In this light, Lin's novel can be regarded as a meaningful reflection provided by a Taiwanese woman on the whole East-Asian literary tradition and society from a feminist perspective. 

Keywords

Chinese contemporary literature, taiwanese literature, sexual violence, feminist theory, women's writing

References

[1]“This is what I want to say to the readers about Fang Siqi's Paradise of First Love──Yihan Lin |Readmoo E-book”, Youtube, uploaded by Readmoo, 4 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p3qyon03Vs.
[2]Lin, Yihan. Fang Siqi's Paradies of First Love. Beijing United P, 2018.
[3]Yu Saiqiong. “Language and Metaphors on imagery under the contrast — interpreting Fang Siqi's Paradise of First Love from a rhetorical perspective.” Chinese Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House, pp. 9-10.
[4]Cai, Yiwen. Fang Siqi's Paradies of First Love by Lin Yihan. Beijing United P, 2018, pp.241-247.
[5]Cixous, H., 2010. Hélène Cixous. In: V. Leitch, ed., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp.1938-1959.
[6]To Live. Directed by Zhang Yimou, Performanced by Ge You, Gong Li, Niu Ben, Guo Tao, Jiang Wu, and etc., 1994.
[7]Dai Yijun, Huang Kai. “Analysis of cao yi chu shu and wu dai dang feng”. The Art World Journal, https://www.zz-news.com/com/meishujie/news/itemid-918838.htmlAccessed 31 Jonuary. 2018.

Copyright © 2022 Ruimeng Qi

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License