A Group Picture Scroll of Women on the Weihe Plain - A Brief Analysis of the Main Female Figures in White Deer Plain

"This is an eloquent epic of 50 years of change in the Weihe Plain, a long scroll of colorful and shocking images of rural China. The protagonist has six marriages and six funerals, and the mysterious prelude foretells ominous things. A family of two generations of children and grandchildren, in order to compete for the rule of the White Deer Plain generation after generation, staged a thrilling drama; trickery to take feng shui land, the evil use of beauty, filial son of a bandit, pro Weng killed daughter-in-law, brothers fry each other, the lovers against each other ...... Revolution, the Japanese invasion, three years of civil war, the White Deer Plain fluctuating, the king's flag changes, the family feuds, national hatred, staggered entangled, grievances and grievances from generation to generation ...... The ancient land trembles in the throes of new life."

This is a paragraph on the Internet on the "White Deer Plains" novel introduction, the entire work in Shaanxi Guanzhong Plain known as the "benevolent village" known as the background of the village of White Deer, delicately reflecting the white and deer surnames of the two families of the grandparents and grandchildren of the three generations of feuds and disputes. And through the description of the local people's style on the natural loess plateau in the southeast of Xi'an, the book reflects the great changes of the Chinese nation from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the beginning of the founding of the nation. The whole book is cohesive with the deep connotation of national history and has a shocking sense of reality and heavy epic style. This is full of curiosity and even ups and downs of the plot is really reading to attract the reader's eyes, I believe that in each person holding the book with interest has been and the book's colorful vivid characters together in that stormy times with the same breath, **** destiny. I also read the novel "White Deer Plain" and many readers of this masterpiece as much emotion.

The rise and fall of the two great families of White and Deer is not a condensed history of social change.----- Can this writing method of using the history of the family to reflect the history of the society in which it is located be regarded as a kind of reconstruction of history by contemporary writers? As a recognized carrier of social transformation, the family, with its difficult metamorphosis, has recorded all the connotations of China's transformation from an agrarian civilization to an industrial civilization, from a patriarchal society to a juridical society. Balzac once said that the novel is the secret history of a nation, and as the art of time, Chen Zhongshi's White Deer Plains renders a nation's unique way of thinking in the long river of history, reflecting a nation's historical consciousness, political consciousness, and a nation's tenacious vitality.

When I finished reading the novel, I was y impressed by the colorful female characters. Although the portrayal of female characters in White Deer Plains is a "non-major" part of the book, and the distribution of the chapters and the narrative process is fragmented, trivial, intermittent and However, the depiction of women's image makes people feel that there are rich types and distinctive personalities in the characterization, and on the basis of which a "picture scroll of women's group portrait" is gradually formed. This scroll powerfully shows the hundred years of change on the Weihe Plain, and also creates a kind of era of bleak pathos. Although the portrayal of women in this novel adds an epic narrative effect to the whole work, there is still a lack of "soul women" with full and complete personalities in the work. The national cultural imprint of the specific historical era affects the judgment and evaluation of women's value, and the epic positioning and masculinist perspective of the work also constrain the objective and fair evaluation of women.

On the whole, however, the author is able to objectively examine the predicament and tragedy of women's existence under the conditions of the feudal era from the perspective of "human nature" as a whole, and gives them deep sympathy and respect without sparing any effort. This work faithfully restores and presents the state of women in the olden times under the real living conditions, and vividly portrays their social roles and social functions at that time. I believe that all readers, including me, y appreciate the hardships and injustices they encountered at different stages and points of their lives. Their images are not mere "kitsch" and "symbols of desire" brought about by love, but the life course of a Chinese woman's soul and self-development in the midst of traditional social change.

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The May Fourth period is known to be a period of conflict in which old and new ideas were constantly stirring, blending, and renewing. Under such a background, some women who had been y hurt by the feudal bad culture advocated self-liberation under the influence of new thinking, and their consciousness as independent personalities gradually broke free from the traditional patriarchal culture. In this work, the author depicts several representative female figures, such as Xiancao, Tian Xiaoe and Bai Ling, whose female consciousness also represents a clue to the change of female consciousness in the society at that time, from defective and unsound to vague and strong. Although this kind of consciousness is relatively abstract and obscure, it can be reflected in real life as their own attitude towards life and their needs.

Xiancao belongs to the thousands of years of traditional feudal ritual culture in line with the requirements of the three principles, patriarchal culture, ancestral legal system with hard work, thrift, simplicity and goodness and other virtues of women, these character traits are precisely by the feudal rituals of the respected and appreciated. However, we cannot ignore the numbness of the spiritual world and the lack of female self-consciousness embodied in the back of this "virtue". In her view, a life that fulfills the basic desires of having enough to eat, clothing to keep warm and having children is the most ideal life. Therefore, when her first son was born, she was already satisfied just by enjoying the services of her mother-in-law. However, she wanted nothing from the world of emotions, and it was difficult for her to get spiritual comfort from her husband, so after giving birth to Bai Ling, she was moved to tears when Bai Jiaxuan boiled a bowl of boiling water for her. When faced with death, she did not feel fear in her heart, but only worried that no one would be able to take care of her husband's life or her children after her death. In the feudal society dominated by patriarchal culture at that time, she had long lost her inner self-consciousness, lost her thinking and pursuit of the meaning of life, and was just a walking body living for her husband and children with a numb spirit. As long as the needs of her survival are met, what other needs are there?

Unlike the crippled and dysfunctional female consciousness, Tian Xiaoe shows some female consciousness, but this consciousness is built on the fact that she uses sex as one of her weapons and means to find ways to win social status and recognition for herself. She chooses sex more actively and freely, desperately hoping that through her body she can win the protection and shelter of men. With Heiwa, she is bravely pursuing happiness, hoping to live a life of freedom so as to get rid of the present hellish life, and being coerced by Lu Zilin because she wants to obtain his shelter in order to survive, a kind of two-way demanding transaction relationship. The seduction of Bai Xiaowen causes the image of the sacred heir to the family that Bai Jiaxuan has created for his son to crumble, a mockery of Bai Jiaxuan's defense of feudalism. She strongly and directly expresses her right to love, dominates her miserable fate in an unyielding struggle, and aspires to change her social status. She is not satisfied with simple physical and survival needs, but even in the all-pervasive social conditions, she still seeks understanding, sympathy and respect, even if the means are radical.

Unlike Xiancao and Tian Xiaoe, Bai Ling is a new-age woman with an independent mindset and a deep self-awareness that she has to take the initiative to control her own destiny. She is destined to take a revolutionary path against feudal traditions. Because she was the first girl in the village to go to school in the city and received a good education in the urban environment, she was destined to have an important influence on the formation of her outlook on life and values. Bai Ling, who grew up under such conditions, is not willing to satisfy the basic needs of women to meet the survival and protection, but to pursue more independently and autonomously, and to think about the value of her own life and the value of society, and resolutely do not want to be the vassal of her father's husband under the patriarchal culture and the female victims of the feudalistic suppression. Therefore, Bai Ling voluntarily withdraws from her father's marriage, which was arranged for her when she was young, and breaks face with her father, Bai Jiaxuan. Afterwards, she and Lu Zhaohai were betrothed to each other, but due to the different paths and different aspirations, she parted ways with him, and chose to join the revolutionary cause because of her belief in ****productivism. In the end, for the sake of the revolutionary cause of the same **** and chose the deer Zhaopeng. This series of seemingly excessive "rebellious" actions at the time precisely shows that she has grown into an independent mind and personality, the pursuit of emancipation with a strong sense of femininity.

What should we reflect on from these images of women? All along, under the influence of the traditional spirit of patriarchy, it is often the male image that receives people's attention, and the female image, which is the other half of the world built with men***, is often neglected. As Wang Anyi said, "The search for the matrilineal descent order will end where the memory of the living and the oral tradition disappears, and extends to the text ---- to the search among the broken fragments of civilization, whose discovery can only be the figure of the male ancestor." The achievements and stories of women in traditional Chinese novels have always been in the "back" of history, becoming a distant and hazy background that embellishes men's stories, and finally being annihilated in the long river of history of the tragic destiny from which they try to escape. From this, we realize that an ancient country with five thousand years of culture in the ancient traditional culture of women's repression and persecution, which is undoubtedly the history of modern literature on the spirit of tragedy of a profound experience, it will be women's pain and struggle to show the side of every reader to reveal the root of their tragic fate, which is for the past, the present and the future of people in the treatment of women's understanding of a far-reaching significance.