In 2017, Zhu Jing republished her novel in Flower City magazine, leaving the writing field for ten years, making her look like a newcomer. In fact, she has a similar starting point to many post-80s writers – she became famous in "Sprout" and published almost monthly from 2004 to 2007. In 2008, she entered married life, studied for a doctorate, worked, and took a ten-year pause in writing. It was not until 2017 that she returned to the literary scene, and unlike her previous youth literary writing, she gradually explored literary attempts with a strong personal style, using herself as a method, taking family life and intimacy as the subject of her writing.
Critic He Shaojun pointed out in an article written for this newspaper that Zhu Jing does not directly inherit the tradition of family novels in modern literature, she does not want to see society through the family, she values the family itself, and the problems she wants to reflect are precisely the problems of the family itself. The family, once hailed as "one of nature's masterpieces," is now in danger of collapsing. Zhu Jing expressed deep concern about this, especially what worries her is that those women who are full of dependence on their families, how should they choose their fate in the face of family crises?
Some of Zhu Jing's works
The fate of women in the post-family era
——Read Zhu Jing's novel
He Shaojun/Text
Published in Literary Newspaper on May 25, 2023
Reading Zhu Jing's novels, it seems that the figure I see the most is an elegant housewife wandering alone in a clean and warm home, this figure is probably Zhu Jing herself, she pays too much attention to the family, her novels mainly use the family as a space, I can't help but want to name Zhu Jing's writing after the family novel.
But I found that if it is named after a family novel, it may be misleading to the reader. Family novel is a very old word, and some people think that "Jin Pingmei" in the Ming Dynasty is the earliest full-length family novel in China. At the beginning of the birth of modern Chinese literature, family novels were very developed. The pioneers of the New Culture Movement realized that "the family system is the basis of absolutism" (see Wu Yu: "The Family System is the Basis of Absolutism", in New Youth, Vol. 2, No. 6, February 1, 1917) They used family novels to launch criticisms of feudalism, such as Lu Xun's many novels "Diary of a Madman", "Death of a Wounded Person", "Blessing", "Happy Family", "Soap", etc. From the time he entered the literary arena to the forties of the twentieth century, Ba Jin has focused his main energy on the creation of family novels, expressing the author's criticism of the feudal system and expressing the author's humanistic ideals through the fate of various characters in the family, the contradictions and conflicts between people and people, and between people and society. In family novels, the family becomes the best mirror of social trends. Therefore, in general, family novels are novels that reflect social issues through the family. Zhu Jing's novels also take the family as the main space, but I don't think she directly inherits the family novel tradition in modern literature, she does not want to see society through the family, what she values is the family itself. Therefore, don't hear that Zhu Jing is writing a family novel, you must see how she reflects social problems from the novel. The problem that Zhu Jing wants to reflect is precisely the problem of the family itself. The family, once hailed as "one of nature's masterpieces," is now in danger of collapsing. Zhu Jing expressed deep concern about this, especially what worries her is that those women who are full of dependence on their families, how should they choose their fate in the face of family crises?
[Finland] Helen Scherfbeck/Painting, the same below
After women become independent adults, they often have to enter the palace of the family, and their main roles in the family are wives and mothers. Zhu Jing's worries began with her wife and mother. In "Such a Good Night", Zhu Jing wrote about a very harmonious family and a very virtuous mother in the tone of a daughter. The mother kept the house in order and the windows clear, and she took care of her husband at work and her daughter who went to school with the precision of a pendulum. Zhu Jing wrote about a particularly dedicated mother. There is one detail that vividly shows how faithful mothers are. In the storeroom, the daughter found her mother's large and small boxes, some containing the leftovers of her mother's clothes, some containing buttons of different colors and sizes, some containing lace of different lengths and weaving, "they are mother's treasures, so ordinary, those secret pitiful little pleasures are the only light she can almost have in family life." She made clothes out of them, she made curtains out of them, she made covers for TVs and refrigerators, this is the home she imagined, this is the home she created. Indeed, often a perfect home is built by a mother. But Zhu Jing did not want to write another ode for her mother in this novel, she wrote about her mother's silent hard work, and suddenly told people that it was this mother who was keen to create the home she imagined, and one day she disappeared without warning, unknown reasons, and her father was indifferent, he felt that she would come back after a while. My mother did come back after missing for a few months, and when she came back, as if nothing had happened, dinner was prepared for everyone, and everything was business as usual! Zhu Jing's valuable thing is that she does not draw conclusions in the novel, she is a serious inquirer, and she presents the doubts she finds. Zhu Jing asked: "What is it that a mother is a family?" The daughter seriously thought about this question after her mother's disappearance, and she could not find the answer, she only knew: "A woman's devotion to the family should be silent and complete, and all families are the same, and have been the same for thousands of years." Men need a bigger world, and women's world is within this family. It's just that a good wife is like air, everywhere but doesn't feel there, and a good mother is probably the same. "The novel shows a mother who is careful for her family, but she closes her heart. Is this the mother's inevitable destination in the family?
"Dangerous Wife" is Zhu Jing asking her wife "what is a family". "I" and Quinn in the novel are a very stable and normal couple who met in the library when they were in college and "started a family naturally" after graduation. "I" also enjoy family life. Zhu Jing is good at using the most daily details to speak, such as writing that "I" are both particular about family life and know how to taste, and there are such details: "The skirt may touch the calf to the touch, and the ratio of 77% silk and 23% cotton can be popular." Zhu Jing also described in detail the scene of her husband living together after returning home, the husband has a fixed position on the sofa, the wife coaxes the children to sleep, and then comes to watch TV with her husband, although these have become a stylized homely routine and silent warmth, but "I" seem to be very satisfied with such family life. The novel also writes about another couple, "my" best friend Lihua and her husband Xiao. Ewha is a completely different kind of wife from "me", she suspects her husband of infidelity and follows her husband's cheating in various ways. But she doesn't care about her husband's infidelity, but pursues her life more freely. Zhu Jing very cleverly put two different types of wives together to tell the story, and then she put up a "dangerous wife" topic for us to figure out, which of them is a dangerous wife? I don't think Zhu Jing will regard Lihua as a dangerous wife, only Lihua's husband will feel danger from his wife, but he can't even love his wife well, is he still qualified to say that his wife is dangerous? In fact, Zhu Jing puts two different types of wives together, which is to ask readers to ponder a question in comparison: Although a wife like "I" is very suitable for the family, but "I" is running the happiness of the family in a situation that is completely cut off from the outside world, if "I" find the complexity of the outside world, can I calmly deal with family affairs? Ewha provides a frame of reference for "me", so when "I" hear Ewha say again that she has found another piece of evidence that her husband is cheating, "I" eat cake in a different position, "I made up my mind to dig the spoon a little more decisively, and bring a spoonful full of matcha mille-feuille to my mouth, soft and smooth, sweet and bitter." Apparently "I" have made up my mind that I can't simply treat the family anymore – this is an enlightened wife, and an enlightened wife is a dangerous wife! This is Zhu Jing's questioning of his wife. "I" seem to be a very qualified wife, this qualification is that the wife can only exist within the family, when the husband goes out to work, she can only wait for the husband to return, "I" acquiesced to this distinction, "He enters another life from the beginning of commuting, and the time to come back belongs to us." "I was like a struggle with my husband for commuting time." But who can guarantee that a husband will be faithful to the family outside the home?
Zhu Jing's worries about her wife and mother in the family are a sign of the times. Women's liberation in the last century began when it came out of the family. Some feminists simply see the family as the source of women's oppression, they want to carry out a family revolution, and strong feminists even want to destroy the family. But feminists found that leaving the family could not bring about complete liberation of women, and they put forward the idea of "returning to the family". Of course, returning to the family is not returning to the traditional family. Perhaps thanks to feminist efforts, the modern family has undergone great changes in both form and connotation, and German sociologist Ulrich believes that we are in a "post-family era". The family in the post-family era is different from the traditional family, it is more of a selective intimate relationship, and the relationship between men and women in the family presents the characteristics of independence and equality. Zhu Jing's family novels have obvious characteristics of the "post-family era", and most of the novels are narrated around a theme, that is, the fate of women in the post-family era. Zhu Jing is not a strong feminist, and she does not believe that women can find their happiness after leaving the family. But she discovered the problems of the family that hurt women the most, and that her novels always have an indelible worry that may be a natural reaction of a female writer. "That Good Night" and "Dangerous Wife" can be said to be two thoughtful works, which generally express her basic views on the two female identities of wife and mother, and from this view, she has written some stories of wife or mother. She also looks forward to stepping out of the fence of the family to re-recognize the women in the family. "Where the Light Comes In" is to rediscover the value of a wife through a man's eyes. The man's wife died in a car accident after six years of marriage and never remarried, and he repeatedly asked the meaning of his wife. He was originally a man who did not want to get married, but his wife suddenly broke into his life, and he rarely spent time with his wife after marriage, until her death, he felt that their married life was too short, how he wished to be able to achieve mutual confession with his wife even through a mesmerizing physical communication or a soul-tearing quarrel, he found that for all these years they were only "living in the concept and identity of husband and wife." He felt more and more that the arrival of his wife had opened a gap in his life, and that his wife was a ray of light thrown into the gap, but he did not understand this until many years later. Zhu Jing may want to remind all men not to ignore the light of their wives. "My Wife Becomes a Rat Woman" is also narrated in the voice of a man. The man's wife has been a full-time wife since marriage, "she has given me a comfortable and beautiful home", "every day when I come home, the door is always greeted by a fragrant and light wife", he thought that his wife was willing to be a virtuous wife, until once found a large number of items provided to the supermarket in the storeroom, he learned that his wife was "meaninglessly consuming time" when she was alone at home, and it was very ironic that although the man found that he did not understand his wife's inner world, And he himself concealed his wife and found several lovers outside. What surprised me was that Zhu Jing chose such a terrifying title for the novel, perhaps she wanted to wake up all wives who were content to "make images in marriage".
Zhu Jing's worries are full of doubts, she sees the problems of the family, but she does not want to completely destroy the family, what she wonders is how to make the family more perfect, so that the family can truly become the destination of women. When she wrote in a novel about the family's problems being exposed, she used a very apt metaphor: "Like the cracks of porcelain blown by the wind, the small flaws of life that break the perfection, but they are real traces." "Zhu Jing is indeed like caring for a fine piece of porcelain to write today's family.
Manuscript editor: Fu Xiaoping ; New Media Editor: Li Lingjun
Image source: Infographic
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