Stills from the movie "Becoming Jane Austen"
What are the signs of a woman's advancement? Own a job? Not dependent on men to live independently? Social activities? So, does writing count? The answer is yes. Writing means that a woman begins to express her thoughts independently and systematically; moreover, she wants the whole society to understand her thoughts.
Since the second half of this year, two things have invariably made women's writing a topic of concern. One is that in the domestic film "Little Women", which is based on the literary classic of the same name, the protagonist, the rebellious and independent female writer Joe, finally insists on signing his novel "Little Women" with the real name of "March Joe". The second is that the sponsor of the British "Bailey Women's Fiction Award" will soon publish the "Take Back Her Name" series of books, which will present the real names of female writers who have hidden their real names for hundreds of years to readers.
What deserves heated discussion is not the simple question of women's attribution in writing, but whether women writers need to become men to win the attention of more critics and readers, and a series of questions raised by signatures: Why do women writers become men? Why do women write? What is the value of women's writing?
Stills from the movie "Little Women"
The same is signed male, and different female writers have very different demands. Kohler Bell may be a cover-up, while George Eliot and George San need a way to cover up
Woolf (1882-1941) implicitly criticized female writers in the form of men in One Room, "Kohler Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all of whom are victims of their inner conflict, as can be seen in their writings, who use men's names in vain to disguise themselves." However, different female writers who are also signed male have very different demands. Kohler Bell may be a cover-up, and George Eliot and George Sang need a desired effect.
For George Sand (1804-1876), she took her neutral name as a fashion symbol. She has probably forgotten her gender and used a male pen name as her identity to enter the public domain. As an intellectual woman, she thinks she can be as strong as a man. She didn't think it was shameful for women to show their faces, as Woolf said. Instead, she tossed the Parisian literary scene to the ground. She loves men's clothing and is keen to appear in the public sphere. Before taking her daughter to Paris, she was a victim of an unhappy marriage and had tried to sacrifice herself in order to maintain the marriage. In her autobiography, she explains very rationally the reason for her marital misfortune: "I can't live with him because we have fundamental differences in personality and ideology." In a marriage without emotional exchange, she began to write the novel Godmother. At this time, writing is a kind of spiritual catharsis and redemption for her.
Georges San embarked on a deviant path and is inseparable from the tradition of cultural salons that French society has inherited since the 16th century. Especially in the 18th century, the equal atmosphere of the salon provided a broad space for women to participate in public life, becoming a classroom for them to acquire knowledge and improve their self-cultivation, and many salon hostesses emerged. This cultural foundation makes the status of women in France very different from that in Britain and the United States. Of course, George Sang's personality is also directly related to his mother, father, and grandmother. Both her mother and grandfather loved birds, and she spent a lot of time talking about birds in her autobiography. Her love of birds fueled her desire for a free life. Her father served in Napoleon's army, and before the age of four, Georges San was brought up in the barracks by his father. The cheerful atmosphere there has created her sociable, unbridled masculinity. The woman who influenced her the most was her grandmother, who lived with her from the age of four to 20, except for three years of studying at the convent. Although her grandmother was a descendant of the nobility, she was supportive of the Revolution and believed that all men were created equal. His grandmother's broad vision gave George Sand a vision of a higher world. The love of his grandparents also made George Sang follow his heart and love him vigorously throughout his life. When she first debuted in the Paris literary scene, she collaborated with her lover Hule to write a book, using the pen name Hule Sandor. When she published her book independently, publishers demanded that the well-known name be followed. She refused, instead using the neutral pen name George Sand. Farewell to the cardamom maiden named Amandina Lucy Olore Duban; farewell to the miserable young woman known as Madame Dudwan; farewell to Jules Sandor, who is still spiritually dependent on men, a strong and independent Georges San, who has unlimited possibilities, is born. This pseudonym allows us to see the inner growth of a woman.
In 1832, Georges San, who had just arrived in Paris, published the lyrical novel Indiana, and its grandeur made the Parisian literary scene smile at the young woman. Although the novel has her own shadow, it gets rid of the autobiographical trapping, the plot twists and turns, not only reflects the relationship between the sexes, warns women about the complexity of life and human nature, but also reflects serious social issues, placing the relationship between the characters in the context of the era of the French Revolution, and integrating the pulse of the times and romantic feelings.
Born about half a century later than George Sand, the British female scholar Vernon Lee (1856-1935), whose original name was Violet Paget, was a gifted girl with a precocious view of literature, history and art. Before she was 14 years old, she corresponded with her mentor, Mrs. Jekin, under the neutral pseudonym Vernon Lee, because she felt that "no one can read the works of art, history, and aesthetics written by a woman except ridicule." At the age of 14, she published a brief account of history in a Swiss newspaper. In 1880, at the age of 24, she published a monograph on 18th-century Italy. In 1884, she published her first novel, Miss Brown, a satire of aestheticism and the "carnalism" of art, which was attacked by mainstream critics and supported by friends. By the late 1890s, when she focused on the field of "psychological aesthetics", she was even more at odds with the British literary mainstream. She collaborated with Clementina Anstruther Thomson to explore the correlation between perception of art forms and human responses, introducing the concept of "resonance" to British aesthetic circles, breaking the monopoly of Pete's aesthetic theory and facilitating the "new science" of aesthetics into the British aesthetic tradition.
Vernon Lee not only dabbled in research in many disciplines, but was also an intellectual with a strong sense of social responsibility. She spoke out before and during World War I and wrote the anti-war drama Satan This Waste. George Bernard Shaw, who in his review, considered her an intellectual with internationalist feelings in the Victorian era, saying: "Vernon Lee was an Englishman among the British... I take off my top hat to pay tribute to the noblest Englishman." In addition to studying aesthetics, Vernon Lee dabbled in language and music studies, publishing The Treatment of Words and Music and Its Lovers. Unfortunately, vernon Lee's work was underestimated in her later years and after her death, and many publishers refused to publish her work. As a female intellectual, she suffered the sadness of not being understood by mainstream cultural circles. What happened to her deserves our deep consideration, but is it the reason for her personality? Or is it the reason for the work itself? Or is it the prejudice in mainstream cultural circles that a woman can't have a creative opinion in many fields?
Women want to describe their true selves and express their true hearts, rather than the female image imagined and constructed by men
In a society where men are inferior to women, how difficult is it for women to continue to write or engage in a career independent of their families while fulfilling their duties as wives and mothers? Even Austin, a single woman, insists on writing. Her nephew says she doesn't have a separate study and finishes her work in a living room shared with her family. If you have relatives and friends visiting, you must also hide the manuscript. Even in modern times, there are still many obstacles to women's writing. Alice Monroe's novel The Office tells the story of the heroine "I" who struggles to write a novel. She rented an office and wanted to concentrate on writing. But Mr. Landlord listened to and disturbed her writing, sneaked into the office to peek at the manuscripts, and constantly made up peachy news about her.
In the long years when women's right to write was lost, the image of women was portrayed by male writers. Among them, there are many women friends who sympathize with the weak position of women, euripides's "Medea", Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urberville", Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina", etc., all of which have deep sympathy for the unfortunate experience of women. However, do male writers' portrayals of women really fit the facts? Obviously, many women are not satisfied with their condescending sympathy for women in their works. In terms of women's shaping, they inevitably bring their own value orientation and aesthetic preferences.
Let's see how the great writers portray women in their understanding. Shakespeare's Hamlet is imbued with a strong misogynistic atmosphere, and the queen and Ophelia seem to be foils and victims of political competition. When the young prince learned of the death of his father, Wang Xian, and his mother, who soon remarried his uncle, he immediately shouted, "Weak one, your name is woman!" "Is it true that a woman who remarries is weak-willed?" Isn't there a compulsive grievance? Can the queen represent all women?
In Paradise Lost, Milton created the shy, innocent and obedient image of Eve, which is Milton's ideal woman. Although he tirelessly describes Adam and Eve's co-working, intimate married life, which is far beyond his time's positioning of women in marriage, we can still perceive his deepest values that men are higher than women and that women should obey men. For example, like an old grandmother, he taught women how to accept partners and marriages with peace of mind. He borrowed Adam's words to say that "there is no loveliness in a woman than the consideration of housekeeping and the promotion of her husband's work." What's more, after the two of them stole the fruit from the tree of wisdom, Adam felt that he was about to be severely punished by God, and he was furious and reprimanded Eve with a stern eye: "Don't let me see you, you serpent!" The name is most appropriate for you, and you are allied with him, equally hypocritical and hateful." Then Adam lamented that it would be nice if there were only men and no women in the world: "How nice it would be if only men and angels were made to fill the world, not to make women, and to reproduce human offspring by other means!" / As soon as this evil water fell, it fell more and more, / The countless messes that were created on the earth were all due to / Female nets..." But even though Adam rebuked her so angrily, Eve did not refute it, and tears flowed unceasingly, and humbly fell at Adam's feet, holding his legs and praying for reconciliation.
Joyce used his wife, Nora, as a prototype for molly, the heroine of Ulysses. Although Nora is very bone-headed, Joyce deliberately highlights Molly's fullness. Joyce's Molly, with the tone of a brash woman in the Epic Irish epic, looks back with interest in all the suitors and affairs of her youth in a late-night monologue, especially rendering Molly's lust and desire for the body of her lover Bowieland. Joyce was well-intentioned, hoping that enlightened women would break free from the shackles of old-fashioned morality and respect their physical feelings, but the female writer who rode the wind and waves was not happy to see him portray women as such a wandering skeleton. Virginia Woolf was furious when he saw Ulysses, saying that its vulgarity offended him.
As Woolf points out, male writers and male critics ignore women's values. From this perspective, women's writing is even more meaningful. Women want to describe their true selves and express the true heart of women, rather than the female image imagined and constructed by men.
George Egerton (formerly Mary Bright, 1859-1945) was one such female writer. She is committed to exploring the "uncharted territory" of women's lives and experiences, such as some eccentric people, some hidden characteristics, some hidden emotions. She pays special attention to unique areas that only women can feel, such as the relationship between motherhood and sex education, such as the plight of remarried families, and so on.
Motherhood is not only reflected in the life of caring for children, for daughters, mothers also have the mission of sex education. In Egerton's day, however, many mothers were ashamed to say anything about it. In The Primal Soil, daughter Florence asks her mother before marriage what it is like to get married, and her mother blinks. After getting married, Florence denounced her mother, "You raised me to be a fool, an idiot, who knew nothing about everything I should know." "This raises the grim topic of the lack of sex education in the family for the whole society."
In the novel The State of Marriage, Egerton depicts a stepmother who relies on alcoholism and punishment for his stepson to eliminate her inner pain. Unlike the one-sided image of the vicious stepmother in fairy tales written by male writers, this stepmother is worthy of sympathy. Her evil stems from the deception and oppression of her remarried husband, whose daughter with her ex-boyfriend is not accepted as an "illegitimate child" by her husband, while she needs to raise her husband and his ex-wife's three children. The ending of the novel is tragic and profound, the heroine's daughter is seriously ill, she rushes back to see the child in desperation, but she is unable to return to heaven, and the child of her ex-husband also dies of her abuse. The heroine falls into a state of madness. If her husband had fulfilled her premarital promise to raise the woman's biological children together, and if her husband had given the woman sincere love and she would not have lost her mind out of resentment, then all four children might not have died.
Women not only won "a room of their own" by their own efforts, but also opened the windows of the room, allowing their thoughts and feelings to embrace the new and strange scenery
Many female writers who pseudonymize men are not satisfied with the style of "lady writers" FengHuaXueyue, hoping to have a broader vision and realm, while paying attention to the plight of women, but also focusing on social reform. They are acutely aware that the root cause of inequality between men and women lies in the lack of social progress. George Eliot (1819-1880) in Middlemarach implied in "Middlemarche" that both men and women should not be bound by the world, and should have the courage to promote social innovation and pursue ideals. Many of the discourses in the book are superficially in line with the mainstream values of the Victorian era, but in fact they are quiet ironies. For example, "A truly happy marriage must be that your husband has some paternal nature, can guide you in everything, and when necessary, even teach you Hebrew." "It's a satire on women's spiritual dependence on their husbands. Another example: "It is inevitable that women will have some opinions of wrongdoing, but in order to ensure the safety of social and family life, these propositions are naturally not suitable for serious implementation." Normal people are always like other people, and they are like him, so that if a crazy person runs into the street, people can recognize and avoid it early. These words would be even more unique if they were read in the light of Eliot and Lewis's shocking love.
At the same time, female writers also fully release the innocence and whimsy of women. At that time, Woolf worried that there was no tradition to follow in women's writing, and this dilemma was being improved by women writers. George Sand and Vernon Lee have created fairy tales and fantasy works, and this tradition continues to contemporary women writers, and J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, is a typical example. She took the tradition of female writers writing fantasy literature to the extreme. As a strong person in life, Rowling changed the original feminine name Joanne Rowling to a neutral pen name J. Rowling. K. Rowling. When her daughter was four months old, she separated from her ex-husband and lived on relief money. In the winter, I had to keep warm in the warm café, write, and take care of my daughter in the stroller. Like George Sang at that time, although her life was temporarily embarrassing, she did not write to cater to society, but to write whimsical and express true feelings. She didn't even create the Harry Potter series specifically for kids, but only because she was interested in the subject of magic. This pure feminine value has brought great success. Now, Rowling no longer needs to warm up and write in the café, but she still has the courage to start from scratch and break through herself. In 2013, under the new male pseudonym Robert Gale Bryce, she published the crime thriller The Cuckoo's Call. She said that with the new pseudonym, exaggerated publicity could be avoided and impartial reviews were obtained. We are pleased to see that women can write not only fantasy works, but also thriller novels, and their changeable style fully demonstrates women's magnificent imagination and profound insight. My guess is that if Woolf had been alive, she would have been happy to give another speech about women's writing. Women not only won "a room of their own" by their own efforts, but also opened the windows of the room, allowing their thoughts and feelings to embrace the new and strange scenery.
Interestingly, the trend of attribution is also reversing, and many male writers have begun to make articles on names, either changing their names to look like a young person or changing them to female names in order to win the favor of more female readers and young readers. Of course, good works have nothing to do with the name, they have to do with the interesting soul behind the name.
Author: Wei Qing, PhD student in the Department of Chinese, Fudan University, teacher of School of Foreign Chinese, Hefei University of Technology
Editor: Fan Xin