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Reference:

Comparison of Characteristics of Female Images in Russian and Chinese Rural Prose

Van Fan'

Graduate student, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia

117198, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 6

FanWang_nefuer.@163.com
Galay Karina Nazirovna

Associate Professor, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia

117198, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 6

Galay@mail.ru

DOI:

10.25136/2409-8698.2023.2.39663

EDN:

GUBIDR

Received:

25-01-2023


Published:

06-02-2023


Abstract: The article compares systematically the works of Russian rural prose school and Chinese Beijing school from the point of view of reflection of female image in the works, analyzes the similarities and differences between them, as well as the reasons for their emergence from the position of comparative literary typology, taking into account the ontology of creativity. The village is the land where Russian and Chinese cultures grew and flourished, and rural literature written in the village gained a high reputation in both Russia and China during the period of great social transformations. The subject of the study is the characteristics of women's images in Russian and Chinese literature. The aim of the work is to analyze and compare female images in authors from Russia and China. Research methods – analysis of literary sources on the topic of research. Results of the research: the study of literary works from Russia and China on the theme of rural life was carried out, the portrayal of the female image by the authors of the two countries was compared. Conclusion. The works show an attempt to transform society through the pursuit of traditional culture and morality, in order to achieve an ideal state of society, full of love and freedom. The similarity of national-cultural narratives, themes and artistic styles makes the works of the Russian rural prose school comparable to the works of the Chinese Beijing school of simple fiction, but the differences between the historical and cultural background, religious beliefs and poetic soil of Russia and China make the works of these two schools of writing somewhat different.


Keywords:

literature, images, women, Russia, China, village, image comparison, comparison, results, image

This article is automatically translated.

At the moment, we can observe the active development of cooperation between Russia and China in various aspects. It is not surprising that in this state of affairs, interaction in the field of culture and art, in particular literature, is gaining momentum. Both countries are characterized by rural life, as part of the cultural development of the country. In this regard, the article presents a comparison of female images in the rural prose of the two countries. It is worth noting that in the twentieth century, the image of a woman as a whole was transformed. Haircuts and clothes changed, gender roles were transformed. In Russia, the transformation of women's roles begins in the post-revolutionary period. The growth of industry in the 20th century led to an increase in the role of women in labor issues and related rights. The position of women in the field of family life is increasing. This is perhaps the first intersection in the transformation of the female position of the two countries. For the PRC, in its traditional understanding based on Confucianism, the lack of rights for the female population was widespread. In China, it manifested itself in the submissiveness of a woman to a man at any age.

From the position of Fan Wenlan, the rights of Chinese women were positively influenced by the uprising of the peasant population of the 19th century, which proclaimed gender equality, nevertheless, these ideas have not been developed. For Russia, the revolution was exactly the same turning point in women's rights, before that the image of a woman was exclusively a housewife, without rights, education and literacy. In China, the Xinhai Revolution transformed realities. In both cases, a new female image with a new set of rights was at the center, which found its response in literary creativity. For example, Sun Bin [1] in his works touches on the theme of revolutionary transformations of the female image. He places women from the rural hinterland in the midst of the great changes of the old society and the modernization of China, and through their various forms of life interprets the great transformation from submission to resistance, from confusion to a breakthrough on the path to self-liberation. The author interprets all the changes in the female image through the everyday life of the Shanxi countryside, telling the life trajectory of four generations of women, describing the history of the struggle for self-arousal of women in China. The author reflects the transformation of rural women between traditional values and modern women's consciousness, incorporating changes in social life, ideological and cultural changes in rural China. In comparison of the same images, everyday life and transformations in Russia, the works of Vasily Shukshin can be cited, he also very vividly and colorfully interprets female images of the Russian hinterland. Both Shukshin and Sun Bin reflect the mental shackles imposed on women by the patriarchal society in their country. The works of Russian rural authors and representatives of the Chinese literary school of rural novelists are known as rural novels. From the point of view of aesthetics, the authors of both countries demonstrate a poetic tendency, the works are characterized by a reflection of the life of their native village, both art schools are permeated with sadness and sadness, from the point of view of language, both art schools are extremely lyrical and poetic [2]. The term "rural prose" itself refers not just to rural fiction, which focuses on peasants and rural life, but to a community of works that give a special spiritual meaning to peasants and the land. Its formal formation was marked by Solzhenitsyn's work "Matrenin's Yard", published in the late 1950s. The writer began to focus on previously taboo topics, depicting the tragic consequences of collectivization, environmental problems and moral failures faced by the village in the face of the growing urbanization of the Soviet Union, depicting ordinary working people who were wise or adhered to traditional values and beliefs, as well as trying to promote the history and culture of the Russian people. During this period, writers such as Abramov, Belov, Alekseev, Shukshin, Rasputin and Nosov wrote a number of masterpieces that approved and popularized the name "rural prose". The genre lost its powerful influence on public consciousness around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the end of the XX century, "village prose" has been revived, which is characterized by contemplation of changes in the Russian countryside, land and peasant life, research into the fate of peasant culture and the search for moral values.  In addition to a large number of new works by old writers of "rural prose", such as Rasputin, Belov and Ekimov, a number of young writers, such as Yuri Petkovich, Roman Sheynchin and Alexey Zakharov, are quite innovative in their expressive content and style.

Rural prose" of the new period, on the one hand, opposes the more decadent realities that the village faced after the abrupt changes in the country and the further degradation of man in the moral and spiritual sphere, and the painful cry of the heart is noticeable in the lines. On the other hand, the works tell more about the life of people in small towns on the border between urban and rural areas.

In his story, Alexey Zakharov tells the tragic story of Toma, an old village woman: in the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the collapse of collective farms and a shortage of young and strong labor, small, remote villages gradually decline. Fields and ancestral homes, which were considered the basis of the peasantry, were either abandoned and left empty, or sold. Since no one works in agriculture, a large number of young and middle-aged people have gone to work in the city, leaving behind the infirm and weak old people. The story is written like an old movie. This story shows that the sufferings and misfortunes of the village, which were shown by the old writers of "rural prose", still exist; the volumes are the future of those old women whom Rasputin portrayed in the 1970s and 1980s, a future that is even more severe and sad than the one that Rasputin portrayed then. Toma's confrontation with her granddaughter and her husband at the risk of her life and her impotent lamentations lead the novel to a climax. Through this tragic scene, we see the last struggle and resistance of a lonely old man, a silent complaint against his grandchildren for deceiving, abandoning and mocking him. If the older generation of writers of "rural prose" reflected the loss of traditional virtues and moral degradation after the children moved to the city, then the coldness and immorality generated by grandchildren, who became a new generation of citizens, is reflected here. If the previous "rural prose" showed the disgust of children towards the older generation, now it shows the rejection of grandchildren from the older generation. It is worth noting that the early works reflected the image of a woman expanding, transforming her rights. However, later works reflect what these transformations led to. Women become free, losing their original essence. This aspect can be noted in the works of both countries. The beauty of the village preserved the beauty in man. The representative of Russian village prose, Valentin Rasputin [3], builds a poetic narrative based on his native village. The heroine Agafia lives in a village by the river, a place of amazing natural beauty and spiritual beauty in a harmonious ecology, and in her long communion with nature, the heroine becomes more and more strong and selfless. Moving away from social transformations, it is worth noting that the national flavor is reflected in the female images of rural prose of both countries. The novelists of the Beijing School relied on classical Chinese poetry to give their language the ancient rhythm of traditional Chinese poetry. Lou Bern [4] focuses on combining Europeanized lyrical sentences with regional slang to form a unique language system. Shukshin [5], like Lu, likes to use Russian village slang in his works, the language of his characters is lively and concise, and the narration is lyrical. The difference between the two schools is the approach to describing reality. In Russia, this is the reality of village life, with all the difficulties that are sometimes inherent in it, in China, a state of non-existence, an imaginary state of village reality, has been created. Both Russian rural authors and Chinese writers like to portray a number of tragic female figures.

The image of Lyuba in Shukshin [5] is typical of a Russian rural working woman who suffers from an alcoholic husband and falls in love with Egor and achieves her love against all odds. As a result, Egor, a harvester with a certificate of release, is not accepted by society and dies, and Lyuba remains unhappy. Initially, Lyuba was supposed to be condemned in the society of her time, but Shukshin considers her actions reasonable from the point of view of humanity. Shukshin considers women in his work from a moral point of view based on the principle of humanity, which is very similar to the position of Shen Congwen. However, unlike Shen Konwen, who revered the natural and primitive state of conformity to the order of nature, Shukshen brings a sense of social responsibility to his criticism of society in the light of women's tragedies.Shen [6] sympathizes with the plight of Chinese women, and in his works he creates a beautiful world for them, far from the generally accepted ethics and morality.

While most of the female tragedies in the novels of the Beijing school are caused by the bad habits of the old society or the discrepancy between primitive humanity and modern civilization, almost all of the female tragedies in the works of the Russian school of rural prose are caused by war or modern industrial civilization, and this difference is due to differences in the historical and cultural past of Russia and China. Two writing schools have different creative goals: the writers of the Beijing school of rural prose seek to explore pure humanity and express the natural and primitive state of life, therefore, the women in their works are extremely innocent and are in a natural state of life, and the writers of the Russian school of rural prose try to realize moral ideals and social responsibility in their works, therefore rural women in their works have a spirit of dedication and devotion.

Writers of Russian rural prose, faced with the ecological destruction and moral alienation of human nature by modern industrial civilization, also proceeded from nostalgia for the traditional culture of the people and tried their best to preserve the dying traditional moral and ecological civilization of the village in their works. In "Farewell to Mater," Rasputin portrays a small village that is about to be destroyed by industrial civilization.

Shukshin also likes to depict in his works the tragedies of rural people who are discriminated against and spiritually drifting in the city, or those who picked up the vices of the city and were eventually abandoned by them. In the novel "The Wife sends her husband to Paris," Kolka, a native of the village, stays in Moscow after marriage, but he always feels lonely and is inextricably tied to the village, and when his wife's family treats him with contempt, he can't take it anymore and eventually kills himself by turning on the gas. In the book "There and Away" [7] Olga is a naive, enterprising girl from the countryside, but the extravagance of the city makes her vain, and eventually she drops out of school to join a gang of thieves and turn into a criminal. He believes that the value and true meaning of life lies in the land, which nourishes the beautiful culture and strong spiritual strength of the nation, as well as the true kindness and beauty of people [8].

The narrative position of the two schools of writers in striving for the traditional culture of the nation also demonstrates certain differences. Both schools of writers try to criticize society through the tragedies of their heroes, while the Beijing school of Chinese rural novelists expresses its disgust for urban industrial civilization and simultaneously criticizes traditional rural practices, while Russian rural prose writers take a position of simple skepticism towards modern industrial civilization [11]. Russian Russian rural prose writers appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, when material civilization was more developed, the national cultural narratives of Russian rural prose writers were more related to the ecological environment than to traditional rural cultural morality [12]. The humanitarian ideals of Russian rural prose writers included ecological ethics, the preservation of nature was a moral criterion in their works, and the protection of the ecological environment and nature became part of the traditional cultural ethics of the nation they pursued [13-14]. In the 1930s and 1940s, writers of the Beijing school of rural fiction were more concerned with human nature, perceiving the beauty of humanity in a patriarchal society as an important part of the precious national culture [15].

References
1. Russian Russian language and linguoculture in a comparative aspect: materials of the annual international conference of the Department of Russian Language for foreign students of the Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, June 1-2, 2017). — Vol. 1. Denisenko V. A. On the expediency of comparing female images in Russian and Chinese literature of the early XX century / V. A. Denisenko, Li Qiang // Russian language and linguoculture in a comparative aspect : materials of the annual international conference of the Department of Russian Language for Foreign Students of the Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg, June 1-2, 2017). 3. Part — Yekaterinburg : Azhur Publishing House, 2017. — pp. 23-26
2. Wang M. Favorite female images of Russian and Chinese literature from ancient times to the present. – 2019. – No. 1. – pp. 320-331.
3. P. Zhenyi. IMAGES OF VILLAGE WOMEN IN THE WORKS OF V. Rasputin and shen CONGWEN: the EXPERIENCE OF COMPARISON //Forum. – 2019. – pp. 57-59.
4. E. Kartashova. N. SPECIFICITY OF REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE IMAGES IN V. SHUKSHIN'S PROSE.2021
5. Kayumov V. M. Sh. Haidarova. R. Specificity of the embodiment of female images in the stories of V. I. Shukshin / / science, education, innovation: approbation of research results. – 2019. – pp. 462-470.
6. Sapa A. Female images in the works of Valentin Rasputin.-Liters, 2022.
7. K. Safarova. R. Poetics of female images in the story //Reviewers: Al Faktorovich, Doctor of Philology, Professor of Kuban State University. – 2015.
8. T. Lisovik. V. The image of the "new woman" in Chinese prose of the XX-XXI centuries: / LISOVIK Tatiana Viktorovna; Faculty of Philology; Department of Chinese Philology; scientific Hands. Krylova. – 2019.
9. Tereshonkova E. V. The problem of the spiritual and moral ideal in V. Rasputin's story "women's conversation" //Russian CULTURAL space: language–mentality-understanding. – 2019. – Vol. 1. 18. – p. 203.
10. V. Antonova. I., Golyakov A. N., Mishanin Yu. A. "Women's world" in K. Abramov's novel prose / / Bulletin of Chelyabinsk State University. – 2017. – ¹. 8 (404). – Pp. 13-21.
11. E. Sinetskaya. A. Some social phenomena of reformed China in the light of the policy of "openness" //society and the state in China. – 2015. – T. 1. 45. – ¹. 2. – Pp. 451-473.
12. Gavrilyuk Yu. A. Female images in Belov's STORIES //From text to context. – 2014. – No. 1. – pp. 119-124.
13. H. Khautieva. G., Khutsieva M. M. CLASSIFICATION OF FEMALE images in Russian literature //Bulletin of Science.-2020.
14. Marziye H. The image of a woman in the Story "The Ethereal Treatise" by A. Platonov: the experience of building a typology //Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. – 2022. – T. 1.– ¹. 3. – Pp. 673-677.
15. I. Tsitsenko. I., Sun H. The work of M. Sholokhov and the literature of China in the mid-twentieth century //The world of Sholokhov.-2014. – No. 2. – pp. 46-56.

First Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

The reviewed article focuses on the comparison of female images using the example of Chinese and Russian village prose. I believe that the chosen highway has a place to be, and the unfolding of the issue is quite real. However, the text of the essay is superficial, formal, weak, and unproven. I note that the author only makes an attempt to develop and compile the material, but it does not work out to form a serious essay. The main drawback of the study is a small appeal to the actual literary texts, a small analytical qualification. The article should be supplemented with clearly defined tasks, an objectively formulated goal, and a verified methodology. There is also not enough footnotes / citations in the text, and this is an important and necessary factor of scientific research. The style of the work can be correlated with the scientific type, because the author's aspiration is noticeable in the following fragments: "rural prose" of the new period, on the one hand, opposes the more decadent realities faced by the village after drastic changes in the country and further degradation of man in the moral and spiritual sphere, and a painful cry of the heart is noticeable in the lines. On the other hand, they tell more about the lives of people in small towns on the border between urban and rural areas," or "the novelists of the Beijing School relied on classical Chinese poetry to give their language the ancient rhythm of traditional Chinese poetry. Poetic novelists loved to use poetry to create a mood in their novels. Lou Bern focuses on combining Europeanized lyrical sentences with regional slang to form a unique language system. Russian Russian Shukshin, like Lu, likes to use Russian village slang in his works, the language of his characters is lively and concise, and the narrative is lyrical," or "writers of Russian rural prose, faced with the ecological destruction and moral alienation of human nature by modern industrial civilization, also proceeded from nostalgia for the traditional culture of the people and tried their best to preserve in his works, the dying traditional moral and ecological civilization of the village. In "Farewell to Mater," Rasputin depicts a small village that is about to be destroyed by industrial civilization," etc. There is also a certain terminological confusion in the work – "rustic prose" and "rural prose". It is advisable to unify these nominations, or give the necessary comment that will allow you not to get confused in these concepts. The final block also looks weak, as such, the results on the topic, the problem of studying have not been done, the author needs to finalize this part of the article. For example, the following thesis sounds unproven and unconvincing: "the narrative position of the two schools of writers in striving for the traditional culture of the nation also demonstrates certain differences. Both schools of writers try to criticize society through the tragedies of their heroes, while the Beijing school of Chinese rural novelists expresses its disgust for urban industrial civilization and simultaneously criticizes traditional rural practices, while Russian rural prose writers take a position of simple skepticism towards modern industrial civilization...". The bibliographic list needs to be corrected, brought into unification mode: such references as "Kartashova E. N. THE SPECIFICS OF THE REPRESENTATION OF FEMALE IMAGES IN THE PROSE OF VM SHUKSHIN.2021" or "Sapa A. Female images in the works of Valentin Rasputin are not appropriate. – Liters, 2022", or "Marziye H. Images of women in the story "The Ethereal Tract" by A. Platonov: the experience of building a typology //Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. – 2022. – T.", etc. It is necessary to bring the sources to a single form, standardly designated by the publication. Thus, we can conclude that the work needs serious editing and correction, the research topic has not been disclosed, the problem has not been indicated texturally and holistically, in this form the article cannot be published in the journal "Litera".

Second Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

The article "Comparison of characteristics of female images in Russian and Chinese rural prose" submitted for consideration, proposed for publication in the journal "Litera", is undoubtedly relevant, due to the fact that the subject of comparing the female image in the literature of China and our country has not been the subject of scientific research. In this regard, the article presents a comparison of female images in the rural prose of the two countries. It should be noted that there is a relatively small amount of research on this topic in literary studies. In addition, the relevance of the article is emphasized by the popularity of Chinese culture and language in our country, as well as the rapprochement of the peoples of the two countries. The study was carried out in line with modern scientific approaches, the work consists of an introduction containing a statement of the problem, a mention of the main researchers of this topic, the main part, traditionally beginning with a review of theoretical sources and scientific directions, research and final, which presents the conclusions obtained by the author. The article is groundbreaking, one of the first in Russian literary criticism devoted to the study of such topics. The research methodology is adequate to the tasks set. The author uses analytical, descriptive, interpretative, and classified methods. However, the scope and principles of sampling the linguistic material on which the study is based are unclear. How large is the text corpus and from what sources was it obtained? We believe that ignoring the linguistic material in the article, namely the lack of textual illustrations with examples of stated conclusions, is one of the significant disadvantages of the presented text. Structurally, we note that this work was done professionally, in compliance with the basic canons of scientific research. The bibliography of the article contains 15 sources, among which works are presented exclusively in Russian. We believe that the original work of Chinese researchers would enrich this study. Unfortunately, the article does not contain references to fundamental works such as monographs, PhD and doctoral dissertations. Technical shortcomings in the design of the bibliographic list include non-compliance with the requirements of the established GOST, namely, the placement of sources not in alphabetical order. There are probably inaccuracies in the design of source 7 (is this a dissertation? Abstracts of the report? A monograph?) Typos, spelling and syntactic errors, inaccuracies in the text of the work were not massively detected. We will refer to typos as "Unsurprisingly", the absence of a left quotation mark is Rural prose." One of the "weak" points of the article are the conclusions, which are not so much formulated by the author as borrowed from the works of his predecessors. The comments made are not critical. The work is innovative, representing the author's vision of solving the issue under consideration and may have a logical continuation in further research. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using its results in the process of teaching university courses in comparative literature. The article will undoubtedly be useful to a wide range of people, philologists, undergraduates and graduate students of specialized universities. The article "Comparison of characteristics of female images in Russian and Chinese village prose" can be recommended for publication in a scientific journal.