China and the West

Wang, Jianxiang. Lun Fujiniya Wu'erfu de nü xing zhu yi li chang [ID D31612].
Wang identifies that Woolf's fundamental stand is to demand a female to be herself, and idependent self, different from the male, unattached to the male but harmonious with the male and the whole world. Wang distinguishes that if Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist claim remains at the level of women's equality with men, Woolf's has actually transcended the level of 'being equals' and and risen to the height of reconstructing a female self'. In fact, 'to be oneself' has become a powerful call for the later feminist movement. According to Woolf's analysis, the oppression imposed upon women by patriarchy in both history and literature penetrated every aspect of women's lives, exerted an imperceptible influence on their thinking, and even made them unconsciously internalize the convention of the mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women. As a result, women's consciousness of being themselves was lost. In order to reconstruct women's self-consciousness or to be themselves, Wang argues, in addition to gaining a room of her own and an income of five hundred pounds a year, women should endeavor four things : overcome self-deprecation, or in Woolf's words 'kill the angel in the house'; establish their own values ; come out of the narrow private world and enter the broad public world; and establish a harmonious relationship between the two sexes.