—— Typical female images in China's classical literary works.

In the long-term survival and reproduction of mankind, women have played a vital role. The history of human civilization began with matriarchal society, but with the development of human civilization and the evolution of society, women gradually became subordinate to men, especially in the long feudal society, women were in an insulted and damaged position. This paper attempts to analyze the tragic fate of ancient women in China by taking the female images in China's ancient literary works as an example.

First, the expression of the tragic fate of ancient women in China

Since China's first poetry collection, The Book of Songs, women have been an important part of all kinds of literary genres and works, and the tragic fate of ancient women in China is also vividly displayed in these literary works. Generally speaking, there are three main manifestations of the tragic fate of ancient women in China:

L, the victim of the social system.

The image of abandoned wife created in China's first collection of poems, The Book of Songs, vividly reflects the heavy blow and unfortunate fate suffered by ancient women under the social system that men are superior to women. The abandoned wife in the poem is a spoony, kind, hardworking and strong woman, but such a virtuous wife is finally abandoned by her husband and laughed at by her family. Poetry profoundly reflects the oppression and harm of the social marriage system to women at that time, and also vividly reflects the passive and low status of women in marriage and family at that time. Du Shiniang in Feng Menglong's Du Shiniang's Wrath Box in Ming Dynasty is a woman with unyielding self-esteem. She is at the bottom of society and has been bullied in her long life as a prostitute. When her painstaking efforts finally turned for the better, what she got was the result of being cheated, bought and sold, and abandoned until she embarked on the road of desperate struggle. Du Shiniang's tragedy may have some contingency from the plot, but in fact, this contingency is the inevitable result of the social environment at that time. In traditional moral concepts, women's dependent status and prostitutes' humble social status are the chief culprits of Du Shiniang's tragic fate.