In Wang Anyi's novels, ordinary people are the protagonists, expressing their extraordinary experiences and feelings in ordinary life. "Understanding" and "love" are her creative purposes. In artistic expression, her early novels are full of emotional expressions, while her recent creations tend to be calm and meticulous.
From Wang Anyi's works, we can generally feel a kind of generous love. She endowed the characters in the story with "heroism" and showed their beauty and kindness. She controls the subtle atmosphere development of the story and the psychological changes of the characters with sensitivity and superb understanding, which is delicate and accurate. Her works tell an ordinary story, a daily life, but she explores the powerful and merciful natural laws behind the story, which is her concern for human nature, human existence and ontological world, which makes her works of extraordinary significance. At the same time, the gentleness of women is always reflected in her works, and her cautious and thoughtful personality makes her exist in the literary world as a maverick.
Related works:
The Everlasting Regret
Author: Wang Anyi
Page count: 384
Pricing: 20.00.
Publishing House: Writers Publishing House
Introduction:
A woman's 40 years of love and affection was elegantly written by a delicate and gorgeous pen, with ups and downs. In the forties, Wang Qiyao, a middle school student, was chosen as "Miss Shanghai", and her ill-fated life began. The canary who became a big shot changed from a girl to a real woman. After the liberation of Shanghai, officials were killed and Wang Qiyao became an ordinary person. The surface days are as dull as water, but the inner emotional tide has never subsided. The complicated relationship with several men is predestined. In the 1980s, Wang Qiyao, who had reached the age of knowing her destiny, was doomed to failure. She had an abnormal relationship with her daughter's male classmate and was finally killed by mistake.
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Wang Anyi's "Three Loves" and Others
If someone asks me why my room is so messy, books and miscellaneous stories about Wang Anyi are covered with beds, desks, floors and electric fans, and the wind keeps blowing, and the wind rolls up a corner of the book, while I just sit on a wooden chair, as if thinking about something.
China writer, 1954, ancestral home in Tongan, Fujian, mother Ru Zhijuan, father Wang Xiaoping, playwright. When Wang Anyi was over one year old, she settled in Shanghai with her parents and received her initial education there. When she was in primary school, she often participated in district and city children's song writing competitions and had deep feelings for literature. 1969 graduated from junior high school. In the second year, he went to work in Liu Zhuang Brigade of Toupu Commune in Wuhe County, Anhui Province. He was elected as a county, regional and provincial activist. 1972 was admitted to Xuzhou Art Troupe and participated in some creative activities. 1976, she published her first essay "Forward" in Jiangsu Literature and Art. Two years later, she worked as a novel editor in Shanghai Children's Times Magazine, and soon published famous novels "Who is the future squadron leader" and "Rain, sasha vujacic". 1980 participated in the fifth literary workshop of the Chinese Writers Association. 1983 participated in the literary activities of the International Writing Project of the University of Iowa. Later, he served as a director of the Shanghai Writers Association and the fourth Council of the Chinese Writers Association. Although her resume is very short, she has been immersed in life and has become a truly rich life.
Since the publication of the novel "The End of this Train", her galloping pen has no end. She has surpassed her parents and become one of the most influential writers in contemporary China literature ... In front of me are her collections of novels, Rain, sasha vujacic (198 1, Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House) and Black, Black and White (1983, Children's Publishing House). China Youth Publishing House), Postscript (1983, Sichuan People's Publishing House), Died (1983, Sichuan People's Publishing House), Xiaobaozhuang (1985, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), Dream at Sea (1985) Hong Kong Sanlian Bookstore). Huayi Publishing House), the novel The Old Road of the Yellow River (198 1986, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House), Dandelion (1988, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House) and the long travel story The Story of Traveling to Germany (1990, Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House). Her novels Who is the Future Squadron Leader, The Terminal of this Train, The Passage and Xiao Bao Zhuang have all won national awards. Many novels have also been translated into various languages.
This is Wang Anyi. Wang Anyi's development is really fast.
I picked up the literary newspaper, 1993, which had just arrived from the ground on July 29th. Summary of Wang Anyi's speech at the Fourth Shanghai Literature Conference. Wang Anyi said,' Intellectuals should keep their own independent thinking in an environment where the wind blows all around. She said that writers should have artistic ideals, and this era of great change needs writers' attention. It is a waste of talent and experience, or a lack of artistic ideal to eulogize love affairs blindly. Yes, Wang Anyi's creation has gone beyond herself. Recently, she has been thinking that if a writer only starts from extremely personal joys and sorrows, it is purely a trick. Her creation has reached the harvest season. The maturity of this thought is that Wang Anyi began to pay attention to grand things and sad things. This change in creation is towards the aesthetic ideal of mankind.
Starting from the novella Uncle's Story, Wang Anyi's creation has made a leap on her own basis. Her artistic ideal is brought to the extreme, which really makes her more atmospheric and deeper. Uncle's story is of great significance to contemporary literature. It has a huge historical connotation, which can definitely stand the repeated chewing of history, and it is also a sign that Wang Anyi's creative thinking is mature. If a writer gives up his ideological pursuit, he will naturally fall behind, especially in the 1990s, and he can't give up his participation and thinking about life. Without thinking, there will be no weighty works. In recent years, Wang Anyi has indeed written weighty works. For example, the novel Documentary and Fiction published this year and the novella Sad Pacific both show the writer's generosity and attach importance to human aesthetic ideals. These two works mark that Wang Anyi's creation has reached another new peak.
Wang Anyi not only maintains her unique pursuit in art, but also is quite restrained and rigorous in life. This is related to the education she received from childhood. I'm afraid everyone knows that she is RuZhiJuan's daughter. She loves reading, treats people warmly, loves thinking, talks philosophically and likes seeking truth from facts. As an upright writer, she deserves it.
Of course, everyone has learned a lot about Wang Anyi's life, so I don't need to go into details here. But to truly interpret a writer, we must never ignore her important works in her growing period. Then, for Wang Anyi, "three loves" is an important part of her whole literary creation, so the analysis of "three loves" has become the focus of my comments.
Wang Anyi brought me into a world.
A world full of life, depression, suffering, burning hope and light-the ontological world of life.
"Three love" is a symbol, and abnormal sexual description shows charm to people. I have to honestly admit that her sexual consciousness is just spinning around on the edge of life and has not really entered the human life instinct. Because she failed to resist the powerful moral persuasion after all, Wang Anyi seems to find her psychological balance in a kind of self-suppressed persuasion.
Chasing Deer in Middle Street has a tendency. She let a woman's life collapse directly, threw herself into the arms of her family and acted as a foil for her husband. They don't realize the existence of self-worth at all. Century on the Hill directly entered the' sex' of human life instinct. In the face of the most real life, any hypocrisy and any concealment will be of no help. Sex provides men and women with equal rights to be human beings, just as the combination of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden constitutes the integrity of human beings, and the same strength of men and women creates the same rhythm of life.
Now a basic feature of the novel is that the big family has disappeared and replaced by a small family composed of two people. The image of the father disappeared and was replaced by the image of the husband. The role of women has also changed from mother and daughter to wife and lover respectively. But this change is only the role exchange within the family relationship, that is to say, the discourse about the family has not changed, and the budding consciousness about female sexuality is still shrouded in the deep psychological family ideology.
Wang Anyi's world is a world with strong subjective consciousness. The issues she cares about, the language she uses and the narrative style before and after her works have all changed greatly. There are both women's self-deprecation and submission to male society; There is also a kind of uneasiness that cannot be concealed, desperately trying to liberate themselves. But no matter how it develops, the author's creation is playing himself. It is another "absence" that determines this kind of drama. He (I use "he" instead of "she" here) determines that Wang Anyi writes like this, not like that. In this way, when Wang Anyi writes with a pen, she is no longer' she' but' he', because the code order in her writing must be consistent with the social code order of' he'. In other words, society is male, not' his'. Women writers can't write without social background. According to Lacan, "in this patriarchal society, women enter the language and cultural system in the form of loss or castration." Although women have made great efforts to achieve the achievements of male culture in writing, they have unconsciously accepted this man's prejudice against women.
What kind of' prejudice' is it? Wang Anyi's concern about women's status is sometimes not in society, but in the family. She thinks that returning to the family means returning to the natural life. In a very comfortable small family, women naturally perform their duties and responsibilities, make sacrifices, forget themselves, be morally pure, be a good wife and mother, or, to put it bluntly, be an' angel in the family'. This kind of' lady' woman satisfies Wang Anyi's psychological needs to some extent. As a result, it also satisfies the social order of "he", that is, women-family; Men-social. Therefore, it is also a man's demand for women and a worship of men as' real women'. They have been together since childhood.
In a small city, they always keep practicing. She asked him to help spread her legs. They touched it like an electric shock. She became the mother of a son and a daughter. She is as gentle as a virgin.
-"Love in a Small Town"
The narrators in Wang Anyi's novels all appear in the third person, which is obvious in itself. The narrator constructs a unique universe through his own incarnation. She created this universe, in which she can know everything, and she has the ability to become a god. She can judge her hero and heroine, good and evil, beauty and ugliness at will under very rational circumstances. This historical observation, which puts himself completely above the meaning of the work, makes the narrator completely become the creator of truth. The hero and heroine in Love in a Small Town had some stormy sex, and then the man took her away in a domineering way and dumped her, which made them more afraid of her. In the eyes of the narrator, a man is an incompetent degenerate, and a woman is a victim, just a very gentle, broad and sacred victim in the eyes of the narrator.
In fact, through her narration, Wang Anyi conveyed to people such a value that she has subconsciously recognized: she thinks that women in China today should be like this. Although women are half of mankind, they have a strong attachment to the other half. Although people's needs, especially sexual satisfaction, are indispensable to each other's satisfaction. But women lack the physiological characteristics of men, so she has no right to create. This is space, and there is no motivation to fill it. This physiological difference is on the one hand. On the other hand, social factors. There is no difference between men and women, but there are sharp contradictions between women. In today's China, being a woman sometimes means giving up the right to be a man. Faced with this contradiction, women try to find a way out. They get married and have children. They want to confirm their personal identity through their families, but they are falling into the trap more and more. "The concept of' family' in some women's minds is that this is their' God'. Maintaining the status of the family and being loyal to the family are loyal to their duties. Wang Anyi's Chasing Deer in the Middle Street is typical in this respect. She is still a third-person narrative way, and she is still an omniscient and omnipotent god who turns herself into a moral manipulator.
A well-educated middle-aged female teacher stared at her husband blindly and followed her all day when she suspected that her husband was having an affair, as if the whole meaning of her life was to control her man. Let him love this family and love her wholeheartedly as she does. Only in this way can the hostess's mentality remain stable forever. She takes the stability of her family as her bounden duty, keeping her husband around, keeping him under control, and letting him and her seek happiness together in the paradise they jointly opened up. This is the greatest happiness in her life. But her husband is not like this. He wears jeans, goes to restaurants with beautiful young girls and learns to dance disco. He keeps saying that he wants to live a free and easy life, and he is trying to make his life free and easy. When he clearly knew that his woman was following him all day, he didn't restrain himself, but he was more proud of being free and easy. Play in circles like a game with your own woman. Some men in China are like this. A man marries a wife at home, takes care of the housework, and immediately finds another lover after marriage. They were immediately dissatisfied and immediately felt that' a wife is not as good as a concubine, and a concubine is not as good as a prostitute'. On the other hand, women don't. They just try their best to keep their families and lack the adventurous spirit of men. Men often get pleasure in an adventurous behavior, while women always like to live a stable and stable life. In their view,' clean daughter married a man' belongs to him forever. This traditional concept of' chastity' is stipulated by the male society as the honor of women. As a model,' family' has a long history in China, and marriage by stages seems to have found a place for women. Most women don't get married to seek the result of love, but family is the place where love is buried. These' ladies' are generally not for love, but to prove their value and establish their social status through their families. In fact, this practice itself is consistent with improving the status of women and consolidating monogamous families centered on men. The purpose of consolidating family order is only to consolidate the social order it represents. In this way, the family has become an ideological state machine, controlling all kinds of social life all the time, and of course controlling Wang Anyi's writing activities.
Wang Anyi asked the heroine to give up her social career and leave the studio automatically. First of all, she has become a vassal of men economically, so she also has the desire to hope that women will return to the family world. She may think it's more natural for women to do this. This is not surprising in China. If a woman writer wants to use the negative image of ignorance and backwardness to achieve a kind of reflection, isn't it attractive to do so? But history is moving forward after all. With the deepening of reform and opening up, writers' consciousness is also changing. Wang Anyi's works have changed a lot in the early and late period, but there are also some contradictions, probably because of the land of China. Talking about men and women now is also an extremely complicated issue. Most of our female writers confine themselves to men's language and lack the courage and strength to discover their self-worth. It can even be said that some people simply don't want to find out, because the socialized literary tradition is difficult to break easily. They are unconsciously following this tradition, and this tradition is a kind of' other' discourse, so naturally they will not consider using male experience to speak. Therefore, it is so complicated for writers to reflect the ambivalence of men and women.
But in any case, as Wang Anyi, his creation has undergone great changes in recent years. 1987' s Three Loves', 1988' s Chasing Deer in the Middle Street, and 1989' s Century on the Mountain still have obvious mutations. It also talks about men and women, sex and people's life consciousness, but "Working Century" seems to be a big step ahead of previous works. Her psychological barrier is being gradually broken through. She no longer regards women as charming roses and gentle angels blooming in the family world, but shows them as an independent personality, a standing, alive and affectionate person. In the past, the quiet and reserved style in her writing, and the hesitation in writing about the devil but afraid of his appearance seem to be turning into Wang Anyi's creative history. She began to bravely face the most instinctive' sex' of human beings and directly exposed the weaknesses and physiological desires of human nature. The "sex" in her works is never hidden, but the climax of desire. When they are in full bloom, they will be in full bloom, not prolonging their lives, but directly writing about fresh life.
Century on the Mountain boldly describes the scene of "wild intercourse" between the hero and heroine in the roadside ditch. In Wang Anyi's works, a warm woman is naked in front of a man for him to watch. The heroine suddenly became a hero in men's eyes, and she is proving the great charm and courage of women to the male world with an infinite power. At this moment, claustrophobia and sexual mania plunged him into a deep fear of castration, and under the temptation of a charming female victory posture, he completely fell into the abyss of desire. It was at this time that Wang Anyi became a woman writer. In her eyes, the status of men and women has been reversed, the traditional order of men and women has been subverted, and the traditional scene of men brutally abusing women is gone forever. Here, women have completely become the driving force, and women no longer passively accept a lack of personality. Women's sexual desire mainly shapes men. Women are stronger than men, and men become incompetent, lacking and unable to satisfy women here.
In the eyes of the narrator, this man is a very naive waste. How can he be like a man? The appearance of Wang Anyi here has completely subverted the language of male writers and directly challenged male culture and patriarchal society.
In her previous works, women have never been the subject, which is the castration of the author's social instinct. In this novel, Wang Anyi obviously shows the change of her personal creative consciousness, and she focuses on the female experience, which is directly related to the author's own thoughts. Especially the consistency of her narrative angle, the author writes in the third person from beginning to end and completes her production with rational operation, which is very obvious in itself. At present, her subject is completely inclined to women, and she begins to realize the value of women themselves. First, she should be a real person. Then, she should be a woman. Her understanding of her own personality strength is profound, and her understanding of women's self-image is clear. No longer hesitate as before, regard women as vassals of men. If women want to be truly liberated, they must first admit themselves. From this perspective, Wang Anyi really discovered and personally experienced the essential meaning of human life. So when she narrates, she has an absolutely overlooking attitude. China's reform and opening up in recent years has undoubtedly provided a good start for writers' creation. Wang Anyi's creation has also made a substantial breakthrough in this kind of opening. She sublimated to the stage of women's self-knowledge and began to pay attention to human life instinct. The women in her works have the characteristics of women in the new era, which is definitely a breakthrough victory for Wang Anyi. However, because our whole society has not completely shaken off the strong sense of male chauvinism, although female writers are sincerely promoting women's abilities, they can't escape the shadow left by the male chauvinism society to all China people subconsciously. Therefore, Wang Anyi can't escape the restriction of this society. At the end of Century on the Hill, the novel still ends with the restoration of patriarchal order. After having a happy and sweet sexual relationship with the peasant captain, Li, a female educated youth, still failed to achieve the goal of being transferred back to work in the city. She finally became the woman of the peasant captain. Under her temptation, he realized the true meaning of sex and the physical pleasure brought by sensuality. It was she who awakened the life that had been sleeping for several generations, but never experienced the true meaning of life happiness. However, it was Li who awakened the lifeless life of the farmer monitor. He and she were both reborn in the satisfaction of sexual desire, and they created each other. Really realize and wake up to the meaning of human life, the meaning of sex, and the beauty of sexual intercourse between men and women. The peasant captain who was locked up in the Li family for seven days and seven nights can be regarded as living happily in this world, and he is not wronged to die with them.
But in spite of this, Li still failed to break free from the net of men's power. She lives under the power of men and will live for so long. The power exercised by the peasant monitor is a symbol of male power, and her fate is in his hands. Although the peasant squad leader lived a vague life at first, he gained a new life from the educated youth, but the saddest thing is that he has learned to use power or never gave up his desire to control women.
This is our society, because no matter how hard women writers try to create something in a changing way, they still can't escape the powerful male-dominated discourse. That is to say, although in Wang Anyi's works, female images can be created for male society, the discourse and narrative rules she uses are all male, because in this society, female discourse and narrative rules, together with the social symbol order that produces them, need to be reconsidered.