Piecing out New Women: How Salomé Contributes to Conflation of New Woman in Early-Twentieth-Century Japan and China

• Main Authors: Yen, Han-Ray, 顏涵銳
• Other Authors: Lee, Ken-Fang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/szwhrv

博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 翻譯研究所 === 107 === The New Woman phenomenon that emerges during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a result of industrialization and urbanization, is seen as a milestone of woman emancipation in the process of modern civilization. These professional and unmarried women, more often than not, coinciding with the emergence of feminism that champions sexual equality and decries traditional gender roles, epitomize the societal development of the time in many countries. Even in Japan new woman were identified with and advocated mainly by feminists who understood the former’s needs as the subjugated sex, however, in China, the construction of new woman relied heavily on their male counterparts who, with the Qing dynasty’s defeat by Japan and the West in mind, late Qing and early Republic Chinese intellectuals narrate a new China with the rhetoric of ‘A strong nation must have strong offspring’, which upholds the dictum of ‘good mother wise wife’ and places new woman on the forefront of reconstructing a new China. Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé is written as his response and challenge to Victorian taboos and moral standards with the intention of shocking the philistines, and probably with new woman as the protagonist in mind, it coincides with the emergence of new women and benefits from many of them contributing to the play’s success and notoriety in history, and was closely weaved into the lives and personae of these turn-of-the-century female artists, including Ida Rubinstein, Allan Maud, and Matsui Sumako, boasting a provocative and daunting narrative which allowed them to channel their talents into and left an indelible impression with which no other fin-de-siècle dramatic roles could compare. With such personal and unusual association between artists and character, Salomé therefore serves as an embodiment of new woman of that period, and in turn empowers them in real life as new women capable of defying traditional social values by enjoying economic and emotional independence. This research tries to incorporate Foucault’s sexual discourse in investigating an aspect left out by previous studies about both Japanese and Chinese new woman inspired by literary figures during the late nineteenth century, which Salomé bestowed on new women when the play was first introduced into both countries.