Date of Award
Fall 2020
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Comparative Literature
First Advisor
Jie Guo
Second Advisor
Michael Hill
Abstract
In this dissertation, I investigate Han Bangqing (1856–1894), Lao She (1899– 1966), and Su Qing’s (1914–1982) works to study the literary representations of how people purchased, prepared, shared, and ate food in different social contexts allowing them to adapt to new gender norms. I contend that the intersection of food, gender and literature stages the process through which people reconciled different and sometimes conflicting gender norms through their everyday eating practices. When encountering new cooking and eating practices in these literary works, people reflect upon their past lives and, wittingly or unwittingly, begin to accept different gender norms, and modify their subjectivities. This all culminates in the process of “digestion,” which refers not only to the bodily function, but also how individuals internalize cultural norms through culinary and alimentary practices. These authors’ own personal conflicts with food and gender are reflected and negotiated in their writings about how characters establish gender relations by participating in various eating acts. The literary representations of everyday eating acts offer new ways to interrogate and revise how gender relations were imagined, and also shows a fluid understanding of gender in modern Chinese history.
Rights
© 2020, Zhuo Feng
Recommended Citation
Feng, Z.(2020). Digesting Gender: Gendered Foodways in Modern Chinese Literature, 1890s–1940s. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6121