Women myth under patriarchal discourse : exploration of women kingdom in The journey to the West, Yichun xiangzhi and Flowers in the mirror = 男權話語下的女性神話 : 《西遊記》、《宜春香質》、《鏡花緣》的女兒國探析

Abstract

The Women Kingdom has always been a popular topic in Chinese literature. The stories about the Women Kingdom frequently appeared in literary creation during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The three works of The Journey to the West, Yichun Xiangzhi and Flowers in the Mirror have all described the Women Kingdom as an important part of the novel in a literary way, and the description of the Women Kingdom has also become a quite striking and wonderful paragraph in these three novels. As a fictional space, the Women Kingdom embodies the imagination of the authors, from which we can see the subconscious male desire of the authors. The Women Kingdom in The Journey to the West and Yichun Xiangzhi is composed of all women, while in the Women Kingdom in Flowers in the Mirror, although men and women coexist, the whole country is ruled by women and women hold real power. This dissertation makes an overall study of the writing of the Women Kingdom in these three novels, and finds that the three Women Kingdoms are all female myths constructed by male writers under the guidance of patrical discourse. The story of Women Kingdom begins with the entrance of beautiful and feminine foreign male. The revelation of the king's lust of the Women kingdom promotes the development of the story, and finally ends with the dissolution of the lust. The writing of the Women Kingdom in these three novels contains the man-centered consciousness of the author both in its beginning, development and ending.