The Traditional New Woman and Emerging New Man in Republican China | Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies (2024)

Abstract

Introduction

In the context of semicolonial Republican China, the New Woman is closely associated with national rejuvenation. She bears deep nationalist and racialized meanings, a marker of the modernization underway in China. As Sarah E. Stevens argues, “As New Women, women stand for the nation and its quest for modernity—modernity understood as an admirable state of civilization, strength, and progress” (2003: 83). In a word, the New Woman stands for the nationwide hope of national redemption in an era of mounting despair. However, scrutiny of New Woman literature in the late 1920s shows that the marriages of New Women, originally founded on love, are rife with dullness and a sense of suffocation. While the advent of the New Woman has attracted considerable critical attention, the dilemma of the New Woman's marriage is not amply studied. At the same time, a discourse of the New Man was beginning to be discernible in the press, though much less intensely. The neologism xianfu liangfu (賢夫良父, “good husband and wise father”) captures the essence of the New Man, who values his wife and takes care of his children. Scholarly discussion has predominantly focused on the New Woman, giving comparatively little attention to the New Man. Yet, this strand of discourse itself signals a critical change in the revisions of gender relations in Republican China and deserves special treatment. This article focuses on the New Woman's plight in marriage and the emergence of the New Man by examining relevant literary works and the topical debates in newspapers and periodicals. In particular, I examine “Shangshi” (傷逝, “Mourning the Dead”) by Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881–1936), Ni Huanzhi (倪煥之, “Ni Huanzhi”) by Ye Shengtao 葉聖陶 (1894–1988), and “Hechu shi guicheng” (何處是歸程, “Where Is the Way Home?”) by Lu Yin 廬隱 (1898–1934) to understand the paradox of the married New Woman in the 1920s. I then shift to an analysis of the emergence of xianfu liangfu discourse in the 1920s, surveying essays published in the press by various intellectual fathers reflecting on their father-child relationships.

Free Love Marriage and Its Discontents

Narratives about failing passion and an increasing sense of suffocation in marriage challenge the all-pervasive discourse about love in the May Fourth Movement. In that era, the discourse of love emerged as an ideological concept and a tool to combat Confucian patriarchy. The model of marriage based on love gained wide currency and popularity. According to Zhou Jianren 周建人 (1888–1984) and many others, marriage based on love is the best form of marriage to help improve the race (1922: 3).

However, one seldom notices the jarring shift that the New Woman experiences from the role of a romantic lover to that of a wife and mother. Lee Haiyan points out the contradictory ideal underlying free love: “Existentially, free love is torn between the quest for autonomy on the one hand, and the need for recognition and the enjoyment of subjection on the other. Experientially, lovers are caught in between their embeddedness in a viscerally resilient web of social bonds on the one hand, and their romantic identity as autonomous individuals free to contract new, adventurous, and democratic forms of sociability” (2006: 96). That is, free love simultaneously calls forth an individual's autonomy in forging heterosexual relationships and in forming allegiances to new partners. The individual autonomy that defines the agency of young lovers and the interdependent model that marriage hinges on are sometimes at odds with each other, if not inherently mutually exclusive. If a free lover designates “an atomistic being shorn of all forms of dependency and obligation, a living signifier of freedom and autonomy, a self-sufficient and self-activating moral agent” (96), then a functional marriage relies on the collaboration of both parties, privileging interdependence rather than individualistic independence. Therefore, a discontinuity is visible in romantic love and marriage, even though intellectuals of the era idealized marriage as a free union based on romantic love. While in a romantic relationship, a lover is only responsible for his own heart, free to terminate and form new love relations; in marriage, the continuation of the unit is dependent on both partners. More importantly, although the extended Confucian family is dismantled, the smaller family consisting of husband, wife, and children still operates along the gendered division of labor, that is, of a man earning money and a woman taking care of the entire household.

With the exception of very few heroines, marriage marks a retrogressive turn in the heroine from the New Woman to the jiushi nüxing 舊式女性 (traditional woman), represented by a decreasing visibility and increasing domesticity. The disconnect between free love and marriage, along with the unchanged labor division, induces the kumen 苦悶 (agony) of married New Women.¹ Less agony is visible in marriage narratives from the husband's perspective. To a considerable extent, this is due to the consistency and continuity of men's roles both in romantic relationships and after marriage. A man is considered to be public. Both prior to and after marriage, the public nature of his role does not change. However, a New Woman experiences this rupture of subjectivity because her newness is constituted by her publicness. She can only be new to the extent that she is public, representing social change and national progress. Yet, after marriage, as per gender conventions, she must answer to her husband and to her family duties. Therefore, she must abandon her newly acquired publicness to return to the private role of a dutiful wife and loving mother.

In 1927, Xin nüxing published a special issue on “xiandai nüzi de kumen” (現代女子的苦悶, “the agony of modern women”) to acknowledge the dilemma of married New Women. This special issue published more than twenty opinion essays by prominent intellectuals, including Mao Dun 茅盾 (1896–1981), Sun Fuyuan 孫伏園 (1894–1966), Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885–1967), Zhou Jianren, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), Chen Xuezhao 陳學昭, and Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893–1980), among others. In response to the agony of married New Women, reactions from intellectuals can be generally divided into three types. The first type refuses to acknowledge the existence of agony itself or else maintains that the two obligations are compatible. For example, Sun Fuyuan claims that such agony is nonexistent because one can always reconcile family duty with learning and a social career if one works hard enough (1927: 25). Following Sun Fuyuan, Xu Diaofu 徐調孚 (1901–1982) advises New Women to consider a family career as part of a social career, linking the domestic sphere to the public realm and stressing the importance of xianqi liangmu (賢妻良母, “good wife and wise mother”) at home (1927: 57). Li Shicen 李時岑 (dates unknown) holds that only enlightened women are able to feel agony, yet there are only a small number of enlightened women; therefore there is no such thing as agony (1927: 55).

The second type of reaction acknowledges the dilemma of married New Women and proposes solutions. The most popular solution is ertong gongyu (兒童公育, “communal childcare”), proposed by Fan Zhongyun 樊仲雲 (1901–1989), Chen Xuanzhao 陳宣昭 (dates unknown), Zhou Jianren, Houjue 後覺 (dates unknown), Cai Yuanpei, and Wu Xuhu 吳煦岵.² The third type, as expressed by Chen Xuanzhao (1927: 36–37), criticizes xianqi liangmu as the product of Confucian male-centrism. Chen Xuanzhao also explicitly called for equal responsibility from men (29). It is important to note that while Chen Xuanzhao demands that men live up to the standard of xianfu liangfu, she does not specify the concrete duties of a good husband and wise father. Instead, she believes that the extended family system and fixed family system are hurdles to women's autonomous development and are the reasons for women's agony. The family system must be abolished and communal childcare facilities must be established to free women from this agony. That is, she does not put forth a solution within the existing framework of family but outside of it.

The dilemma of the New Woman is caused by her traditional role within the new family model. The new type of family displays a hybridity representative of the transitional period. On one hand, the family is decidedly new because its founding is based on love and no longer on arranged marriages. One the other hand, it is also old in the sense that it still relies on the age-old division of public man and private woman. In fact, as early as 1920, Xiang Jingyu 向警予 (1895–1928), notable feminist of the era, already declared that the new family is no solution to women's problems. She argues that

Here, Xiang insightfully points out the traditional nature of the new family. The old problem in the new family has received gendered portrayals in the writings of male and female writers.

Gendered Portrayals of the Married New Woman: Male-Authored Stories

The prototypical text lamenting the degradation of the New Woman is “Mourning the Dead” by Lu Xun.³ It was written in 1925 and later collected in Lu Xun's second short story collection, Wandering (Panghuang 徬徨), in 1926. It tells the love story of Juansheng 涓生 and Zijun 子君. Juansheng, an educated young man, seeks to reform Zijun's character. At his prodding, Zijun rebels against her father and her uncle to establish a household with Juansheng. They engage in discussions about Henrik Ibsen, Percy Shelley, Rabindranath Tagore, and the despotism of the traditional Confucian family.⁴ Zijun transforms from a young woman who is trapped in the “shackles of traditional morality” into a New Woman who declares, “I belong to myself! None of them has any right to interfere in my life!” (Lu 1990b: 340). Impressed by Zijun's courage, Juansheng proposes marriage to her. However, the marriage bodes ill from the very outset, for when Juansheng proposed, he “detected a glimmer of surprise and bewilderment in those eyes as well—like a bird trapped in a room, she seemed to be looking for an open window through which to fly away” (341).

However, he soon discovers that Zijun is like any ordinary married woman, who “was so taken up with household chores she no longer had time to chat, much less read or go for a walk” (345) and whose “sole function in life was to buy and prepare food” (349). While Zijun is left at home, Juansheng works at the government bureau. Juansheng notices a change in Zijun's physical features: “The skin on her hands began to grow rough” (346). It is remarkable that in most narratives dealing with the degradation of the New Woman, the degeneration of physical beauty is repeatedly mentioned. “Mourning the Dead” begins by “representing the body as a pleasing object of feminine beauty; the body is enlightened and elevated as a sublime object, and then falls from that height and becomes a vulgar object” (Zhu 2010: 18). Across this body of literature, beginning from Juansheng, male characters tend to associate a glamorous physique with an emancipated state of mind. Once her state of mind degrades to that of a traditional woman, one that knows only household chores, the formerly beautiful physical features are likewise replaced by weary features.

Notably, Zijun seems to become locked in a rhythm determined by meal patterns, showing no progression at all after the marriage takes place. Juansheng complains about the “never-ending round of meals” and that “it took a good five weeks before I was able to get it through to her that my work simply could not be subject to the restrictions of her meal schedule” (Lu 1990b: 349). Zijun is no longer concerned about anything else beyond the chores of the house. Her time is moving neither forward nor backward. Both temporally and spatially, Zijun seems to be locked in an impasse that is far removed from the linear progression of Chinese modernity. Instead of representing social change and national progress, the New Woman, once married, is stripped of her public function and is reduced to the barest function of reproducer and caregiver. As Larson argues, although the New Woman is an emblem of the nation—that is, national progress and social advancement—it is impossible for her to be intellectual and continue literary endeavors (1998: 128). In my survey of marriage narratives, this intellectual effacement has its grounding in the New Woman's unchanged role in the familial life. She is new only in relation to the less educated women and need not be more educated than her male partner.

“Mourning the Dead” portrays Juansheng and Zijun in terms of a teacher/pupil relationship throughout, denying the latter a real opportunity for autonomous inner awakening. As Chan argues, “The objectification of its memory in Juansheng's journal may thereby be taken to be the key-hole, the central mediation, through which the other (masculine) self visualizes his will and objectifies his passion; bypassing the despair of Zijun, Juansheng has found his ways to transcend the past, re-live the present, and peep into the future” (Chan 1998: 25). Just as our understanding of Zijun is mediated through Juansheng's consciousness, Juansheng claims and confirms his masculine selfhood through the medium of Zijun. As Lydia Liu rightly points out, Juansheng's account is profoundly gendered: “It is, moreover, devoted to erasing and exorcising Zijun and casting her into the empty space between words” (1995: 165). Therefore, Zijun is twice removed from readers in the male-dominated discourse. She is another social/textual victim devoid of voice, thought, and will of her own (Chien 1995: 110). Whereas Zijun is rendered traditional, irreversibly belonging to a past era, Juansheng celebrates his own newness, projecting himself into the future.

“Mourning the Dead” is a variation on Lu Xun's “A Happy Family” (Xingfu de jiating 幸福的家庭), in which Lu Xun displayed the quotidian life of a writer husband and a housewife. This story, inspired by Xu Qinwen 許欽文 (1897–1984)’s “An Ideal Partner” (Lixiang de banlü 理想的伴侶), was published in Women's Magazine (Funü zazhi 婦女雜誌) in 1924. The husband is attempting to compose a short story on the theme of a happy household for Happiness Monthly. In his view, an ideal family should be created from the free will of both parties: “The marriage will be the free kind that they've undertaken themselves, rather than some traditional arranged thing worked out by their parents” (Lu 1990a: 256). He goes on to write that for a perfect couple, “They'll draw up a contract before the wedding. It will be very detailed with more than forty clauses in it, and that's precisely why there'll be such a conspicuous degree of equality between them, why they'll be completely free” (256). Ironically, it seems that equality is guaranteed only by contractual clauses akin to the restrictions of an arranged marriage. While the husband is working on his story, his wife keeps interrupting him with trivial household matters. Later, he has to put away his work entirely to comfort his wailing daughter. As he contemplates his daughter's teary face, “It suddenly occurred to him that this lovable, innocent little face—though somewhat smaller in outline—looked exactly as her mother's had just five years before, especially the crimson lips. It had been on just such a clear and bright winter's day as this that she had listened while he vowed to overcome all obstacles and sacrifice everything on her behalf” (262). “A Happy Family” also implies the gap between a youthful New Woman and a weary traditional wife. Supposedly, they have overcome many obstacles to get married, but as the grandeur of love fades away they are buried in the mundane life of marriage.

The stories show that no matter how liberated the wife is before marriage, she is still bound up with domesticity, losing her glamour as a New Woman entirely. For example, the writer's wife becomes buried by domestic duties, such as grocery shopping, disciplining their daughter, and sorting cabbage. As is indicated by both “Mourning the Dead” and “A Happy Family,” not only do the husband and wife follow the public/domestic divide, they also follow the intellectual/manual division of labor. As we will soon discover, most husbands and their New Woman wives follow this rule. In the end, the writer “wadded the draft paper into a tight little ball and testily threw it into the wastebasket” (262). Interrupted by his wife and daughter, his literary endeavor fails. At the same time, it is ironic that he would construct a “happy family” completely divorced from reality. In fact, the husband also seems to fault the wife for her interruption, just as Juansheng blames Zijun for interrupting his work with her meals. By contrast, her vulgarity and concern with “triviality” become proof of his civility and intellectual superiority. As Shih argues, in Lu Xun's stories related to gender, “‘woman’ is represented as the receptacle of tradition in need of the male modern's enlightenment, an allegory of old China's (female) need for modernity and modernization (male)” (2001: 204). In response to this argument, Zhu contends that women in Lu Xun's works carry a different function: “Those seemingly weak and passive female figures in his stories possess an anamorphic power that is critical to the construction of modern iconoclastic subjectivity. ... Instead of being dismissed as an insubstantial and empty signifier, the feminine image works as the hidden recourse, repressed past, and unconscious reparation of the masculine iconoclast subject” (2015: 48).

Ye Shaojun 葉紹鈞 (1894–1988), pen name Ye Shengtao, replays this narrative arc in his novel Ni Huanzhi, which was initially published in installments in Education Magazine (Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌) in 1928 before being finally released by Shanghai Kaiming Publishing in 1929. Ye Shengtao was famous for his contributions to Chinese children's literature and Chinese education, so it is no wonder that his only novel should focus on the educational career of a young man. After the defeat of the nationalistic revolution in 1927, he set out writing Ni Huanzhi, covering the massive social changes from 1911 to 1927. The male hero, a representative of the intelligentsia, enthusiastically embraces an educational career in order to reform China. Very rarely do critics lend attention to Ni Huanzhi's marriage with Jin Peizhang 金珮璋, a well-educated New Woman. Yet the sudden transformation of Jin Peizhang, from an ambitious educator into a traditional woman arrested by maternal obligation, deserves special analysis if we are to understand the New Woman's agony. If we reread Ni Huanzhi as a portrayal not only of the disillusionment of a young man but also the failure of a young woman to achieve the New Woman ideal, then Ni Huanzhi can provide important insight into the plight of the latter.

Ni Huanzhi starts as a primary school teacher ambitious enough to carry out educational reforms in a rural school, aided by the principal Jiang Bingzhi 蔣冰之. He meets Jin Peizhang, a motherless young woman who attended the women's normal school. Initially, shared aspirations for education draw them together. Huanzhi is attracted to Peizhang for her traits that run counter to those of the traditional woman. As Huanzhi describes Peizhang when he introduces her to his mother for the first time, “Although there are frivolous girl students, there are decent ones as well. They have received education and have come to understand many things. They are better and more competent than common traditional women when it comes to worldly affairs and management of the household” (Ye 2021: 152). However, this brief conversation with his mother betrays his narrow and ambivalent conception of women's duties, framed in domestic terms. His attraction to Peizhang is paradoxically united in her glamour as an educated New Woman and her utility in the traditional role of homemaker.

Their marriage begins with love: they talk about whether the vernacular should be employed in formal writing to replace Literary Sinitic, and they exchange ideas about women's educational opportunities. Huanzhi wants to establish a household with her: “Two souls have been united together for the sake of love. ... The focus of our career is lifelong devotion to education; two people work together, engage in more discussions and share more interests and will lead to more successes. The new family has completely abandoned the vulgarity of traditional families” (140). Notably, Huanzhi's ideal of the new family is based on a companionate relationship on the basis of mutual affection. Ever since the May Fourth Movement, familial duty ceased to be the central consideration of marriage; instead, romantic love between the partners was privileged. As Hubbard indicates, “Unlike earlier and later discussions of sexual morality based on one's duty to family and country, New Culture ideals emphasized the necessity of mutual affection between husband and wife” (2014: 349). However, the mutual affection between Huanzhi and Peizhang soon dwindles after they marry.

The novel is embedded within Ni Huanzhi's consciousness and narrated from his perspective. Huanzhi is initially attracted by Peizhang's physical beauty: “The glow of her eyes betrays an enormous beauty. The nose seems to be sculpted by the hands of a famous craftsman, the curvy and delicate eyebrows, the lips with dainty contours, the rounded and sleek curves of her shoulders that hide under the black-gauze and leather coat. All these features are delightful” (Ye 2021: 51). Huanzhi's gaze is male-centric, reducing Peizhang to an object of male desire. On the night of their wedding, Huanzhi claims ownership over Peizhang's person: “Huanzhi set his eyes on her, playfully looking at her rounded forehead and jade-like nose, half-open eyes shaded by glittering eye lashes, the upper lip and lower lip touching each other. A sensation of possessing a treasure overtook him and encouraged him to say ‘We are now together’” (170). However, like Zijun's physical beauty, Peizhang's youth soon fades and is vulgarized. After Peizhang gives birth to their son, her physical features go through another round of change in Huanzhi's eyes. Huanzhi looks at Peizhang, who is now fast asleep: “Her eyes are closed to a line, a bluish circle encompasses the eyes, showing the purple lines of the skin. Her face is pale, having lost all its youthful glow; her mouth is slightly open and her lips are pale with slight reddishness” (192).

Peizhang and Huanzhi's conversation about gender equality also merits our attention. Huanzhi says that because of the constraints of customs and mores, women have suffered countless injustices. Peizhang adds that “women are in an unfavorable position because of a lack of educational opportunities; therefore, they cannot be independent or free” (138). Peizhang, as an educated woman, is in a more privileged position than her uneducated counterparts. However, the fact that her education does not remove the concrete difficulties of having a public career speaks to the general under-delivery of women's educational goals. Having an education does not automatically translate into opportunities in the job market. Once Peizhang is pregnant, she abandons her ambitions altogether. The narrator then justifies the change by announcing that “judging from her whole life, this change is still consistent. She is endowed with traditional feminine attributes; observations of the environment have prompted her to be independent and to serve the public. Granted, this is very glorious; however, it is not a product of her spontaneous volition. It is not persistent. Therefore, because of a change in her physiology, she gives up her learning and shows who she truly is” (181). This narratorial position undermines the New Woman's agency and denies her potential to be spontaneous and autonomous. That is, women's ambition to serve in the public domain is socially and historically contingent, far from an inherent quality in women. What, then, are the hurdles that obstruct Peizhang's desire to serve the public?

Huanzhi's continual contempt for Peizhang's daily labor at home speaks to the persistent devaluation of domestic labor. Huanzhi complains that Peizhang buries herself in chores, such as washing clothes, cleaning the rice, and cutting fish. After their son is born, Peizhang is busy breastfeeding, cuddling, and comforting him. Huanzhi is disappointed by Peizhang's change because her efforts in the domestic sphere categorize her as a traditional woman. He concludes that he has a wife now, but has lost a lover and a comrade (182). Peizhang's unpaid reproductive labor is downright trivialized by Huanzhi. Likewise, the public sphere is posited as superior to the private sphere. Zhao Yanjie 趙妍傑 argues that

This devaluation of private labor recalls the words of Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), a prominent reformer in the late Qing. In “On Women's Education,” Liang Qichao argues that “the strength of a nation is directly related to the proportion of its people who are without work. Why is this so? People without work must be supported by people with work. ... Translated Western texts have referred to this idea as the principle of profit making and profit sharing” (2013: 190). Liang Qichao considers women to be dependent on the national economy precisely because they cannot engage in productive work. Childcare, cleaning, and washing are not given the same status as paid work in the public sphere. That is, so long as reproductive labor at home does not bring profit, women's labor will not be respected. Therefore, although women have made every effort to maintain and manage the household, women's domestic role is discredited. This hierarchy between productive labor and reproductive labor was not questioned until the May Fourth Movement. Mao Dun (using the pen name “Pei Wei”) asserts, “There are many unemployed Chinese men; however, the majority of women are working. Do you suspect that I am incorrect? Let me explain. Aside from women from well-to-do families, women from average families are more or less occupied, for instance by cooking, laundry, and making clothes. These are family industries. Nowadays, New Women should not consider these activities to be contemptuous” (Pei 1920: 4). Mao Dun challenges the labor hierarchy by valuing everyday activities done at home, an opinion not shared by Huanzhi.

Gendered Portrayals of the Married New Woman: Female-Authored Stories

If male characters in male-authored stories often fault New Women for their excessive involvement in “trivial matters” such as chores, we find New Women in female-authored stories complaining about the sense of uselessness and boredom that accompanies household management. From the mid-1920s on, the fervor for freedom in love gradually dwindled. As is shown in literary works by women, this was replaced by exhaustion over household chores and disappointment about marriage. Women writers like Lu Yin, Chen Xuezhao, Su Xuelin 蘇雪林 (1897–1999),⁵ and Chen Ying 沉櫻 (1907–1967)⁶ composed numerous narratives lamenting that the myriad promises of free love failed to be delivered once they married. In what follows, I will examine what is amiss in New Women's marriages based on a close textual analysis of Lu Yin's story “Where Is the Way Home?”

Lu Yin emerged in the May Fourth Movement as a writer who placed the woman question at the core of her literary endeavors. After graduating from Beijing Women's Normal College, she taught in Anhui and Henan provinces. In 1921, she published “A Writer” (Yige zhuzuojia 一個著作家), which won her instant fame on the literary scene. In “Where Is the Way Home?” Lu Yin depicts the fate of three women, Shalü 沙侶, Lingsu 玲素, and Third Sister. The latter two visit Shalü’s home after being apart for several years. Lingsu and Third Sister remain single for fear that marriage will entail too much family responsibility. However, Third Sister questions her choice of celibacy by telling the story of her aunt, a feminist activist who regrets her singlehood. It is undeniable that Shalü values the intimacy promised by a mother-child relationship. The narrator describes Shalü’s affection toward her child: “She suddenly finds the ten-month-old child who sleeps by her side: pink cheeks, long and black eyelashes, delicate and chubby face. She can't help planting a kiss on his forehead” (Lu Y. 2017: 127). The story soon shifts to a long, self-reflexive look in the mirror. As with the withering physical beauty of Zijun and Peizhang, Shalü is taken aback by her weary appearance. “What has happened to me? Marriage, childbirth, motherhood. ... Everything has ended wearily. Career and ambitions have become historical relics. ... Woman ... This is the vocation of woman. Yet who is to believe that woman is such a simple-minded creature? ... Managing chores, taking care of children, alas! Waiting on one's husband, these trivialities can really wear one down. A public career—an activity born of personal volition—should best be put aside” (128). Shalü is consciously questioning the significance of her marital life. Disappointment abounds in her narrative because she cannot realize her youthful ambitions. Juansheng and Huanzhi critique their wives for being content with household chores, yet they seldom realize that their wives are disappointed about this change of landscape. To add to Shalü’s disillusionment, she remarks that men take wives so that they will have someone to care for the household and provide them sexual release (130). However, her increasing awareness of this unsatisfactory situation does not translate into tangible action toward change. In the text, we find Shalü busy with the management of her household, fetching pants for her husband when he wakes up, ordering Mother Zhang to prepare food, and asking the doorman to prepare the horse cart. Lu Yin creates heroines who are stuck in the confines of family with no way out. Increasingly, an incongruity is visible in the New Woman's perception of an increasingly dull marital life and her stubborn insistence on her marriage and domestic duties.

Communal Childcare: Alternative Path to Women's Emancipation?

“Where Is the Way Home?” calls attention to the conflict between the New Woman's aspiration to a public career and the mounting burden of domestic labor. As shown by numerous stories, the foremost constraint on women is childcare. In the New Culture movement, intellectuals recognized the burden of childcare for liberated New Women. Consequently, proposals for communal childcare—that is, rearing infants and small children in a state-owned public facility without burdening the parents—were raised. In a 1929 issue of Xin Nüxing, Xisu 熙素 (dates unknown) writes that the social problems now plaguing China are the issue of labor, the woman question, and the issue of children, which are all interconnected. Xi Su argues that public childcare allows experts with professional childcare knowledge to cultivate the mental and physical growth of children, which is better than family-based childcare, as parents do not always possess sufficient knowledge to educate their children (1929: 764). Xi Su asserts that a single family is economically inadequate to support the full growth of children. He then questions mothers’ ability to educate their children, arguing that even the educated New Woman is not capable of children's education. Placing the children in a public childcare facility would help with their socialization.

This emphasis on the growth of children reflects an ideological shift from parent-centered Confucian values to the child-centered family values of the May Fourth Movement. Lu Xun was an outspoken advocate for child-centered values, writing that “the life that comes after is more precious and complete than the previous one. In order for humankind to join the journey of development, we must respect the ‘life that is to come,’ love the young generation, and value the children” (1980: 557). He also criticizes Confucian values around children: “Chinese traditional values are utterly oppositional to child-centered values. Centrality should have been accorded to the young, yet it is actually placed on the elderly. Emphasis should be given to the future yet it is now given to the past” (557). This child-centeredness derives also from prevalent antitraditionalism during the era. Oftentimes in social discussions, women and children emerge as members of society who need the most support. Examining women's emancipation and children's welfare together, it follows that communal childcare arises as a solution to both.

Ren Kaiguo 任開國 (1898–1928) claims that “public childcare is not only necessary for the current social life, but also indispensable for women's careers. Once women go to the factory, they become economically independent ... if women wholeheartedly take care of the children, they cannot fulfill their jobs” (1923: 126). Communal childcare, therefore, is necessary for gender equality. Additionally, the proposal of communal childcare is pertinent to the freedom of young men and women in matters of marriage. Dong Sun, a contributor to Current Affairs Daily (Shishi xinbao 時事新報), writes that “only when we abolish the extended patriarchal family system, cancel private property, and implement ‘communal childcare’ can we alleviate the pain and shackles of the traditional marriage system. Only in this way could absolute freedom in celibacy, marriage, and divorce be achieved” (quoted in Pan 2013: 141–43). The practice of communal childcare is directly relevant to another ideological concept of the early twentieth century, the abolition of the family (Zhao 2020: 15–27). If children are sent to public facilities, then young couples will not have any hesitations in filing for a divorce. That is, children are removed from the family sphere so that parents may follow their own paths. Zhao Yanjie points out that “this radicalization of thought not only means a complete renovation of China's politics, economy, and social organization, but also anticipates the rupture of people's daily values, conceptions, and habits with tradition” (2005: 191).

The proposal of communal childcare, however, does not fundamentally change the gendered division of labor. Indeed, in the communal childcare facility, is it women or men who take care of the children? This question has never been answered nor explored in detail. Presumably, it is also women who would take care of the children if the plan were ever realized. For instance, Liu Bannong 劉半農 (1891–1934) suggests that one communal childcare center should be established for every fifty families to take care of their infants, plus one kindergarten to educate children, a public restaurant to supply food, a laundry center to handle the clothes, and four to eight public women servants to clean the premises, deliver the letters, and finish the chores (Li Xiaoying and Li Dingkai 2001: 52). Therefore, according to the plans of male intellectuals, women should continue doing what they have always been doing at home.

The notion of communal childcare also raised skepticism. Xi Yue 洗月 (dates unknown), a contributor to Dagong Bao 大公報 (Ta Kung Pao), believed that a good society builds upon the emotional bonds between people and that the original source of interpersonal emotion is the fact that mothers love their children and sacrifice themselves in their service (1928). Xi Yue clearly highlights the important role that mothers play in the education and nurturing of children. Moreover, Yang Xiaochun 楊效春 (1895–1938), an educator during the Republican era and a staunch opponent of communal childcare, argues that “communal childcare destroys the family. And the destruction of the family dissolves society” (Yang 1920).

Both the supporters and the opponents of public childcare conceptualized the matter of childcare as a woman's issue, failing to grasp its depth. In either case, they could not elevate women's roles at home or in society at large without paradoxically undermining them at the same time. Supporters of communal childcare belittled women's roles as mothers and subsequently undermined women's power in the domestic realm. They did not believe that mothers could have a powerful influence in the domestic realm by establishing deep bonds with children. This demeaning bias is based essentially on the hierarchization of reproductive and productive labor along with the elevation of the public sphere at the expense of the private sphere. Since society had not yet offered sufficient job opportunities for women in the public sphere, home remained the realm where women might achieve self-fulfillment. In Peizhang's case, her role at home is met with utter contempt because of this dualist and hierarchical thinking. Conversely, opponents of communal childcare conceived of women's value solely through mother-child bonds without envisioning a wider range of activities for women. They essentialized women's roles as a reproducer rather than producer.

In these debates, communal childcare was formulated as a woman's problem, omitting men's responsibility. Only rarely did supporters of women's emancipation call for shared parental responsibility. Without a radical redistribution of family responsibilities, women were still mired in a prolonged conflict between career and family. Already, women were choosing to remain single or to reject motherhood altogether. Stories depicting women reluctant to give birth began to appear in the 1930s. For example, in Yang Gang's “Torture of Flesh” (Rouxing 肉刑, 1935), the protagonist, a female revolutionary, finds her pregnancy unbearable and an obstruction to her revolutionary endeavors. She resorts to abortion in the end. Similarly, the heroine in “Four Years” (Sinian jian 四年間, 1934) is tortured by pregnancy, believing that it has dashed all her hopes and invited endless darkness. Unable to balance their commitments to childcare and revolution, these literary heroines begin to opt out of maternity and motherhood.

The emancipation of women would mean taking a job in the public realm while also taking care of children and doing household chores. Popularizing women's education, expanding women's job opportunities, and improving public childcare are only partial answers to gender equality. A radical design of motherhood and mothering should be implemented to truly bring about the emancipation of women.

The Emerging New Man: Toward an Attentive Fatherhood

In Chen Xuezhao's opinion essay addressing the agony of married New Women, she uses two terms: xin nanxing 新男性 (New Man) and xianfu liangfu. Notably, these terms begin to frame the New Woman's agony as the failure of men to fulfill their responsibilities as husband and father. The term xin nanxing designates a man who espouses women's emancipation and right to education and regards women as their equals. But to what extent can a man be new?

The emergence of the New Man is historically associated with the women's movement. Male feminists, such as Liang Qichao and Jin Tianhe, can be regarded as prototypes of the New Man, stressing the need for women's education and gender equality. However, Chen Xuezhao (1927: 36–37) castigated false New Men who claimed to be supportive of women's emancipation while retaining male privileges in their own lives. In addition, Chen faulted men for not being good husbands and wise fathers. The demand for men to live up to the standard of good husband and wise father is significant because—as the previous section has indicated—the family domain was considered to be a woman's province by intellectuals of the era. It points to a rarely followed direction of inquiry in the 1920s and the 1930s: the asymmetrical gendered division of labor and the importance of attentive fatherhood.

As the antitraditionalists sought to dismantle obligatory filial piety during the May Fourth Movement, intellectuals began to theorize a new kind of father-child relationship. In 1919 Lu Xun published an article, “What Is Required of Us as Fathers Today?” (Women xianzai zenyang zuo fuqin? 我們現在怎樣做父親) in New Youth (Xin qingnian 新青年). He wrote:

In the essay, Lu Xun seeks to dismantle the age-old Confucian principle of obligatory filial piety. He proposes that love and affection are essential for fatherhood. Gratitude should not define the son's feeling toward his father; however, the father is expected to treat his son with love. Hu Shi wrote a vernacular poem titled “My Son” (Wode erzi 我的兒子), in which he stated plainly that he did not expect his son to repay anything but to grow up as a well-rounded person (1919: 2). Instead of being a traditional figure of authority, a father should try to be affectionate and loving. This reframing of the father-son relationship is part of the broader antitraditionalist current and came to be known as feixiao 非孝, namely, antifiliality. Jiang Yu 姜瑀 argues that the New Culture movement sought to replace the perpetuation of lineage with wuen youai (無恩有愛, “Love instead of gratitude”)—natural love among kin—as the essence of the parent-child relationship. This principle replaces hierarchal kinship with equal and independent love as the general rule for organizing relationships among family members (2020: 116). This new attention from intellectual fathers to their children in general is in line with the nationwide attention to the children in educational reforms starting from the 1920s. At that time, American educator John Dewey exerted great influence on Chinese educators, notably Tao Xingzhi 陶行知 (1891–1946) and Chen Heqin 陳鶴琴 (1892–1982). They collectively championed the children-centered education philosophy and emphasized children's individuality. Thøgersen points out that “progressive educational ideas became an integral part of the ideological package of the Chinese left. Children, just as much as workers, peasants, and women, were to be liberated from the oppressive cultural and social mechanisms dominating the old society” (2020: 174).

If, in the 1910s, fatherhood was conceptualized in the abstract terms of natural love, in the 1920s and 1930s some narratives and theories about fatherhood shifted to daily attentive care from fathers—that is, an intimate fatherhood formulated in concrete terms. Both literary works and the periodical press began to reflect this emerging new fatherhood. In “A Happy Family,” for example, when the father hears his daughter crying, he goes to check on her. “Upon seeing her father, she immediately broke into another loud wail. ‘It's all right, don't cry. There's Daddy's good girl. Don't cry.’ He took her up in his arms” (Lu 1990a: 261). While the mother is the primary caretaker of the daughter, the father already shows attentive affectionate care toward his daughter, ceasing to be the traditional cold figure who only provides for the family and remains emotionally detached. In Xiao Hong's short story, “Hands” (Shou 手, 1936), the father of the heroine, Wang Yaming, is an affectionate father who takes care of his children after his wife's passing. He also gives Wang Yaming his own gloves to keep her warm.

Jun Lei points out that “Enlightenment journals promoted the nuclear family as the new model to modernize Chinese households. Central to the new family model was a monogamous heterosexual couple with fewer, healthier children. Crucially, the ideal family required equal parental responsibility for child rearing” (2022: 91). Lei further proposes the concept of the “New Man of Feelings” who demands a manifestation of more authentic and active feelings in contrast to the Confucian virtues of zhong 忠 (loyalty) and xiao 孝 (filial piety). However, this model is used primarily for men as romantic lovers. I propose that this model should be expanded to incorporate men who conscientiously practice a new kind of fatherhood that requires daily attentive care and emotional investment.

In 1931, Women's Magazine collected ten reflective essays from intellectuals who were themselves fathers, such as Ye Shengtao, Mao Dun, Feng Zikai 豐子愷 (1898–1975), and Xia Mianzun 夏丏尊 (1886–1946). In Ye Shengtao's novel, the father is aloof and distant, considering his child a barrier to the husband-wife relationship. In Ye's essay, he initially wrote that he did not consider children to be indispensable to a fulfilling life but that they were a social responsibility. His family treated him as an authority figure, and his children found him intimidating. In the end, he shared some expectations for his children: a healthy body and a practical career. Unfortunately, he did not give details of his interaction with his children.⁷ Fathers like Xu Diaofu replicated the opinion of Ni Huanzhi, complaining about his wife's indifference toward him after the birth of their child (Xu 1931: 58–59). Xia Mianzun openly declared that he did not like his children, and when his oldest son got married, he did not help arrange anything at all, earning him the nickname waiguoren (外國人, “Foreigner”). His initial feeling on becoming a father was disillusionment caused by economic pressure and a lack of time. His education method for his children was notably to “let them follow nature's course” (1931: 58–59).

At the same time, some fathers expressed deep concern for their children's growth. The most touching description is from Xie Hongtu 謝宏徒 (1898–1945). He was deeply concerned about his pregnant wife's labor pains. He collected guidebooks about pregnancy, read them himself, and relayed information about newborn care to his wife. In contrast to Ni Huanzhi and Xie's fellow contributors who complained about their wives’ aloofness, Xie felt sorry for his wife who used to play piano but now had no time to play. Xie filled his account with profuse loving details about his child. He told readers how grateful he and his wife felt when they received a letter from his mother in which she gave the newborn a meaningful name. He went on to describe the appearance of his daughter with an attentiveness and intensity that showed unmistakable fatherly love. He wrote, “When she reached the seventh month, she was really lovely. The contours of her face gradually became more defined. She has fine and arched eyebrows, pitch-dark eyes, long and soft eyelashes. Her nose looks like her mother's; the shape of her mouth, the complexion of her skin, and dimples look like mine” (1931: 46). He also described how much his daughter liked playing with toy trains and how she used his large books to build one. Above all, his most earnest wish was for her to become a free person, a strong-minded and resilient woman (47). Xie's daily care for his daughter is exemplary of the emerging good husband and wise father.

Feng Zikai, a prominent painter and essayist of the era, was pessimistic about his role as father. In the essay that he wrote about being a father, he lamented the loss of his own mother and considered himself disqualified from the role of father. He nevertheless wrote few anecdotes about daily life with his children. For example, he recounted how his son brushed his beard and found a gray hair. He also wrote a poem using the names of his children (1931: 49). In 1933, he published another short essay titled “As a Father” (Zuo fuqin 作父親) in Literature (Wenxue 文學). In it, he shares an interesting anecdote about his children, who wanted to buy little chicks on a spring day. Upon seeing the chicks, he writes, “In an instant, my own heart was free from worries and concerns. I was soon absorbed in the beauty of the small animals and experienced the children's love for the small chicks” (Feng 1933: 59). Although still uncommon, a decisively new fatherhood was emerging, dismantling the cold and stiff image of the traditional authoritative father from previous times.

Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1978), influential intellectual and writer, penned an essay about xianfu liangfu in 1937. He argued that if we saddled women with household chores just because they were born with the responsibility of maternity, then this was not a natural development of motherhood but a burden. He wrote that it was high time we advocate for “good husbands and wise fathers” who “broaden their horizons, think for the future of the country and humankind, and respect women's personality” (1937: 14). The connection of xianfu liangfu to overall social progress and national rejuvenation recalls Liang Qichao's rhetoric about xianqi liangmu, which carries deep nationalistic connotations. In the same year, Heng Ru 恆如 (dates unknown) seconded Guo's ideas, asserting that fathers should always be close to their children. If fathers could educate their children successfully, it would be a great contribution to national renewal (1937). Endowing domestic obligation with nationalistic significance and acknowledging a father's importance at home, xianfu liangfu rightfully called for equal involvement in the domestic realm from both genders.

The emergence of xianfu liangfu discourse was also a reaction to the double standard for men and women. Geng Sheng 更生 (dates unknown) wrote that “the biggest reason for the failure of a family is the lack of a xianfu liangfu. In the past, women were educated to become xianqi liangmu due to oppression; however, society is excessively indulgent with men, allowing them to commit all manner of evil” (1937: 1). This recognition of the injustice inflicted upon women and the lenience given to men is important because it belies the two genders’ asymmetry in their commitment to morality and acknowledges the inequality therein.

Over time, intellectuals stressed the necessity of xianfu liangfu in the creation of an ideal new family. In 1947, another educator named Tan Renmei 檀仁美 (dates unknown) wrote an article on xianfu liangfu, laying out three principles for husbands and fathers. The first duty is for a husband to sustain a loving relationship with his wife, foster a compatible sex life, and understand her heart. The second is for a father to be responsible for taking care of and educating the children, instead of relegating this duty to the mother and the school. The last duty is to set a good example for the entire family and create an affectionate family atmosphere. He argued that both xianqi liangmu and xianfu liangfu are indispensable for the creation of an ideal family. Nevertheless, the importance of the latter has oftentimes been neglected by his fellow male citizens (1947: 83–84).

Although the discourse on xianfu liangfu has attracted attention, it has thus far held much less weight in comparison to that on xiangqi liangmu. To a certain extent, it signaled a critical shift in how intellectuals envisioned a new fatherhood that differed from the role of authoritative figure of the household. Moreover, it demanded affective investment and attentive care from the fathers, moving away from stereotyped Confucian-style fathers who function only as the breadwinner and head of the household. It required intimacy instead of indifference and interaction instead of isolation. It designated men as indispensable caretakers of their children, sharing equal responsibility with the mothers. This discourse was mostly in line with the general antitraditionalist current ever since the New Culture movement. Discussion surrounding xianfu liangfu was still heated in the 1930s but gradually thinned in the 1940s. With the advent of the Sino-Japanese War and the Civil War between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party, debate about the new family was replaced by a wave of anti-imperialist fervor.

Conclusion

The first group of Chinese New Women emerged in the late Qing. While the historical advent of the New Woman has been amply studied, little research addresses her plight after getting married. A survey of 1920s Chinese New Woman literature shows an asymmetrical understanding of the difficult situation of the New Woman: male writers tend to attribute the public-private shift of the New Woman to personal failure and describe New Women as content with their status quo. On the other hand, female writers are prone to focus on the emotional and psychological cost the New Woman endures in her change of role from young student to wife and mother. This gendered division of narratives could be attributed to differing circ*mstances and stances based on gender.

The predicament of the New Woman is generally articulated through a withering of physical beauty and a fading passion for public affairs. This article further attributes the agony of the New Woman to the uncontested sexual division of labor at home, which chains the New Woman to the reproductive labor of the household. The greatest hurdle for women's self-development is that of domestic duties, especially childcare. Communal childcare was proposed in response to the dilemma of women's emancipation, but has never been realized. Intellectuals who countered by supporting communal childcare, identified childcare as a woman's issue, but without contesting the gendered division of labor at home. Female intellectuals then began to demand that fathers participate in attentive daily childcare. Only in this way can women's emancipation be achieved without the impossible double burden of family responsibilities and work duties.

Female intellectuals meanwhile started to demand that men live up to the standard of good husband and wise father, and a small current of xianfu liangfu discourse began to appear in the 1920s and 1930s. Intellectuals began to call for equal responsibilities from husbands and fathers. The demand for a revision of the father-child relationship and the father's role at home first appeared during the May Fourth Movement. Male intellectuals such as Lu Xun and Hu Shi recommended love as the pillar of father-son relationships. In the 1930s, male writers wrote about their experiences as fathers, demonstrating an attentive fatherhood that was no longer formulated in abstraction but through concrete daily care and deep emotional investment. Although this discourse has attracted much less attention than the xianqi liangmu from contemporary scholars, its appearance represents the beginning of a critical shift in gender relations in the new family.

References

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