From “resignation” to “resistance”-The difficult path of female awakening from Hu Yuyin in A Small Town Called Hibiscus

School of Foreign Languages, Spanish, Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong, China

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Abstract

A Small Town Called Hibiscus is a novel set against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, which depicts the social situation under the influence of the far-left ideology with realistic expression. The study will take the protagonist Hu Yuyin’s experiences as the focal point, employing close reading of the text to explore Hu Yuyin’s awakening journey from “resignation” to “resistance”. The study finds that the obedience of Hu Yuyin is a result of the traditional gender concepts in the patriarchal society. The label of “Rice Tofu Xishi” and the subordinate status in marriage reveal Hu Yuyin’s existence of a “second sex”. The political violence disrupted the patriarchal order, hence Hu Yuyin’s self-positioning was reshaped. Despite the awakening being incomplete, her spirit of struggling against patriarchy reflects the burgeoning feminine consciousness during the cultural revolution, and providing a sample for the study of contemporary female consciousness.