Women Stereotypes in Shi Zhecun’s Short Stories

This article analyses the representation of women in two 1933 short story collections by Shi Zhecun: An Evening of Spring Rain and Exemplary Conduct of Virtuous Women. It discusses how the New Woman image was a site of contestation in Republican China, and argues that Shi Zhecun’s short stories contain four basic stereotypes: the enigmatic woman, the estranged wife, the prostitute, and the inhibited woman. Using these narratives of women and how they were perceived by men, Shi Zhecun deconstructed the New Woman image by subverting the various ways modernity was projected onto women.