Women as Ethical Subjects: Familialism, Gender, and Moral Allegory in Chinese Family Films (1946–1949)

Between 1946 and 1949, China underwent a turbulent transition marked by ethical rupture and efforts at moral reconstruction. Family melodramas, a dominant mode of Chinese family film in the late 1940s, became key cultural forms that mediated emotions, repaired ethical bonds, and articulated national allegory. This article examines how these films construct female ethical subjectivity within the institutional and affective structures of jia benwei (familialism) and jia-guo tonggou (the integration of family and state). Women appear not only as domestic figures but also as ethical actors who perform emotional labour and assume moral responsibility. Through close readings of The Spring River flows East (1947), Myriad of Lights (1948), Spring in a Small Town (1948), and Remote Love (1948), together with comparative analysis of three additional works, the study identifies three recurring ethical forms: sacrificial, ambivalent, and active. Departing from Western feminist paradigms that are centred on autonomy, the gaze, or resistance, the article conceptualises what it terms the ethical subject as a relational and culturally embedded formation. By foregrounding this concept, the study proposes a localised analytical framework that enriches discussions of gender, ethics, and subjectivity in modern Chinese cinema and contributes to wider debates in feminist film theory.