New Forms of Devotion and Self-Sacrifice of Beautiful Women in the Vietnamese Romantic Literature of Tu Luc Van Doan
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The traditional concepts and norms in the Vietnamese conservative society have found a new form of expression at the beginning of the 20th century. The development of large cities, influence of French culture and modern style of life gave a new space for individual desire and its expression. The Vietnamese Self-Strengthening Literary Union (T? L?c Văn Đoan) constituted a new form of modern writing. Our paper focuses on new forms of literary deification of women especially in the work of Khái Hung (1896-1947). In our comparison of his particular novels, the author usually combines two motifs: one new connected to modern feminism, and one old connected to tradition. The new motif is personal beauty of woman idols accompanied by their extraordinary intelligence and social independence. More traditional motif is self-sacrifice as a social or even religious action. In the comparison of particular cases, the criticized traditional Confucian rules are often understood as negative and obsolescent. On the other side more basic Asian social values are not neglected. As the result the women in the their self-sacrifice shift their role from passive victims to dominant actors directing and creating their destiny. They became the masters of sacrifice through their beauty, intelligence and even dominance over the men. The result is a new type of literary devotion forming modern understanding and better social position of women in the Vietnamese literature and contemporary society. |
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