Images of Women in the Fiction of Zhang Jie and Zhang Xinxin

Zhang Xinxin and Zhang Jie are two contemporary Chinese women writers. They began to publish in the post–Cultural Revolution era, and became well–known in the early 1980s for their fictional depiction of the problems of urban intellectual women attempting to resolve conflicts between love and career, love and marriage, and ideals and reality. Although the works of both authors present a limited challenge to traditions they believe have served to oppress women, a clear generational difference is perceptible in the attitudes they each express through their characters. Zhang Jie, born in 1937 and reaching adulthood in the idealistic climate of the 1950s, presents characters strongly influenced by both Confucian morality and socialist ideals, while Zhang Xinxin, who was born in 1953 and grew up during the Cultural Revolution period (a disillusioning experience for most of her generation), presents characters who show little enthusiasm for political ideals and are less constrained by traditional morality.