Narrative Deconstruction and Existential Predicaments of Female Images in Yu Hua’s Novels from a Feminist Perspective

Abstract

 Since the 1980s, Yu Hua’s fiction has consistently retained an avant-garde edge. The female figures in his works are both complex and symbolic: some bear traits of obedience shaped by traditional ethical discipline, while others display heterogeneous qualities that challenge the patriarchal order. These images embody Yu Hua’s sustained and probing attention to women. A close dismantling of these portrayals helps illuminate the trajectory by which female subjectivity in Yu Hua’s corpus is progressively eroded and subsequently reconstructed—a trajectory of clear scholarly significance that remains underexplored from feminist vantage points. Anchored in feminist theory, this article traces a spectrum of female images in Yu Hua’s novels, from “the loss of subjectivity” to “existential breakthroughs,” and, by deconstructing narratives of madness, the dilemmas of objectification, and patriarchal disciplining, reveals the literary representation of gendered power relations and their metaphorical bearing on the quandaries of modern existence. The study offers a new gendered perspective for Yu Hua scholarship.