User:Reuentahl404/Mao Dun

Transition of female characters

There is an obvious transition of female characters' identity in Mao Dun's work before and after the 1930s. Between the 1920s and the 1930s, which is also the early period of Mao Dun's writing career, the female characters occurring in his work mostly were in identity of “New Woman”. For instance, Mrs. Gui (桂阿姨) and Qionghua (琼华) in Wild Rose (Ye QiangWei 野蔷薇, 1929), Ms. Mei (梅小姐) in Rainbow (Hong 虹, 1930)

However, after the 1930s, the “New Woman” characters in Mao Dun's work started to be replaced by the female who are living in traditional Chinese family. Additionally, female characters even started to lose their names. As in one of Mao Dun's short novels which released in the 1930s, Shui zaoxing (水藻行), the only female character does not even have an actual name but only be called as “Xiusheng (one of the two main male characters)'s wife (秀生妻)”

Marriage and personal life
Mao Dun owns a typical traditional Chinese marriage. His family got him engaged to the Kong（孔）family when he was five years old and he married the daughter of Kong family after he quit from university.

After their marriage, the daughter of Kong family has been renamed as Kong Dezhi（孔德沚）and she got chances to learn some new things that she has never been able to get in touch before, which made her be able to assist Mao Dun with his literary and political life during their marriage.

However, the marriage between Mao Dun and Kong Dezhi was not perfect. Mao Dun had an two-year long affair with Qin Dejun（秦德君） during his marriage which even had effect on his novel Rainbow. In the end, Mao Dun ended this relationship and returned to his own family.