Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the Modern Girl in Republican China

Author(s): Sarah E. Stevens

Source: NWSA Journal , Autumn, 2003, Vol. 15, No. 3, Gender and Modernism between
the Wars, 1918-1939 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 82-103
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the
Modern Girl in Republican China

SARAH E. STEVENS

This paper examines the cultural figures of the New Woman and the
Modern Girl in Republican China (1 911-1949). In addition to reflecting
the anxieties arising from a changing gender ideology, these contending
images reveal anxieties associated with the concept of modernity and
the modern nation project. The New Woman represents a positive view
of linear modernity and hopes for a strong future China. The Modern
Girl manifests in two distinct ways: as a self-absorbed woman search-
ing for subjectivity and as a dangerous femme fatale who devours the
urban male. Both of these manifestations reveal deep anxieties over the
alienation and loss that accompany modernity. Literary works by Ding
Ling, Mao Dun, Shi Zhecun, and others reveal that the figures of the
New Woman and the Modern Girl cross political and canonical lines.
They can best be distinguished by their use in depicting the hopes, fears,
pleasures, and dangers of modernity.

Keywords: China / gender / literature / Modern Girl / modernity / New

Woman / subjectivity

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, contending groups
of Chinese intellectuals used the "woman question" as a keyhole through
which to address issues of modernity and the nation. Because the process
of national invention and the struggle to create a new gender ideology
occurred simultaneously in China, the tension between contending ideals
of womanhood reveals not only the anxieties associated with changing
roles for women, but also the anxieties associated with modernity and
the modern nation. Social conservatives supported a cultural ideal of
womanhood that accorded with the more traditional ideology of liangqi
xianmu (good wife, wise mother). In its modern incarnation, such a notion
emphasized women's role as mothers of citizens, much like the eugenic
ideal of the jianquan (flawless) women who contributed proper genetics
and gestation to children.' This paper will examine two distinct images
of women found in the Republican decades: the figure of the xin niixing
(New Woman) and the figure of the modeng gou'er (Modern Girl). Both of
these archetypes were widespread in literature, film, and pictorial maga-
zines and both were posited in opposition to conservative ideals such as
those endorsed by good wife, wise mother rhetoric. At the same time,
these two images reflect opposite views of modernity. Taken together, the
figures of the New Woman and the Modern Girl reveal tension in ideas

C)2003 NWSA JOURNAL, VOL. 15 No. 3 (FALL)

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 83

about the modern, th

in China. In the figures of the New Woman and the Modern Girl, contra-
dictory views of women's bodies parallel contradictory views of moder-
nity itself. As New Women, women stand for the nation and its quest for
modernity-modernity understood as an admirable state of civilization,
strength, and progress. At the same time, as Modern Girls, women are
used to represent fears for the modern nation and the drawbacks of moder-
nity-modernity understood as a state of danger, individual alienation,
and cultural loss.
Within this representational schematic, the New Woman stands as
a distinct archetype, easily distinguished from the Modern Girl. Often
associated with leftist and progressive intellectuals, the New Woman
is equated with the positive aspects of modernity. As such, she is edu-
cated, political, and intensely nationalistic. Cultural reflections of the
New Woman archetype highlight the transformation of a backwards or
bourgeois woman into a New Woman, thus representing the necessary
transformation of the Chinese nation. In direct opposition to the New
Woman, the Modern Girl reveals disillusionment with the promises of
modernity. Elusive, fragmented, and cosmopolitan, she is depicted in
two disparate manners. The Modern Girl appears as the primary voice in
(female-authored) works that explore female subjectivity. In this guise,
the Modern Girl expresses the struggle for women to find their voices in a
new and changing world. She also appears in works by so-called decadent
writers like the xin ganjue pai (New Perceptionists), who objectify the
Modern Girl as a femme fatale or fldneuse. In this guise, the Modern Girl
expresses male disillusionment with modernity, fears of female subjectiv-
ity, and fears of the alienation that accompanies the urban, cosmopolitan
world. Regardless of general tendencies for leftist writers to portray the
New Woman and for so-called decadent writers to use the Modern Girl,
depictions of these two archetypes cross ideological lines and represent
fundamental anxieties over modernity. Therefore, the New Woman and
the Modern Girl can be distinguished most easily by examining the ways
in which the two figures interface with ideas about modernity.
The Republican era (1911-1949) was a period of great social change
in China. Officially book-ended by the fall of the imperial system and
the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Republican decades
saw tumultuous politics, with the Nationalist government waxing and
waning in power, the Communist Party growing in importance, warlords
wielding power in peripheral areas, and Japan invading China in 1937. The
interwar decades were a time when Chinese intellectuals saw China being
treated as a second-class nation. At the end of World War I, the Treaty
of Versailles ceded former German holdings in China to Japan, instead
of returning the territories to China itself, even though China had sent
troops to fight with the Allies in Europe. Such unfair treatment sparked

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 84 SARAH E. STEVENS

a widespread intellectual uprising known as the May Fourth Movement.

Focusing on the need for national strength and modernization, this move-
ment also encompassed widespread cultural and literary innovation. The
interwar period ended early in China with yet another trauma, Japan's
invasion of coastal China in 1937.
The Republican decades of the 1920s and 1930s can be described
as "semicolonial" and "scientistic." Although China was technically
an independent nation, portions of China were under foreign control
throughout the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, the nation
struggled with colonial attitudes as it confronted the seeming disparity
between China and the West. China was thus caught between discursively
admiring the West and dealing with the material reality of colonial domi-
nation by foreign powers. It is this uneasy bifurcation that leads critics
such as Shu-mei Shih to discuss China in terms of semicolonialism (1996,
936). Such a political backdrop led to differing articulations of nationalism
and to a variety of responses to Western products, philosophies, and tech-
nologies. Within this range of viewpoints, Western science was almost
universally applauded as a possible foundation block for modern China.
Since, at times, references to Western science during this period have little
relationship to "real" Western thought or to actual science, Republican
intellectual discourse is best described as "scientistic," not necessarily
"scientific" (Dikotter 1992, 128).
During these decades, urban centers were home to a new type of cos-
mopolitanism that saw the rise of a public sphere and the mass media.
In places such as Shanghai, young people congregated around Western-
style cinemas, dance halls, and coffee shops. Pictorial magazines such as
Liangyou (The Young Companion) and LinLoon huabao (LinLoon Maga-
zine) sold a modern lifestyle that consisted of the latest fashions, make-up,
Western brand-name products, Hollywood and Chinese movie stars, and
all things urban. At the same time, intellectual discourse found a voice
in the rising mass media, as journals, magazines, newspapers, and books
were published widely and relatively cheaply for the first time. These cul-
tural products were important public arenas for the display and codifica-
tion of new body cultures-high heels, new hairstyles, close-cut gowns,
Western-style bras, swimming and other new forms of body work. At the
same time, representations of women gave rise to two distinct archetypes:
the New Woman and the Modern Girl.

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 85

Terms and Derivations:

Nuxing, Xin Nuxing, Modeng Gou'er

The term nfuxing (literally female sex) came into use during the 1920s,
along with the May Fourth birth of colloquial language and new defini-
tions of literature as social criticism (Barlow 1991). Tani Barlow argues
that, before this time, women were described by the relational term funul,
emphasizing familial and gender roles rather than biological sex.2 During
the May Fourth era of the late 1910s and early 1920s, intellectuals con-
structed a theory of "new literature," in which writing was associated
with realism, with the search for modern subjectivity, and with a call for
the Chinese people to resolve the national crisis. The term niuxing came
into use within this larger context. Beginning in the 1920s,

Nuxing operated as one-half of the Western, exclusionary, male/female binary.

... Nuixing and its correlate nanxing, or male sex, acted as a magnet, attract-
ing around its universal, sexological, scientistic core a psychologized per-
sonal identity that allowed its possessor to act as the fulcrum for upending
Confucianism and all received categories.... In particular, colloquial fiction
established sex as the core of an oppositional personal identity and woman as
a sexological category. (141)

Barlow argues that the formation of this oppositional term involved the
adoption of a universal, scientistic, personal identity based on biological
attributes rather than familial or gender roles. This construction also
allowed "woman" to become the Other of "man" in a Westernized binary.
New fiction was a crucial site for the establishment of this sex-based
identity and thus played a key role in shaping the identity of niixing.
The meaning of the term xin niuxing (New Woman or, less commonly,
xin nhzi) is closely conjoined with these implications of niuxing and has
been the most widely discussed cultural construction within this larger
niixing discourse.
Less common than New Woman, the term Modern Girl also appeared
in literary criticism. Interestingly, the term most commonly appeared in
English, even within Chinese texts. The Chinese term modeng gou'er was
a seldom-seen transliteration (Liu 1995, 366). The term modeng niuxing
(modern woman), as well as another translation of modeng guniang
(Modern Girl), were also used in 1930s China (Harris 1995, 72). In Japan,
the transliterated term appeared as modan garu or moga, for short. In
China, the predominant usage of the English words Modern Girl high-
lights the cosmopolitan nature of this female archetype. The inclusion of
English within a Chinese text was a new feature in the early twentieth
century and served as an immediate visual marker of a text's connection
to modernity.

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 86 SARAH E. STEVENS

Defining Archetypes:
The New Woman and the Modern Girl

My use of the two terms New Woman and Modern Girl will not necessar-
ily follow the uses of these two terms in the literary products themselves.
Sometimes, a character might be described in the text or in criticism as
a New Woman when, in fact, she most closely abides by the archetypal
characteristics of the Modern Girl. In fact, current literary studies often
conflate the figures of the Modern Girl and the New Woman. For instance,
one critical description of the Modern Girl states:

In stories, essays, films, and cultural debates, modernity made a special appear-
ance as the "modern girl" (often written in English) to which there was no
equivalent "modern boy." The Modern Girl had easily identifiable physical
characteristics, such as short hair and stylish, modern clothes. She was an
urban woman, and often one who attended school to prepare for a career and
sometimes immersed herself in love affairs or later worked for social justice.
The modern girl had a deep emotional interior, sought meaning from her
life, struggled against inequality, and valued her intellect. She paid attention
to modern technologies such as hygiene and nutrition and took care of her
personal appearance. The modern girl could be fraught with contradictions:
looking for love but scorning men, valuing social change but pursuing triviali-
ties. (Larson 1998, 138)

Like many other examples in Western and Chinese scholarship, this

description actually combines the characteristics of the New Woman
and the Modern Girl. A failure to distinguish the two figures neglects the
ways in which women's bodies were used to enact the struggle between
conflicting aspects of modernity. The contrasts between the figures of
the New Woman and the Modern Girl illustrate the tensions inherent
within the very construction of modernity itself. In addition, recogni-
tion of the distinct figure of the Modern Girl can illustrate the fears of
female subjectivity that permeated (male-authored) literary texts during
the interwar period.
The New Woman and the Modern Girl do share certain physical char-
acteristics, highlighted by the passage above. The construction of the
overarching category nuxing (including both the New Woman and the
Modern Girl) included signifiers such as "short hair and stylish, modern
clothes" and an attention to "modern technologies such as hygiene and
nutrition."3 Physical appearance alone cannot be used to distinguish
between the New Woman and the Modern Girl. Instead, the two charac-
ters can only be distinguished by a close investigation of their functions
within the literary text. The use of the New Woman is always linked to
the positive aspects of modernity. She symbolizes the vision of a future
strong nation and her character highlights the revolutionary qualities of

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 87

the modern nuxing. As such, though the New Woman sometimes deals
with the search for female subjectivity, she does so only against the ever-
present backdrop of the nation and socially progressive ideals.
In contrast, the use of the Modern Girl highlights the problems associ-
ated with modernity and the search for female subjectivity. This aspect
of her character appears in several different ways. The Modern Girl is
sometimes used by (female) authors to explore the conflicts and fears of
the modern woman struggling against society and tradition, lost in the
midst of a changing culture. The Modern Girl is also used to symbolize
the alienation and fears associated with the new urban lifestyle. In this
case, she appears in the guise of a femme fatale who expresses (male) fear
of the independent female subject.
The concept of the New Woman was widespread in the United States,
Europe, and Japan during the later 1800s. In these nations, the New
Woman signified educated, politically aware women who often worked
for women's rights agendas (Harris 1995, 64-6; Sato 1993, 266; Silverberg
1991, 248). As Carolyn Kitch (2001) explores in her work on images of
women in the American mass media, the New Woman in the United
States represented new social, political, and economic possibilities for
women. At the same time, although the New Woman was involved in
public life, she was often depicted in the home, revealing continuity
between the New Woman and the Victorian idea of domestic True Wom-
anhood.
In China, the New Woman of the late nineteenth century was a liminal
figure, not fully articulated until well into the twentieth century (Ying
2000). May Fourth intellectual Hu Shi used the word to describe indepen-
dent Western women in 1918, saying,

"new woman" is a new word, and it designates a new kind of woman, who
is extremely intense in her speech, who tends towards extremism in her
actions, who doesn't believe in religion or adhere to rules of conduct, yet who
is an extremely good thinker and has extremely high morals. (qtd. in Harris
1995, 64)

Groundbreaking works like Cai Chusheng's 1935 silent film Xin niixing
(The New Woman) further clarified the need for the Chinese New Woman
to have a "social conscience in the form of proletarian politics" (Harris
1995, 65).
The New Woman is thus recognizable because of her revolutionary
nature, her devotion to the larger cause of nationalism, and the fact that
her search to find self-identity is inevitably bracketed within the larger
nationalistic struggle. Markers of the New Woman include her involve-
ment in the leftist political struggle and her pursuit of a Western-style
education. Her pursuit of "new love" emphasizes the relationship between
freely chosen marriage and social improvement, rather than dwelling on

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 88 SARAH E. STEVENS

issues of personal f
tion to national str
stood as a linear pr
Woman is usually t
which largely make
As such, the New W
scholarship as the m
Indeed, her appearance is quite important and marks an era in which
women were envisioned to be equal political participants and given public
roles as citizens in a new China. Since she is a canonical figure, the New
Woman is the subject of considerable scholarship. The Modern Girl, on
the other hand, occupies largely marginalized texts and has only recently
been acknowledged as an important figure. Several contradictory images
of the Modern Girl appear in literature and criticism and this paper will
attempt to show how these images can be reconciled into one coherent
archetype. Before proceeding to examine the Modern Girl, I will give
one example of a literary New Woman: Meilin in Ding Ling's "Shanghai,
Spring 1930" ([19301 1989b).
"Shanghai, Spring 1930" was written as Ding Ling began to empha-
size class and social relationships within her literary works. One of the
only canonical women writers in modern Chinese literature, Ding Ling's
career followed a distinct path, leading from early stories exploring female
subjectivity and sexuality to later works emphasizing communist beliefs
about class and revolutionary struggle. Her early stories, focusing on the
modern lifestyle of young women, met with great critical acclaim within
the parameters of the May Fourth tradition. In the early 1930s, after Ding
Ling joined the Communist Party, her writing underwent a radical change
and became unabashedly political (and non-gendered in the process).
After the Nationalists killed her husband and she fled from captivity
to the Communist base in Yan'an, Ding Ling followed Mao Zedong's
dictum to emphasize politics, peasants, and the Party. Her earlier works
were then criticized by the Party as examples of bourgeois, self-absorbed
writing that neglected the central issue of nationalism. Those early
works were considered too autobiographical, too personal, and therefore
somehow shameful. Throughout the rest of her career, Ding Ling rose
and fell in political favor. Much of the criticism she received was directed
at her personal life, her sexuality, her relationships, and her identity as
a woman. Ding Ling's story, "Shanghai, Spring 1930," belongs to this
latter category of works and consists of two parts, only loosely connected
to each other. "Part One" tells the story of male revolutionary Ruoquan,
his bourgeois writer friend Zibin, and Zibin's lover Meilin. Central to the
story is Meilin's transformation into a New Woman. At the beginning of
the story, Meilin is a passive, elitist woman who has "simple charm and

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 89

delicate beauty" and "an aura of tranquility derived from never having
had to worry" (118). Meilin's personality and taste is completely shaped
by the influence of her older lover, who proudly keeps her in an expensive
lifestyle. Through contact with Ruoquan and his invigorating ideas about
political and class struggle, Meilin begins to realize that she is dissatisfied
with her life. Reflecting on her relationship with Zibin, Meilin realizes
that she has "worshipped him" to the point of "throw[ing] over everythin
for love" (145-6). By the end of the story, with Ruoquan's revolutionary
example in front of her, she realizes that her life is frivolous and she needs
a radical change in focus. Meilin "wanted to be with the masses, to try to
understand society, and to work for it" (133). Towards this aim, she joins
the Communist Party, finds immediate comfort in the presence of her
new comrades, and begins to volunteer her time at the Party office. The
story ends with Meilin participating in a mass May Day movement, while
Zibin-left behind physically, intellectually, and politically-laments:
"Oh, such a woman, so gentle and soft. Now she too had abandoned him
to follow the masses" (138).
Meilin is a perfect example of the New Woman archetype. No longer
satisfied with being an adored and adorned young woman, she has discov-
ered the key to self-fulfillment in a larger political cause. She represents
the optimism associated with belief in the linear process of modern nation
building. Such an example of the New Woman contrasts directly with
the depiction of Modern Girls such as Miss Sophia, found in one of Ding
Ling's earlier works, "Miss Sophia's Diary" ([1927] 1989a).
Existing in tension with the New Woman, the Modern Girl is a cosmo-
politan figure who celebrates the superficial aspects of modern life, while
at the same time symbolizing the alienation of modernity. Sophisticated
and elusive, the Modern Girl appears in two main guises. In some texts,
the Modern Girl appears as a female character actively seeking love,
romance, and subjectivity. In other texts, the Modern Girl appears as a
sinister and dangerous figure-a distant siren, luring the unwary and
ill-prepared male subject to his ultimate demise. These two sides of the
Modern Girl are not contradictory. Instead, it is in the dualistic nature
of the Modern Girl that her role in expressing modern anxieties is most
clear.
My use of the term Modern Girl thus encompasses the Modern Girl
discussed by Republican literary critics and also new uses of the terms
femme fatale and fldneuse in Western scholarship. All Modern Girls are
ultimately concerned with the alienation of the modern subject and the
search for self-identity within a rapidly changing society. This broader
understanding of the term Modern Girl more fully reflects the tensions
within ideas of the modern, the national, and the cosmopolitan during
the Republican era.

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 90 SARAH E. STEVENS

The Modern Girl: Praying Mantis or Mirror-Gazer?

The Chinese Modern Girl can be related to global female archetypes that
frequented the early twentieth century. In the United States, the impact
of the domestic science movement, the ideal of companionate marriage,
and the beginnings of the "feminine mystique" in the 1920s existed
alongside the disappearance of the New Woman and her political promise
(Kitch 2001, 8-12). This disappearance was marked by a shift towards
images of women as beautiful yet dangerous, tempting yet cruel. Images
of the New Woman were replaced by images of the beautiful, dangerous,
woman-consumer-images that can be more closely related to China's
Modern Girl. These images include the well-known flapper as well as the
"Gibson Girl," an upper-class status symbol portrayed as an enigma in
constant conflict with men (41-4). Gibson's famous illustrations included
women examining tiny men under microscopes, women flying men
attached to long strings like kites, and powerful women juggling small
male figures.
The Japanese modan garu, or moga, shared many characteristics with
the Gibson Girl. Prevalent in the 1920s, the modan garu existed as
a "commodified cultural construct" with a distinctive body culture
(including short hair and long, straight legs) and a character that was
at the same time aggressive, erotic, and anarchistic (Silverberg 1991,
240-3). In opposition to the cerebral Japanese New Woman, the Modern
Girl reflected changes in daily life and urban culture during the interwar
period. Symbolizing the modernism phenomenon, the Modern Girl in
both China and Japan was intimately related to the rising popularity of
mass women's magazines, Hollywood movies, and the most superficial
aspects of modernity. The above characteristics of the Gibson Girl and
the modan garu resonate with depictions of China's Modern Girl in the
guise of a femme fatale. In fact, the origin of the femme fatale side
the Modern Girl can be traced back to Franco-Japanese images such as
those found in the works of Paul Morand, Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Lot,
and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (Shih 1996, 947-8). A 1928 issue of the Japanese
journal Shincho contained a roundtable discussion of the modan garu that
agreed on the following characteristics: 1) she is not hysterical, 2) she uses
direct language, 3) she has a direct and aggressive sexuality, 4) she scoffs
at the idea of chastity (she changes men like she changes shirts), 5) she
can be poor, since clothes are inexpensive, 6) she is liberated from ties of
class and gender, 7) she is an anarchist, 8) she accosts men when she needs
train fare, 9) she has freedom of expression (gained from watching movies),
and 10) compared to her, the modan boi (modern boy) is insignificant (qtd.
in Silverberg 1991, 250).

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 91

How do these global

construction of the archetype? One side of the Chinese Modern Girl-the
femme fatale or praying mantis side-is closely related to the flapper, the
Gibson Girl, and the moga. However, China's Modern Girl is distinct
from Western and Japanese images because she also manifests as a mirr
gazing woman seeking to find herself-her subjectivity, her sexuality,
her independence-within the confusion of a changing modern world.
Both manifestations of the Modern Girl, both the praying mantis and the
mirror-gazer, reflect the potential alienation of the modern individual,
positing fears of modernity on the bodies of literary female subjects and
objects.
In 1931, literary critic Qian Qianwu aptly described the mirror-gazing
Modern Girl in an article claiming that "Ding Ling is the most skillful
at introducing the character of the Modern Girl (Qian [1931] 1982, 226;
here and throughout this section, italicized words appeared in English in
the original). He specifically comments on the short story "Miss Sophia's
Diary" and claims that Ding Ling has created a new type of female char-
acter. According to Qian, the Modern Girl is a jindai niizi (contemporary
woman) who is city-centered and has all the characteristics of the shi-
jimode bingtai (fin-de-siecle malaise). He identifies six characteristics
of the Modern Girl. She is 1) very selfish; 2) overly emotional and easily
moved to laughter or tears; 3) often tired, frustrated, and made pessimistic
by the people and situations surrounding her; 4) depressed in activities; 5)
mired in obsessive and unproductive thinking; 6) suspicious, irritated, and
lost in a "mystical delirium" (227). Additionally, Qian Qianwu goes on
to state that the Modern Girl seeks bodily pleasures. In depictions of this
mirror-gazing Modern Girl, romantic love is used as a trope for personal
liberation. Note that this use of love is in direct contrast to love in the
world of the New Woman, where romantic love must always be rejected
in pursuit of political liberation.
In creating the larger critical category of the Modern Girl, the above
descriptions must be merged. Both the praying mantis and the mirror-
gazer are actually the same female archetype viewed from two opposite
perspectives. All these characters must be recognized as aspects of the
same Modern Girl. When their central sameness is recognized, the crucial
role of this archetype in revealing contemporary anxieties about moder-
nity can be seen clearly. The Modern Girl is experiencing a crisis in sub-
jectivity and self-identity, aptly described by Qian Qianwu above. Thus,
when she appears as the subject of a literary work, the reader experiences
her mirror gazing: her obsessive self-oriented thinking, her emotionality,
and her confusion over modern life. When the Modern Girl appears as an
object within a literary work, however, she manifests herself externally
as a femme fatale who preys upon the urban man.

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 92 SARAH E. STEVENS

The femme fatale is well described by Heinrich Freuhauf in his work

on urban exoticism. Fruehauf describes the prominent role of the femme
fatale as follows:

She is the twilight figure who evades clear-cut boundaries. Strong, self-confi-
dent, and far more adaptable than her male counterparts, she alone is capable
of mastering the dangerous game of the urban labyrinth. Although this feature
makes her enviable even in the most moralizing portrait, she almost always
remains a cryptic and unscrupulous being. (1993, 160)

The femme fatale is often portrayed by New Perceptionists as a praying

mantis devouring the befuddled urban man. Writers like Liu Na'ou and
Ye Lingfeng appeal to this praying mantis image in their depictions of the
fetishized Modern Girl's mouth. Liu Na'ou's descriptions of the mouth as
both edible (like a cherry or pomegranate) and deadly indicate a simulta-
neous desire for and fear of the Modern Girl (Lee 1999, 194-6). Elsewhere,
Liu Na'ou states "this girl loves me as if she could swallow me in one
mouthful" (qtd. in Lee 1999, 196). In Ye Lingfeng's Unfinished Confes-
sion, the narrator echoes these oral metaphors in his fixation on a Modern
Girl's mouth, compared to "two protruding scarlet petals" ([1934] 1988,
346). When the male offers the Modern Girl a cigarette, she leans over and
takes it between her scarlet lips: "'I'd rather be a cigarette!' I could not help
saying that while inserting the cigarette between her lips" (345-6; trans.
in Zhang 1996, 219). In addition to the clear sexual imagery of the phallic
cigarette penetrating the lips, this passage reveals something about the
allure of being devoured.
Shu-mei Shih claims that works by Liu Na'ou and other New Percep-
tionists "saw the Westernized 'Modern Girl' as a desirable embodiment
of anti-patriarchal, autonomous, urban, and hybrid modernity" (1996,
935). This explanation of the Modern Girl as a wholly desirable symbol
of modernity is misleading. In addition to symbolizing the lure and
desirability of the cosmopolitan lifestyle, the Modern Girl represents
deep-rooted fears of modernity. In particular, the Modern Girl reveals
(male) fears of women liberated by modernity and seeking to become the
subject of their own lives. The Modern Girl also demonstrates (male) fears
of the loss of individuality experienced in the increasingly cosmopolitan,
industrialized, and urban landscape of modernity.
It is in the Modern Girl's representation of these male fears that the two
sides of her character-as an introspective female subject searching for
her identity and as a dangerously desirable femme fatale-are most clearly
recognizable. Revealed from the first side, the Modern Girl is preoccupied
with self-expression, both in terms of sexuality and subjectivity. Writ-
ten from the opposite side, the Modern Girl is depicted from the point of
view of the men who are seeking to conquer her-and who, in so doing,
are attempting to gain or regain a sense of control, masculinity, and male
subjecthood within the context of modern alienation.

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 93

An examination of Ding Ling's Miss Sophia and the femme fatale

in Liu Na'ou's "Two Men out of Time" ([1929] 1990) reveals that these
superficially different characters in actuality are but two sides of the
same modern-girl coin. In Ding Ling's classic story "Miss Sophia's Diary,"
Sophia is a quintessentially modern woman struggling between self-loath-
ing and self-love, between traditional expectations and modern freedom.
The story is told through diary entries that clearly reveal her self-absorp-
tion. Confined by tuberculosis and forced into long periods of introspec-
tion, Sophia narrates her thoughts, feelings, and encounters with various
friends and visitors. One visitor, Weidi, is a puppy-like admirer who dotes
on Sophia, to her immense irritation. In turn, Sophia spends a great deal of
time dwelling on thoughts of Ling Jishi, another male visitor who is both
elusively handsome and somehow repugnant. The centrality of the quest
for self-identity in Sophia's story is well symbolized by both her incessant
diary writing and her narcissistic mirror gazing (Liu 1991, 31-2).
Sophia's diary reveals her bouts of self-love and self-loathing. To the
reader, she is clearly preoccupied with issues of subjecthood, vacillating
between taking pleasure in expressing herself and feeling pressured to
conform to social norms. These qualities mark Sophia as a Modern Girl
in the sense that Qian Qianwu notes-selfish, emotional, frustrated,
depressed, obsessive, lost in a mystical delirium, and pursuing bodily
pleasures in order to forget her anxiety. However, if the reader were not
privy to Sophia's diary and had only external knowledge of her character,
Sophia would actually appear as a so-called femme fatale. For example, if
Weidi were relating Sophia's story, his account would center on incidents
like the following diary entries:

Weidi came over after lunch. The familiar hurried sound of his leather shoes
carried all the way from the other end of the corridor and comforted me, as
though I'd suddenly been released from a suffocating room. But I couldn't show
it. So when he came in, I simply glanced silently at him. Weidi thought I was
peeved again. He clasped my hands tightly and cried, "Sister, Elder Sister!"
over and over. (Ding 1989a, 51)

When this honest, open man [Weidi] was here, I used all the cruelty of my
nature to make him suffer. (54)

I told Weidi about my new "philosophy of life." And, true to form, he did the
only thing instinct gives him leave to do-he burst into tears. I watched impas-
sively as his eyes turned red and he dried them with his hands. Then I taunted
him with a cruel running commentary on his little crying jag. (62)

Sophia plays with Weidi's emotions ruthlessly, torturing him with the
power of his love for her. Only the reader is privy to her remorse and
self-hatred after such episodes: "[O]nce he'd left, there was nothing I
wanted more than to snatch him back and plead with him: 'I know I was
wrong. Don't love a woman so undeserving of your affection as I am"'

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 94 SARAH E. STEVENS

(54). Sophia's diary entries make her motivations clear. She torments
Weidi out of deep-seated feelings of self-hatred, confusion, and disgust for
her life. To Weidi, however, she must appear to be one of those praying-
mantis women, forever laughing and scorning capture, darting about in
the modern world of love and romance while her male admirers are rooted
to the ground in despair.4
In the same way, the overt actions of femme fatales such as those found
in the works of New Perceptionists like Liu Na'ou, Shi Zhecun, and Mu
Shiying reveal but one side of the complete Modern Girl. In Liu Na'ou's
"Two Men out of Time" two urbanites known only as H and T vie for
the attention of an unnamed woman, moving from one cosmopolitan
cityscape to another. This love triangle is further complicated when the
woman deserts both men for yet a third date. H and T believe that the
unnamed woman of their desire is cruel, toying with their affection,
using and abandoning men without care, viewing them to be as easily
interchanged as letters of the alphabet. If readers of "Two Men out of
Time" were able to enter into the subjectivity of the female character,
however, they might find an interior monologue very similar to that of
Miss Sophia. Outside viewers see the woman as uncaring (or even mali-
cious in her contempt for the men who pursue her). In the same way,
Miss Sophia often appears cruel and vengeful to her admirer Weidi. The
difference between these two figures is merely one of perspective. Ding
Ling's Modern Girl displays her subjectivity and thus reveals her personal
battles with modernity and the concept of self. Liu Na'ou's Modern Girl is
revealed from the perspective of male characters who view her as an object
that symbolizes their own despair. Unable to understand the subjectiv-
ity displayed by the so-called femme fatale, the male characters project
their frustrations, fears, and anger onto the woman. The dual images of
the Modern Girl-the obsessive, emotional woman and the hardened,
praying mantis-are thus reconciled into one coherent female archetype,
differing only because of the perspective granted the reader (and perhaps
the writer).

Sex and the City

One discursive link between women and modernity is forged by the

frequent placement of female literary characters within the urban land-
scape-the quintessential site of modernity. Symbolizing both the city's
dangers and its pleasures, nuixing is usually an urban woman. Specifically,
the New Woman is often geographically located in the city, while the
Modern Girl is actually defined by her ambiguous relationship to urban,
modern life. Examination of several New Women and Modern Girls from
literary works of this time shows that both figures are clearly linked to an

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 95

urbanized female ideal. At the same time, the relationship between each
archetype and the city reveals some of the tensions surrounding ideas of
modernity.
In fiction centering on the New Woman, the city is typically a posi-
tive background for the New Woman's evolution, as she journeys towards
political activism. Revolutionary fiction of the 1920s and 1930s projected
hopes for a strong and modern China onto the urban scene. Therefore,
in works such as Ding Ling's "Shanghai, Spring 1930, Part One," dis-
cussed above, the city of Shanghai has a political life of its own, which
contributes to Meilin's transformation into a New Woman. The city is
imagined as a bustling arena of political discourse, leftist organizations,
and powerful displays of revolutionary fervor, such as the march in which
Meilin participates at the story's conclusion. Mao Dun's novel Rainbow
([1941] 1992) tracks the conversion of female protagonist Mei from a
pleasure-seeking, confused Modern Girl to a committed revolutionary
New Woman. This journey is paralleled by her physical movement from
the countryside to the city, the final site of her maturity into political
activism. In this way, depictions of the urbanized New Woman glorify
the possibilities of modernity for transforming the nation. In contrast,
the relationship of the Modern Girl to the city is quite complicated. The
Modern Girl is quintessentially a cosmopolitan, urbanized figure of male
desire. At the same time, however, because of the inability of male charac-
ters to understand her inner subjectivity, the Modern Girl also becomes a
figure who represents the dangers of modernity, partially by representing
the dangers of the city.
The use of the Modern Girl to represent these urban dangers can be
seen clearly in such disparate texts as Mao Dun's Midnight ([1933] 1957)
and Mu Shiying's short story "Craven 'A"' ([1933] 1990). Mao Dun's novel
Midnight was first published in 1933 and has been highly regarded by both
Chinese and Western literary critics as one of the greatest examples of
realist fiction in modern Chinese literature. Coming from a leftist politi-
cal perspective, Mao Dun was a vocal proponent of women's liberation
and an active participant in debates over the woman question. Midnight
is intricately concerned with questions of Chinese nationalism and the
conflicts between modernity and tradition. As such, the reader might
expect to find the figure of the New Woman frequenting the pages of
Midnight. Indeed, some characters within the text can be appropriately
labeled New Women. However, like the New Perceptionists, Mao Dun
also reveals conflicting views of modernity, partly through his depiction
of the Modern Girl.
Midnight is full of images of Modern Girls who illustrate the dangers of
the sexualized, urban woman. In the first chapter, the dangers presented
by the Modern Girl are made clear as Wu, the old grandfather from the
country, first enters the city of Shanghai. Mao Dun sets the scene for Old

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 96 SARAH E. STEVENS

Mr. Wu's arrival with a paragraph that mimics the flow of Wu's visual
impressions of the city. In a panoramic description, the reader's attention
moves from objects of nature (the sun and the river) to the method of
entering the city (the riverboats) to the city itself, Shanghai, making its
grand entrance.

Under a sunset-mottled sky, the towering framework of Garden bridge was

mantled in a gathering mist. Whenever a tram passed over the bridge, the
overhead cable suspended below the top of the steel frame threw off bright,
greenish sparks. Looking east, one could see the warehouses on the waterfront
of Pootung like huge monsters crouching in the gloom, their lights twinkling
like countless tiny eyes. To the west, one saw with a shock of wonder on the
roof of a building a gigantic neon sign in flaming red and phosphorescent green:
LIGHT, HEAT, POWER. (9)

The city is introduced with images of steel, warehouses, and tall build-
ings, under the blazing sign of LIGHT, HEAT, and POWER. The stress
on brilliant lights and colors-sparks off the cable car, neon signs on a
building-presents a clear contrast to the pastoral image of the sunset-
mottled sky. Shanghai is LIGHT, HEAT, and POWER. As quickly becomes
evident, Shanghai is also SEX-or perhaps, first and foremost SEX. It is
Shanghai's relentless SEX, exhibited by the Modern Girl, which over-
whelms Old Mr. Wu.
An old-fashioned newcomer to the city, Old Mr. Wu finds many aspects
of Shanghai alarming: "Good Heavens! The towering skyscrapers, their
countless lighted windows gleaming like the eyes of devils, seemed to be
rushing down on him like an avalanche at one moment and vanishing at
the next" (15). Although these urban cityscapes confuse Wu, he becomes
truly distressed only after the sight of a Modern Girl. In order to appreci-
ate fully the sight and effect of these images of the Modern Girl, I will
quote two passages at length. As Wu rides in the car with his family, he
is assaulted by images of modernity and SEX:

All this talk about fashion acted like a needle on the atrophied nerves of the
old man. His heart fluttered, and his eyes fell instinctively upon [his daughter]
Fu-fang and he saw now for the first time how she was decked out. Though it
was still only May, the weather was unusually warm and she was already in the
lightest of summer clothing. Her vital young body was sheathed in close-fitting
light-blue chiffon, her full, firm breasts jutting out prominently, her snowy
forearms bared. Old Mr. Wu felt his heart constricting with disgust and quickly
averted his eyes, which, however, fell straight away upon a half-naked young
woman sitting up in a rickshaw, fashionably dressed in a transparent, sleeve-
less violet blouse, displaying her bare legs and thighs. The old man thought for
one horrible moment that she had nothing else on. The text "Of all the vices,
sexual indulgence is the cardinal" drummed on his mind, and he shuddered.
But the worst was yet to come, for he quickly withdrew his gaze, only to find
his youngest son Ah-hsuan gaping with avid admiration at the same half-naked

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 97

young woman. The ol

and his throat burnin

Bare arms, bare legs, breasts that invite baring-such a barrage of urban
sexuality is too much for Old Mr. Wu. At the same time, such fashionable
visions appeal to his son, who has absorbed a new code of body culture.
Old Mr. Wu's senses are further and finally assaulted when he enters
the house. Already struggling to understand the modern technology
around him, Wu feels attacked by the Modern Girl and her sexuality. As
the younger people dance, Old Mr. Wu's vision is filled with countless
breasts that he imagines are assaulting him. Under their attack, he col-
lapses and dies later that night. To his bewildered eyes,

All the red and green lights, all the geometrical shapes of the furniture and all
the men and women were dancing and spinning together, bathed in the golden
light. Mrs. Wu Sun-fu in pink, a girl in apple-green, and another in light yellow
were frantically leaping and whirling around him. Their light silk dresses
barely concealed their curves, their full, pink-tipped breasts and the shadow
under their arms. The room was filled with countless swelling breasts, breasts
that bobbed and quivered and danced around him. Wu Sun-fu's pimply face
grinned and Ah-hsuan's lustful eyes shone among the dancing breasts. Sud-
denly, all these quivering, dancing breasts swept at Old Mr. Wu like a hail of
arrows, piling up on his chest and smothering him, piling up on the Book of
Rewards and Punishments on his lap. (21; translation slightly altered)

This passage almost speaks for itself, with its repeated emphasis on
breasts, breasts, and more breasts and its presentation of the women, the
lustful men, and the breasts as interchangeable elements in some frenzied
dance. The room is a microcosm of Shanghai, containing LIGHT, HEAT,
POWER, and SEX. The lights-reminiscent of the neon in Mao Dun's
opening passage-are joined with elements of technology, visible in "all
the geometrical shapes" of the furniture and the room's clock. However,
it is Shanghai's SEX, in the form of attacking breasts, which is responsible
for Old Mr. Wu's collapse and death.
This image of female sexuality is problematic and functions on several
levels. On one level, these depictions of women are pleasurable, displaying
knowledge of urban body culture and fashion. The images of the Modern
Girl conjured by Mao Dun's words do not greatly differ from the visions in
film of the 1920s and 1930s, or in pictorial magazines. On another level, in
these passages, unrestrained female sexuality is a dangerous force, capable
of breaking social boundaries and even leading to death. Modern female
sexuality destroys the order and control of traditional beliefs, represented
by the figure of Old Mr. Wu and by his beloved classical tome, The Book
of Rewards and Punishments. Such representations of dangerous female
sexuality echo the advice from socially conservative discourses, such as
materials dealing with fetal hygiene, which advised that unnatural sexual

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 98 SARAH E. STEVENS

activity was dangerous to the woman, to her future children, and therefore
to the nation. Here, unrestrained female sexuality is depicted as a danger
to society at large.
In Mu Shiying's short story "Craven 'A,"' the direct link between
female sexuality and the city is again made through the detailed descrip-
tions of a Modern Girl. Published in 1933 in Shanghai, Mu Shiying's story
is an example of New Perceptionism, in contrast to Mao Dun's canonical
realist writing. Both stories share the same descriptions of women and
dangerous sexuality, set within an urban environment and functioning
as warnings of the perils of modernity. Mu Shiying's story takes its name
from the brand of cigarettes smoked by an intriguing Modern Girl who
is the object of male protagonist Yuan Yecun's obsession. The woman's
name is Yu Huixian, but Yuan calls her Craven "A," conflating her iden-
tity with the Westernized, commercial product she consumes. Craven
"A"' is introduced in an archetypal urban situation-drinking, dancing,
and smoking at a Shanghai dance hall. As the protagonist gazes at her,
he equates her body to a map: "People's faces are maps. After research-
ing the map's topography and mountain ranges, the rivers, climate, and
rainfall, you can immediately understand that place's customs, habits,
thoughts, and characteristics" (536). Yuan thus believes that gazing at
the exterior appearance of Craven "A" leads to understanding her inner
nature (removing the possibility of female subjectivity in the process). He
analyzes her appearance at great length, using geographical and industri-
alized terminology. Her hair (the "northern border") is a region of dark
forest, bound with a white silk scarf, like a cloud in a smoke-filled sky.
This dark forest of hair is the site of "fragrance manufacturing." The
description continues, linking her body to highly sexualized landscape
elements. Her mouth is a volcano, with sultry puffs of smoke and milky-
white teeth. This sexualized volcano imagery is elaborated at length,
as Yuan Yecun imagines a yearly offering of sacrificial male victims to
her dangerous, volcanic mouth. The objectified woman's entire body is
described, with Yuan discussing plateaus, rises, temperature, and rain-
fall in a highly suggestive manner. Between her "embarkments" (legs),
Yuan pictures a three-cornered plateau (pubic mound) with an important
"port" (vagina)-a "big commercial port"-"otherwise, why would two
such exquisite embarkments be built?" (537-8). This long descriptive pas-
sage creates a fragmented and fetishized view of the Modern Girl's body.
Through a type of twisted Petrarchan blazon, the female body is broken
down and its elements are conquered by the male viewer. She is nature
to be appeased, nature to be exploited, and a modern industrial landscape
ripe for commercial venture.
After Yuan Yecun discovers the name of this mysterious woman, he
suddenly recalls hearing many scandalous stories about her. His new mus-
ings about Craven "A" deal directly with her sexuality and are couched
in metaphors of use, possession, and colonization:

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 99

I know many stories about her. Almost all my friends have already visited
that country, because the traffic is so convenient that you can see nearly the
whole country in a day or two. They have all already inscribed poems on the
rocks at the peak of those twin sister-hills. Whether old-handers or first-timers,
they immediately scale the banks to the port and then go upstream towards
the north. Some stay two days, some stay a week. After returning, they boast
of the beauty of the country's scenery. Everyone treats this place like a fine
landscape for short vacations. (539)

This passage is overtly misogynistic and pornographic, clearly equating

the woman to an exploited colony. Most importantly, the most sexualized
part of her body-her vagina-is described as a port and a site of inva-
sion. In describing Craven "A," Yuan Yecun might well be describing the
arrival of Westerners to China. If we extrapolate this identification of the
woman's body to China, we discover that the "big commercial port" is
Shanghai. The port of Shanghai is thus identified with the vagina-as-port,
reifying the undeniable link between SEX and the City.
In this short story, the figure of the Modern Girl also represents the
vision of a certain, narrow type of sexuality. Craven "A" is a physically
attractive woman who attracts Yuan Yecun's attention from across the
room. She is ultimately cosmopolitan, smoking foreign cigarettes and
enjoying the trendy atmosphere of the dance hall. The Modern Girl arche-
type is thus identified as the object of both desire and loathing. She is
desirable on the exterior, yet is also represented as being both immoral and
dangerous. Both the Modern Girl's mouth and vagina function as highly
sexualized orifices. Echoing male fears of the vagina dentata, her mouth
is a volcano surrounded by teeth, feeding on sacrificial male victims. Her
vagina is a busy port, open to all visitors, whether "old-handers or first-
timers." Because of the close associations between the city of Shanghai
and prostitution, the not-so-veiled implications of immoral sexuality are
tainted even further by contemporary discussions of the prostitute as a
dangerous figure (Hershatter 1997).
Both Mao Dun's text and Mu Shiying's vivid depiction of Craven "A"
work to dehumanize the body of the Modern Girl by focusing on specific
body parts. Such tactics necessarily serve to dehumanize female sexual-
ity and break women into component fetishized fragments. Likewise, the
protagonist in Shi Zhecun's "At the Paris Theater" (l[1931] 1933) fixates on,
of all things, a snotty handkerchief used by the object of his desire, who
is an elusive Modern Girl qua femme fatale. This close focus on dismem-
bered female bodies (and bodily effluvia) presents women as objects to
be divided and devoured, not owners of an independent female sexuality.
This breakdown of the female body may be one technique through which
the male author assuages his anxiety over modernity, symbolized in the
figure of the Modern Girl. Both dangerous and seductive, the Modern
Girl-like the city, like modernity itself-must be conquered by anxious
male characters.

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 100 SARAH E. STEVENS

Language Acts, Body Acts

In all major revolutions a certain reciprocity will obtain between violent

actions choreographed within master narratives and master narratives real-
ized in the form of essential texts.... Body acts become anchored in language
acts.
-Apter and Saich (1994, ix)

During the interwar period, the two archetypes of the New Woman and
the Modern Girl demonstrate conflicting emotions associated with ideas
of modernity, progress, urbanization, and "new" China. The New Woman
is used to exhort China to follow the path of modernity to a bright and
strong future. The Modern Girl expresses the anxieties of authors, readers,
and society at large as to what that future will look like. How can subjec-
tivity-whether male or female-be constructed in a new and alienating
environment? Both of these images exist in contrast to socially conser-
vative ideals of the good wife, wise mother, and the eugenically flawless
woman. I would like to conclude by speculating on the following two
questions. First, how do these discursive constructions of women during
the interwar period relate to images of women in post-1949 China? How
did these constructions affect real women in the 1920s and 1930s? In
other words, how did real women embody the tensions between contend-
ing notions of modernity?
Republican literary images of women have many textual descendents.
The revolutionary New Woman, who finds fulfillment in her duty to the
nation, has obvious daughters in the works created after Mao Zedong's
1943 "Talks at Yan'an" (McDougall 1980). Model works of the 1950s
and 1960s provide some of the most obvious examples of the dedicated
revolutionary heroine who sacrifices herself for the greater national good.
Such works continue to downplay the significance of gender, to posit a
progressive and linear notion of the modern project, and to call for the
creation of a strong nation. As for the Modern Girl, glimpses of her re-
emerge in post-Mao fiction created after 1978. She appears in the writings
of women who once again claim a female voice and female subjectivity.
As a femme fatale, she also appears in the writings of male authors who
re-write masculinity by, in part, creating misogynistic images of the
dangerous female Other.
What about the relationship between cultural images of women and
real women during the interwar period? As so elegantly stated in the
above quotation by David Apter and Tony Saich, "body acts" and "lan-
guage acts" are often inseparable. What were some of the real body acts
that were linked to the discursive creation of the New Woman and the
Modern Girl? To what extent did real women embody conflicting ideals of
modernity? At the heart of this discourse study is the belief that cultural

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 FIGURING MODERNITY 101

displays do both reflect and create reality. Real women were exposed to
competing messages about female sexuality, female subjectivity, women's
role in the national project, and women's place in the modern, urban set-
ting. Individual women received different messages from many sources
and had some ability to choose among many options, from embodying
traditional values as mothers of citizens, to becoming leftist revolutionar-
ies, to rejecting politics in favor of urban pleasures and new consumerism.
Further study of these choices and the women who made them will help to
determine how ideas about modernity were written onto women's bodies
and how real women dealt with this discursive merging.

Sarah E. Stevens is Acting Director of International Programs at Southern

Oregon University, where she also teaches in Women's Studies and sociol-
ogy. Her research interests focus on issues of women, gender, and sexual-
ity in twentieth-century China. Current projects include an examination
of the changing body culture in Republican China. Send correspondence
to International Programs, Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou
Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520; stevenss@sou.edu.

Notes

1. In the early twentieth century, the term jianquan was intrinsically related
to the eugenic mission of strengthening the Chinese race and appeared
frequently in texts on hygiene and education. The term could also be trans-
lated as "perfect" or something much less politically charged, like "robust,"
"sound," or "in good health." I have chosen to use "flawless" in order to high-
light the eugenic use of the term. For more on the effects of eugenics on views
of female sexuality, see Stevens 2001, 28-33 and 105-46. For a non-gendered
study of Chinese eugenics and medical science, see Dikotter 1995.

2. This shift from a reliance on gender roles to biology resonates with changes in
the history of sexuality in the West. During the Victorian era, Western ideol-
ogy shifted from an emphasis on role to an emphasis on sexual identity, as
images of the True Man and the True Woman (emphasizing gender roles) gave
way to ideas of heterosexuality and homosexuality (emphasizing biological
models of sexuality as identity). For a good discussion of this shift, see Katz
1990.

3. Such signifiers reinforce the importance of body culture in Republican China.

Norma Diamond's interviews with female leaders during this time period
reveal that hundreds of women were killed after 1927 for having short hair or
other physical indications of being "radical women" (1975, 6-8). These char-
acteristics also played a crucial role in the construction of the modan garu in
Japan (Sato 1993, 364-6; Silverberg 1991, 242-8).

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 102 SARAH E. STEVENS

4. The female protagonist in Chen Ying's "Woman" ([19291 1998) is another

example of the Sophia-type of Modern Girl. This story details a woman's deci-
sion to have an abortion. The character is clearly caught between her desire
to be an independent, modern woman and her fears that becoming a mother
will lock her into traditional expectations for women. In many ways, the
protagonist is a New Woman, but in the depictions of her obsessive thoughts,
uncertainty, and painful decision making, she is clearly revealed as a Modern
Girl who illustrates the pains of modernity. Interestingly, this story is nar-
rated by the woman's husband, a man who is quite confused about how to be
supportive; he is utterly unable to comprehend his wife's thought patterns.
Presented as a sympathetic character, however, he does not fall into the trap
of viewing the inscrutable Modern Girl as a "praying mantis."

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