| Résumé en anglais | Abstract
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932. She was praised highly "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces". Born in a family of Presbyterian missionaries in 1857, she was taken to China by her parents as an infant before 1900s, grew up and passed more than half of her life-time there. Compared with Pearl S. Buck, Eileen Chang, who was born to a prestigious family of gentlefolk in Shanghai, China in 1920, has a quite different background. However, they have similar point of views regarding the norms and rituals of traditional Chinese society which are represented in their works. The present thesis sets out to examine the representation of the awakening of female consciousness in Pearl Buck’s Pavilion of Women (1948), and Eileen Chang’s The Rouge of the North (1955). Two novels of the mid-twentieth century were written respectively by an American and a Chinese writer concerned both with the place of women in Chinese society, but the protagonists’ consciousness is viewed through quite different prisms.
In the first half of 20th century in China, along with cultural conflicts, the gradually aroused female consciousness saw a series of dramatic changes in physical life, cultural and intellectual life. To a certain degree, conflicts can be seen as a crucial agent of female consciousness. These conflicts and changes are also mirrored in Pearl S. Buck’s Pavilion of Women and Eileen Chang’s The Rouge of the North. Thus, the present thesis will be devoted to a comparative study between the two representations of the awakening of the protagonists’ consciousness in the above two novels disclosed by the handling of the thematic, narrative and other poetic items, so as to highlight the poetics of each work in the light of the above cultural conflicts, and social and individual changes.
Key Words: Pearl S. Buck; Eileen Chang; Female Consciousness; Cultural Conflicts; Changes; Traditions; Comparison
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