Existential motives in the autobiographies of Chinese women writers of the 1930s

Abstract

The article reveals the typology of the interrelations of fundamental existential categories in Chinese women's autobiographies of the 1930s through the motif of struggle as a desire for existence and the motif of death as a representation of the end. The writers, through their individual style, interpret the correlation of the motifs of struggle and death, demonstrating death as a protest and struggle as a symbol of life (Xie Bingying), life as a struggle with death (Xiao Hong), death as the end of struggle and struggle as the main manifestation of life (Lu Yin), which reflects their empirical experience and is in tune with the mood of the era, requiring courage and heroism.