Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality
Year: 2024
DOI:
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When Power Meets Beauty: Love’s Imagination in Fan Fiction of Dream of the Red Chamber
Songyan Li
ABSTRACT:
In Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber, a classical masterpiece of eighteenth-century China, the novel’s complex female characters facilitate a wide discussion of women’s issues. In contemporary China, with the rise of online fiction, fan fiction of Dream of the Red Chamber has flourished, discussing women’s issues in the original novel and making changes with a contemporary twist. Among these, love is a key theme. In these works, women always require men to be loyal to their wives, and many writers are interested in men’s wealth and social positions. The authors of fan fiction rarely follow Baoyu, who defies social norms regulated by Confucianism, as their male protagonist; instead, they treat him with contempt and deride him explicitly. Fan fiction authors love to arrange princes and nobles for their heroines, especially the emperor, who is their favourite. For example, Daiyu is often arranged by the authors to marry Emperor Yongzheng. This transformative reception is a result of the context of the participatory culture performed in fan fiction, which permits writers use different lenses to re-write the source text. It is also a place that prioritises nobility and equates it with romance. It does however often reveal an identification with authority and patriarchy, and indicates a clear revival of Confucian culture in contemporary China in the context of gender norms.
keywords: Dream of the Red Chamber, women, fan fiction