Free Love: Gender Politics of Romance in the Chinese Revolution

Abstract

This studies compares and contrast the life, experience, and perceptions toward the concept of ‘free love’ of two prominent female authors of modern China—Ding Ling (Jiang Bingzhi) and Aileen Chang (Zhang Ailing). Even though these two authors appeared to be on opposite sides of the ideological divide of the Cold War and their masterpieces were first published more than a decade apart, their life, experience, and perceptions towards ‘free love’ as presented in their literary works are actually quite similar and complimentary. Both perceived ‘free love’ as a path to self-identification and social liberation. Nonetheless, both were forced by the momentous tides of ideological struggles of their time—Ding Ling by the Communist Revolution in China and Aileen Chang by the Cold War—to abandon this theme that was so central in their earlier masterpieces. ‘Free love’ was deemed less important than the revolution for Communist China and not nearly as important as the preservation of liberty for the US throughout the Cold War years. Now that the Cold War has become a thing of the past, the age of Globalization could provide a broader and more tolerant atmosphere to study these brilliant female authors and their masterpieces for the themes that truly define them instead of the rigid ideological stances that they were forced to take during their time.