What you learn from reading Meng Jiangnu crying at the Great Wall

A detailed explanation of my reading experience and gains from this story is as follows:

When I read the original text of the article for the first time, I thought it was a story about love. Meng Jiangnu meets Fan Xiliang, and her parents Before the marriage, there were no stories of passionate love and life-and-death love. After marriage, they fell in love so deeply that the myth that even the Great Wall would never fall was shattered in front of her emotional tears. At first I thought that this was determined by China’s traditional conservative and simple view of love. But later, after I read the text again, I felt that there was a deeper connotation in it.

This story implies a more important level, that is, the growth process of an ordinary woman is permeated in the narrative details and fantasy elements. Therefore, this may be a story of female growth. As Meng Jiangnu grew up, she gradually clarified the long-standing value orientation of Chinese women. For example, a woman's birth, meeting her husband, getting married, separation of husband and wife, finding her husband, finding her husband, crying down the Great Wall. Every link contains China's unique culture of treating women. For example, one part involves meeting her husband. After the garden of Meng Jiang's house was broken into, a man saw her taking a bath, so she had to marry him. There was no way around it. According to the requirements of Chinese culture, you must remain faithful after you get married. If this plot was not about being peeped in the shower, but about meeting Wan Ziliang by chance, it would be another Chinese cultural story. For example, after Meng Jiangnu met Wan Ziliang, she took the initiative to propose marriage. However, her parents could not resist her, or they were optimistic about Xiliang's character, so the marriage was successful. According to the orders of her parents, this is Meng Jiangnu's self-exploration and active choice, and it is also a sign of her growth. She was happy at this time, but later Wan Ziliang was arrested to build the Great Wall, and her happy life came to nothing. Meng Jiangnu stayed alone in the empty house, missing her husband Zheng. Finally, she strengthened herself and decided to find a husband. This is also the requirement of Chinese culture for female fidelity. At this time, the weak woman in the boudoir was facing her own life crisis, facing loss, loneliness and despair. However, under the stimulation of this sentiment, she went on the road of finding a husband for thousands of miles without hesitation. This was another part of her growth. logo (somehow reminds me of The Ugly Duckling's Outing, haha). In the end, Meng Jiangnu cried down the Great Wall and found Fan Xiliang's remains, which is also a landmark event in the story. The towering of the Great Wall is the incompleteness of Meng Jiangnu's world; the collapse of the Great Wall can return Meng Jiangnu's world. In a sense, this accomplished Meng Jiangnu's goal, and she also regained the integrity of her life growth.

I think that in addition to the story of women’s growth, there is also a deeper meaning, which is women’s dissatisfaction and resistance to male society. This is the root cause. To put it bluntly, women in feudal society are not satisfied with men controlling the world and want to resist. In reality, we cannot resist, so we can only rely on myths and imagination. The Great Wall represents the power of male society. She was originally a happy woman, but her happiness was taken away by Emperor Qin who built the Great Wall. Therefore, there are two aspects of resistance, one is the hegemony headed by Qin Shihuang, and the other is the male society. In addition, women's psychology is full of ambivalence. For example, on the one hand, they want to resist the male society, but on the other hand, they cannot do without men. They can only find a husband on the one hand, and dream of overthrowing the Great Wall that symbolizes male power on the other. .

In this sense, what this story describes is mainly a true portrayal of the inner spiritual world of women in feudal society. The collapse of the Great Wall, on the one hand, hints at the collapse and loss of men’s spiritual support in women’s reality and in their minds, and on the other hand, it reflects the subversion of men’s self-expanding political privileges. Compared with the male group, women's oppression and dominance are twofold, which is why they have so much energy to cry down the Great Wall. Guo Xiajuan once pointed out that the female group "not only accepts the rule of cultural hegemony together with the dominated male group, but also because it is usually the male group that controls cultural hegemony, they have to be dominated by male values ????on the gender level. Compared with the male group, Women’s oppression and domination are twofold.” It is because of the accumulation of counterattack power from the two oppressions of monarchy and husband’s power that it explodes with such great energy. This is a kind of ideological resistance. From crying down the Great Wall, we can see how strong this imagination is! This is a huge resistance force in the subconscious mind.