Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Часть 1

Секция 3 • Panel 3 Проблемы литератур Дальнего Востока. Т. 1. 2018 362 the narrator’s sight and falls into the cage of his visions, convictions and madness  1 . The writer often resigns from naming her characters and instead she uses either Latin letters or titles such as Mr., Mrs., dr, etc., or a profession name, function or civil status, e.g. a physician, neighbour, widow. Due to that move, her characters become typical, do not refer to the particular individuals, and personify various personality types or characteristic feature sets. Can Xue openly declares her feminist views and equally openly presents them in her texts. Exceptional and non-stereotypical women very often are the main characters of her novels and tales. We can find there the types of characters present not, or very rarely, in the works of other Chinese writers. As an example may serve a figure of mother which in Can Xue’s works has nothing common with its traditional image in the Chinese literature. The writer tears off the halo on the mothers’ heads and shows their dark faces contorted with anger and hatred. In her texts, e.g. in the short stories ኡкⲴሿቻ ( Hut on the Mountain ) or 㣽㘱Ⲵ⎞Ӂ ( Old Floating Cloud ), they often are neither good, gentle nor sacrificing themselves for children, but egoistic, cruel and repulsive. A girl from the story Hut on the Mountain , pub- lished in 1985 and recognised as representative for the whole Can Xue’s literature, is alienated and alone amongst household inmates who do not pay her any attention. The tale, stylised as a nightmare, is filled with improbable events. We can see the distorted world through the eyes of the narrator-girl, who experiences shocking and scary situations every moment, but mostly she is afraid of her mother anyway: “[…]Mother pretended she knew nothing about it. But I had a feeling she was glaring ferociously at the back of my head, since the spot would become numb and swollen whenever she did that”  2 . Even the seemingly innocent child’s behaviour causes the mother’s aggression, which suppressed transforms into autoaggression: “Little sister sneaked In and told me that Mother had been thinking of breaking my arms because I was driving her crazy by opening and shutting the drawers. She was so tortured by the sound that every time she heard it, she'd soak her head in cold water until she caught a bad cold”  3 . In every conversation the mother threatens the daughter, accuses her of malice and tries to make her feeling guilty for her father’s suicide attempt. In many texts of Can Xue, the mother is not only the main opponent of her children, but also seems to find pleasure and satisfaction from such a position. It is reflected in her lack of agreement on the children empowerment and departure from a house, because through her behaviour she does not allow to build an independent personality and psychic adulthood. It was clearly presented in the short story entitled ⊑≤кⲴ㛕Ⲳ⌑ ( Soap Bubbles in Dirty Water ) in which 1 Wedell-Wedellsborg A. Ambiguous Subjectivity: Reading Can Xue , Modern Chinese Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 1994), p. 9–10. 2 Can Xue, Hut on the Mountain , 1953, p. 384. 3 Ibid. P. 385.