The following is an artistic creation that serves as a modern sequel to one of the primary texts my Non-U.S. Experience Humanities class explored. The text my modern sequel was based on: “Regrets for the Past” written in 1925 by Lu Xun. Click this link to download a word document of the text: Regret For The Past

Click this link to download a pdf displaying my 3D project: Spiral of Strength

Click this link to view the the google slides: Spiral of Strength

Click this link to view the pdf of the written report: HON 205 Final Written Report

Or, see the report below:

Written Report:

 

Lu Xun, the author of Regrets for the Past, wanted to bring to light the irony of male intellectuals attempting to liberate women during the New Cultural Movement. The best way he communicated this point was by showing that Chuansheng’s words did not align with his actions. His character Chuansheng, was one that identified as someone who wanted to “liberate women.”  Chuansheng said he wanted a woman who would think for herself and act based on her own desires. However, based on actions, we see that Chuansheng did not want his own wife to have a voice and he wanted to make every decision for the household (from something as big as what to do when he lost his job, to something as small as the placement of the dishes). Not wanting a women to speak shows male intellectuals did not want the women themselves to have a say in the women’s liberation movement (crazy right?). 

I live in a time a whole century after the New Cultural Movement but I share the same general concern as the author about men unconsciously (or consciously) still holding back women. I also think there is a larger theme of ironic movements where people’s actions happen to oppose their own goals. 

In my project I follow the relationship between two students, Heng and Zhan, in an American high school during the years 2017-2020.Through this, I try to represent a modern “Regrets for the Past” from a female perspective. I focus specifically on student characters to address that the younger generation in a democratic country may still face similar barriers to adults in China. In both “Regrets for the Past ” and my project, the male character unconsciously wants the female character to fill a stereotypical role. However, the role that Heng wants Zhan to fulfill is different from the role Chuansheng wants Tze-chun to fulfill and this difference is largely due to the time and country in which the story takes place.

 In “Regrets for the Past” society as a whole still wants women to have a stereotypical wife role. That’s not true of our society now, an increased number of laws treat women fairly, but individual people still hold old beliefs. To me, that means the fight has transferred to occur more on an individual level than on a societal level. That is why, while Chuansheng wants Tze-chun to be a typical wife, Heng wants Zhan to fulfill a general stereotypical female role (this means being innocent but being sexual, being strong minded but still not having a say in decisons). 

In the modern world we have to deal with the sexualization and objectification of women. Men tend to see women as objects of their sexual desire and nothing more. I realized as I was doing this project that I would say Chuansheng viewed Tze-chun as an object. I had not thought about this interpretation before but Chuansheng did not respect Tze-chun as a human being, he wanted her for sex and for cooking.  I’ll go even further and say that maybe, it wouldn’t matter to Chuansheng who his wife was as long as she fulfilled his idea of a traditional wife disguised as a “modern woman”. 

This shows that the lesson society needs to learn has not changed, only the details have. At the end of “Regrets for the Past” Chuansheng leaves Tze-chun. At the end of the timeline for my project, it is the female that breaks away from the male before he succeeds in fully caging her. This is an important change because in our time women have the power to leave men. This would have been looked down upon years ago but now it is even supported, particularly for women in relationships with abusive men. I say the “end” of my timeline but I also left the timeline unfinished on purpose. Such is life that we never know the end, one story does not stop with one person or even one generation. 

For my project, I chose to tell the story visually because I wanted the overall message to be clear whether or not someone decided to read the details.  Originally I wanted to draw a graph depicting the battle inside Zhan as she moved between doubting her thoughts and standing up for her thoughts but, there were two problems with this idea. One was that while humans indeed fight the same battles over and over (sometimes with more strength, sometimes with less), we do not live the same year over and over. And two, was that in my original depiction, there was no way to show the female growing strong enough to end the relationship. I realized then that I needed to create a three dimensional model of my graph. I was excited for the challenge but I doubted it would work because I drew five different shapes and did not know which one to build. I’m grateful that it did work in the end, and that the shape I chose allowed me to add more details to my representation.

I ended up creating a timeline of the relationship between Heng and Zhan from the moment they met, to the moment they began dating, to the moment Zhan broke up with Heng. The timeline is made up of writings from Zhan’s journal and includes quotes Heng said to her.  I printed out this timeline and drew the graph of waves over it, graphing the strength of Zhan’s love in red, the strength of her thoughts in green, and how often she journals in blue. I hung the graph vertically in a spiral and added one finishing touch:  I placed a picture of the painting “St. George and the Dragon” on top. This painting depicts a knight in shining armor killing a dragon. The knight believes he is saving the princess, but the princess is holding the dragon, who is her pet, on a leesh. It shows that women do not need to be saved by men. 

I thought about adding more to the timeline to show Zhan once again talking to Heng and once again dating him before finally saying no to him forever. But, I purposely decided to leave the story in a place where Zhan says “no” only for now. Maybe Zhan will never speak to Heng again, maybe she will. Maybe she will marry Heng, or maybe she will block him on all of her social media and threaten to file a restraining order if he appears at her house again. The element of not knowing is powerful because it leaves room for further downfall and further growth. And, that is where we are as a society today. We are in a place of progress that will mean nothing if we don’t continue to keep fighting our individual battles.

 

Thank you for reading!