A Comparative Study of Female Images in “Flipped” and “Border Town” from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_68How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cross-Cultural Perspective; Flipped; Border Town; Female Image; Cultural differences

Abstract

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen narrates the growth of American teenagers, shaping a female character, Juli, characterized by cognitive awakening and independent consciousness; Border Town by Shen Congwen, set in Chadong of West Hunan, portrays Cuicui, a female image coexisting with nature and embodying the beauty of rural humanity. Guided by cross-cultural theory, cognitive development theory, and ecological aesthetics, this paper incorporates Sino-American cultural differences to compare the two female images across three dimensions: cognitive growth, relationship with nature, and social role positioning. It analyzes the underlying cultural logic—American individualism and feminist ideological trends propel Juli to form a “cognition-driven” proactive personality, while the ecological ethics and Confucian rituals of rural West Hunan society shape Cuicui’s “nature-embedded” passive personality. The study reveals that through the construction of female images, both works not only reflect how different cultures discipline female ways of living but also demonstrate a shared human pursuit of innocent humanity and harmonious relationships, providing typical cases for studying the cultural symbolic meaning of female images in cross-cultural contexts.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ziliang Zheng
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - A Comparative Study of Female Images in “Flipped” and “Border Town” from a Cross-Cultural Perspective
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 592
EP  - 601
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_68
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_68
ID  - Zheng2025
ER  -