Performing and Failing Masculinity: Gender Performance in Twentieth-Century Chinese Women’s Literature

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_12How to use a DOI?

Keywords

gender performativity; hegemonic masculinity; bodily discipline; Chinese women’s literature; twentieth century

Abstract

This study examines the construction, discipline, and collapse of masculinity across distinct historical phases of twentieth-century China through the core texts of Eileen Chang’s Jasmine Tea, Yang Mo’s The Song of Youth, and Yan Geling’s Youth. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance and R. W. Cornell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, it analyzes the mechanisms through which the male subject is both constituted and devalued. The research demonstrates that masculinity is not a stable essence but a process of constant fabrication through bodily actions, emotional norms, and political demands, while simultaneously failing in practice. The three female authors, using men as their vantage point, reveal how gender norms impose dual oppression on both men and women, exposing the temporal nature and impossibility of the state and society’s imagined “qualified masculinity.” This study reinterprets the historical formation and crisis of modern Chinese masculinity from the perspective of gender politics.

Copyright

© 2026 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.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Juntao Lin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Performing and Failing Masculinity: Gender Performance in Twentieth-Century Chinese Women’s Literature
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 111
EP  - 127
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_12
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_12
ID  - Lin2026
ER  -