改革开放后西方文化对中国女性婚姻观的影响.doc

The Influence of Western Culture on Chinese Womens Marriage Values after Chinas Reform and Opening-Up I. The Meaning of Marriage and Its Function in the SocietyWhen someone begins on that arrangement called marriage, he/she is getting into something which is, to say the least, adventurous. When a couple gets married, they are doing something they know nothing about. And, from all indications, when they have tried it more than once, they know more about it the second time than they did the first. So what is marriage? No definition of marriage is broad enough to apply easily to all societies and situations. A commonly quoted definition comes from Notes and Queries on Anthropology. Marriage is a union between a man and a woman such that the children born to the woman are recognized as legitimate offspring of both parents. (Kottak, Culture anthropology, 2004:214.)  It always involves some form of legally legitimized sexual relationship. Traditionally, marriages have had a religious basis. In the modern, industrialized West, marriage is based on a legal contract. In the Bible, women occupied an inferior social position to the nearest male relativesfathers, brothers, or husbands. Marriages were usually arranged in the Bible by the parents. Bible Marriage: In the Bible, the relationship between Israel and God was likened to that of a marriage: one based upon a covenant between two unequal parties. The “marriage” between Israel and God was expected to be monogamous and mutual faithfulness was required from both sidesotherwise, the relationship might be ended. Marriage is the foundation of the family unit. In this society and era, the family is the closet knit, self-perpetuating, self-protecting unit. Marriage and family life are microcosms of life itself. They can bring difficult time. Conversely, unhealthy or dysfunctional relationship can arouse problems that may persist form one generation to the next. Marriage and family are perhaps societys oldest and most resilient institutions. From the beginning of human life, people have grouped themselves into clans and families to find emotional, physical, and communal support. Although social commentators for many years have predicted the demise of both marriage and the family, these institutions not only survive but also continue to change and evolve. Marriage transforms relationships and conveys certain right. Marriage establishes legal parentage of children. It gives spouses rights to each others sexuality, labor, and property. And it establishes a social relationship between spouses and each others relatives. It also typically improves the health and economic well being of adult, stabilized community life and benefit civic society.  II. The Influence of Chinese Traditional Culture on Women before Chinas Reform and Opening-Up to the Outside World.2.1 The Traditional Marriage Values of Chinese Women. 2.1.1 No Matter Whomever I Marry Live with Him.This proverb represents that when a woman marries a man, she will not leave the man whether he is rich or poor, healthy of not and whether their life is happy or not, they will live together until their deaths. This is an extreme view. However, in the traditional society, Chinese women always thought, “No matter whomever I marry live with him.” If she married a man, it means that she would find a life and psychology rely. Maybe the life was not happy after their marriage, but she would feel a sense of settlement and belonging.In the early twentieth century, a large number of women had lived in the countryside, they seldom had economic and political power to resist their husbands, because they were considered inferior to man and controlled by the whole family.In China, the parents asked their daughter to bind their feet, because they thought the binding feet looked more beautiful, and it could make sure the material wealth. Women had no poverty right and no political positions. Therefore, women had to follow their husbands and be obedient to them, though they were treated violently.   2.1.2 A Man of Talent and a Woman of Beauty, the Matched Family BackgroundIn the ancient China, for women, marriage was a passive matter. Some societies believed that parents who choose good partners for their children than young people with no previous experience. There was a popular saying, “the dictates of parents and the words of matchmakers”, which was proposed by the whole society, made women lost the opportunities to choose their husbands freely. In the old days, women married at an early age, in general, when they were 16years old, a matchmaker who was an old woman and a medium between man and woman would go to womans family to propose marriage. After the discussion, between two families would marry. As for the familys background, they should be matched or in an equal class. If the mans family was very rich, the woman must be very beautiful. But for some poor beautiful women, they could not see their husbands until the wedding night.Before Chinas transformation, in particular, the period of Cultural Revolution, Chinese society, in a great degree, was a society stratified by politics. Due to the different positions in the society and several political movements, many people who came from a poor family would be in a disadvantage position during the marriage selection. So the countryside women always concerned about the political conditions when they chose their husbands. At that time, the economy in countryside developed slowly, and the nation policy deviated the center of economic construction, many people still under the subsistence level. Women were in a weak economic position and had no independent economic conditions. If they wanted to change their economic conditions, they must choose a man from a wealthy family as their husband. Because marriage was a new start of their life and an opportunity to improve their positions, and it could also solve the problems of living.2.1.3 Family-Based Family, in any social form, serves as a specific and absolute institution within the large society. Acting as the essential but decisive cell in each society, family, as both the most traditional and the most modern social element, has been the core of human life in the entire history. For almost everyone, family is, as it were, the homeport or the particular base from which the individual starts out on his lifelong journey through society. (李中泽，2004：88)                      Marriage was based on the family. When a woman married a man, it meant that the number of people in this family was increased. They had more labor to do farm works. In the countryside, the life was based on the agriculture. After the man cultivated the field, the women did the last works, such as cooking, darning, washing, and exchanged foods and other article; the most important thing was giving birth to child and looking after them carefully.At that time, woman must follow the old convention, she couldnt leave her husband family until the husband discard her. If the husband died before her, she must look after the whole family member until died, let alone divorce. Before transformation, China was a country, which had the lowest divorce rate in the world. Because it was closely related to the everlasting feudal ideology and childrens special values in the whole family. Divorce, for thousands of years, was regarded as a great scourge. And for women, it meant losing chastity and is discarded. Therefore, in order to raise the children and keep on face-saving, they endured the pain of the die marriage to maintain the family; they werent willing to go forward to find new happiness. Therefore, there was only a few number of women divorced with their husbands because of the broken relationship or her husbands serious disease, or death.2.2 The Positions of Traditional Women in the Marriage   In semi-colonial and semi-feudal old China, women were, for a long time, kept at the bottom of society. The impact of the several millennia of oppression and devastation imposed by the feudal patriarchal system on Chinese women was exceptionally grave. In political, economic, cultural, social and family life, women were considered inferior to men. This was profoundly manifested in the following ways: Possessing no political rights, women were completely excluded from social and political life. Economically dependent, women were robbed of property and inheritance rights and possesses to independent source of income. Having no social status, women were forced to obey their fathers before marriage, their husbands after marriage and their sons if they became widowed. They had no personal dignity or independent status, and were deprived of the right to receive an education and take part in social activities. They enjoyed the freedom in marriage but had to obey the dictates of their parents and heed the words of matchmakers, and were not allowed to remarry if their spouse died. They were subjected to physical and mental torture, being harassed by systems of polygamy and prostitution, the overwhelming majority of them forced to bind their feet from childhood. For centuries, “women with bound feet” was a synonym for the female gender in China. Marriage was regarded as the great matter in China. Because it is not only the combination of two genders, the binding of the family, but also the sign of becoming an adult. So marriage was the most important thing in ones life. However, this most important thing seemed that it had no relationship with the two persons. In the common sense, the matchmaker chose the man, and the parents determined whether they could marry or not. The two families always arranged marriage. Women were looked as the tool of creating wealth and producing a male heir to carry on the family line. Under this social background, seeking for true love and happiness would be blocked by the society from every aspect. They seldom had a successful and happy ending. For instance, “The Butterfly”, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, they loved each other deeply, but their families forced them depart from each other, and it caused a tragic end with death. There were so many tragic marriages at that time, but women had to face it. They had no right to change the reality with their passive positions. III. The Influence of Western Culture on Chinese Womens Marriage Values after Chinas Reform and Opening-Up to the Outside World3.1 Main Marriage Values of Western Women 3.1.1 Womens LiberationSeeking for Equality Womens Liberation was firstly occurred in the later half of the 19th century to the early 20th century. It was “a collection of opinions and developments that, in general, seek to end discrimination against womenat least, discrimination that is based on the notion that women are somehow inferior to men.” (赵艳萍，1996：221) The goals of the womens liberation movement were “Equal rights for women” “Equal pay for equal work”. The summit of this movement was that Britain and American women got totally vote right. After the 1960s, the second female movement began. It based on the students rebelling movement in France and West Europe, the peace movement against Vietnam War, Negros movement against racial discrimination, and civil movement in America. The political struggle between Europe and America was the direct cause of the womens movement. After this movement, women in some countries got their property rights and vote rights, and the movement also influenced some other fields, such as employment, education, welfare, politics, and culture and so on. It took great efforts in exploring the construction of womens feature and culture. People began to think about what a woman was, how to define womens temperament and characteristics, and how to define these problems again. They concerned about womens rights of receiving education, welfare, the equality of opportunity, the life of women after she had baby, and the rights of whether she would have a baby and when would she have. This movement expanded all over the world and influenced majority of women in every country, they try their best to get their equality right.3.1.2 IndividualismSeeking for IndependenceIn Western countries, family is not the most basic unit, because it could divine into individual that has personal qualities and free wills. It means that Western culture regards personal wills as the core of thought, individual is the core of the society, but not the family. Family as one of the forms of social structure, it is neither the only form nor the general form. Of course, it is also not the most common form. Women seek for independence and look themselves as a whole, and they are never the ornament and followers of man. For example, Roman woman, especially the women in the upper class, lived better than the ancient Greece women. They could determine their lives actively though the man was still the leader of the family. Maybe they never get the political power, but they owned the economic rights and could receive good education. This helped them to get various opportunities to find jobs and live independently. The daughters had the same inheritance right as sons; some parents may took sides in their daughters when they distributed their heritage. In the Period of Roman Empire, some upper class women had a large quantity of possession. They were so smart that they did some proper investment. Roman respected their wives and their mothers, family was their living place, they were the mothers of the family, and they had the equal right with their husbands.In America, every American pays most attention on the development of individuals independent ability. The children have more freedom and equality. They could not only talk about national matters or debate with their parents, but also choose the school and jobs freely. When the children are 18 years old, they must find a part-time job while still at school. If they still live with their parents until 20 years old, others will look them down upon. On the basis of equality, a few of female can be independent form the family; they could do what do can do and what they would like to do.3.1.3 Single WomenSeeking for Successful Career“At recently as 1960, only 33.3 percent of the American work force was female. By1985, the percentage had risen to 54.7. More and more women are working outside their homes. They are working not just in menial or clerical positions, as they once did, but in the professions and trades as well.” （赵艳萍，1996：222）There was a general tendency seemed like this: the childcare and support for the elderly are regarded as womans business while making money is mens business. However, this is more or less transformed by the impacts of womens liberation movement and the feminist arguments. In addition, modern medical improvements made the family planning and birth control