Woman's Day Gift: A Feast of Feminine Literature and Movies

It has been more than 100 years since a group of women in Chicago, USA marched and rallied for gender equality on March 8, 1909. This event, since then, has been celebrated as a holiday, when women from around the world fight for peace, equality and development, as well as being celebrated as a memorial day for the events in history created by women.

Nowadays, as women grow up and struggle for success, in many places they have fewer restraints to prevent them from owning and pursuing their dreams than did their predecessors. Too, their charm has been polished by time and tide.

We would like to introduce a feature presenting feminine literature and movies. Hopefully the girls can draw power from this article and obtain the ability and courage to manage a variable life and to seize every valuable thing in it and, each can finally grow into a unique and charming person.

Women are most beautiful while reading

As an accumulation of knowledge can expand the horizons and improve abilities, more and more women agree that she who loves reading is most beautiful and charming.

Loving reading, as an activity that refines one internally, Zhuang QING, a teacher from the Faculty of English Language and Culture, believes that a woman who would like to become more refined, both externally and internally, must continually acquire knowledge and nurse her ability to be an independent thinker and only through much reading can this goal be attained. Professor QING specifically recommended poetry written by the American poets Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. She also believes that Emily Dickinson is an outstanding female poet who had an exquisite and vivid description of love and nature, and brought a unique point of view to her readers on the triviality of these themes. And, while Robert Frost's poems seem simple and easy, they actually contain profound philosophical points. His poems involve topics of life, choice and success, and more which can be helpful as women train their capacity for independent thinking, instead of going with the tide.

There is an old saying in China that, by reading tens of thousands of books and travelling tens of thousands of miles, then you may be an able man. As Zhuang QING believed, travelling is also an important way for women to enrich their experience and become more self-cultivated. If you cannot travel a lot, reading many books could make up for the experience of the fun of travelling around the world. A Sigh for the Past Thousand Years, written by YU Qiuyu, a famous writer, essayist and scholar of cultural history in China, is a book that can take readers travelling the world. This book is a complete account of YU Qiuyu's forty-thousand kilometer journey with the production team of the TV program "Travel in theYear of 2000" of the Phoenix TV Network of HK which conducted a profound discussion of the reasons for the fall or decline of the Islamic, Mesopotamian, ancient Arabic and ancient Indian civilizations. As the book is written in the form of a diary, the resulting portrait of the hostess of Phoenix TV also showed how independent, strong and wise she was throughout the journey.

A Sigh for the Past Thousand Years: an in-depth insight into history

Cui LE, a teacher from the Faculty of Chinese Language and Culture, recommended Language and Gender: an introduction written by Mary Talbot and published by the Central China Normal University Press. He introduced this work, one translated and introduced by Professor AI Xiaoming of Sun Yat-Sen University, in 2004 by saying that ''Ten years have passed while it seems to me that this translation is still the most advanced example of literature in its field in China in which the most wonderful, incisive and central chapter, I believe, is Chapter 7". He comments, "this Chapter summaries the development of western research about language and gender with a 4D's framework which is: Deficit, Dominance, Difference and Dynamic and incisively criticizes the previous normative research approaches and their limitations.

Cui LE states that, though it is an academic book, the volume shows how western research about language and gender has evolved with the development of the feminist movement and provides some guides for Chinese linguisticians to think about how we should discover and exhibit feminism in the study of Chinese Linguistics.

We also interviewed young women on campus at random, asking which literature has had the greatest impact on them. Xiao CHEN from the Faculty of English Language and Culture strongly recommended that we should read San Mao, a well-known Chinese woman writer. She said, "By reading her essays, the readers might feel her passion, frankness and independence."Additionally, Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind, the Thorn Birds and Pride and Prejudice, among others, were also books also highly recommended by those interviewed, a number of whom also frequently mentioned words like self-confidence and being strong and independent.

Movies are another strong influence. Different kinds of excellent movies can influence women toward independence of mind and help build strong character.

Cui LE introduced to us the Disney movie, Frozen, which has just won the Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song in the 86th Academy Awards. He said, "I watched this movie last month with both laughter and tears. The visual effects and the songs are both awesome. " He also mentioned that there were a lot of femine consciousness and pluralistic gender consciousness concepts reflected in the movie based on the facts that the kingdom was ruled by a queen and, too, the princess wasn't passive in her relationship with the prince. In fact, the princess saved the prince with her brilliant and brave actions when they encountered danger. Cui LE said, "The ending not only broke the rules of romance between prince and princess but emphasized the kinship between sisters." Also, in the movie, Elsa had lived in a secret and concealed room with great fear since she was a child and the song, 'Let it Go', which she sang when she came out of the room was a song of freedom and liberation. We could find the wisdom, courage and love of women in this movie.

Frozen: wisdom, courage and love of women

Zhuang QING also strongly suggested that we should watch the movie Out of Africa, adapted from the Danish Woman author, Isak Denisens's autobiography with the same title. The story was about Karen, a vain, rich girl who left her homeland, Denmark to marry a man in Kenya in east Africa for the title of baroness. The title didn't bring her a happy marriage but, fortunately, she could go hunting and adventuring in the vast lands with which she gradually fell in love. Experiencing the misfortunes that her husband ran away from home; her manor was destroyed and her lover died by accident; she retraced and returned to the simple, pastoral life she had once owned and had since, long lost. Zhuang QING suggested that, what moved her in the movie was the love and dignity, elegance and generosity of a woman with a dramatic and radical fate.

Out of Africa: love and dignity, elegance and generosity of a woman

As in the interviews with the students, Mona Lisa's Smile, the Reader, Being Jane and the Joy Luck Club and so on are works that are highly recommended among them.

Afterword: It is repeatedly mentioned that the March 8th Women's Day should be revised into a Beauties Day, incorporating the previous day, one which has been celebrated by many universities as the Girls' Day, and raised much attention. Here, we would like to wish all the ladies a happy holiday and hope that you might continue your efforts to become, continually, more refined internally so that you might all become independent, strong and self-confident beauties based on your hard work and wishing that you all lead a wonderful and colorful life.