This thesis explores the contemporary and historical significance of the assertion by 1980s mainland Chinese women writers and critics that there is a tradition of women's writing (nuxing wenxue) in modern Chinese literature. Through an examination of the history of Chinese women's writing in the modern era, we can say that if there is such a tradition, it is located in the way women writers have been actively engaged in creating meanings for 'woman' in their texts, and for linking this exploration with broader reformist and revolutionary social, political, cultural and economic movements in modern China. In the post-Cultural Revolution context of the 1980s, women scholars and writers participated in a broad movement to rethink the legacies of modernity, nationhood, and revolution, and attempted to reclaim the role of women as active agents of their own transformation and of general social transformation.
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