Keywords: "Munchkin Grassland", female image
Malachinov is a leading figure among contemporary Mongolian writers in China. During his sixty years of creative work, he wrote more than forty short and medium stories and one long novel--"The Munchkin Grassland".In 1957, the upper part of "In the Munchkin Grassland" (renamed "The Munchkin Grassland" after the author's modification in 1963) was published.The novel reflects the people of the Inner Mongolian grassland in the early stage of the national autonomy and the war of liberation under the the story of liberation under the leadership of the Chinese ****production party. Like other literary works of the seventeenth century, this work is a product of the "*** name" of the times, with strong political colors of the times. Inevitably, the characterization of Marakhinov is a bit "stereotypical" under this framework. But Marachinov as a writer with deep literary literacy, in the molding of women's image or "can not help" to retain the character of the vivid features of life. The images of women in The Vast Grassland can be divided into the following two categories:
One, the image of female leaders
Female leaders are very common in seventeen years of literature. Because the liberation of the country not only means political liberation, but also embodied in the liberation of women. The founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) marked the liberation of the vast number of women who had been living at the bottom of society for thousands of years. The State promulgated a series of constitutions and laws guaranteeing women equal rights with men in politics, economics, culture and education, as well as in society and the family, and women became the masters of the country. So many writers consciously designed the image of women leaders in their works to show the thoroughness of the liberation of the new China.
The image of Su Rong, the political commissar of the ****production party task force and a Mongolian woman of the Eight Roads, as a leader is portrayed in Munchkin's Grassland. Su Rong is one of the most distinctive and prominent of the many female leaders portrayed by Malachimov. This character has a dual identity of politics/gender.
First of all, in terms of her political role, she is a leader who is loyal to the Party's leadership and resolutely implements the Party's guidelines and policies. As soon as she came to the village of Tezhik, she started propaganda among the Mongolian herders in accordance with the Party's ethnic policy, uniting the masses and mobilizing them, as well as uniting all the forces that could be united, even with the upper class of the Mongols. In Su Rong's physical appearance, Malachimov also wrote "two thick eyebrows of a man" and "strides like a man", which are similar to male characteristics, which undoubtedly strengthens Su Rong's political identity as a leader. Several "encounters" with the enemy fully demonstrate her maturity and sophistication as a political leader. Once when the task force was just stationed in the village, the big herdsman, Pu Ri Bu, found a few famous Mongolian folk singers to perform a horse dedication for the task force, the "Horse Concert". This horse dedication is nominally to welcome the arrival of the task force, but in fact is intended to give the task force a downward spiral. Su Rong, with the calmness and wisdom of a political leader, defused the crisis again and again, and finally "turned" the opposition on its head by propagandizing the masses against the civil war and for liberation. All this shows that women are equal to men in political status and that women's wisdom is extraordinary. That is why Su Rong has been called "the pride of the steppe" and "the heroine of the steppe".
Secondly, from the gender point of view, she is an ordinary woman with female characteristics. If from the political point of view to shape the image of Su Rong this female leader more or less with the mainstream political tendency to influence the typological characteristics, then from the perspective of the female traits to shape this female leader, but also make her have a full flesh and blood. She has the hard-working quality of Mongolian women, and it has been written many times in the work that she breastfeeds her lambs "like a shepherd's wife"; she also misses her husband and her children in the deserted night; there is also a weak glimmering light when she encounters difficulties and frustrations, and she needs the help of men, etc. All these are a part of women's qualities. All these are a concentrated manifestation of femininity. And it is also this quality of a large number of writing so that the image of Su Rong did not become a political symbol, and many critics have reflected on the "androgynization" of the image of the female leader in the seventeen-year period, but in Malachimov's Vast Grassland, we can see a different image of the heroine from the "female hero" in the male narrative subject. However, in Malachinov's The Vast Steppe, we can see a unique and attractive image of a female leader that is different from "the female heroine, who is shaped by the rhetoric of the male narrative subject into a figure that is difficult to recognize or contradicts itself in terms of both gender and heroic characteristics "1.
Second, the Image of Female Common Herders
In The Vast Grassland, in addition to portraying the image of a female leader like Su Rong, the writer Maraqinov portrayed a large number of images of common Mongolian female herders, especially the image of young women, which is the most aesthetically pleasing image in the work. Maraqinov is very good at depicting grassland women, and his concern for the fate of grassland women is a remarkable feature of Maraqinov's novels. In The Vast Grassland, Malachimov's depiction of grassland women is more colorful than his other works. He has portrayed many ordinary women in his works, each of whom has a different character and different encounters. Generally speaking, these ordinary female herdsmen are characterized by the following two aspects:
1. They are the heroes of tragic destiny
Marachineff, with a strong sense of women's care, portrayed the ordinary female herdsmen at the bottom of the society for us. They are oppressed by both class and men, and walk humbly on the stage of Mongolia's history.
First of all, from the point of view of class status, the main women depicted in the work belong to the laboring class at the bottom of the society, and they are oppressed and exploited by the Mongolian aristocrats. The work depicts the evils of the great herdsman Gungol who arbitrarily preys on women based on his power. Dulima had a happy family and a gentle and considerate husband, but after being taken over by Gonggol, she fell into the abyss of pain and despair, and became a cold fatalist; Sichin was originally a childhood friend of her lover Timur, but Gonggol's lust and greed destroyed the happiness of the two lovers; the old lady Gangaiya lived a lonely life in the old society of Mongolia ... ...All these reflect the unequal class status of Mongolian women in the old social period, and they are the main group of oppressed and victimized.
Secondly, in terms of gender differences, these women were the victims under the control of traditional patriarchal society. After human society entered the patriarchal society, women gradually lost their own existence. They became subordinate and subservient to men, they were constructed without the right and ability to choose.
This existential dilemma for Mongolian women is even more pronounced due to the geographic location of the Mongolian region which makes the development of culture somewhat different from that of the inland regions. Dulzhima had tried to fight and run away after being overrun by Gungor, but when all this failed to change her fate, she chose to submit. If this submission is only superficial and not internal, then we can say that she is not a true victim of masculinity. But Malachimov astonishingly shows us the psychological distortion of an underclass woman developed under the oppression of male consciousness. Duk Ri Ma hates Gungor, who destroyed her family's happiness, and who plunged her into the depths of despair, becoming a bullied and uncared for person. But this did not make Atsuma awaken, on the contrary, in this cruel life in the middle of the difficulties, she formed a kind of more than ordinary endurance. Beauvoir once said, "The attitude of resignation to fate brings with it a woman's envied degree of endurance." ② She becomes cold and unsympathetic in this long endurance, gradually moving towards an extreme psychological distortion. When Gungaol takes Sichin captive again, Atsuzuma projects all her discontent onto her partner, who shares the same fate as she does. She even thought that the arrival of the Sichin make her "lose favor", this "thin life recognize peach blossom" mentality is so profound.