Comparison of Characteristics of Female Images in Russian and Chinese Rural Prose

At the moment, we can observe the active development of cooperation between Russia and China in various aspects. It is not surprising that in this state of affairs, interaction in the field of culture and art, in particular literature, is gaining momentum. Both countries are characterized by rural life, as part of the cultural development of the country. In this regard, the article presents a comparison of female images in the rural prose of the two countries. It is worth noting that in the twentieth century, the image of a woman as a whole was transformed. Haircuts and clothes changed, gender roles were transformed. In Russia, the transformation of women's roles begins in the post-revolutionary period. The growth of industry in the 20th century led to an increase in the role of women in labor issues and related rights. The position of women in the field of family life is increasing. This is perhaps the first intersection in the transformation of the female position of the two countries. For the PRC, in its traditional understanding based on Confucianism, the lack of rights for the female population was widespread. In China, it manifested itself in the submissiveness of a woman to a man at any age.

From the position of Fan Wenlan, the rights of Chinese women were positively influenced by the uprising of the peasant population of the 19th century, which proclaimed gender equality, nevertheless, these ideas have not been developed. For Russia, the revolution was exactly the same turning point in women's rights, before that the image of a woman was exclusively a housewife, without rights, education and literacy. In China, the Xinhai Revolution transformed realities. In both cases, a new female image with a new set of rights was at the center, which found its response in literary creativity. For example, Sun Bin ^[1] in his works touches on the theme of revolutionary transformations of the female image. He places women from the rural hinterland in the midst of the great changes of the old society and the modernization of China, and through their various forms of life interprets the great transformation from submission to resistance, from confusion to a breakthrough on the path to self-liberation. The author interprets all the changes in the female image through the everyday life of the Shanxi countryside, telling the life trajectory of four generations of women, describing the history of the struggle for self-arousal of women in China. The author reflects the transformation of rural women between traditional values and modern women's consciousness, incorporating changes in social life, ideological and cultural changes in rural China. In comparison of the same images, everyday life and transformations in Russia, the works of Vasily Shukshin can be cited, he also very vividly and colorfully interprets female images of the Russian hinterland. Both Shukshin and Sun Bin reflect the mental shackles imposed on women by the patriarchal society in their country. The works of Russian rural authors and representatives of the Chinese literary school of rural novelists are known as rural novels. From the point of view of aesthetics, the authors of both countries demonstrate a poetic tendency, the works are characterized by a reflection of the life of their native village, both art schools are permeated with sadness and sadness, from the point of view of language, both art schools are extremely lyrical and poetic ^[2]. The term "rural prose" itself refers not just to rural fiction, which focuses on peasants and rural life, but to a community of works that give a special spiritual meaning to peasants and the land. Its formal formation was marked by Solzhenitsyn's work "Matrenin's Yard", published in the late 1950s. The writer began to focus on previously taboo topics, depicting the tragic consequences of collectivization, environmental problems and moral failures faced by the village in the face of the growing urbanization of the Soviet Union, depicting ordinary working people who were wise or adhered to traditional values and beliefs, as well as trying to promote the history and culture of the Russian people. During this period, writers such as Abramov, Belov, Alekseev, Shukshin, Rasputin and Nosov wrote a number of masterpieces that approved and popularized the name "rural prose". The genre lost its powerful influence on public consciousness around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the end of the XX century, "village prose" has been revived, which is characterized by contemplation of changes in the Russian countryside, land and peasant life, research into the fate of peasant culture and the search for moral values.  In addition to a large number of new works by old writers of "rural prose", such as Rasputin, Belov and Ekimov, a number of young writers, such as Yuri Petkovich, Roman Sheynchin and Alexey Zakharov, are quite innovative in their expressive content and style.

Rural prose" of the new period, on the one hand, opposes the more decadent realities that the village faced after the abrupt changes in the country and the further degradation of man in the moral and spiritual sphere, and the painful cry of the heart is noticeable in the lines. On the other hand, the works tell more about the life of people in small towns on the border between urban and rural areas.

In his story, Alexey Zakharov tells the tragic story of Toma, an old village woman: in the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the collapse of collective farms and a shortage of young and strong labor, small, remote villages gradually decline. Fields and ancestral homes, which were considered the basis of the peasantry, were either abandoned and left empty, or sold. Since no one works in agriculture, a large number of young and middle-aged people have gone to work in the city, leaving behind the infirm and weak old people. The story is written like an old movie. This story shows that the sufferings and misfortunes of the village, which were shown by the old writers of "rural prose", still exist; the volumes are the future of those old women whom Rasputin portrayed in the 1970s and 1980s, a future that is even more severe and sad than the one that Rasputin portrayed then. Toma's confrontation with her granddaughter and her husband at the risk of her life and her impotent lamentations lead the novel to a climax. Through this tragic scene, we see the last struggle and resistance of a lonely old man, a silent complaint against his grandchildren for deceiving, abandoning and mocking him. If the older generation of writers of "rural prose" reflected the loss of traditional virtues and moral degradation after the children moved to the city, then the coldness and immorality generated by grandchildren, who became a new generation of citizens, is reflected here. If the previous "rural prose" showed the disgust of children towards the older generation, now it shows the rejection of grandchildren from the older generation. It is worth noting that the early works reflected the image of a woman expanding, transforming her rights. However, later works reflect what these transformations led to. Women become free, losing their original essence. This aspect can be noted in the works of both countries. The beauty of the village preserved the beauty in man. The representative of Russian village prose, Valentin Rasputin ^[3], builds a poetic narrative based on his native village. The heroine Agafia lives in a village by the river, a place of amazing natural beauty and spiritual beauty in a harmonious ecology, and in her long communion with nature, the heroine becomes more and more strong and selfless. Moving away from social transformations, it is worth noting that the national flavor is reflected in the female images of rural prose of both countries. The novelists of the Beijing School relied on classical Chinese poetry to give their language the ancient rhythm of traditional Chinese poetry. Lou Bern ^[4] focuses on combining Europeanized lyrical sentences with regional slang to form a unique language system. Shukshin ^[5], like Lu, likes to use Russian village slang in his works, the language of his characters is lively and concise, and the narration is lyrical. The difference between the two schools is the approach to describing reality. In Russia, this is the reality of village life, with all the difficulties that are sometimes inherent in it, in China, a state of non-existence, an imaginary state of village reality, has been created. Both Russian rural authors and Chinese writers like to portray a number of tragic female figures.

The image of Lyuba in Shukshin ^[5] is typical of a Russian rural working woman who suffers from an alcoholic husband and falls in love with Egor and achieves her love against all odds. As a result, Egor, a harvester with a certificate of release, is not accepted by society and dies, and Lyuba remains unhappy. Initially, Lyuba was supposed to be condemned in the society of her time, but Shukshin considers her actions reasonable from the point of view of humanity. Shukshin considers women in his work from a moral point of view based on the principle of humanity, which is very similar to the position of Shen Congwen. However, unlike Shen Konwen, who revered the natural and primitive state of conformity to the order of nature, Shukshen brings a sense of social responsibility to his criticism of society in the light of women's tragedies.Shen ^[6] sympathizes with the plight of Chinese women, and in his works he creates a beautiful world for them, far from the generally accepted ethics and morality.

While most of the female tragedies in the novels of the Beijing school are caused by the bad habits of the old society or the discrepancy between primitive humanity and modern civilization, almost all of the female tragedies in the works of the Russian school of rural prose are caused by war or modern industrial civilization, and this difference is due to differences in the historical and cultural past of Russia and China. Two writing schools have different creative goals: the writers of the Beijing school of rural prose seek to explore pure humanity and express the natural and primitive state of life, therefore, the women in their works are extremely innocent and are in a natural state of life, and the writers of the Russian school of rural prose try to realize moral ideals and social responsibility in their works, therefore rural women in their works have a spirit of dedication and devotion.

Writers of Russian rural prose, faced with the ecological destruction and moral alienation of human nature by modern industrial civilization, also proceeded from nostalgia for the traditional culture of the people and tried their best to preserve the dying traditional moral and ecological civilization of the village in their works. In "Farewell to Mater," Rasputin portrays a small village that is about to be destroyed by industrial civilization.

Shukshin also likes to depict in his works the tragedies of rural people who are discriminated against and spiritually drifting in the city, or those who picked up the vices of the city and were eventually abandoned by them. In the novel "The Wife sends her husband to Paris," Kolka, a native of the village, stays in Moscow after marriage, but he always feels lonely and is inextricably tied to the village, and when his wife's family treats him with contempt, he can't take it anymore and eventually kills himself by turning on the gas. In the book "There and Away" ^[7] Olga is a naive, enterprising girl from the countryside, but the extravagance of the city makes her vain, and eventually she drops out of school to join a gang of thieves and turn into a criminal. He believes that the value and true meaning of life lies in the land, which nourishes the beautiful culture and strong spiritual strength of the nation, as well as the true kindness and beauty of people ^[8].

The narrative position of the two schools of writers in striving for the traditional culture of the nation also demonstrates certain differences. Both schools of writers try to criticize society through the tragedies of their heroes, while the Beijing school of Chinese rural novelists expresses its disgust for urban industrial civilization and simultaneously criticizes traditional rural practices, while Russian rural prose writers take a position of simple skepticism towards modern industrial civilization ^[11]. Russian Russian rural prose writers appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, when material civilization was more developed, the national cultural narratives of Russian rural prose writers were more related to the ecological environment than to traditional rural cultural morality ^[12]. The humanitarian ideals of Russian rural prose writers included ecological ethics, the preservation of nature was a moral criterion in their works, and the protection of the ecological environment and nature became part of the traditional cultural ethics of the nation they pursued ^[13-14]. In the 1930s and 1940s, writers of the Beijing school of rural fiction were more concerned with human nature, perceiving the beauty of humanity in a patriarchal society as an important part of the precious national culture ^[15].