Date of Award

4-27-2009

Document Type

Research Paper

First Advisor

George DaRoza

Abstract

This project examines China’s change and modernization, as seen in three phases of Chinese history, by reviewing trends in literature and changes in architectural form. This study relates how gender roles, and the change in understanding of how these roles play a part in Chinese society’s views of architectural space, both public (masculine) and private (feminine), form the late Qing through the republic and then to the Modern Era. The literary research examines The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh Chin, Hsiao-Hsiao by Shen Ts’ung-wen, and the Golden Cangue by Eileen Chang. Through these three influential writers, this study explores each of their views on China as it undergoes change, the introduction and process of Westernization and modernization, and the effects upon gender behavior within the temporal, cultural and architectural framework of their society. The visual component of the project looks at the structure and the adaptations of buildings that reflect China’s views on changing gender roles within modern society. The pictures chosen demonstrate a contrast between traditional and modern architectural structures that express China’s progression as it becomes modern and how modernity blurs the lines of masculine and feminine spaces. Both literary research and visuals support the claim that in China, there was a development from the late Qing to the modern era that show how gender roles began as a separation of space, the became blurred and finally blended in the modern era in both literary and structural forms.

Comments

WSP Major: Biomedical Chemistry

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