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Dwelling and Escaping: “Worldliness” and “Aloofness” in East Asian Feminist Writing-A Comparative Reading of Memories of Matsuko and The Vegetarian

Author(s)

Xinyu Zhou

Affiliation(s)

School of Film and Animation, Chengdu University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Abstract

Drawing on an analytical framework of “worldliness” and “aloofness” within the “oppression-resistance” binary narrative, this article examines two works of East Asian feminist writing-<Memories of Matsuko> and <The Vegetarian>-to delineate two survival paradigms that female characters adopt under the multiple power structures of family, state, and market: the “worldly faction”, epitomized by Kawajiri Matsuko, and the “otherworldly faction,” represented by Kim Yeong-hye. By comparing the sharply divergent coping mechanisms through which the two protagonists respond to women’s existential pressures, this article elucidates how East Asian gender power structures regulate women’s survival strategies and exposes the emancipatory limits of one‑dimensional individual strategies. Building on this, the article recasts the “worldliness”–“otherworldliness” dyad embedded in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions as an indigenous analytical tool for feminist literary criticism, thereby opening a culturally grounded and dialectically integrative theoretical pathway for understanding East Asian gender power structures.

Keywords

Feminist Theory; East Asian Women's Literature; Gendered Survival Strategies; Power-Discourse Analysis

References

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