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[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Lu Hsun and Eileen Chang
The all works done by Lu Hsun show he battled for a great cause and the extent of his contribution to the democratic revolution. It is interesting to consider the things that drew his fire. In the early part of this period, about the time of the May the Fourth Movement, the feudal-minded literati were still giving active support to the foreign imperialists and northern warlords. Opposing democratic reforms, they grumbled that the world had gone to the dogs. Upholding and praising feudal morality, they did their best to bolster up patriarchal authority, considering it right and proper for children to obey their fathers implicitly, and for widows to kill themselves. Advocates of sacrificing to Confucius, the reading of Confucian classics and the preservation of "national characteristics," they defended superstition and attacked science, considering all democratic ideas fraught with danger.
In short, what they wanted was a return to the past. These hidebound conservatives supported the northern warlords and were supported by them; thus the warlord government of the time passed laws for the honouring of women who were chaste according to its inhuman standard, and repeatedly ordered the schools to sacrifice to Confucius and study the Confucian classics. During this period, therefore, Lu Hsun first attacked feudal conventions and morality, the feudal family system, and the die-hards, warlords and bureaucrats who upheld such ideas and systems. Lu Hsun called on his readers to emancipate women and young people, and to win a better future for their children. At the same time, he indignantly tore away the sanctimonious masks of those evil-minded hypocrites.
The task of the democratic revolution in China during those years was emancipation of the people. This work was not completed by the 1911 Revolution, but was continued by the May the Fourth Movement.But in the later part of this period, when the democratic movement was making headway.....
