Abstract

This study explores the configurations of the tropes of “home” (jia)and female bonds in contemporary Chinese women's writing, gender culture, and urban culture industry. By intruducing sphere considerations into gender discourse, it highlights the fact that space (both public and domestic) is often constructed in terms of differential gender domains of power. Chinese has one word “jia” to express both home and family. Home, jia, a term referring to both spatial belongs and emotional attachment, is gainning unprecedented visibility in women writers participate in constructing female subjectivity and in managing to create a space of their own. This paper thus attempts to uncover a variety of textual and gendered meanings of female bonds through studying female experiences of home and visions of female bonding, and through close readings of two representative works by women writers.