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YANG Yuheng, ZHANG Haiyan
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DOI:10.17265/2161-623X/2026.03.007
North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China； Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
This study examines the paradoxical construction of rebellious female subjectivity in two canonical works of world literature—Cao Xueqin’s A Dream of Red Mansions (1791) and Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (1830). Through a comparative feminist analysis of Lin Daiyu and Madame de Rênal, this paper investigates how male authors in distinct cultural contexts simultaneously empower and constrain their female characters. Drawing on feminist literary criticism, the analysis reveals that while both authors grant their heroines unprecedented psychological depth and rebellious consciousness, they ultimately re-contain these figures within patriarchal narrative economies through strategies of internal contradiction, tragic predestination, and romantic mediation. This dual mechanism of “empowerment” and “containment” exposes the inherent contradictions of male-authored female subjectivity. The cross-cultural comparison further illuminates how divergent aesthetic traditions—Chinese lyrical symbolism versus French psychological realism—shape but do not fundamentally alter this paradoxical dynamic.
Lin Daiyu, Madame de Rênal, feminist literary criticism, comparative literature, male authorship, female subjectivity
YANG Yuheng, ZHANG Haiyan. (2026). Beyond Empowerment and Containment: The Paradoxical Construction of Rebellious Femininity in Cao Xueqin and Stendhal. US-China Education Review A, March 2026, Vol. 16, No. 3, 164-170.
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