The Evolution of Bai Liusu’s Female Subject Consciousness: Gender and Identity Construction in “Love in a Fallen City”

Abstract

Using Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of female identity in The Second Sex as the core perspective, combined with research methods from psychology and sociology, this paper analyzes the evolution of Bai Liusu’s female subject consciousness in Love in a Fallen City—from her status as the “Other” under traditional patriarchal discipline to her gradual awakening and reconstruction of self amid gender power struggles and historical upheavals. This study particularly focuses on Bai Liusu’s persistent focus on “self-preservation” within relationships, and how she uses marriage, a seemingly traditional vehicle, to actually confirm her sense of self-worth and existence. This process is less a pure act of “female liberation” and more an individual’s attempt to construct a low-energy, sustainable emotional self-preservation system within a limited space of existence—she needs to be needed, but this need ultimately serves the confirmation of her own subjectivity.