Abstract
This study uses the pictures and articles in issues of The Women’s Pictorial (from 1933 to 1937) to discuss how the magazine portrayed women in the 1930s’ Shanghai and analyzes how women’s images in the publications had an influence on their daily life. Shanghai in the 1930s was a bustling metropolitan city as well as the cultural center of China. In the consumer society of the day, which was highly reader oriented, “pictorial culture” became a popular contribution of the publishing industry in Shanghai. However, some pictorials distinguished themselves from the others that were full of pictures by publishing literature works of famous writers. The Women’s Pictorial was one among these unique literary pictorials; it was edited by the cartoonist Guo Jianying and several works of Chinese modernists were published in its issues. However, the concern of this study is to analyze the urban woman, the subject of The Women’s Pictorial, from two perspectives: commercial marketing and experimental literary forms. I first investigate the pictorial market in the 1930s’ Shanghai and the historical background of the Liang You Company. Second, I discuss the gender issues in The Women’s Pictorial by specifically examining the visual and rhetorical forms of pictures and articles. Finally, I aim to reveal how The Women’s Pictorial depicted the urban narrative in its unique content.