Abstract
Published by Ocean Publishing Company, Zhang Shuhan's ”Petrel Collection” has been regarded as the first collection of short stories by women writers after World War II. Although these stories belong to the genre of popular romance, the collection as a whole provides a fresh perspective for exploring the complexities of cultural space in the 1950s. For Zhang's commercial taste, the collection is installed with beautiful pictures of these writers before their individual pieces, pictures that fulfill the voyeuristic desire of the readers and reflect the needs of the society. How are these pictures constructed and how do Zhang's commercial tactics work to promote the book? Not only do these pictures explain and define the feminine ideal of a new, modern woman for the readers; they also intertwine with the narratives of gender and nation. In constructing the image of a ”modern woman,” this paper argues that it is necessary to understand her role as a new woman and the dialectical relationship that involves the position of these writers in the field of cultural production, the construction of female subjectivity, and the dominant culture and marketing logic in the 1950s. This paper then attempts to discuss these women writers' intentions and strategies of self-presentation in terms of commodity, consumption, literary space, and feminist visual culture.