Contemporary Chinese Romantic Fiction: Analyzing the “Female Young Werther and Male Charlotte” Genre

Abstract

On the one hand, to a certain extent, romantic fictions satisfy female readers’ fantasies about love. On the other hand, these novels are also a kind of embodiment of social values. They play an important role in contemporary popular culture. In Chinese mainland today, a large number of romantic fictions have been adapted into films or drama series with large market value. However, contemporary Chinese romantic fiction has not attracted much academic attention. In order to address the lack of academic research in this area, this study mainly focuses on the characters in contemporary Chinese romantic fictions, especially female characters, as well as the social value of these novels. This paper takes the Female Young Werther and Male Charlotte (FYW&MC) genre as an example to analyze and discuss the character image and social value of contemporary Chinese romantic fiction. Here, I divide the FYW&MC genre into three subtypes and select three representative works, Qiyue and Ansheng, Cry Me A Sad River, and The Best of Us, as case studies to analyze and explain the social value and character image of the FYW&MC genre. In addition, readers’ emotional responses towards the works or characters are also among the points of concern in this study.