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YANG Chian-ho, born September, 1921, during the era of Japanese Occupation, received a colonial, traditional yet modern Japanese New Style education. After finishing school, she chose a path of career and social action instead of submitting to the traditional women’s fate of becoming a wife and mother. Thus, she was among the first women to experience economic independence. In addition, her involvement on the Taiwanese social scene injected a breath of fresh air to the Taiwanese literary world that was lacking independent women’s voices. Although she stopped writing after her marriage, in early 1990s she made her literary comeback with a memoir, Prism of Life, in which she describes her almost fifty years earlier life. The book also allowed her readers to become acquainted with the first woman reporter in Taiwan’s history for the biggest newspaper of that time Taiwan Jit Jit Sin Po. Although she belonged to the upper class of the colonized people, she did not submit to the oppressions of colonialism and sexism as a Taiwanese and a woman. Her acts of outspokenness for the wronged, and her involvement to go after what she deserved, showed a strong personality that did not bend its knees before the powerful. Her honest and direct character and special life experience were drastic departures from the older images of submissive, powerless and sorrowful women. Her story gives us a modern example of women who have achieved selfhood.
While YANG’s physical independence was shaped by her educational and work experience, her emotional independence found expression and challenges in the different stages of her life, most of which were not without conflicts or their rough spots. In analyzing the process of losing and reconstructing her selfhood, we can also discover the myriad facets of her life. Thus, this thesis aims to focus on YANG’s life as the main vehicle in making an across-the-board analysis of how women’s selfhood was achieved through her education and professional backgrounds and her experience as one of a very few women councilors in Taiwan. Moreover, this study presents how YANG’s personal life was influenced by the struggles for the women rights during the 1920s. The four goals of this women’s liberation movement for education, economy, marriage and politics, serve as reference points for the basis of the development of YANG’s life. This is the framework of the chapters. Chapter by chapter, YANG’s construction of a woman’s selfhood through writing and actions is examined. Furthermore, another topic of this research is to point how Taiwanese women, even under the triple domination of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchal society and marginalized on several fronts, could achieve balance in life and find means and opportunities to speak out.
Lastly, the paper shows how YANG’s ‘private’, reflective writings spoke for the women of her time. The paper attempts to make a thorough analysis of the process of realizing women’s selfhood from YANG’s life experiences and writings, including her novels, essays, autobiography and narratives. The paper makes an organized analysis of the realization of women’s selfhood, how it moves and changes during different stages of life, and so to understand the new self image of woman presented by YANG.
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