Woman Like Me

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In Xi Xi’s ‘A Woman Like Me’ (1982), the voice of a female narrator is used to depict a modern woman’s struggle against societal expectations. The portrayal of the narrator’s cynical perspective with regard to love is also significant in light of the writer’s subversion of the commonly-portrayed feminine idealization of love. The narrator, in telling her aunt’s story, also weaves their personal ‘exceptional’ stories into a bigger narrative of ‘unlovable’ women.
The female narrator in ‘A Woman Like Me’ is portrayed as an atypical woman due to her occupation as a mortuary cosmetician. Not only does her unusual profession directly associate her with the social taboo of death, it also challenges the accepted gender stereotypes. The narrator herself admits that had ‘once entertained the thought of changing [her] occupation’ and mentions that ‘men everywhere like women who are gentle, warm and sweet, and such women are expected to work at jobs that are intimate, graceful and elegant’. The readers, being privy to her inner …show more content…
With the narrator explicitly stating that ‘a woman like [her] is actually unsuitable for any man’s love’, Xi Xi effectively subverts the traditional understanding of women as often shaped by concerns of love and family. It is important to note, however, that not all women in the text are portrayed in this subversive manner – as mentioned above, there is in fact a great amount of distance between the narrator and the other female characters mentioned. Interestingly, people who are deeply affected by matters of love, regardless of their gender, are generally portrayed as victims and described as ‘weak’ within the text. The ‘otherness’ of the narrator as an independent, modern woman who deviates from the established gender norms thus allows for an exploration of the female individuality and core sense of

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