This essay develops a feminist perspective called “returning the gaze.” It discusses differences between early pre-May Fourth Movement writers and the “New Sensationalist” writer Mu Shiying (1912-1940), Eileen Chang (“the first modern woman writer to represent female sexuality in Chinese literature”), and Li Ang (a post-modernist, feminist, writer from Taiwan). These newer writers examine the space made available for the female in a male dominated culture, and are generally more open-minded about sex than earlier writers.

sexual politics, “New Sensationalist School”, sexual aesthetics, marginality, May Fourth Movement, Martin Buber, unconscious, Freud, “Sensationalist School”, feminine sensibility