화보(畵報)를 통해 본 근대조계(租界)와 여성(1)

Abstract

This study was the first stage among the works that investigated how women reappeared visually and were ‘made' as modern women through the pictures in illustrated magazines. The study looked closely into the following elements: the process and features from women staying only at home to going to the outside world; male intellectuals' opinions and controversies for such women's social activities; western women in the concession who became the role model for concrete witnessing and experiences; foot-binding that had to be untied for women to go to the outside world and discourses for this; and several women who really came outside and faced the real world and social view on them. Women became an object of curiosity and observation based on the fact that they were away from the limited space, home, in the late Qing. Meanwhile, most of women in the late Qing did not have freedom to select the representation of primitive state such as the foot-binding that forcefully hindered their feet from growing. Women were not allowed to have modern desire that pursued stability and continuity. In addition, not only the women independently exposed to the public, but also the men who chose femininity were blamed for their exposing the crisis of old-fashioned viewpoint because the boundary between normality and abnormality starting for the formation of modern identity on sex was not exceptional also to men. Rapidly changing modern time and space of concession, Shanghai, were variously experienced while women (and men) were expressing themselves through their bodies.