《海上花列傳》과 근대성

I tried to examine modernity described in the novel《The biographies of HaiShangHua》by Bangqing Han in 1892. This novel was a serial story in a novel magazine 《Strange Book of Hai Shang》from January, 1892 to October, 1892. This novel shows the life of the gisaengs who prostitute her talents or herself in the later 19th century of Shanghai. I divided the character of the novel into the male and female, or the customer and gisaeng. Then through the gender's division, we can find out the late 19 century of modernity. First, through the male, we can know the erosion of traditional family system and traditional education. Second, through the female, we know that a gisaeng is a subject of consumption as well as a object of it, or a circuit of consumption. Also, through Sufang Li's death, and Erbao Zhao's nightmare, we know that her dream couldn't be realized in her times, as a result, one of them dies from it, the other suffers from it.