Female Empowerment in Communist China Aachal Gowan 10th Grade

Feminism is the advocacy of equality between men and women socially, politically, and economically. In Dai Sijie’s novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the narrator and his friend, Luo, are set on civilizing a young village girl who they meet during their re-education, known as the Little Seamstress. This novel displays a female protagonist, The Little Seamstress, who is not afraid to take control of her own future and goes against Luo and the narrator’s stereotypical beliefs that she is in need of being saved. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a feminist piece of literature because it uses the Little Seamstress to prove that women, no matter what background, are capable of doing many of the same things as men on their own.

At first, this novel may be mistaken as a sexist piece of writing rather than a feminist one because of the way Dai Sijie portrays the Little Seamstress, however it is written through the perspective of the narrator and Luo so it actually reflects the views of most men on women at that time, which the Little Seamstress later disproves. The way the narrator describes her when they first meet gives the impression of an innocent girl who spends her days sewing for the benefit of the men in...