Raise The Red Lantern: An Analysis

Director Zhang’s film Raise the Red Lantern focuses on women in a big mansion and shows the conflicts between wives. During the 1920s, Confucian ethical values were widely circulating in the society and had an impact on women’s life (He, 2013).
This paper argues how the Confucian ethical value “male dominance” had an influence on women’s independence regarding making choices about their marriages and work as well as having the ability to think and act independently.
Since the mansion, which is referred to as Siheyuan in Chinese, is a “historical type of residence that was commonly found throughout China” (“Siheyuan”), as well as the tradition of Chinese men being married to several women at the same time, the mansion can be seen as a micro-society (Hays, 2008). Therefore, this paper also touches a bit on how this mansion as a micro-society reflects the trends in the big society. …show more content…
In the 1920s, China had a male-dominated patriarchal society, which was based on Confucianism, and highlighted the distinctions between men and women as well as their roles within the family ("Globalization and Women in China").
Research also shows that in patriarchal societies males usually have more power and thus are more dominant than females. According to Social Dominance Theory, “males [also] tend to have higher social dominance orientation” (“Social Dominance Theory”).