Discussing The White-Haired Girl Opera and Ballet from the Perspective of Female Characters

Abstract

 The scope of this dissertation is to study the female protagonist, Hei'er, in the White Hairy Maiden Opera and Ballet and to exemplify the historical context of the White Hairy Maiden Opera and Ballet and the characteristics of the status of women in this era. The purpose of the research is to draw the characteristics of the era of the female characters in Bai Mao Nü in relation to the female lead's plot and the women's characteristics of the era in the context of Chinese history. The writing process of the thesis is firstly to find the tableaux and scores of the White Hairy Woman's operas and dance dramas in Chinese websites for reading and to collect the literature related to the White Hairy Woman's operas and dance dramas, and to collect the literature on the historical background of China and the status of women in the period of the 1940s to the 1970s. Secondly, I set out a framework for the thesis, matched and categorised the collected literature with the framework, and wrote the thesis; finally, I revised the final version and submitted the course thesis. My research found that the female drama of the White Hairy Daughter opera and ballet fully embodies the unequal gender treatment and social status of women in 1940s China. This work of White Hair Woman also portrays a more vivid image of Chinese women in the 1940s. However, the limitation of this thesis is that this thesis discusses the character lines and the related historical background from the score of White Hairy Woman, but it is difficult to find the literature that elaborates on the music of White Hairy Woman, and almost all of them focus on the content of White Hairy Woman's textual plot. The reason why the authors have some difficulty in discussing the musical score examples and the women's period characteristics is because there is very little literature that can help the authors to provide good ideas for their analyses. The final conclusion is that the female zeitgeist after the 1940s has given the female role of the White-haired Woman a deeper historical significance, and has provided scholars studying the White-haired Woman's operas and ballets with a new interpretation of female perspectives. It is also enough to show that White Hairy Woman is not only a successful musical theatre in 20th century China, but also a female theatre work that can promote Chinese women to gradually weaken sexism.