Women’s Issue as a Breakthrough for Critiquing Traditional
Culture during the New Culture Movement
In revolutionaries’ eyes, Confucian culture represented conservative and traditional
culture; therefore, bring back Confucian culture reflects the degeneration of the whole
nation. As a result, they made a quick respose to this social phenomenon. Because the
requirement of female subordination lies in the nature of Confucian ethics, women
under Confucian culture in a sense was the epitome of how Confucian doctrine had a
negetive impact upon the Chinese for centuries. Thus, the revolutionaries raised the
women’s issue in critiquing Confucian culture as a breakthrough point, which could
provoke the Chinese to stop “rasing the old banners” (Lu, p. 9).
