Miss Sophia's Diary
| Miss Sophia's Diary | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 莎菲女士的日記 | ||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 莎菲女士的日记 | ||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Shāfēi nǚshì de rìjì |
| Wade–Giles | Sha-fei nü-shih te jih-chi |
Miss Sophia's Diary, or The Diary of Miss Sophie, is a short story by the Chinese author Ding Ling, in which a young woman describes, through diary entries, her thoughts and emotions, particularly about relationships, sexuality, and identity.
"Miss Sophia's Diary" was written in 1927 and first published in the influential Early Republic of China "Fiction Monthly" (小说月报).
A major influence on the story was Ding Ling's personal experiences at that time, including depression, exhaustion, and impoverishment. Dr. Tani E. Barlow describes Ding Ling in 1927 as "miserable, drinking heavily, dispirited by the national tragedy of political counterrevolution, and exhausted by her impoverished, often squalid life in boarding-house rooms . . . . "
More generally, Ding Ling was passing from the milieu of a girls' schools to the male-dominated literary scene and involvement with some of China's most sophisticated male writers.
The major subject matter of Miss Sophia's Diary is a person's thoughts and feelings. The "interior" nature of the story is reinforced by its setting in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
Much of the diary concerns Miss Sophia's romantic attraction and sexual desire, and even reveals her bisexuality. More generally, the diary displays rapid swings of mood and outlook, and captures complex ambivalence of the subject about virtually everything in her life, what one scholar called "the chaos of personality."
Miss Sophia's Diary provides an unorthodox perspective on basic aspects of life. It expresses frank, unflattering views of the male gender: "glib, phony, cautious" . . . "make my skin crawl" . . . "bastard". It also shows an unflattering side of women: cruel, tough, selfish ("the lovely news that someone got sick over me") . . . "savage" It turns traditional morality on its head: the chasteness of her friends Yunglin and Yufang is "just one of those strange, unexplained things in life."
The story shows a person in all her complexity and contradictions. For instance, it shows how Miss Sophia is simultaneously able to exercise power over others, and yet is powerless. A recurring motif is that she has the power to command the attention of others, but not to make them understand her. She is attracted to a man named Ling Jishi for his physical beauty, but is stimulated by the jealousy of her friend Weidi. Moreover, Ling Jishi has "the beautiful form I adore" but a "cheap, ordinary soul."
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