Yang Lianfen

　　School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University

　　Abstract:The new women of the May Fourth Movement were molded by the enlightenment discourse of the new culture in universities. The ideological identity they acquired from the new culture was an individualist ethics of justice. Their gender identity and the corresponding ethics of care, however, stirred their sympathy for other women shackled by the “old ethics.” To realize their human rights and maintain the sacredness of love, the new women were even prepared to “overlook” their social status and sacrifice their dignity to enter into special marriages with married men at the ambiguous interface of the old and the new ethics; but the shortcomings of an abnormal marriage, the gender hierarchy concealed behind love, and the antagonism and conflict between individual freedom and their ethics of care for others plunged these women into an identity crisis. Their identity dilemma reflects the moral limits of the justice ethic of the May Fourth new culture, limits that also account for a kind of deficiency in expression in May Fourth literature.

　　Keywords: May Fourth literature, new women, identity, ethics of justice, ethics of care