| dc.description.abstract | Marriage is one of the most important rites of passage. With the invention of photography, it is more and more common to have a visual record for this ceremony, especially when the progress of technology is coupled with decreasing price, so that wedding photos became an indispensable element in today′s weddings.
In addition to protection from the elements, clothing is also an important tool for constructing identity. If the naked body means physicality of the self, clothing is a sign which extends into social and cultural spheres. The social and cultural information carried by clothing covers age, gender, profession, social status, religion and political ideology, ethnic and national identity, etc... Highly gendered, wedding costumes have maximized the gendered clothing in daily life and the power relationship between the sexes.
Over the past century, the evolution of Chinese wedding costumes can be approximately described as a process of “Westernization”. But this process is far from homogeneous in both sexes. It reflects the evolution of gender roles in Chinese society, particularly the roles assigned to both sexes in the face of Western culture. The phenomenon of “civilized marriage” appeared in the 1910s. It is worth noting that during this time, the westernization of wedding costumes affected only men. The “collective wedding” promoted by the National Government in 1935 not only pushed the previously personal and familial nature of wedding ceremony to a national level, but also directly returned to the traditional gowns and cheongsam in terms of wedding clothing. This thesis investigates mainly wedding photos published between 1910 and 1940, as well as discourses on costumes and gender roles in the mass media, to discuss the representation of Chinese gender and national identity in wedding costumes in the early twentieth century. | en_US |