Women as Silent Support: Diary of Miss Sophia

Recently, I read a piece of May Fourth Era literature, Diary of Miss Sophia. It's amazing how even after so much time passing, we are still able to form emotional connections to characters in historical literature.

Ding Ling 丁玲 (1904-1986), author of Diary of Miss Sophia

The story is really quite simple: woman, dying of Tuberculosis, refuses two lovers. Her month-long struggle is recorded in several dozen pages of diary entries. This romantic disease as a literary device demonstrates the extent of a woman's agency; historically, a woman only has two things that she may use to her advantage: her body and her mind. While men may fight amongst each other in physical contact, Sophia fights internal battles while confined to her mental ward. Have you ever found that, one of the only ways a woman can consistently demonstrate her love is through self-inflicted suffering?

In the book and film adaptation, Atonement, Cecelia cannot seem to tell anyone about how she truly feels, quits school, and becomes a lowly nurse. Why? So that she may feel closer to Robbie, who is a soldier in the war, as she cares for patients.

Who could forget the infamous scene from Momento, in which "Sammy's" wife watches her husband inject her over and over again with insulin, as if his will to remember and stop would prove his love for her.
Sophia uses her body and mind that is simultaneously victimizing and vindictive. Refusing to eat and feigning symptoms of her illness in order to earn a man's attention; to what extent are these things a product of her manipulative personality as opposed to society's restraints upon how women should demonstrate love for another person? And a woman's ability to keep silent about how she feels and how she is suffering seems to be further demonstrative of her strength and resilience.

Even as a main character, Sophia feels constrained to act as a secondary character, to act as a woman defined by their support and dedication to a man. What other sources have you seen this troupe in?

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