The Spiritual Journey: An Analysis of Chen Ran's Short Story Collection Divorced People

Abstract

As a representative writer of contemporary Chinese avant-garde women's literature, Chen Ran has long focused on women's hidden
inner worlds and spiritual existential predicaments. Her short story anthology Divorced People, published in 2004, collects her representative
short stories spanning more than two decades, fully presenting the evolution of her aesthetic taste, spiritual stance and creative mentality. Centered on three groups of female figures marked by distinct temporal imprints and psychological differences, the book constructs a complete
thread of women's spiritual growth: Paper Girl, a teenage girl trapped by environment and fate, sensitive, depressed and powerless to break
free in her early town narratives; the Shui Shui group in her 1990s urban avant-garde writings, who possess self-awareness, question secular
norms and seek spiritual redemption inwardly and outwardly; and Lin Zhi, a middle-aged woman in her later works who confronts marital
predicaments, gender alienation and the trauma of divorce, attaining restrained, muted grey peace within her heart. These three archetypes
not only serve as a literary presentation of women's real psychological moments in different life stages, but also an artistic projection of the
author's decades of life experience, spiritual pursuit and shifts in creative psychology. Taking women's unspeakable private spiritual sufferings
as the narrative entry point, Chen Ran elevates personal romantic trauma and interpersonal loneliness into universally applicable philosophical
propositions of modern existence. She keeps reflecting on the inescapable spiritual solitude, interpersonal barriers and existential nihilism of
modern people, devoting her whole life to searching for a self-consistent and tranquil spiritual home for wandering, rootless modern souls.