Gender characterization in Lady Windermere's Fan and its Chinese translations: A corpus stylistic approach.

This study investigates gender representation in Oscar Wilde's 1892 play *Lady Windermere's Fan* through corpus stylistic analysis, focusing on the original English text and two Chinese translations by Shen Xingren (1918) and Hong Shen (1923). The analysis reveals that Wilde’s play portrays women in a binary moral framework—either virtuous or immoral—while depicting men negatively, reflecting Victorian gender norms and critiquing moral absolutism toward women. Shen’s translation largely preserves these gender characterizations and the play’s feminist undertones, aligning with her background as an educated woman and the progressive New Culture Movement, whereas Hong’s translation, influenced by his ideological and poetic aims and the context of Shanghai’s theatrical scene, softens women’s voices and reframes gender issues into broader human nature themes. The study highlights how translators’ individual ideologies and adherence to differing poetic conventions shape gender representation in translation, demonstrating the value of corpus stylistics in uncovering nuanced shifts in characterization across cultural and temporal contexts.