Female Romance and Constraints in Du Xiu??-Lan’s Ni N? (逆女) and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

[[abstract]]Both in Western and Chinese societies, it is empowering to foster the friendships of emotional and personal connections amongst women. We define these interactions as female romantic friendship. Female romance means emotional support and expression of love towards other women. It can, furthermore, sustain women in difficult time and provide the support to struggle continually against oppressions and inequalities. These friendships between women can provide models of female romantic friendships and even expand the definition and function of lesbianism. In this thesis, I will discuss the female romance on the basis of two lesbian novels, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Ni N?. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a bildungsroman which depicts the relationship between a pious mother and her adopted lesbian daughter. Ni N?, published in 1996, illustrates a lesbian daughter who rebels against the familial tie and filial piety. It portrays the protagonist’s, Tian-shi Ding (丁天使), lesbian identity since childhood and how the familial conflicts especially the mother-daughter relationship affects her sexual identity. Both novels express the idea of “genuinely spiritual dimension” that mainly indicates lesbians’ sharing of feelings, experiences and thoughts emotionally and spiritually rather than physically