Title: Beijing: A Marginalized One-Dimensional Utopia in And the Bride Wore Red

Abstract: This essay undertakes a detailed textual analysis of And the Bride Wore Red by Lucy Gordon, a romance writer from Great Britain, to interpret the image of Beijing. At the narrative level of this Western romance story, this city is delineated from three perspectives: Beijing as a timeless city, as a utopia for the female protagonist Daley, and as a marginalized city. This essay further elaborates on the reasons for the author’s description of Beijing in this manner. In the story, Beijing, endowed with a singularly traditional quality, is a projection of the author as an idealized but marginalized backdrop to this Western romantic story. Readers, especially those who are Chinese, can perceive no realistic sense of Beijing after reading this story.

Keywords: image of Beijing, dehistoricized, marginalized, utopia

Author: Yujuan Shen, Ph. D. candidate, Beijing Foreign Studies University, School of English and International Studies, Beijing, China.