While other critics tend to view the unexpected rise and success Shanghai women writers in the 1940s as sparked off by the particular period and environment, this paper adopts the methodology of American literary critic Rita Felski, trying first to reconsider the cultural context and significance of the rise of Su Qing and Zhang Ailing from the point of view of the development of the Chinese women's movement and women's literature as well as from the interaction between the two. That established, the second part of the article then concentrates on Su Qing and her fiction and by means of close reading and literary analysis attempts to reevaluate more objectively and appropriately author's literary success and female consciousness as well as her oeuvre's sexual politics.