由於胡適在五四時期的詮釋，李汝珍的小說《鏡花緣》長期以來被認為是古典文學中提倡女權的先驅，對傳統中國的婦女問題有所發見。本文欲從不同時代、不同位置的讀者對《鏡花緣》的閱讀中，瞭解這樣的性別論述如何透過對古典文本抱持現實關懷的詮釋中建構而成，並將其影響力延續至今。 作者企圖從此文導引出來的問題是：中國近代女權論述的建構中隱含的兩種預設──本質化的「西方」與「傳統」，如何影響時人對歷史文獻的評估。此種基於時代關懷的論述方式具有很大的影響力，使得後來的讀者面對的不僅是文本本身，而更是與晚清與五四時期的讀者進行對話。

Because of Hu Shi’s interpretation during the May-fourth era, Li Ruzhen’s novel, Flowers in the Mirror (Jing-hua Yuan), has been regarded as a forerunner of the advocacy of women’s rights in classical literature and as having discovered the problems of women’s plight in traditional China. This article attempts to look over the various readings of Flowers in the Mirror from the readers of different eras and positions, in order to realize how this gender discourse was constructed on the basis of the interpretation of classical texts with contemporary concerns, and has kept its effectiveness even now. The main question the author intends to pursue in this article is: how do the two assumptions, the essentialist “western” and the essentialist “tradition”, underlying the construction of feminist discourse from late Qing to May-fourth era, impinge on our evaluation of historical documents. This kind of discourse, derived from their contemporary concern, has great effectiveness, and causes the subsequent readers, not only to face the text itself, but also to converse with the readers of May-fourth era and late Qing.