The film tells the story of an unnamed woman, who lives as a streetwalker by night and devoted mother by day in order to get her young son an education amid social injustice in the streets of Shanghai, China.

[4][5] Four years after the original release of Goddess, Yonggang Wu remade the film as Yanzhi Lei) with changes made to the cast, the setting, and parts of the storyline.

When the school principal reads of this news in a newspaper, he visits her behind prison bars and promises her that he would adopt her son from the orphanage and raise him well, providing a good education.

[8] Wu's use of the euphemism portrays his views of seeing beyond the stereotype of the fallen women and calls attention to the themes of class struggle and social inequality through the complex character of Ruan Lingyu, who is both victimized and empowered at times.

[4] In The Goddess, Ruan appears in front of the camera wearing a cheongsam (also called a qipao), a popular style worn by women since the 1920s China.

[9] Well-to-do women, courtesans, dance hostesses, actresses, girl students, and female workers almost all accepted the characteristic style of qipao.

[9] As early examples of Chinese commercial advertising, calendar posters exclusively portray women, many wearing Qipao, as the conveyor of modern marketing messages.

They include pictures of women seated with crossed legs, a specific bodily posture that, both in China and in the West, can be read both as a signifier of modernity and as a possible reminder of sexual availability.

[11] Qipao, as a style of the commodified women on the calendar posters reflects a society which objectified female bodies as a source of pleasure and turned them into tradable commodities which led to the rise of prostitution in Shanghai.

[12] Based on the data collected from the sociologist Gamble: In 1917, Shanghai had the highest population of prostitutes compared to other cities, such as London, Berlin and Beijing.

[13] On the other hand, prostitutes, as the visual harbinger of Chinese modernity became the negative side of this metropolitan city, as their roles took on meanings of the "victimized" and the "disorderly.

Having spent his time observing these "street walkers"[14] and the fact that much of Wu Yonggang's early experience in cinema education revolved around the fallen women genre.

[14] Despite Wu's wishes to show more of the realities of the women in Shanghai, he was forced to undergo self-censorship in order to navigate the diffuse and pervasive anxieties about ideology, politics and market confronting China's filmmakers in 1934.

This is shown by Wu Yonggang response to contemporary critics, "‘When I first set out to write about the goddesses, I wished to show more of their real lives, but circumstances would not permit me to do so.

"[16] The circumstances that he refers to were the strict conservative restrictions and state surveillance in place by China's Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Party during the film's production in October and November 1934.

While one could say that this film is reflecting the reality Chinese people during that particular time experienced in everyday life, it also seems to act as an agency to reinforce the central ideas of patriarchists; the female mother is vulnerable and in need of help from the male principal, who is able to resolve the problems for her.

[21] Through the use of intertitles, lighting and distinctive close up shots of the protagonist's face, Cinematographer Hong Weilie humanizes the Goddess, creating a strong emotional connection between her character and the audience.

[3] However, while Goddess owes a narrative debt to these earlier Hollywood films, its quality has been enough to immortalize it as a worthy contemporary of them, particularly based on the strength of Ruan Lingyu's performance.

[4] Ruan Lingyu's popularity was cited as an influence, as well as the emotional appeal, with the Cultural Revolution affecting the acceptability of film content and styles.

[5] Interest in the "classic" film era for Chinese cinema returned internationally after Maggie Cheung's portrayal of Ruan Lingyu in the biopic Center Stage (1991),[5] which recreates one of its scenes.

[18] The matte image also demonstrates the prejudices that the vulnerable fallen women experience in Shanghai as powerful male oppression can perceive them as personal possessions arbitrarily.

When Ruan's character picks up the broken toy on the floor and looks up at the thug, the camera cuts to a shot of the mother crouching with her child framed between the man's legs.

Ellipsis When Ruan's character, now wearing a white dress, abruptly appears - her costume signaling a time jump between shots of her apartment and the night streets.

Set Design: Show the simplicity of the goddess's living quarters: a bed, a table, a few chairs, a hot water bottle, a couple of dresses and a few other possessions.

[18] This indicates that the thug, as a significant figure, invades Ruan and her son, a suffering woman and a poor child's small, personal space as a male oppressor.