|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mid-Qing
Stories by Pu Song Ling By Cindy
Li Posted to Web Site: 7 May 2003 |
|
|
Cindy won the W J
Liu Chinese Studies Prize for 2002. |
|
|
|
|
|
To consider these issues, I
discuss the way in which women are depicted in Pu Song Ling’s Strange Tales of Liaozhai, a
collection of short stories from the High Qing period. I argue that these stories can only offer
limited insights about the experiences of Chinese women because the author
considers women through a male-gaze.
I also make comparisons between the male-gaze of Pu Song Ling and the
male-gaze adopted by some of the earlier historiography on Chinese women. |
|
|
Love and marriage are some of the
many subjects in Pu’s stories 3/. These stories are a primary source which
offer historians insight into the neo-Confucian gender order in the Qing
dynasty. Recent historiography,
informed by post-modern feminist theory, departs from the assumption that all
women throughout Chinese history were always victims of a monolithic
patriarchy. Dorothy Ko in her study of
Chinese women writers in the seventeenth century takes on this theoretical
approach 4/.
While she agrees that the stereotype of the victimised Chinese woman
is “not without its grain of truth” 5/, she argues that
this image of woman, frozen in time, obscures the dynamism of gender
relations in Chinese history. In Confucian ideology, the
family was the most fundamental social unit. It was regarded as the bastion
of morality 6/.
The subjugation of wives to their husbands had a clear political
purpose. A wife’s proper relationship
with her husband was regarded as a model and metaphor for the subject’s
relationship with the emperor 7/. The state was therefore one of
the chief agents in fostering and promoting family ideals throughout Chinese
history 8/. The
Manchu, in an attempt to legitimise their rule of the Chinese, rabidly
promoted “familistic moralism” among commoners in order to signify their
commitment to Confucian ideals 9/. Women’s subjugation was therefore an
important basis on which the wider Confucian political order was constructed.
The doctrine of sancong (Three Obediences) is often
regarded as definitive of women’s position in Confucianism 10/. This treatise, found in Confucius’ Book of Rites specifies that
throughout a woman’s life course, she is to live under the directions of her
menfolk: “The
woman follows the man: -- in her youth, she follows her father and elder brother;
when married, she follows her husband; when her husband is dead, she follows
her son” 11/. The sancong is the ideological and philosophical basis for women’s
subjugation in Chinese kinship formations.
Under sancong a woman does
not exist in her own right. Her existence and even her own identity is
defined by male-kin. However Dorothy Ko questions the
extent to which the sancong is
entirely representative of women’s position.
To reduce the Chinese construct of womanhood to the sancong is to assume that the Chinese
patriarchy was based only on coercion or brute force 12/. Ko argues that while women may
be denied power on an official level by Confucian discourse, in their actual
experiences they may enjoy a degree of “informal power” 13/. In certain circumstances, they may even be
able to mitigate or manipulate Confucian ideals of womanhood 14/. The status of the widow in Qing
society is an example which illustrates how women, in particular contexts,
were able to have power within an overarching patriarchal framework. In Confucianism, a wife was expected to
remain chaste and to continue serving her patrilineal family, even after the death
of her husband. The Qing rulers enthusiastically
supported the cult of the chaste widow, which was a remnant from earlier
dynasties 15/.
Qing efforts to promote widow chastity could be regarded as part of
the broader attempt to impose stronger controls on female sexuality and
ultimately, to further disempower women. However, Matthew Sommers
explains that in the Qing legal code widows, among all women, had the
greatest property rights and independence, providing that they remain chaste 16/. In elite
families, some widows were even able to take over the patriarchal authority
once held by their husbands 17/. The potential for widows to
become heads of households is described in Pu Song Ling’s “Hsi-liu” 18/. In this
story, a diligent woman by the name of Hsi-liu becomes the head of her
household after the death of her husband.
She works hard and is ultimately rewarded when she transforms her two
wayward sons into a merchant and a scholar. But not all widows were able to
enjoy the independence which Hsi-liu possessed in Pu’s story. If, for instance, a widow’s chastity was
broken through adultery, remarriage or rape, then her rights to her husband’s
property, to her children and to refrain from remarriage were all lost 19/. The strong
distinction between chaste and unchaste widows can also be in seen in Pu’s
stories. While a chaste widow like
Hsi-liu is rewarded and praised for her virtue and hard work, unchaste widows
are criticised. In “The Faithless
Widow” 20/. Pu
describes a widow who commits all possible acts of faithlessness: she
squanders her husband’s money, remarries and deserts her children. Ultimately, she is punished with death
when haunted by her husband’s ghost. |
|
|
In the “Virtuous Daughter in
Law” 22/ Pu details the miseries which wives could
experience in the patriarchal and patrilocal family. A young wife Shan-hu dutifully waits on a
tyrannical mother-in-law. Shan-hu is blamed and beaten by her husband for his
mother’s displeasure and he finally divorces her. Even after her suicide attempt,
Shan-hu’s husband remains unmoved.
Pu’s vivid descriptions of Shan-hu cutting her own throat and crying
tears of blood arouses pity in the reader.
Shan-hu as a tragic figure serves as poignant criticism of the Chinese
patriarchal family which subjects the wife to the control of both her
mother-in-law and husband. However, Pu constructs Shan-hu
not only as a victim, but also as a model of feminine virtue (perhaps to
arouse the reader’s sympathy).
Shan-hu receives passively the abuse of her husband and her
mother-in-law and she guards her chastity by refusing to remarry, even when
divorced. Pu contrasts the virtue of
Shan-hu with the other daughter-in-law who manipulates her husband and
squanders the family fortune 23/. He even ends the story by having Shan-hu
rewarded for her virtue through ancestral intervention 24/.
In this way, Pu applauds the utter selflessness of Shan-hu and thus he
supports the doctrine of sancong. Pu’s stories on female sexuality
also suggest that he supports neo-Confucian conceptions of female sexuality.
The need to maintain the ancestral lineage required strict control of female
sexuality. In Confucianism, women were denied their sexuality because the
disciplines of domestic life were incompatible with desire 25/.
In Pu’s stories, female
sexuality is depicted in a mystic or surrealist way. By relegating female sexuality to
surrealism, Pu accepts that female sexuality is a taboo subject that cannot
be spoken of in realistic terms. Inadvertently, he contributes to its taboo
status. In Pu’s stories, there is a
tendency to depict female sexulity as if it were a monstrosity. While the
most sexually assertive women in his stories tend to be foxes or devils in
disguise, human women often play no active part in courtship or sexuality. This can be best seen in “The
Painted Skin” 26/.
In this story, a monster disguises herself as a beautiful woman by
wearing a painted human skin. She
ensnares a married man name Wang and through repeatedly having sex with him,
she sucks all the yang energy out of Wang and ultimately, he falls ill and
dies 27/. The notion that sexual intercourse with a
woman is depleting or harmful to a man’s yang energy is extremely
misogynistic. On the other hand, Wang’s wife,
the human woman in this story, is depicted as a model of virtue. She
willingly suffers public humiliation and degradation to restore her husband
back to life 28/.
In this story and in many others, Pu polarises women into either
paragons of virtue or femmes fatales 29/. The former stereotype exonerates Confucian
gender constructs; the latter warns of the consequences if society were to
depart from the Confucian gender order. This reducing of women to
stereotypes can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the author is
male. Through Pu’s male gaze, women
tend to be either idealised or reduced to their sexuality. |
|
|
To further explain this, I will
first discuss how Pu’s stories conceive of a woman’s identity. I will then consider how he views widow
suicide and footbinding through a male gaze. In his stories, Pu tends to
define women in relation to their menfolk thus denying them their own
identity. In almost all of his short
stories, the first line introduces the name of a male character 32/. Women characters are generally
introduced later in the story as the relatives of the male characters. Unlike
male characters, female characters are seldom introduced without the author
explaining to whom they are related to.
And so in Pu’s eyes, women exist, not in their own right, but through
their relations with men. Pu further denies women their
sense of subjectivity by defining their actions through a male gaze. His
treatment of widow suicide is an example of this. In “Perserverance Rewarded”
33/. A-pao’s
husband dies and out of her love for him, she tries to hang herself. This greatly moves the Judge of Hades and
he restores her husband back to life. In this story, the many possible
causes of widow suicide are reduced only to a widow’s yearning for her
husband. This very male-centric
conception of widow suicide brushes aside the many other pressures which
widows were subject to, under the Confucian patriarchal system. If this story was written by a female
author, then the causes of A-pao’s suicide attempt may be more complex then
Pu suggests. Likewise, in earlier
historiography, widow suicide had also been regarded through a reductionist
male gaze. Jonathan Spence for instance, argues that widow suicide was
generally accepted as an act of virtue and he assumes that this was the chief
cause of the pervasiveness of widow suicide 34/. But in doing so, he reduces women to mere
dupes, who accepted, without question, their society’s misogynist and
patriarchal attitudes. Recent historiography, on the
other hand, addresses the phenomenon of widow suicide more broadly. The Qing legal code granted property
rights to widows. Because these
rights could be forfeited if she broke her chastity, it was in the interest
of the dead man’s family to force his widow to remarry 35/.
A widow in this situation faced
a “triple jeopardy” of the loss of her children, an inferior match in marriage
and the personal humiliation of failing to stay chaste – these pressures,
among many others, would have likely contributed to the causes of widow
suicides 36/. Footbinding, like widow suicide,
is regarded as symbolic of Chinese women’s subjugation and like widow
suicide, it also tends to be understood through the male-gaze. Pu’s stories make references to women’s
little feet and shoes as being sexually titillating to men. In “Miss Lien Hsiang” 37/, for instance, a woman devil Miss Li gives her little
shoe to a scholar to express her love interest in him. Pu’s stories do not offer any insight into
female attitudes towards footbinding; they do not discuss any of the pain (or
pleasure) which women attributed to this practice. Dorothy Ko argues that it is
important to understand how Chinese women themselves regarded footbinding in
order to understand why it lasted for a millennium 38/.
Footbinding was a misogynistic practice which attempted to objectify women
and to keep them in purdah. Ko argues
that while it should not be condoned, footbinding should also be regarded as
a custom which offered something to women. To these women, it was not only
a symbol of their gentility, but also a symbol of their agency as individuals
39/. It was “one of the few sources of pride” available
to these women 40/.
While Ko’s analysis footbinding regards women as agents making choices
rather than as passive dupes, it is nevertheless important not to overlook
the systematic patriarchal pressures on women to bind their feet. Because Pu considers women
through a male-gaze, Liaozhai can
only offer limited insights into the lives of Qing women. The patriarchal assumptions underlying his
stories offer far greater insights to the historian than the actual stories
themselves. While Pu was in some respects,
sympathetic to women’s subjugation, he generally supported the neo-Confucian gender
order, especially in regards to female sexuality and widow chastity. Although subjugation of women in late
imperial China is generally regarded by historians as pervasive, recent
feminist historiography has tended to depart from the stereotype of the
passive and victimised Chinese woman. This stereotype is disempowering
to women because it regards them as passive dupes and it denies them their
subjectivity. While it is important to understand how these women viewed
their own position in society, the abuse and subjugation of women under the
Confucian framework must not be denied. |
|
|
Ko, D., Teachers of the Inner Chambers Women and Culture in Seventeenth-
Century China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994. Mann, S., Precious Records Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century,
Stanford University Press, 1997. Ng, V., “Sexual abuse of
daughters-in-law in Qing China: cases from the Xiang’an Huilan”, Feminist Studies, vol. 20, no. 2,
1994, pp. 373-391. Pu Songling, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
Liaozhai zhiyi, (trans.) H. Giles, Dover Publications, New York, 1969. Pu Songling, Strange Tales of Liaozhai, (trans.) Lu
Yunzhong, Chen Tifang, Yang Liyi & Yan Zhihong, The Commercial Press,
Hong Kong, 1990. Sommer, M., “The uses of
chastity: sex, law and the property of widows in Qing China”, Late Imperial China, vol. 17, no. 2,
1996, pp. 77-130. Spence, Jonathan, The Death of Woman Wang, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, London, 1978. |
|
|
2. Susan Mann,
Precious Records Women in China’s Long
Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1997, p. 20. 3. Throughout this
essay, I make generalisations about Pu’s many stories. From his collection of
491 stories, I have selected and read ten, which give insights into the lives
of women. 4. Dorothy Ko,
Teachers of the Inner Chamber Women and
Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Standford University Press,
California 1994, p. 4. 6. Vivien Ng,
“exual Abuse of daugheters-in-law in Qing China: cases from the Xiang’an
Huilan”,Feminist Studies, vol. 20,
no. 2, 1994, pp. 373-391. 7. Dorothy Ko,
Teachers of the Inner Chamber Women and
Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Standford University Press,
California 1994, p. 6. 8. Patricia
Ebrey, “omen, Marriage and the Family in Chinese History” in Paul S. Ropp
(ed.), Heritage of China: Contemporary
Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, University of California Press,
1990, p. 223. 9. Susan Mann, Precious
Records Women in Chian’s Long Eighteenth Century, Stanford University
Press, 1997, p. 22. 10. Dorothy Ko, Teachers
of the Inner Chamber Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China,
Standford University Press, California 1994, p.6. 11. Confucius cited
in Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner
Chamber Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Standford
University Press, California 1994, p. 6. 15. Susan
Mann, Precious Records Women in Chian’s
Long Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 23. 16. Matthew
Sommer, “he uses of chastity: sex, law and the property of widos in Qing
China”,Late Imperial China, vol.17,
no, 1996, p. 77. 18. This
story is reproduced in Jonathan Spence, The
Death of Woman Wang, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1978, pp. 62-70. 19. Matthew
Sommer, “The uses of chastity: sex, law and the property of widows in Qing
China”, Late Imperial China, vol.17,
no, 1996, p. 77. 20. Pu Song
Ling, Strange Tales from a Chinese
Studio, H. Giles (trans.), Dover Publications, New York, 1969, pp.
288-291. 21. Jonathan
Spence, The Death of Woman Wang,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1978, p.109. 22. Pu Song
Ling, Strange Tales from a Chinese
Studio, H. Giles (trans.), Dover Publications, New York, 1969, pp.
229-237. 23. This
story centres around the recovery of the family fortunes. It shows how property ownership relates to
female subjugation. The Chinese
regarded property as owned by the whole family and not by individuals. In order to keep property in the family,
there was a greater need to control female sexuality. A virtuous woman, like Shan-hu, would
never remarry and would dutifully raise male heirs so that both the family
property and the ancestral lineage could be maintained. 24. Shan-hu’s
dead father-in-law comes back from the grave, revealing to her a secret
buried treasure that will allow the family to reclaim its squandered
fortunes. But only Shan-hu, who is
the sole virtuous person in her family, is able to dig up the treasure. 25. Susan
Mann, Precious Records Women in Chian’s
Long Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, 1997, p.15. 26. Pu
Songling, Strange Tales of Liaozhai,
(trans.) Lu Yunzhong, Chen Tifang, Yang Liyi, Yang Zhihong, The Commercial
Press, Hong Kong, 1990, pp.73-78. 27. Monsters
or devils are predominantly yin and can only exist in the world if they suck
the yang energy out of mortals. 28. She
approaches a madman doctor who forces her to swallow his sputum in
public. When she chokes and vomits,
her husband’s heart falls out of her mouth and she brings him back to life. 29. In
another story, “Lien-Hsiang”, two women, a fox and a devil are sexual
competitors and they vie at seducing a scholar. However, they wish the man no
harm and when he becomes sick from their Yin energy, they try to bring him
back to life. In the end of the story, they become much like sisters to each
other. While the women in this story
change from being temptresses, to being virtuous, they are still defined
through stereotypes. 30. Susan
Mann, Precious Records Women in Chian’s
Long Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 3. 32. Of the
ten stories which I have read, only “Hsi-liu” begins by introducing a woman
character. 33. Pu Song
Ling, Strange Tales from a Chinese
Studio, H. Giles (trans.), Dover Publications, New York, 1969, p.
115-121. 34. Jonathan
Spence, The Death of Woman Wang,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1978, pp.100-101. 35. Vivien
Ng, “Sexual Abuse of daugheters-in-law in Qing China: cases from the Xiang’an
Huilan”, Feminist Studies, vol. 20,
no. 2, 1994, p. 74. 36. Susan
Mann, Precious Records Women in Chian’s
Long Eighteenth Century, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 25. 37. Pu Song
Ling, Strange Tales from a Chinese
Studio, H. Giles (trans.), Dover Publications, New York, 1969, pp.
104-115. 38. Dorothy
Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chamber Women
and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China, Standford University Press, California
1994, p. 150. |
|
|
