By Menggelisha
Through her literary works, Chinese novelist Eileen Chang (1920 –1995) brings her readers into a world of matrimony, romance, familial relationships, and the destiny of women residing in patriarchal societies. Unlike works produced during the May Fourth Movement, Chang’s novels refrain from making a singular critique of society dominated by men. Rather, her writings permit women to act as themselves, revealing their own contradictions, repressions, self-confrontations, and even the more sinister facets of their own ugly selves and deformities. Women are the main characters of her stories, residing in Shanghai or Hong Kong.
In her novels, Chang not only exposes the adverse effects of the patriarchal social system and traditional customs on women, but also delves more profoundly into their spiritual realm, encouraging readers to critically contemplate their own vulnerabilities; in doing so, she empowers the notion of women’s critique. Bai Liusu from Love in a Fallen City and Cao Qiqiao from The Golden Cangue are among the most renowned names.
“A family of twenty or so, sharing a house, and even if you cut your nails in the house, there are people watching through the windows”, is the description Bai Liusu gives of her huge, ailing Shanghai family. She refuses to tolerate the disdain of her brother and sister-in-law following the death of her ex-husband and instead makes the decision to depart from Shanghai for Hong Kong. On the one hand, she starts to break social customs in an attempt to stop being treated unfairly. Her true motivation, though, is her need for economic security, which she eventually finds by marrying a wealthy man who can support her and save her from the struggles of earning a livelihood with her birth family. Together, Bai Liusu and the wealthy man go through a lot of hardships, but it is finally the political collapse of Hong Kong that traps both of them on the island and forces them to genuinely bond. The city and their “love” share a lamentable connection, as the city’s defeat during the Japanese invasion signifies their unique relationship’s triumph.
Chang portrays Bai Liusu as a character who, despite receiving an education, fails to overcome their entrenched sentiments of feudalism; Bai perceives matrimony merely as a profession and a vehicle for financial benefit. Meanwhile, Chang’s Cao Qixiao, an illiterate character, becomes a victim of marriage under the yoke of feudalism. Greedy siblings sell Cao, daughter of a hemp oil merchant, to an affluent but handicapped man who subsequently enters into matrimony with her. After years of being sexually deprived as a result of her husband’s disability, Cao develops an obsession with wealth and a mental distortion. She pushes her daughter into opium use, foot-wrapping, and forsaking academic pursuits. Additionally, she reveals a major secret concerning her son’s spouse, an act that ultimately results in their demise and despair. Cao is intolerable to the happiness of others, including her children, on account of her own misfortune.
It is difficult for Cao, a destitute woman wedded to a wealthy family with old-fashioned values, to maintain even the minimal level of comfort. Her exasperation is perpetuated by the incongruity between her living conditions, limited academic background, and the derision she faces from others. Further, this establishes the foundation for the subsequent emergence of her resolute retaliatory persona, as she employs her own desire as a weapon with which to assault her environment and peers. All other parties remain silent as the family property is divided, but she asserts her right to both possession and inheritance, citing the feudal patriarchy’s suppression of women’s free will. Money seems the only thing capable of compensating for her youth and instilling within her an overpowering sense of permanence. She locks herself up securely with gold and intensifies her efforts to lock up the happiness of her children.
Indeed, the mistrust of these characters toward marriage is a reflection of Chang’s own upbringing, as is the animosity of their family and peers. Chang was born into a distinguished family; however, upon her birth, that family began to disintegrate. Her father exemplified the archetypal prodigal; he was a cigarette smoker, gambler, and frequent visitor to brothels. Her mother divorced this abusive partner so she could pursue higher education in Europe, and in turn neglected her children through this abandonment. Cao, who regards wealth as a form of security and is estranged by abuse, is, in essence, a reflection of her stepmother: more generally, the women subjected to and distorted by feudal norms. In response to Chang’s own desire to pursue education overseas, her stepmother subjected her to more frequent physical abuse and confinement.
Chang’s personal experience shaped her critical feminism. Rather than purely celebrating Chinese women’s liberation, Chang provides more nuance to a contemporary feminist movement by showing their harsh economic realities. Her feminism is founded not solely on her compassion for women and her condemnation of patriarchal society, but on an understanding of women’s inability to attain economic parity with men. Chang argued that, while the consolidation of external social influences on women is undeniably the primary cause of their frequent entrapment, the most crucial factor remains the frail and subjugated state of the female psyche. According to her argument, “women were initially subjugated and enslaved in patriarchal societies due to their physical inferiority to men. Yet, men’s strength was incomparable to that of wolves or tigers; thus, why were women not subjugated by beasts?”
Many literary critics have deemed Chang to be narcissistic or misogynistic, but they are mistaken. She is in fact the most ruthless towards herself; she looks out of the water, but only at all times with icy self-reflection; she does not hesitate to draw the knife (or sword-like pen) toward the water in order to annihilate the past. By proposing a female-centric approach to women’s issues, she empowered women’s voices and expanded the field of Chinese female literature, serving as an indelible source of inspiration for subsequent works in the genre.
Further Reading
Chang. E, Love in a Fallen City (Shanghai, 1943)
— The Golden Cangue (Shanghai, 1943)
Zheng. X, ‘Western Feminism and Chinese Women Literature’, Foreign Literature Studies， 1999
Bluestocking Oxford 