while Confucianism had erected chaste widowhood into a religion, jewels and pearl
necklaces, which had nothing to do with Confucianism, turned women into
concubines and cocottes. The accumulation of wealth and the rise of great houses
during the Wei and Ch' in Dynasties, coupled with the general political disorder,
encouraged concubinage on the one hand and forced the drowning of baby girls on the
other, owing to the fact that poor parents could not provide for the expensive wedding
ceremonies of their daughters. In these times many rulers and rich families had
dancing girls in their private households by the tens and hundreds, and the life of
licentious luxury and female entertainment was something that would have satisfied a
roue's dreams. Women, in short, had become the playthings of men. Shih Ts'ung, who
had dozens of concubines, used to make them tread on a bed spread with rare incense
powder and those who were light enough to leave no footprint on it would be
rewarded with strings of pearl necklaces, while those who did would be "put on the
diet" and instructed to reduce. Those pearl necklaces, rather than Confucianism, were
the cause of women's downfall in China as in ancient Rome or modern New York.
The situation was therefore ripe for the institution of footbinding, which was the last
sophistication of male fancy.
1 Most of these stories can be found in the official histories of the different dynasties,
where special sections are devoted to lives of great women, along with those of men.
A woman who distinguished herself by committing suicide to guard her chastity had a
fair chance of leaving her name in literature in one form or another.
Paradoxically, it was in this period that Chinese women were known throughout for
their jealousy, and henpecked officials often appeared at court with bruised faces,
resulting in punishment of their jealous wives by royal decree. A certain Liu Poyii
used to recite the Ode to the Goddess of River Lo, and once remarked with a sigh in
his wife's hearing, "What a beauty for a wife!" His wife said, "Why do you praise the
Goddess of River Lo and insult me? When I die, I will become a water spirit/' That
night she drowned herself in the river. Seven days afterwards the wife appeared before
Poyu in a dream and said, "You wanted to marry a goddess, now I am a goddess." For
the rest of his life Liu Poyii never dared cross a stream. Whenever women passed the
river at this ferry, called the "Ferry of the Jealous Woman" (in Shantung), they had to hide or crumple their beautiful dresses and disfigure themselves, otherwise a storm
would come up. But if the women were ugly the goddess was not jealous. And women
who passed the ferry without raising a storm thought they must be ugly themselves.
It is easy to see how women's jealousy grew with the system of concubinage. It was
their only weapon of defence. A jealous wife could, by the sheer force of this instinct,
prevent her husband from having concubines, modern instances of which can still be
found. If man had sense enough to see that marriage is woman's best and only
profession he would be able to excuse in her such professional ethics, whether with
concubines or not. Our scholar, Yti Chenghsieh, discovered as early as 1833 that
"jealousy is no vice in women." Women who lose their husbands* favour have about
the same feeling as a professional clerk who loses the good favour of his employer,
and unmarried girls have about the same feeling as a man out of employment. Man's
professional jealousy in commercial competition is just as merciless as woman's in the
field of love, and a small trader has just as much liking for being put out of business
as a shopkeeper's wife has in seeing her husband take to another woman. Such is the
logic of the economic dependence of women. The failure to see this is responsible for
the jokes about gold-diggers, for gold-diggers are merely the female counterpart of
successful business men: they are more clearminded than their sisters, sell their goods
to the highest bidders in a professional spirit, and get what they want. Successful
business men and gold-diggers want the same thing, money, and they ought to respect
each other for his or her clearmindedness.
II. HOME AND MARRIAGE
Anything is possible in China, however. I have been carried in a sedan chair by
women up the mountains in the outskirts of Soochow, The women sedan-bearers
insisted on carrying me, a man, up those hills. Somewhat shamefacedly, I let them, for,
I thought, these are the descendants of the ancient Chinese matriarchs, and sisters of
the women in southern FuHen, with glorious breasts and an erect bearing, who carry
coal and till the field, who rise early in the morning, dress and wash and do their hair
neatly and go to work and come back to nurse their children with their own milk.
They are the sisters, too, of those women in rich families who rule the household and
their husbands as well.
Have women really been suppressed in China, I often wonder? The powerful figure of
the Empress Dowager immediately comes to my mind. Chinese women are not the
type to be easily suppressed. Women have suffered many disadvantages, have been
prevented from holding stenographic positions or judicial posts, but women have
ruled nevertheless in the home, apart from those debauchee households where women
have become toys. Even in these homes some of the concubines manage to rule their
lords. And what is still more important, women have been deprived of every right, but
they have never been deprived of the right to marry. To every girl born in China a home of her own is provided. Society insists that even slave-girls should be married
off at proper age. Marriage is women's only inalienable right in China, and with the
enjoyment of that right they have the best weapon for power, as wife and as mother.
There are two sides to this picture. Man has undoubtedly been unfair to woman, yet it
is interesting to see how sometimes woman has her revenge. The total effect of the
subjection of women consists in the general recognition of the inferiority of women,
in women's self-abasement, in their deprivation of the social advantages of the men, in
their lesser education and knowledge, in their cheaper, harder and less free lives, and
in the double sex standard. The oppression of women is more the invisible sort,
resulting from the general recognition of their inferiority. Where there is no love
between husband and wife the husband may be very autocratic, and in such cases the
wife has no other recourse but submission. The women merely endure family
autocracy as the Chinese people endure political autocracy. But no one dare say there
are more autocratic husbands or less happy marriages in China, for reasons we shall
soon see. The women are expected not to be garrulous, not to gad about from family
to family, and not to look at men in the streets. But many of them are extremely
garrulous, many of them gad about from family to family, and many of them look at
men in the streets. They are expected to be virtuous, while men are not, but this is not
such a great hardship, since most women are naturally chaste. They are deprived of
the consideration and social advantages which Western women enjoy, but once they
get used to it, they don't care about going to mixed parties, for they have their social
occasions and home parties as well, and just as little do they care for the privileges of
policing the streets or peddling iron wares. In fact, all the rest is unimportant
compared with their position in the home, in which they live and move and have their
being.
In the home the woman rules. No modern man can still believe with Shakespeare that
"Frailty, thy name is woman!" Shakespeare disproved this himself with his Cleopatra,
and with King Lear's daughters. Close observation of Chinese life seems to disprove
the prevalent notion of woman's dependence. The Chinese Empress Dowager ruled
the nation, whether Emperor Hsienfeng was living or not. There are many Empress
Dowagers in China still, politically or in common households. The home is the throne
from which she makes appointments for mayors or decides the professions of her
grandsons.
The more one knows Chinese life, the more one realizes that the so-called suppression
of women is an Occidental criticism that somehow is not borne out by a closer
knowledge of Chinese life. That phrase certainly cannot apply to the Chinese mother
and supreme arbiter of the household. Anyone who doubts this should read the Red
Chamber Dream, a monument of Chinese home life. Study the position of the
grandmother Chiamu, the relationship between Fengchieh and her husband, or that of
any other couple (that of the father Chia Cheng and his wife is perhaps most normal
and typical) and see whether it is the man or the woman who rules in the family. Some Western women readers might envy the position of the old grandmother, who was the
most honoured person in the whole household, who was treated with decency and
respect, and to whose chamber the daughters- in-law repaired almost every morning to
pay their respects and decide the most important family affairs. What if Chiamu had a
pair of bound feet and was secluded? The doorkeepers and men servants had to use
their feet more than she. Or study the character of Madame Water, the mother of the
Confucian hero in Tehsao Paqyen, who was well educated and a 'model of Confucian
wisdom, and who was undoubtedly the highest character in the whole novel. One
word from her could bring her son the prime minister to his knees, and she watched
over the welfare of the big family with infinite wisdom as a mother hen guards over
her chicken-yard. She ruled with a wise and benign rulership, and all the
daughters- in- law were her willing slaves. The character is perhaps overdrawn, but it is
not mere fiction. Yes, woman rules in the family, while man rules outside it, for
Confucius has set this sharp division of labour.
The women know it, too. To-day the salesgirls in the department stores of Shanghai
still look with eyes of envy on the married women with their fat handbags, and wish
they were buying instead of selling. Sometimes they wish they were knitting
sweaters for their babies instead of counting the change, and standing for a stretch of
eight hours is long and tiring in high-heeled shoes. Most of them know instinctively
which is the better thing. Some of them prefer their independence, but the so-called
independence in a man-ruled society does not amount to much. The cynical ones
laugh a little at this "independence." The primeval urge of motherhood 梖ormless,
wordless and vague and strong梖ills their whole beings. The maternal urge causes the
cosmetic urge, all so innocent, so natural and so instinctive, and they count the
savings from their starvation wages which hardly suffice to buy them the mesh
stockings they are selling themselves. They wish they had a boy friend to buy them
presents, and they would perhaps ask him to, indirectly, shyly, in an effort to keep
their self-respect. Chinese girls are essentially decent, but why shouldn' t they ask men
to buy them presents? How else may they purchase mesh stockings, which their
instinct tells them they must have? Life is such a mix-up! All too clearly the idea
dawns upon them that they want one man to buy them presents for life. They want to
marry. Their instinct is right. What is wrong in marriage? What is wrong in
protected motherhood?
In the home they have arrived. They knit and they sew, although now in the
middle-class families in Kiangsu and Chekiang they do not even cook or sew. For
men have beat them on their own ground, and the best tailors and cooks are men and
not women. Men will continue to beat them in every profession except marriage. For
men have every advantage over women outside marriage, while inside marriage
women have every advantage over men, and they know it. In every nation the
happiness of women does not depend on how many social advantages they enjoy, but
on the quality of the men they live with. Women suffer more from male tyranny and
coarseness than from the disqualification to vote. When men are naturally reasonable and good-tempered and considerate, women do not suffer. Besides, women have
always the weapon of sex, which they can use to great advantage. It is nature's
guarantee for their equality. Somehow every man, from emperor to butcher, baker and
candlestick-maker, has scolded his wife and been scolded by her, because nature has
ordained that man and woman should meet in their intimacies as equals. Certain
fundamental relations, like that between husband and wife, differ much less in the
different countries than one would imagine from travellers' descriptions. Westerners
are apt to imagine Chinese wives as mute slaves of their husbands, although actually
Chinese husbands, on the average, are fairly reasonable and considerate beings; while
Chinese are apt to think that, because the Westerners have never heard of Confucius,
therefore Western wives don' t look after their husbands' laundry and stomachs, but
simply go to the beach inpyjama suits or live in a continuous round of dancing-parties.
