Chinese Flowers

Peony Pavilion, Peony in Love, and Chinese Women's Literature

I've been thinking of Chinese literature the last couple of days. I recently finished reading Lisa See's new book Peony in Love. Her writing is based on historic texts. She did a good job discussing Nu Shu (women's writing) in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and in Peony she centers the novel around the classic Chinese drama The Peony Pavilion by the late Ming playwright Tang Xianzu (1150-1616).

The Peony Pavilion relied upon the "cult of qing" (or genuine feelings) that men found attractive and desirable. It was seen as a predominately feminine attribute, but the literati and educated men tried to be "sensitive" as part of their cultivation. It corresponds roughly to early sentimentalism. In the story during a dream, the female character, Du Liniang falls in love with a man she has never met in real life. She even dreams about a sexual encounter with her mystery man. In her waking life, she begins to suffer from "love-sickness" so much so that she eventually dies from starvation. However, before dying she paints her self-portrait to capture both her beauty and spirit. When she dies, she is buried under a plum tree in the family garden. Years later, a young scholar, Liu Mengmei finds her portrait and falls in love with her. She then visits him in his dreams as a ghost, and "seduces" him. Eventually he resurrects her with his love, and they win the family's permission to marry.

In Peony in Love Lisa See explores the effects of the Peony Pavilion on young women. Generally, girls never met their future husbands until they married, so leaving home was highly traumatic. They had no control over their lives. It's argued by See and others that the Peony Pavilion as a "love story" raised young girls' hopes and gave them a strategy for power through starvation. Many writers describe the "lovesick maidens" that began to starve themselves. Lisa See hints in her book that these maidens actually hoped to be resurrected by love, but I'm rather incredulous of that belief. I think it just gave them a way of exerting some control. Anyway, stories of women perishing for love became integral to the male fantasy.

If you plan on reading the Peony in Love, you should probably stop reading here because plot details are important in my comment about the actual book. The characters in Peony in Love are based on a commentary later published about the play, supposedly written by three women. In 1694 Wu Ren, a male poet, claimed that his three wives had successively written their thoughts on the Peony Pavilion. This text came to be known as the Three Wives Commentary, although the first edition of the text was published under Wu Ren's name alone. He argued he had published in that way to protect his wives' virtue. In her book, See argues that it is essential to view this text as the product of female writers. But I would argue it's important to distinguish between genuine writing by women and men pretending to write as women. Men pretending to write as women emphasize female beauty; whereas, women writing their own texts, emphasize their thoughts, frustrations, or talents. In a poem found within the Three Wives Commentary one of Wu Ren's wives, Qian Yi, is reported to have written the following about the original lovesick maiden Du Liniang:

That I could glimpse your beauty for a moment cannot have been by chance,/ I saturated my brush and sketched your portrait so as to preserve your beauty. / From now on everyone will recognize your spring breeze face, /Heart-broken for your lover after a dream at dawn.

(Trans. by Idema and Grant 503)

Compare this with a text that is less-questionably written by a woman, Lin Yining:

A lifetime's failure and success are all an idle dream, /But the value of one's writing is a different matter. / I have the ambition to ferret out literature's secrets, / And emerge from the inner chambers a great scholar.

(Trans. by Idema and Grant 487)

In real women's writing, the act of writing and the written text are the beloved. "Beauty" is not identified as the tantamount good in a woman's life or person. Love-sickness for a man is not as felt as the desire for freedom and self-expression:

I do not want to be one of those lovesick mandarin ducks.

Don't think that I am nothing but longing and yearning.

All alone I think, all alone I ponder, and all alone I muse.

My heart is still here,

My soul is still here-- (511)

Even in this example by the legendary figure of Xiaoqing, one of the most famous lovesick maidens, there are probably pieces of the text that are genuinely from a woman's thoughtful hand and pieces of the text that are from the brain of male fantasy. In the end, what Lisa See argues about the importance of hearing women's voices is true, but I argue it's essential to be careful those voices are in their natural ranges and are not falsettos.