El otro sexo del dragón: Mujeres, literatura y sociedad en China (The other sex of the dragon: Women, literature and society in China) (review)

356 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 Graeme Lang is an associateprofessor ofsociology in the Department ofApplied Social Studies specializing in science and technology studies, applied social research, and the sociology ofreligion. Taciana Fisac Badell. El otro sexo del dragón: Mujeres, literatura y sociedad en China (The other sex of the dragon: Women, literature and society in China). Madrid: Narcea S. A. de Ediciones, 1997. 158 pp. Paperback, isbn 84-277-1178-6. In the past twenty years, feminism and the development of gender studies have encouraged many scholars interested in China to explore the condition ofwomen in both traditional and modern Chinese society. With information drawn from classical texts, Confucian tradition, ancient and modern literature, sociological studies, codes of law, personal accounts, interviews, and a multitude ofother sources, a great effort has been made to determine what the role ofwomen was in Chinese history. The result has been an abundant literature in which there is a general agreement that, in spite of certain strategies of survival and undercover power that could be wielded by women, they were the most oppressed members of Chinese society, at least until the Revolution of 1949. After that, there is disagreement on their new status, which, in spite of an official egalitarian discourse, is far from having reached full equality. Taciana Fisac Badell, using literary sources both of and about women, presents a general survey on the condition ofwomen first in traditional Chinese society , then from the turn of the century until 1949 when women were caught in China's uneven efforts to modernize, and finally after the 1949 revolution, which brought about a total change for women, at least insofar as their legal status is concerned. The first part of El otro sexo del dragón cannot escape from the broad generalizations that a historical overview entails. It is informative, and the author offers a rather standard description of the lot ofwomen in traditional China: low position in the family, economic dependence, bound feet, one-way chastity, and so© 1998 by University forth. There is a survey ofthe Confucian view ofwomen, the view ofthe "great ofHawai'i Presstradition," using the term coined by Robert Redfield, which was also shared by women who wrote about women. Even the most "feminine" of expressions achieved through poetry could not escape the restraints of a proper Confucian Reviews 357 upbringing, and although we find good lyric poetry among women poets in China, there is no expression ofrebellion. In a survey ofdie classical literature (mainly written by males), the author engages in a titanic task ofsummarizing in about thirty pages the images ofwomen that appear from the Song to the Qing dynasties. Women are seductive or they are demons in Pu Songling's Liao Thai, both weak and dangerous in the Shuihu quan zhuan, evil and sexually driven in the Jin PingMei, and doomed in the Honglou meng. Unfortunately, because ofthe quantity ofmaterial surveyed, all this very interesting information is too brief, and the reader is left with a desire to know more about both the literary works and the society in which they were created. More than half ofthe book is devoted to the modern and contemporary periods , in which the author seems to be much more at home. Most of the discussion of the modern period is centered on Ding Ling, who is almost a symbol ofthe new writer and the modern woman. Ding Ling survived the difficult days ofthe Guomindang, joined the communists in Yan'an, and participated in the building of the new China only to be brutally criticized and persecuted in the long run. Thus she is a link between two periods plagued by ambiguities in the attitudes toward women, but she remained always true to herself. The chapter that deals with the period between 1949 and roughly 1976 (the official end of the Cultural Revolution) is less about literature and more about social and political changes in China. It is mostly a description of the contradictions that arise from an egalitarian discourse on the one hand and deeply rooted attitudes ofdiscrimination on the other. Women seem to be the pawns ofeconomic development, sometimes encouraged to join in the...