Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists: Sexuality and Male-Female Relations in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Fiction (review)

222 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 Keith McMahon. Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists: Sexuality and Male-Female Relations in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Fiction. Durham and London : Duke University Press, 1995. xii, 378 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 08223 -1555-6. Paperback $19.95, isbn 0-8223-1566-1. Keith McMahon continues to map out new terrain in his second book, Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists. By surveying a wide range ofeighteenth-century novels (here broadly defined as works from 1680 to 1820) for depictions ofpolygamy, Professor McMahon has compiled a rich sourcebook on fictional treatments oflateimperial gender and sexuality. The issues raised in this book will be important for those scholars interested in literary history, gender studies, and cultural studies. The first two chapters contextualize the fictional world ofthese novels within two other textual representations ofsexuality: the household manual, which warns of the social threat to the stability ofthe household ofexcessive emotional attachments, and the ars erotica, which reveals the potentially life-threatening danger of improper sexual behavior. The depictions of sexuality in the novels are often casebook illustrations of these two discursive traditions. Though brief mention is made of actual elite marriage and sexual practices, the study is about texts rather than practice. The distinction between fictional constructs and real people is occasionally muddied when McMahon ascribes psychological agency to the fictional archetypes, as in the following passage: "Crossing ofgender thus appears to be another form ofescapist regression, like the miser's, a self-centered, makeshift, and infantile attempt to preempt sexual division. In other words, all such regression is infantile and make-believe, an indication of the man's refusal or inability to give up the authority he has or thinks he has" (p. 289). It is unclear in this passage whether McMahon is ascribing psychological agency to the fictional characters or to the individual or collective unconscious ofthe author(s), where psychological agency truly lies. A much larger issue raised by McMahon's analysis of male sexual behavior is whether Freudian models ofpsychosexual development are universally applicable. What, for example, is the normative male subjectivity from which these characters are "regressing"? What Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists does best is introduce a wealth ofnew material on eighteenth-century fiction and the sexual imagination. The novels discussed range from shorter, formulaic scholar-beauty novels to lengthy and hybrid scholar novels. A number of these novels are available only in rare-book col-© 1996 by University lections, and manyhave received litde more thanbibliographic attention in either Chinese or Western scholarship. Chapter-length studies are devoted to Yesou puyan (A country codger's words of exposure) (for the sake of clarity, I will follow McMahon's translations of titles), Honglou meng (Dream of the red chamofHawai 'i Press Reviews 223 ber), QiIu deng (Lantern at the fork in the road), and the less well researched Lin Lan Xiang(The six wives ofthe wastrel Geng), Lu ye xianzong (Trails ofImmortals in the green wilds), Shenlou zhi (The mirage oflove), and Emu yingxiong zhuan (Tales ofboy and girl heroes). The chapters defining chaste and erotic romances discuss more than a dozen shorter scholar-beauty romances. For each of these novels, McMahon provides a quick synopsis and briefbibliographic notes; lively translations from the novels are woven throughout the analyses. However, from my perspective as a literary historian, I wish more information on editions and textual history had been provided, especially for the rarer novels. The complicated mosaic ofsexual and gender variations which emerges from McMahon's discussion ofthese novels reveals that sexuality was a major preoccupation ofthe late-imperial literati imagination, despite the supposed disinterest of Confucianism in matters sexual: monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, male and female homosexuality, female domination, and transvestism are just some of the themes treated. The sheer number ofworks discussed in this study provides a clearer vantage point from which to consider the depictions ofgender and sexual practices in mid-Qing fiction: which images are repeated so frequendy as to be "normative" of fictional standards, and which can rightiy be called subversive or transgressive? With the exception of the discussion of the narrative of successful polygamy in Emu yingxiong zhuan as a response to Honglou meng (chapter 13), the...