Writing Women in Modern China: An Anthology of Women's Literature from the Early Twentieth Century (review)

90 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 Amy D. Dooling and Kristina M. Torgeson, editors. Writing Women in Modern China: An Anthology ofWomen's Literaturefrom the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xii, 394 pp. Hardcover, isbn 0-231-10700-5. Paperback, isbn 0-231-10701-3. Only a few ofthe writers represented here are well known—Qiu Jin, Ding Ling, Lin Huiyin, Bing Xin, and Xiao Hong. Tugging the other thirteen out of obscurity cannot help but enrich the China field. The translations are uniformly readable and smooth, with only a very occasional awkward lapse. The introduction, crisp and cogent, places these writers in the context ofboth the political and literary times. The writers showcased here were extraordinarily privileged in the China of late Qing times to 1937. An astonishing fourteen of the eighteen received significant encouragement from their parents (often the father) or other close male relatives. Three ofthem also were aided, at least initially, by men prominent in literary circles. An additional two women received early encouragement from well-known literary men. Even more stunning, twelve ofthe eighteen sojourned overseas—for higher education, graduate degrees, work, or travel. During periods when their outspoken views jeopardized their safety, some also sought refuge in the foreign concessions in Shanghai. Thus, an overwhelming majority ofthese women writers benefited from the very institutions they often attacked—patriarchy and imperialism. This is hardly surprising (we see similar dependence on men, for example, in the Japanese Ema Saiko1), but what is perhaps surprising is that editors Amy Dooling and Kristina Torgeson decline to emphasize this. It is not that they ignore this dependence (these generalizations are extrapolated from facts included in their introduction and the briefbiographies of these writers); it is rather that they do not foreground it. Indeed, most ofthese writers were far more privileged than nearly all other persons in China—women or men—during the tumultuous times in which they lived and wrote. They were part ofthe elite responsible for the persistence of some of the very conditions they deplored. Like early feminists elsewhere, these writers concern themselves primarily with the women oftheir own class. Most do not see themselves forging a common cause with their less fortunate sisters. Exceptions are Qiu Jin and Chen 1999 by University xiefen The heroine ofQiu Jin's "Stories ofthe Jingwei Bird" does not distinguish between the elite and those who serve them. And in her impassioned essay, "Crisis in the Women's World," Chen Xiefen addresses all Chinese women and exhorts those with education to teach those who haven't gone to school. In ofHawai'i Press Reviews 91 "Aunty Liu," Luo Shu, too, demonstrates the ability to empathize with a woman ofa lower class, as does Xiao Hong in "Abandoned." But in a letter to her friend Shi Pingmei, Lu Yin clearly distinguishes between the upper class and the lower. Her condescension toward the "other" is also clear in the last sentence: You want me to take some responsibility for the burdens of ordinary poor women; ofcourse I cannot object, but thinking it over carefully, what more do I know than they? How am I any more enlightened? They are living their lives contentedly, so how can I bear to tear open the thin veil shielding them, only to make them recognize their own misfortune? (p. 141) And in the essay, "The Woes of the Modern Woman," Chen Xuezhao separates the educated and the illiterate even more sharply. This is more than condescension; it is arrogance: Men look upon their wives like [sic] they were still the illiterate women of the past, who, being incapable of economic independence, relied on men, and were the property of men, just like slaves, (p. 171) And male intellectuals "continue to treat educated women in the same manner in which they once treated old-fashioned illiterate women from the countryside" (p. 172). My overall reaction to the pieces collected here is that they reveal the inability ofboth the writers and their characters to effect social change. Despite the fact that many of the writers were active in protests, notably during the May Fourth Movement, they seem at maturity to have become...