Although Charlotte Bronte's book The Professor was her last published (post-mortem), it was actually the first novel she wrote and presents Charlotte's ideals of character and idealism of thought. The main character, William Crimsworth, is a man who must learn to live by his wits and abilities. The younger son of a tradesman, and declining his wealthy and titled uncles' connections to the Church and opportunities of matrimony, William first attempts to follow his deceased father's trade. His elder brother's unfriendly and exacting demands, however, and his own abhorence of the trade, force him away from all familial aid and turn him loose to follow another course. He lands on teaching, which suits him well and leads him to Brussels. [There is quite a bit of french dialogue in the book, so if you know any amount of french you'll have opportunity of exercising it here. But even if you don't know any french, don't use that as an excuse for not reading it; you can pick up the jist of the dialogue by context, or make use of a french-english dictionary.]
While teaching in a boys' school, William gains an opportunity to also teach classes in a girls' school. This introduces him to the world of jeune filles and Charlotte begins to paint a picture of the female sex through William's observations: "Let the idealists, the dreamers about earthly angel and human flowers, just look here while I open my portfolio and show them a sketch or two, penciled after nature." He then proceeds to describe the foibles, flaws, and feeble enticements of girls who "belonged to what are called the respectable ranks of society; they had all been carefully brought up, yet was the mass of them mentally depraved." He admits that the schoolroom does not give opportunity for the girls to show off their most charming assets. "In short, to the tutor, female youth, female charms are like tapestry hangings, of which the wrong side is continually turned towards him; and even when he sees the smooth, neat external surface he so well knows what knots, long stitches, and jagged ends are behind that he has scarce a temptation to admire too fondly the seemly forms and bright colors exposed to general view."
Two women catch his notice and William's choice surely projects Charlotte Bronte's idea of the ideal: a woman of intelligence, simplicity, and sensibility; one who is independent in thought yet willing to submit when submission does not require loss of personal or moral freedom; a woman perhaps lacking in outward beauty, but intent on developing moral character and applying to study; a woman strong but quiet, confident but unassuming. What Charlotte is doing at the same time is developing her ideal Man. In William we find some of the same traits of intelligence, rationality (slightly tinged with the romantic), and respect for personal freedom. In many respects Charlotte has presented a surprisingly modern picture.
One of the most interesting conversations comes near the end of the book when William observed to his wife that she was "a good and dear wife to me, because I was to her a good, just, and faithful husband. What she would have been had she married a harsh, envious, careless man - a profligate, a prodigal, a drunkard, or a tyrant - is another question..." If you read this book, let me know what you think of their subsequent conversation.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Review of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Page Turner has written an excellent review which relieves me of the need to write as much as I might have - please read it! (Find it in the posting below entitled, To Add to Your Reading on China. Thank you, H!) I appreciated this book and wish we could have made it more central to our discussion at the book club meeting. (This is the dilemma of choosing titles we haven't yet read...) Snow Flower brings so much to our theme of the year: women's roles and influences. Quoting Lily (the book's main character and narrator): "Anyone who says that women do not have influence in men's decisions makes a vast and stupid mistake." This book illustrates how women's struggle to define their femininity crosses all barriers of time and culture.
Page Turner has aptly discussed the theme of love, which is especially poignant set in a culture of honor and duty. Lily seems not to even recognize love and must learn, painfully, to value it. Through a series of events that lead to a crisis between Lily and her mother, and Lily's inability to forgive her mother, Lily attempts to hide her feelings, which she cannot understand. This, in turn, "set the stage for what happened later." As Lily writes, "I tried to keep an emotional distance from my mother - though on most days we were in the same room - by acting as though I'd matured into a woman and no longer needed tenderness. This was the first time I would do this - properly follow customs and rules on the outside, let loose my emotions for a few terrible moments, and then quietly hang on to my grievance like an octopus to a rock - and it worked for everyone. My family accepted my behavior, and I still looked like a filial daughter. Later I would do something like this again, for very different reasons and with disastrous results."
Another important theme in the book is the power of words. Learning about nu shu, the women's secret language, was fascinating! [This very real language has only recently died out and was used for over 1000 years!] When she is older, Lily realizes that nu shu is not secret from men, as she had been taught, but that "men just considered our writing beneath them." Men didn't think women had thoughts worth thinking about. How wrong they were! On the contrary, Lily comes to understand "that we learned ... songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives." It is Lily's inattentiveness to the nuances of nu shu that bring about her greatest failure and cause her deepest regret.
It has already been pointed out how insignificant women were thought to be in 19th century China. I would like to know how the practice of foot-binding began, since it served to reduce women's scope of influence. But the women themselves had a part in the continuation of this culture of repression. Mothers bound their daughters' feet. There is a joke Lily explains about the use of cloth to make bride-price gifts and how Snow Flower's (Lily's laotong, best friend, “Old Same”) life was in a sense reshaped by the unusual reuse of this cloth. She ends the explanation by saying: "All of it was women's work - the very work that men think is merely decorative - and it was being used to change the lives of the women themselves."
Finally, I want to note that Lisa See has composed a beautifully-written story. She has gleaned from 19th century Chinese culture both humor and horror, information and wisdom. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is worth reading.
Page Turner has aptly discussed the theme of love, which is especially poignant set in a culture of honor and duty. Lily seems not to even recognize love and must learn, painfully, to value it. Through a series of events that lead to a crisis between Lily and her mother, and Lily's inability to forgive her mother, Lily attempts to hide her feelings, which she cannot understand. This, in turn, "set the stage for what happened later." As Lily writes, "I tried to keep an emotional distance from my mother - though on most days we were in the same room - by acting as though I'd matured into a woman and no longer needed tenderness. This was the first time I would do this - properly follow customs and rules on the outside, let loose my emotions for a few terrible moments, and then quietly hang on to my grievance like an octopus to a rock - and it worked for everyone. My family accepted my behavior, and I still looked like a filial daughter. Later I would do something like this again, for very different reasons and with disastrous results."
Another important theme in the book is the power of words. Learning about nu shu, the women's secret language, was fascinating! [This very real language has only recently died out and was used for over 1000 years!] When she is older, Lily realizes that nu shu is not secret from men, as she had been taught, but that "men just considered our writing beneath them." Men didn't think women had thoughts worth thinking about. How wrong they were! On the contrary, Lily comes to understand "that we learned ... songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives." It is Lily's inattentiveness to the nuances of nu shu that bring about her greatest failure and cause her deepest regret.
It has already been pointed out how insignificant women were thought to be in 19th century China. I would like to know how the practice of foot-binding began, since it served to reduce women's scope of influence. But the women themselves had a part in the continuation of this culture of repression. Mothers bound their daughters' feet. There is a joke Lily explains about the use of cloth to make bride-price gifts and how Snow Flower's (Lily's laotong, best friend, “Old Same”) life was in a sense reshaped by the unusual reuse of this cloth. She ends the explanation by saying: "All of it was women's work - the very work that men think is merely decorative - and it was being used to change the lives of the women themselves."
Finally, I want to note that Lisa See has composed a beautifully-written story. She has gleaned from 19th century Chinese culture both humor and horror, information and wisdom. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is worth reading.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Chinese night
We should have had our March meeting at a Chinese restaurant, focusing as we did on Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution, with side dishes of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan -- all set in China. We spent some time piecing together what little each of us knew about Chinese history, trying to place the books in a time frame.
If you're interested, here's the Wikipedia entry for ancient Chinese history; and here's one about a book written in 18 BC about exemplary Chinese women. (Bear in mind, the title of the book is taken from a neo-Confucianist word used to mean "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; woman who dies defending her honor.") For the history of modern mainland China, see History of the People's Republic of China.
Glancing through the ancient history entry, I see that the Cultural Revolution wasn't the only tyrannical period in China's history: "An estimated 25 million people died during the Manchu conquest of the Ming Dynasty (1616-1644). . . . The Manchus enforced a 'queue order' forcing the Han Chinese to adopt the Manchu queue hairstyle and Manchu-style clothing. . . . The penalty for not complying was death." Yikes!
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is set about a thousand years ago, if I remember correctly from the discussion (not having read it myself). Of the three books, it has the most to say about the condition of women, and horrifies with its description of foot-binding. There's also the intrigue of a secret language for women. Be sure to read Page Turner's post below, with a reference to a review of this book on her blog. (We were very glad to see her at this meeting, coming all the way from the far reaches of Indiana!)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a coming-of-age book about two young men, but there is a significant young woman in the story -- a peasant girl. The young men have been sent to the countryside for re-education, their parents being on the wrong side of the Revolution. They come upon a treasure chest of Western novels, which they devour in their spare time off from grueling labor. The books act almost as a drug on the two teens; they can't get enough. The little seamstress, too, is overpowered as the boys read to her. Ironically, what makes peasant life bearable for them makes it unbearable for her.
The Red Scarf Girl depicts life for a 12-year-old girl as the Cultural Revolution unfolds. An excellent student with high hopes, her patriotism is challenged when she learns her family is also on the wrong side of the Revolution. She's puzzled, frightened, angered, and anguished when her hopes are dashed. As in Life and Death in Shanghai (by Nien Cheng), the rules gradually change and the pressure mounts. Who will be next to be singled out? Will the family's past be discovered? Should Ji-Li head off trouble for herself by renouncing her family?
I found frightening parallels between the mob behavior in Red Scarf Girl with this past week's news about the AIG bonuses. When a news report said that President Obama was "denouncing" the executives, and a US Senator said they should "retire or commit suicide," I had a shock of recognition. "Oh," I thought, "This outrage that I feel over the abuse of my tax dollars by a 'state-owned' company is what the Chinese felt over the abuses of feudal landlords." But the reaction, then as now, goes over the top. As Ji Li Jaing says, the lack of a good legal system is dangerous. She attributes the abuses of the Cultural Revolution to that lack. Without laws in place to prevent abuse and punish abusers, the mob will rule. (See this cartoon for a reference to our own Salem witch trials, and this article on Barney Frank as Madame Defarge.)
I know I haven't done justice to our discussion. I beg the rest of you to chime in.
If you're interested, here's the Wikipedia entry for ancient Chinese history; and here's one about a book written in 18 BC about exemplary Chinese women. (Bear in mind, the title of the book is taken from a neo-Confucianist word used to mean "woman who commits suicide after her husband's death rather than remarry; woman who dies defending her honor.") For the history of modern mainland China, see History of the People's Republic of China.
Glancing through the ancient history entry, I see that the Cultural Revolution wasn't the only tyrannical period in China's history: "An estimated 25 million people died during the Manchu conquest of the Ming Dynasty (1616-1644). . . . The Manchus enforced a 'queue order' forcing the Han Chinese to adopt the Manchu queue hairstyle and Manchu-style clothing. . . . The penalty for not complying was death." Yikes!
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is set about a thousand years ago, if I remember correctly from the discussion (not having read it myself). Of the three books, it has the most to say about the condition of women, and horrifies with its description of foot-binding. There's also the intrigue of a secret language for women. Be sure to read Page Turner's post below, with a reference to a review of this book on her blog. (We were very glad to see her at this meeting, coming all the way from the far reaches of Indiana!)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a coming-of-age book about two young men, but there is a significant young woman in the story -- a peasant girl. The young men have been sent to the countryside for re-education, their parents being on the wrong side of the Revolution. They come upon a treasure chest of Western novels, which they devour in their spare time off from grueling labor. The books act almost as a drug on the two teens; they can't get enough. The little seamstress, too, is overpowered as the boys read to her. Ironically, what makes peasant life bearable for them makes it unbearable for her.
The Red Scarf Girl depicts life for a 12-year-old girl as the Cultural Revolution unfolds. An excellent student with high hopes, her patriotism is challenged when she learns her family is also on the wrong side of the Revolution. She's puzzled, frightened, angered, and anguished when her hopes are dashed. As in Life and Death in Shanghai (by Nien Cheng), the rules gradually change and the pressure mounts. Who will be next to be singled out? Will the family's past be discovered? Should Ji-Li head off trouble for herself by renouncing her family?
I found frightening parallels between the mob behavior in Red Scarf Girl with this past week's news about the AIG bonuses. When a news report said that President Obama was "denouncing" the executives, and a US Senator said they should "retire or commit suicide," I had a shock of recognition. "Oh," I thought, "This outrage that I feel over the abuse of my tax dollars by a 'state-owned' company is what the Chinese felt over the abuses of feudal landlords." But the reaction, then as now, goes over the top. As Ji Li Jaing says, the lack of a good legal system is dangerous. She attributes the abuses of the Cultural Revolution to that lack. Without laws in place to prevent abuse and punish abusers, the mob will rule. (See this cartoon for a reference to our own Salem witch trials, and this article on Barney Frank as Madame Defarge.)
I know I haven't done justice to our discussion. I beg the rest of you to chime in.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
To add to your reading on China...
I highly recommend Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See to round out your reading on China this month. It is set in rural China in the early to mid-1800's, much earlier than the Cultural Revolution described in Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution, but I expect that the cultural history and the circumstances of women that it describes might add to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution more than a century later. If nothing else, it is amazing to contemplate the many changes, especially for women, that took place within that century. You can read my complete review here.
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