"The worst thing that happens to a woman is precisely to cater to the male mind, to gladly and vainly see herself as a prey to be pursued, as a desired object, a property to be defended."
- "Rejoice"
Joy, Dacha Malayini, China Friendship Publishing Company, translated by Yu Tingting, 2021
"Joy" is not so much a novel as it is a philosophical prose cloaked in the skin of a novel. The book begins with the protagonist "I" when he was six years old in Kyoto, Japan: "I" was misunderstood by my father to stain his book with ink, and after losing my mother's trust, I had the idea of running away from home, and "I" rebelled against "injustice" with this unfulfilled thought. "Fairness" thus becomes the starting point for speculative discussion of the entire book, and extends to issues such as justice, right and wrong, and morality. Then "I" recalled my stillborn son, and remembered the past when my husband left "me" for this reason and moved to the United States with his lover. "I" began to wander, looking for plots and statements in myths, religions, and texts that stigmatized women. "I" became a staunch feminist, speaking up and acting for women's rights. All of this stems from Dacha Malayini's real-life experiences when she was young. No wonder she said, "It's not a novel, it's an autobiography, stemming from the painful memory of losing a child when I was seven months pregnant." ”
At that time, Dacha Malayini was young, fully devoted to literature, drama and the arts, and dreamed of becoming a writer. She married a painter, and a short and happy marriage bore fruit—giving birth to a boy. Dacha Maraini was bedridden for months, reading a lot of books and talking to the children in her belly, telling him about the books he had read, his fears and dreams, and the struggles he had fought for women's rights as a feminist. Unfortunately, the child died before it was born, and Dacha Maraini fell into pain and depression. When this passage returned to Dacha Malayini's memory decades later, she began to study it and write it into a book. "Joy" is somewhere between imagination and non-fiction, and although it has the structure of a novel, it tells the story of what really happened. The Nagoya concentration camp mentioned in the book is where Dacha Maraini and her family were imprisoned while living in Japan during World War II, because their father, an anthropologist, had liberal ideas, and the Dacha Mariaini family was held in a fascist concentration camp for three years and suffered inhuman treatment. This made the writer jealous of fascism, which was often presented in her works.
Dacha Mariaini
The most important plot of Joy is that the seven-month-old child is stillborn (then named "lost"), and in order to alleviate the pain, "I" fantasize that the child is still in the belly and gradually grows up. "I" developed the habit of talking to my children, with whom I "explored seduction, pedophilia, slut-shaming, gender antagonism, and the loss of feminine value in the world of male forefathers." The dialogue between "I" and the dead son is actually more of "me" pouring out to "lost", and only after the child grows up, the two accidentally have a real dialogue. Italian journalist Ariane Farage once wrote "Letter to an Unborn Child", which is a very appropriate subtitle for "Joy". At the same time, the way ideas are expounded and expressed in the form of dialogue reminds us of the philosophical novels of the French Enlightenment period, such as Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master. It can be said that Dacha Malayini expounded her feminist views under the guise of the dead child. "Why does disgust with women become an imperceptible poison, even in the blood of the noblest?" This misogyny is a true and deeply rooted cultural tradition. Dacha Malayini reflects on the "real and deep cultural tradition" of "misogyny".
But it's a bit strange that a book that in the form of a verbal indictment of patriarchy's suppression of women's freedom doesn't have a real male character. One of the objects of communication of "I" is the "loss" of the son who died in the womb, I imagine him becoming a man after the rebellion of adolescence, "losing" is not actually a real male character, he is a hypothetical object of talk. Another of "I's" communicators is her high school tablemate and girlfriend, Sylvana, who, after experiencing a broken marriage, began to be exposed to feminist ideas under the influence of "I". It's not true that there are no male characters in the book, like "my" grandfather and father, and the ex-husband who is a painter has appeared, but it is only mentioned that "I" has never had a substantive dialogue with them. Wouldn't a book that deeply reflects on the oppressive situation of women and makes men blatantly absent? If the author really intends to expose the nature of patriarchy, then at least men who are "defendants" should be allowed to appear and explain their views, right? But no, consciously or unconsciously, Dacha Maraini faded the voice of men, seemingly deciding that it was enough to criticize the patriarchal world from a female perspective alone, even if she was telling the truth and the truth.
We can conclude from this that Dacha Malayini's reason for this treatment is to reveal at a deeper level that women's motives for accusing men are actually circulating in an internal self-communication. She may know that if men and women are allowed to argue their respective views as they do on the debate stage, there will be no reconciliation, and the two sides will only express their own ideas from their respective positions. This shows a pessimistic perception deep in Dacha Malayni's subconscious, and also points to the real dilemma that most women face: it is not so easy to physically rebel against patriarchy. This explains why "I" can only talk to my dead son and girlfriend, and only in the face of them can I express those profound feminist ideas in a righteous and solemn way. Especially in the dialogue with the son's "loss", "I" is on the side of absolute strength and output of opinions, gushing and quoting scriptures to talk about the "stigmatization" of women, like a battle text, bursting out of the mouth of "I", full of aggression. This is a "preachy" woman who can only instill the right feminist ideas in the young minds of boys, as the characters in the book put it, "I insist on getting into my son's stubborn head and making him understand how history has shaped these two so different, eternally opposing creatures, as if they were two opposing sides, but not in reality." "This may be a helpless move that has to be so helpless in a bad real-world environment."
Dacha Malayini has worked, although still in the imagination. She observes the growth process of "loss" and further understands how the "misogynistic" plot of men is formed. "Lost" escapes from his mother and family, who protect him, and joins a male world of rebellious teen gangs ("a world that has been rationally constructed by generations"). Seeking recognition, he began to imitate the behavior of other boys, with the result that he learned to belittle and insult women as if they were objects. The views that Dacha Malayini wants to express here are the same as those expressed by the famous Japanese feminist scholar Chizuru Ueno in her book Misogyny. Chizuru Ueno believes that the way to make a man a man is not a woman of the opposite sex, but a man of the same sex. "The sexual subjectivization of men requires a male group that recognizes themselves as men. As Lacan said, 'Desire is the desire of the other,' and men become sexual subjects by imitating the sexual desires of other men. So, the path to becoming a man, there is no diversity. She also has a more incisive argument: sexual discrimination is the act of assimilating a woman into a man who acts together by the other, and that is the essence of "misogyny."
Dacha Mariaini and Moravia, the two have lived together
Misogyny: Female Disgust in Japan, Chizuru Ueno, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, translated by Wang Lan, 2015
At the end of "Joy", "Loss" passes through ignorant and rebellious adolescence, undergoes the tribulations and baptisms of love, and becomes a real man. He met a woman, learned about the mysteries and joys of women, love and independence, and his fear of the female world disappeared. It can be said that "loss" saves itself from the "misogynistic" male world under the inspiration of women and becomes a real man. This plot aptly validates Goethe's famous quote in Faust, "The eternal woman who leads us up." Dacha Maraini is not completely disappointed in men, in her view, to achieve equal rights for men and women, in addition to women's self-awareness needs to awaken, men must also be baptized by feminist thought from an early age, recognize the real female world, and get rid of the "misogynistic" complex. As she says in the book, "How best to teach a child to respect women and get rid of the logic of patriarchy that today's boys will eventually absorb and repeat unconsciously." "This is a manifestation of a certain idealistic belief of Dacha Maraini.
Originally called Corpo Felice, "Joy" is directly translated from Italian as Chinese is "Joyful Body". But can women really get the experience of joy from the body without being stigmatized? Traditional cultures despise women for telling about their physical feelings, especially sexual experiences. "No one speaks of women's sexual desires. Although it lives in the female body, it cannot be seen, and it does not have a visible and recognizable image. "Whenever people mention female sexuality, they think of male sexuality." The independent existence of female sexual desire is not recognized, but is lost in the simulation of pain. The female body is a body of pain, not a "body of joy." Dacha Mariaini took the title of the book, perhaps to tell the reader that women should learn to "rejoice" in themselves, which is a matter of course. The road to "joy" is open and natural, and feminism stimulates the awakening of women's self-consciousness and removes the shackles, derogatory and stigma that tradition has imposed on women. "The worst thing that happens to a woman is precisely to cater to the male mind, to gladly and vainly see herself as a prey to be pursued, as a desired object, a property to be defended." Only by moving away from the idea of materializing the self can women attain "joy."
Praise should be given to Dacha Mariaini. As one of the most important female writers in the contemporary Italian literary world, Mariaini has been "standing on the female side" throughout her life, paying attention to women's living conditions and actively speaking out for the interests of women. She is a prolific writer who has published more than 60 works in genres including novels, essays, poetry, and news reports since her debut novel, Vacation in 1961. On June 25, 2021, Dacha Maraini received the 37th Premio Hemingway, a late-coming honor. Now in her eighties, Mariaini is still working tirelessly, latest in a collection of critical essays, "The Moderate Revolution: Reflections on a Changing State." We are looking forward to more of her work being translated into Chinese."
Editor: Deng Jiefeng
Second instance: Liu Ya
Third trial: Chen Tao, Wang Yang