In recent years, the survival status of women has been constantly discussed and written, and it is an indisputable fact that most women are gender-discriminated in the workplace, and many professional women have spoken out for this, emphasizing the equality of men and women in their careers. But it is clear that the status of women in family life is still exploited and bound, and the terrible thing is that at this point, women's voices are often weak, and even women themselves are difficult to realize their position in family life, and it is precisely because of this that the concept of patriarchal society that women are unconsciously instilled is more acute and harsh.
Unlike the equality of men and women emphasized in today's workplace, in the positioning of family roles, women are naturally given the role of so-called "safe haven", in fact, this seemingly mild metaphor is the destruction of women's independent imagination. In these traditional role assignments and even family positioning, the image of women is actually distorted, and these emotional bindings also serve as tools for ideological control under the patriarchal society, continuing the concept of male domination of desire.
Poster of the movie "Kim Ji-young in '82"
The 2019 South Korean film "Kim Ji-young, born in 1982", actually offers a sharp discussion of the family status of such women that has long been ignored and domesticated. The caged nature of family life has never been revealed before, and the unconscious oppression and exploitation of women by women in the film has also aroused widespread discussion. In fact, the same concern has long been seen in Zhang Huiwen's novels.
In the writing of family life, she shows a sense of isolation and desolation, and the female figures in her writing are slow and obscured, often constructing the self into a mysterious bubble under the distorted space, running away from themselves in the field of the individual, but outside the self space, few people can notice their emotional anxiety, which also puts forward the thinking about the identity status of women in today's family life.
One
Cage attributes that are covered in family life
In the internal space of the family, women are often forced to be placed in closed narrow corners, such as kitchens, bedrooms and other places where they need to work, most of the time, women in the family carry a subservient position, that is, have to devote themselves to the tedious layout work, at the same time, these monotonous labors make women isolated from the outside world, which also leads to their having to submit to trivial and disorderly work, day after day self-repression.
In fact, from the perspective of family space, women in this enclosed space are fleeing from the blows and oppression of patriarchal society, and women have to be subordinate to this oppression and become part of men's property, isolated from their spouses. Regarding the state of patriarchy and husband power, in fact, most literary works are displayed and written, so Zhang Huiwen also put forward a new thinking, that is, the self-compromise that women face after becoming mothers.
Under the patriarchal social order, women's living conditions are constantly built in and assimilated, which is also the problem that Zhang Huiwen hopes to talk about in his novels, obviously, today, it is difficult for us to intuitively feel the situation of "male superiority and female inferiority", but in fact, sexism is everywhere, and the solidified concept of gender also exists in family and workplace life.
Speaking of the novel "The Silent Mother"[1], in fact, this is a work with a strong mixture of Eastern and Western cultures, a Chinese woman married to the United States, with all the so-called female "good qualities" in Asian culture, she is virtuous, family-oriented, and does not love vanity, which is considered the best candidate for a wife in any patriarchal society, and it is precisely for this reason that Mr. Walker almost did not hesitate to marry this woman.
As a bystander to examine this marriage is not difficult to see its deformity and ridiculousness, Mr. Walker, as a husband and father, that is, the absolute ruler of this family, he has a strong selfish color, he takes the demands of Chinese wives - virtuous, conservative, family care, children, etc., to demand his wife, on the other hand, he refuses to pay the burden of the husbands common in Chinese families, he calculates every expenditure, and at the same time refuses to pay the money for the wedding banquet, nor does he refuse to let his parents live in the house.
Apparently, these bonds and repressions slowly accumulated into Mrs. Walker's daily life, but when her father fell ill and she wanted to get some money from her husband, she faced a harshness that she had never faced before, and the husband gave one example after another to refuse to give the money, and Mrs. Walker, who had lived in a cage for a long time without knowing herself, finally understood the truth of her life.
The truth of life seemed to be revealed in front of her in an instant, that is, she did not have a penny of her own! And the deeper truth behind this is that in this family, she does not have any decision-making power, nothing here belongs to her, and her meaning here is to have one child after another! She became heartbroken overnight.
Also held captive by the cage of life is the "she" in World of Two[2], whose characters are not named throughout the novel, and seem to imply that this life is similarly laid out in the daily lives of most women. In fact, the "she" in the novel is not a traditional mother or wife image to some extent, "she" is not sure of the love for the child, "she" can not do the full dedication to the child, but also feels angry at the husband's "immaturity", and more inconsistent with the ordinary patriarchal culture is that "she" has a lover. But it is also through this lover that the novel shows "her" difficulties and closures in married life.
The novel mentions many times the difference between women and men facing new lives, for "she" she must experience life being filled with boys and housework, must experience constant distress and chores, children occupy all her space, whether physical or psychological, in these numb and trivial events, she no longer has a whole piece of time, must be accustomed to compromise with tedious living conditions.
But for the husband, he was "consistent." He is the one who always welcomes the arrival of the child." He was neither aware of his wife's change nor able to make effective counseling.
After retiring to family life, women face not only the loss of economic conditions, but also a complete disconnect from the outside world, but also the triviality and wandering of their own lives, so when the "she" in the novel begins to refuse to visit her lover, and "no longer gets happiness and sweetness from his phone", she is facing the rupture of being changed.
At the end of the novel, she is no longer able to derive pleasure from the pleasures of the flesh, and even in bed, she thinks of her son again and again, and at the same time she shows her lover her side as a mother, messy, sloppy, "imagining his reaction to seeing herself with a self-destructive, mixed with vengeance pleasure." From here, whether physically or mentally, "she" has entered the cage of the family.
Under the claustrophobic space of the living individual, life is slow, the space is cramped, and the pain of isolation not only disconnects women and social life, but also separates from the pillow person and even other people in family life, which profoundly symbolizes the veiled bondage and cage. The caged nature of family life that we are discussing today is also here, from the perspective of Eastern Confucianism, the idea of "female protagonist" has a profound impact on family relations, and under the social principles of patriarchy, women must stand in the ethical perspective and retreat to the back of life by taking care of the family, obeying human feelings, etc.
Two
Females collapse inward and break outward
After the cage of silence, what we need to explore is the entanglement and escape of women after isolation from the outside world. When women are discordant in the social order and the daily order of life, even if they are silent, there is a possibility of outbreak and collapse. In fact, Zhang Huiwen often talks about women's escape from marriage in her women's novels. In these works, it is difficult for women to get care or respect from family life, only the endless indifference and oppression of men, so in the face of this day-to-day pain, women can only choose to flee and rebel.
Obviously, especially in the eastern social order, one of the cores of the domestication of women in patriarchal society is the admonition in marriage and family, and after women are forced to surrender to the family and lose their social status, their social roles are kidnapped and naturally assumed as hidden servile identities. On the one hand, in a patriarchal society, men do not need to express gratitude for women's efforts, and all the efforts in the family seem to be deserved; on the other hand, women need to thank men for the money they bring back, and the men who exist as earners seem to have a higher social value than women, and women's value is naturally ignored.
When gender relations are placed in family life, there is often a role of a mother-in-law, in fact, this role represents the vertical core of women in the patriarchal ruling order, under the traditional concept, "many years of daughter-in-law to become a wife", this sentence can be seen in the absolute vassalage of women under traditional thinking. Even if the status of "mother-in-law" gives women a lofty power in old age, this power is still subordinate to men, and it is also directed at "sons" to squeeze daughters-in-law as "accomplices".
In the conclusion of traditional Marriage in China, people in the parent-child relationship attach importance to human morality, so women's emotional projection of their sons is accompanied by the suppression and exclusion of daughters-in-law, they demand the absolute obedience of daughters-in-law, and also act as the "accomplices" of gender rulers, forcibly pulling women back into family life, through this one-dimensional gender domination and age advantage, to try to meet their own emotional and power needs.
Therefore, in order to escape from this caged situation, the oppressed tragic woman partly chooses the collapse of the self inward, and partly chooses the outward rupture. From the novel "The Silent Mother", Mrs. Walker in the novel is a typical self-collapser, when she realizes the "truth of life", on the surface, she still maintains decency and virtuousness, doing housework as usual, but at the same time, she can't swallow in front of her husband. But when her husband left, "she hid like a rat all kinds of cheap snacks she bought in the supermarket in empty boxes in the garage, and then took them out when the children were asleep, or watching TV, or playing upstairs, and greedily stuffed potato chips, snickers, colored fudges, cream cookies into her mouth like a person with swallowing compulsion disorder..."
Later in the daughter's narrative, the mother went to self-destruction in the mental illness of bipolar disorder. She was a silent, reticent conformist, and her pity lay not only in the fact that she was poisoned by the so-called "virtuous and virtuous" ideas, but also in her inability to resist. In fact, her struggle can only show tragedy from self-destruction. We can imagine that if this dream does not wake up, Mrs. Walker will always be Mr. Walker's silent, obedient wife, but unfortunately, her father's illness and Mr. Walker's indifference will wake her up quickly from the dream, and her misfortune lies in this, she has been manipulated all her life, but the cruel social reality also makes it impossible for her to truly choose to awaken, and the only thing she can use to rebel is life, which is her most fierce but also the most bleak resistance to the patriarchal society.
Of course, it is worth mentioning that the plot construction of the father's illness is also about after the author's thinking, women who flee from the patriarchal culture are forced to get involved in the husband's power, and her awakening is actually the self-torture under the tilt of patriarchy and husband's power.
In the novel Rose Rose[3], the author writes about another outward search and rupture. The hostess of the island graciously invited "I" to visit her home, but when "I" arrived on the island and came into contact with her life, "I" learned about the coercion and pain in the seemingly vast space.
Asexual marriage causes a woman's collapse and fear under the repressed desire, if "The World of Two" and "Silent Mother" are all about the emotional blackmail that women encounter in the parent-child relationship, then "Rose rose" [3] shows the emotional scarcity in the spousal relationship. The novel borrows the complex situation in asexual marriage, effectively writing about women's self-denial under this repression and autism.
From the perspective of "I", the couple is born a couple, supports each other and loves each other, but under marriage, their respective pains can only be understood by themselves, on the one hand, the lack of sex to a large extent represents the lack of emotion and isolation, women can not get real warmth from intimate relationships; on the other hand, under the influence of East Asian culture, women must also suppress their sexual desires, so the hostess can only choose to say everything to "me", even at the moment of full collapse of her own situation. She can only make a broken output, rather than a complete self-search. Under the completely sharp outward fracture, the novel presents the silence and dislocation of women in the lonely moment, unable to obtain warmth in the intimate relationship of the family, and the novel concludes a fuller emotional tension.
The same emotional blackmail also appears in the novel Snow from the South,[4] where the family remains the center of the storm, while the novel chooses the male as the eye of the storm, looking back at the struggle and loss of the two women. The story told in the novel is not complicated: a divorced single man with a young daughter tries to make his lover and daughter coexist peacefully after meeting someone he likes, but under the ignorance of his young daughter, he loses the possibility of starting over.
In fact, the core of this kind of story is not uncommon, the contradiction between step-parents and stepchildren has always been an enduring theme of writing in Eastern families, however, the novel begins with an email, trying to show the undercurrent and storm of the father-daughter under the long peaceful life, the weak daughter is the executioner who once personally destroyed his love, and Xu Ning, who was misunderstood by him, will never come back.
On the other hand, Xu Ning's role also deserves attention, in the novel, she is actually a gentle stepmother image, even in the face of his unprovoked accusations and loss of control, as well as Xiao Min's chaotic deception and pretense, she chose to leave categorically:
"No need to answer, no need to say anything!" She stood up and said, taking a tissue to wipe the tears from her face, looking relieved, "I should have understood it a long time ago." I should have thought this would turn out like this..."
In Xu Ning's world, her relief is not an outward rupture, and the subjective projection of the stepmother image certainly carries the label of preconceived notions in an unfamiliar environment, and at the same time, the timely escape of women in family life also leads to a completely different mode of thinking. This escape is a figurative struggle after absolute domination and prevents them from becoming sacrificial objects in family life.
Three
Women's self-game under the "whim"
As immigrant writers, we often talk about Zhang Huiwen's sense of identity and identity about the culture of difference that Zhang Huiwen shows in her novels, in fact, in its realistic novels, most of the characters are permeated with a kind of difficult identity anxiety. This is also the core of the novel's narrative, and this culture shock brings about the discussion of the survival dilemma and the capture of emotions, especially in terms of female identity, most of the female figures in her novels have different degrees of identity anxiety, they have a desire for family life, and at the same time, they also have a yearning for the unknown far away.
Under this separation of desires, the novel presents a metaphorical portrayal of the lives of immigrants, especially for women, who often face a double dilemma. From the perspective of family life, in Zhang Huiwen's novel, most of the women's immigrants are mostly related to their spouses, so their rush is actually to leave the original family and go to another place to rebuild their homes, which is undoubtedly a kind of wandering and wandering of life encounters. At the same time, they also need to face the regular soul wandering and exploration, in life, their life course is real and hidden, the novel pays attention to women's inner feelings, and their rootless dazedness is deeply written and displayed.
In the previous article, we talked about the imprisoned situation of female consciousness in family life, in fact, the deep level of family imprisonment is the rebellion against the idea of husband power and even male power, and in Zhang Huiwen's other novels, she eliminated this kind of confrontation for resistance or intuitive confrontation, but in the perspective of gaze, reflecting the game and pursuit of feminism. This gaze often comes from another emotion that women open up outside of intimate relationships, as lovers or "confidants with red faces", in this relationship they open up another side of themselves as women, and it is from this seemingly wrong feeling of regret that the novel pushes women's awakening consciousness to a climax.
From the novel "Memories of Nanjing"[5], the emotions of the first-person "I" are complex and turbulent. Zhang Huiwen cleverly borrows the identity of immigrants to show the double emotional dilemma of women. On the one hand, "I" am used to living with my boyfriend and am not ready to change this life, but the emergence of "he" has changed this situation, and at the same time, this small spiritual derailment of "I" has also made "me" have a deeper understanding of my own emotions.
This can be seen as a small "whim" of women in a long-term and constant intimate relationship. In fact, this kind of "whim" is not the loss of emotion, but can be seen as women's bystanders and floating for marriage and even love, for "I", this "unusual friendship" is the identity search after women's determination, and the corrected mistakes are sad after many years, and it is also out of some untraceable nostalgia.
As early as Camelot's novel The Woman Behind the Mask[6], there is a depiction of this "whim": "She will loosen the lips of the young man like a grape peel, and then leave, wander around, be intimate with the other people she meets, forget about them, until she returns home tired, savoring her independence, freedom, and frankness that stems from a determined personality, and the lonely, empty and shameless, strange pleasure of being a stranger—like this simple affair under this boring situation. A small mask and strange outfit made her taste like that. ”
The accumulation of this emotional emotion is the deconstruction of male power, which has nothing to do with the so-called rebellion or awakening, but more about the redemption of self-growth, a self-growth that does not depend on men. In "Memories of Nanjing", "I" is a person to look back at the perspective of middle age, the novel no longer has emotional trade-offs, but also does not have any unethical factors, on the contrary, the novel is a deep writing of the individual's inner emotional world, this role has the hidden tolerance of women, but also has a concern for their own desires.
Obviously, from the title of the novel, it can be seen that from the perspective of looking back at people to middle age, the loss of "I" is actually nostalgia and retrospective of the emotional relationship of "I", after immigration, the identity of "I" is missing, whether it is family life or life experience overseas, which makes "I" lose the surge of vitality, and it is precisely for this reason that "I" miss men can also be seen as nostalgia for "Nanjing", that is, for that period of life. The novel uses this emotional complexity to express a woman's silent grief and struggle.
In the social context, women's desires are often in a state of aphasia, therefore, women's tearing at the moment of looking back is actually a denial of the "original self", the pursuit of the "superego", the "I" in the novel, no matter how bland the self-life is, always harbors the desire and planning for the ideal other, for that period of "whim" that has never happened, many years of life has tampered with this small spiritual derailment, which constitutes the pursuit of the ideal of the superego.
Obviously, in the social situation, the image of women often can not escape the wife or mother, in this parent-child relationship or emotional relationship, women's sense of independence is hidden, it is precisely for this reason that Zhang Huiwen put forward her new thinking. In her novels, we can see women's search for self-emotional relationships, and the seemingly betrayal of emotional writing is a distinct and accurate female power, in fact, they also shape their independent consciousness and identity through the awakening of emotional relationships.
Four
Figurative metaphors in erotic symbols
No matter how feminist literature is interpreted and changed, no matter how women's social identity is sought, in fact, writing about feminism can never escape the control and domination of the body. Due to natural physiological factors, women are often forcibly given a dominant position in sexual life, and men's control over women comes from this, coupled with the exchange of money and sexual relations, which makes women become subordinate and do not have the value of being treated equally.
But in today's feminist literature, we can often see the emphasis on women's privilege, at the same time, women have a new recognition and understanding of their own physical control, women are no longer subordinate to men to obtain sexual pleasure and sexual value, on the contrary, women have become dominant, in the arbitrary control of rebellion to dissolve the attachment of lust, complete the identification and writing of their own gender.
From the novel "Double Parts"[7], similar to "Memories of Nanjing", the novel is also a middle-aged person who looks back at the emotions experienced when he was young, and he also has a sense of loss about this unencovered feeling. But the difference between the male and female perspectives has since emerged.
In the novel "Memories of Nanjing", "I" communicate with "him" on an equal footing and have an "unusual friendship", but it ends here, and it is because of this person that "I" still have a good feeling for Nanjing to this day. But in the novel "Double Part", the memory of "I" as a man is gray and heavy. For "me," the image of that woman carries more complex emotions.
The novel sets this woman in the image of a "high-class prostitute", and for the "I" who has just entered the business field, it takes a lot of strength to stay in the mud and not stain the dirt, so the rescue of the prostitute is also a figurative identity symbol. The woman's body constructs a holy space of power that represents a strong power. On the one hand, the body is the capital of this woman's existence and the reason why she can get the exchange of benefits; on the other hand, she will also use her wisdom to earn "double" money. When "I" advise her to conform to Liang and hope that she can have a normal life, she turns around and informs her to a higher level. This metaphor for the loss of physical control of a prostitute actually reflects the total rout of "me" under lust and interest.
In fact, at the end of the novel, "I" have discovered that "I" have long since become the woman that "I" once looked down on or could not understand:
"He sometimes suddenly fell into that gloomy mood, as if shrouded in a thick fog... And he still has to spend the rest of his bleak life in the trivial, meaningless affairs of day after day... At his age, there was little worth his excitement and hurry, except to catch, possess, and experience that little bit of happiness, but that happiness dissipated in a flash, and then threw him in the long shadows. He thought that he also had his "double share", something that he knew was despicable and sinful but could never give up. ”
It is in this way that a savior is transformed into a catcher, and the novel not only involves the female body in politics, but also uses a huge subversive force to reverse and satirize the structure of power. The woman who took the "double share" seems to be subordinate, but she has the right to dominate the "me" at that time, and the "I" who later dissolves itself in the long shade cannot return to the state of innocence, and can only create an illusory form of desire, sinking into the power relationship to write the eternal discursive hegemony, and the narrator's criticism and reflection on the center of the storm eye.
As an immigrant writer, Zhang Huiwen's works are often able to transcend a single country and show more intensely the western field from the perspective of the East, and under the emotional dilemma reset by the novel, the writer completes the writing of the spiritual bondage dilemma through the separation of women's self-worth search and family identity, under this emotional tension, the novel has a strong ideological shock, and at the same time, it can penetrate into the real world and outline the collapse and collapse under the abnormal space.
[1] Zhang Huiwen, "Silent Mother", Jiangnan, 2018, No. 5.
[2] Zhang Huiwen, "The World of Two", Harvest, 2019, No. 2.
[3] Zhang Huiwen, "Roses and Roses", Harvest, 2020, No. 3.
[4] Zhang Huiwen, "Snow from the South", People's Literature, 2019, No. 4.
[5] Zhang Huiwen, "Memories of Nanjing", Huacheng, 2020, No. 6.
[6] [French] Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette: The Woman Behind the Mask, Tianjin: Tianjin People's Publishing House, 2018.
[7] Zhang Huiwen, "Double Parts", Shanghai Literature, 2019, No. 5.
The original article was published in The Guangdong Sea Wind, No. 4, 2021
Some of the images come from the Internet
Editor: Xu vv