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Source | The public number Phoenix Network Reading
The original text is excerpted from "Mirror - Women's Literary Reading Class" Author: Zhang Li Publisher: Huacheng Publishing House Published: 2022-3
How modern women can achieve both family and career seems to be a problem that every working woman will face today. In fact, this problem has long existed, during the Republic of China period, "the first batch of public students studying in the United States, the first female university professor, the author of the first vernacular novel" female Chen Hengzhe, during her pregnancy completed the "Western History" that Hu Shi called "pioneering works", but in the process she also realized the cost of becoming a mother: "You can hire someone to raise and nurture your children for you, but your heart is still not free."
In the following, scholar Zhang Li retraces the story of Chen Hengzhe's life as a woman, in her view, Chen Hengzhe's later efforts to complete the duties of a mother did influence academic creation, however, the success of Chen Hengzhe and even every woman is not only related to her career, cultivating successful children, or taking care of life well is also a kind of success - the standard of women's success should be defined by themselves.
How modern women can achieve both family and career
| Zhang Li
I don't know if you have noticed that successful women will always encounter the problem of how to balance family and career when interviewed, but few people will ask men this question, as if they naturally do not have this problem. Even a woman who is successful in her career, if she has no family and no children, will be attacked and said to be a failure. On the other hand, if a woman becomes a full-time wife and concentrates on raising her children, she will be considered to have no financial ability and lack of professionalism, which is also a failure. So what exactly are the criteria for success for women?
In front of his career and family, the young Chen Hengzhe chose a career
To discuss this topic, I would like to start with an amazing woman in the history of literature. The woman's name was Chen Hengzhe.
The history books have given her many definite words: the first batch of public students studying in the United States, the first female university professors, the author of the first vernacular novel... This is a number of records that belong to her, especially her experience of entering Peking University to teach in 1920 and becoming the first female professor at Peking University, which is unprecedented in the history of modern education and also opens the way for Peking University to recruit female students.
The picture shows Cao Chengying, who is one of Hu Shi's friends with Chen Hengzhe. Chen Hengzhe (1890.7.29 -1976.1.7), pen name Sha Fei, ancestral home of Hengshan, Hunan, in 1914 after the Tsinghua Study Abroad Quota went to the United States, successively studied Western history and Western literature at Vaasa College and the University of Chicago, and obtained bachelor's and master's degrees.
Today, Chen Hengzhe's life is a legend, and the reason why it is a legend is not due to fate, is because she herself has been trying to become a "life-maker".
As a girl born at the end of the Qing Dynasty, she always had to face various choices in life. For example, whether to tie feet, whether to go to school, whether to marry according to the orders of parents. In the face of choice, Chen Hengzhe can always make the right decision. At the age of seven, she was determined not to tie her feet. —— If foot binding is very painful and inconvenient to walk, why should it be wrapped? Again and again, she took off the shroud. After many iterations, her mother respected her decision. Next, where is the future of the girl who does not wrap her feet? Go to school. Her uncle told her that there are three kinds of people in the world, one is a person who lives in peace, one is a person who complains about life, and one is a person who "makes life". Apparently, the phrase "make a life" ignited her courage. After graduating from medical school at the age of eighteen, her father selected a young man of good character for her to be her husband. She quarreled, cried, and stubbornly resisted, but there was still no room for negotiation. She fainted during one of the fiercest arguments, and the parents had to realize that the daughter really did not want to get married because she wanted to remain free "in order to realize her ambition to develop in the intellectual world."
Don't tie your feet, go to school, and resolutely don't get married, how cool Chen Hengzhe was when he was young. And even cooler was when she was twenty-four. It was 1914, and she saw the newspaper: Tsinghua Xuetang was the first time to recruit beautiful students nationwide. Among the more than forty candidates, she ranked second, and uncontroversially became the first batch of publicly assigned female students.
The solitary, strong-willed girl finally boarded the ship to the United States, and she saw the vast world and the new world. At that time, Chen Hengzhe's English name was Sha Fei, and she was a famous unmarried person, a typical literary and artistic young woman. There is a photo with female classmates on the gallery pavilion, she smiles white teeth, the inferiority, shyness, Zhang Huang, and uneasiness of Chinese women in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty do not exist in her place, she is cheerful, determined, and has a strong vitality.
After going to college, life was smooth and met ren Hongjun, a lifelong partner. Ren Hongjun later served as vice president of Sichuan University and was a well-known scholar. From 1918 to 1920, Chen Hengzhe, who was still studying, began to publish many works in the New Youth. She became the main leader of the May Fourth New Literature period by a young woman in literature and was regarded as a pioneer of the New Culture Movement.
Ren Hongjun and Chen Hengzhe
After returning from his stay in the United States, Chen Hengzhe went to Peking University to become a professor of history, becoming the first female university professor in Chinese history. Although he later resigned and returned home due to pregnancy, he was also trying to write a book. In five years, she was pregnant twice, gave birth twice, and had to survive pregnancy, childbirth, lactation... She finally completed the most important academic monograph of her life, "Western History".
The dry history becomes lively and vivid in her pen, full of vitality. Hu Shi was very excited after reading it, and commented that "the first "History of the West" carefully written by scholars of Chinese history of western governance to Chinese readers" and "a pioneering work." Once published, the book was well received by readers and was reprinted six times in three years. To this day, the book is still reprinted, still read and discussed, and is considered to be "the most talented foreign history textbook in the Republic of China era."
Since its publication in 1924, the History of the West has been reprinted and reprinted many times. This cover is the 2007 edition of China Workers Publishing House.
The price of motherhood
At first, Chen Hengzhe did not clearly realize how she was different from her male classmates Ren Hongjun and Hu Shi, and her talent and courage were obviously not inferior to them. However, after becoming a mother, she gradually discovered the difference between "I" and them. As a woman, "you can hire someone to raise and nurture your children on your behalf, but your heart is still not free." The woman who has given birth to a child is destined to face the reality of raising that little life to grow up.
Chen Hengzhe once said in an article that the impact of marriage is very weak in terms of men, but very serious in women. A man will never have any fundamental problems in his career because he has become a father or a husband. But after a woman becomes a mother, her former volunteers and careers must not be carried out without hindrance. She sadly discovered that with money and status, a woman could offload the task of housekeeper to the shoulders of others, but there was no substitute for raising children:
"For we must know that the family's rice salt trivia is one thing, the divine motherhood is another, and at the same time it is the most dedicated undertaking, and you can hire someone to raise and nurture your children for you, but your heart is still not free." 」
In Chen Hengzhe's time, Hu Shi once had a very important point of view, which we have mentioned before, called "super virtuous wife and motherhood". He proposed that a woman who is not married, who has not had children, still has the value of her life. This view was avant-garde and modern at the time, and it seems true today. But in Chen Hengzhe, we find the problem of being obscured under slogans. In the eyes of others, Chen Hengzhe is such a woman, her family life and academic career have been well balanced, she also has monographs after marriage, and there are many texts. But if we look closely at her chronology and writings, we will find that after becoming a mother, her true academic creativity declined dramatically.
Because she didn't allow herself to be an ordinary mother. In order to give children better learning opportunities, she took them all over the country. During the war years, from Lushan, Hankou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, she sent her eldest daughter all the way to a famous women's college run by the British, and then took her to the Southwest United University, but Kunming was full of gunfire, and sent her daughter back to her alma mater, Vassar University (as a distinguished alumnus, she has immediate family members who enjoy the benefits of free exams and free schooling). Running east and west, ups and downs, the effort was not in vain. As a mother, Chen Hengzhe was fortunate that her hard work was rewarded in her children: the eldest daughter Ren Yidu received a doctorate in history from Harvard University and is a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania; the son Ren Yi'an received a doctorate in geography from Harvard University and became president of the National Geological Society in 1992; and the second daughter Ren Yishu graduated from Vasa University and returned to China as a professor at Shanghai University of Foreign Chinese, returning to the United States in the 1980s as a translator at Vaasa University.
Chen Hengzhe's daughter later mentioned her education for children, what kind of movies children watched needed her to look at first, and if the content was not serious, she was not allowed to watch. There are strict rules on where the daughter goes to watch movies and how the children talk when they come out to see the guests. The children should love and fear Chen Hengzhe, so they call her "Good Lady".
From the perspective of the world, Chen Hengzhe is an excellent scholar and a successful mother. But there are still many contradictions in her body: at first, she believes that a woman's independence is important, but after marriage and children, she stubbornly believes that a good wife and mother are the most important identity duties of women. However, although she feels that it is her duty to be a good mother and a good wife, she has become a good mother herself, but her views on some issues are also entangled. For example, when the eldest daughter told Chen Hengzhe that she would not go out to work when she grew up, and her husband and son had a sense of accomplishment, she was furious and trained her daughter for more than an hour, saying that she had no ambition. My daughter later recalled: "I can't remember the details of her lessons to me, but her lessons made me deeply understand that the idea of teaching my husband and son was wrong, and I never dared to think like this again." ”
The criteria for women's success should be defined by themselves
So, is women's success only related to careers? Is it a success for a mother to raise an accomplished child, or to say that she takes care of her life well in her daily life? In today's context, when everyone discusses what a successful woman is, they will think that women who have a very good influence and contribution in the social field are the so-called successful people. But if a woman takes care of her life well in her daily life and educates her children well, does it have value as a housewife? I think it should be.
We live in a modern society that encourages many women to leave the family, but we can't ignore the women in the family, including grandmothers with children, grandmothers, and part-time aunts. In the past, our value judgment of women usually came from whether they contributed to the family, but in modern society, we usually judge the value of a woman at the social level. However, the judgment of women's value should not be divided into two levels, whether it is the family or society, the contribution of both aspects should be recognized, we can not encourage housewives, but people who are housewives should not be discriminated against.
Finally, I would like to say a few more words about Chen Hengzhe's growth. In her, we see the self-division of working women from motherhood. However, even so, I would like to point out in particular that whether it is a scholar or a mother, Chen Hengzhe is a courageous woman. And it was this courage that made her life very different. For example, when she was very young, her imagination of herself was different from other girls: "Anyway, I was really ambitious in my childhood, I did not aspire to wear more beautiful clothes than others, but I wanted others to think that I was smart and had a future in my studies." 」 Not wearing beautiful clothes means not being physically beautiful but showing her intellect, and this self-imagination and self-construction ultimately made her."
Therefore, looking at Chen Hengzhe's life, it is not enough to discuss her fate and the tearing of female identity, but more importantly, the female strength she herself has shown. In 1935, Chen Hengzhe wrote in English "The Autobiography of a Young Chinese Girl", writing about the wits and courage of the evil servants in her teenage years, she said:
Never show weakness in the presence of a barking dog. You have to be calm and courageous, as if you were their queen, then danger will never happen to you. On the road of my life, I have relied on this confident weapon to go alone, and I have not yet encountered any real danger.
Can you imagine this being a girl's survival experience a hundred years ago? And this is indeed the life principle that Chen Hengzhe summed up for himself. When Chen Hengzhe was twenty-nine years old, he wrote a poem that was widely circulated:
If I get out of the cage, no matter what he goes to, / No matter his bad rain and wind, / I will fly him a sea and a wide sky! / Fly straight to exhaustion, the water is exhausted, / I ask the fierce wind to blow my feathers and bones, / Every trace of it is scattered in the free air!
These words are really encouraging. A girl who is constantly rising strong and confident, the fate will be good: to have the courage to grope in the dark, to be sure that she has strength.
END