Note: This post originally appeared on my discontinued website maartensity.com. The published date and time has been adjusted to mirror the original.
I browsed the web for information and commentary on Eileen
Chang's novellas and short stories, yet found very little that is
publicly accessible. I do not include online academic journals, which
generally require paid membership. This lack of information was a
surprise, like seeing an exciting ad for a new chocolate bar, then
discovering it can only be bought overseas. Let's not forget that the
recent Ang Lee film “Lust, Caution” is based on one of her stories, or
that she moved to the USA in 1955 after already establishing herself as
one of the greatest novelists of her generation (you can read more about
her personal life elsewhere), and even translated some of her own works
into English. You'd therefore think her work should have been discussed
in English forums more widely!
This lack of freely available commentary motivated me to post a close
reading of at least one of her stories. Once I came to the end of “Red
Rose, White Rose”, with its powerful conclusion, I knew that this is the
story I want to write about.
My reference is the Penguin Modern Classics version of the text in “Love in a Fallen City”, p. 253-312.
The very first paragraph introduces us to Zhenbao, and even before we
know anything about his character, we are told that there are two women
in his life. They are, significantly, symbolised in ideal form: a white
rose (a chaste woman) and a red rose (a passionate woman). In the very
next moment, the narrator deems it necessary to comment, somewhat
critically:
Isn't that just how the average man describes a chaste widow's
devotion to her husband's memory—as spotless, and passionate too? - p.
255
When, in the next paragraph, the narrator says “maybe every man has
had two such women—at least two”, the assumption of the desirability of
both a chaste and a seductive, passionate woman may appear strange to a
Western reader. It should be borne in mind that when the story was
written (1940s), China had only recently become a republic. Traditional
values still held sway. Classical images (for instance the line of a
poem by Li Po) are contrasted with mundane, negative images (such as a
bloody mosquito):
Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak
smeared on the wall, while the white one is “moonlight in front of my
bed”. Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky
rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a
scarlet beauty mark over your heart. - p. 255
The classical images come across as artefacts from another time. The
wife is described through the eyes of a married man, as someone
annoying. Neither a passionate woman nor a chaste woman, once she
becomes a wife, can hope to remain romanticised in his mind. In each
case the mistress, on the other hand, is idealised. This is not simple
hypocrisy on the man's part. There is an indirect co-dependency between
these descriptions: the romantic memory of his mistress is like the
spice in curry, covering the underlying rotten meat that he wants to
avoid tasting.
If we take it at face value, Zhenbao is said not to be like "every
man", instead he is “logical and thorough”. He has a special ability
that sets him apart:
If he did bump into anything that was less than ideal, he bounced
it around in his mind for a while and—poof!--it was idealized: then
everything fell into place. - p. 255
However, this statement is actually highly ironic, as we shall soon see.
The “Red Rose” and the “White Rose” of the title are Zhenbao's
idealised women. But unlike the description above, where the mistresses
are idealised poetically and the married wives are given negative
associations, Zhenbao's “White Rose” is an exception--she is his wife.
This relation towards his idealisation is problematic for Yanli, his
idealised white rose. Presumably, in a previous era, this would have
protected her. But in the present age she gets a raw deal, because there
is a structural failure of the social environment to support his ideal.
The world has moved on.
Idealising Yanli denies her the status of a proper wife. At the same
time she is deprived of the benefits of a mistress. She is excluded from
both categories, caught in a no-woman's-land between the old and the
modern. As a result she is socially powerless and disconnected, isolated
behind the abstract, scholarly “white membrane” that both protects her,
and cuts her off from the world:
For ten years now Yanli had gone to school, diligently looking up
new words, memorizing charts, copying from the blackboard, but between
her and everything else there always seemed to be a white membrane. - p.
294
Her education seems to keep her out of touch with the changing world
around her. The ability of traditional learning to make sense of the
rapidly changing social environment is impaired.
Yanli's lack of power and status is concluded by the story's ending,
when Zhenbao returns to being his “good” self after a self-destructive
period. This goodness deprives Yanli of the limited power she obtained
as a wife publicly suffering at the hands of her husband, and therefore
deserving of sympathy and support. Not only does the foundation for her
short-lived status crumble when Zhenbao becomes a “good man” again, she
also loses credibility. Her social status is arguably lower than it was
before:
The next day Zhenbao rose and reformed his ways. He made a fresh start and went back to being a good man. - p.312
Her esteem is obliterated. Unlike Jiaorui, who has found a better
life away from Zhenbao, Yanli has no life and no social status of her
own. She is a snow flake of Zhenbao's fantasy. She is his White Rose.
He denies everything else.
Hence the mocking tone when the narrator refers to the idealised
chaste rose mistress as “'moonlight in front of my bed'”. In the case of
a “good” man like Zhenbao, who applies it to his wife, it is
disastrous. The metaphor has a distant relation in Browning's “My Last
Duchess”. The girl, who was a bit too full of life for the Duke's
liking, he prefers as a painting. In Chang's story, the metaphor is
split into two parts: the “Red Rose”, the lively one, who Zhenbao
consciously does not choose; and the “White Rose”, who is nevertheless
still in real life too distasteful, and too human, and has to be
idealised to be tolerated.
Although Zhenbao encourages Yanli to listen to the radio, as a way to
further a modern woman's education, “he didn't know that Yanli listened
to the radio just to hear a human voice” (p. 302). The only place where
she feels at home is in the bathroom. There she can be alone with her
constipation, cut off from everyone else: “Only in the day-lit bathroom
could she settle down and feel rooted” (p. 304).
When Zhenbao accidentally observes her through the open bathroom door
in a voyeuristic setting late one night, the narrator frames his view
with an aesthetic metaphor. It is false flattery, because, as with
Browning's Duchess, this aesthetic reduction is precisely her undoing:
But never in dynastic history has a painting of a pretty woman
taken up such an awkward subject: Yanli was pulling up her pants ... In
America, the scene would have made an excellent toilet-paper
advertisement, but to Zhenbao's hasty glance it was household filth ..
damp and giving off a stagnant, stifling, human scent” - p. 307
Even Yanli, already little more than a pale, pretty ghost roaming the
house, is too stiflingly human for Zhenbao. The reference to America
alludes to the uneasy tension between traditional and modern, and the
fact that the present societal and normative environment is not yet up
to describing modern domestic realities in China. As a result
individuals like Yanli are excluded from proper description, and remain
disconnected from social community. If Yanli is curiously inexpressive
throughout the story, it is because the language to give expression to
her problems does not exist yet.
This China that has its feet in the future and its head in a more
traditional era, is described earlier in the story as detrimental to
women:
In China, as elsewhere, the constraints imposed by the traditional
moral code were originally constructed for the benefit of women: they
made beautiful women even harder to obtain, so their value rose ...
Women nowadays don't have this kind of protective buffer, especially not
mixed-blood girls, whose status is so entirely undefined. - p. 286
It is time to re-evalute Zhenbao's inherent need to be a “good” man.
At the very start, the narrator suggests (somewhat mockingly) that
Zhenbao isn't the kind of man to idealise his mistress and then hold a
negative view of his wife. As we have just seen, this is not the case.
He may publicly refer to Yanli as his White Rose, in order to save face,
but the truth is just as the narrator described the average man's view
of his wife: he thoroughly despises Yanli.
Although on the surface he seems an ideal, good man, his inability to
understand his own heart leads to great domestic unhappiness. For a
while he even becomes highly self-destructive:
He couldn't smash up the home he'd made, or his wife, or his
daughter, but he could smash himself up ... He had to be smashed to
bits! Smash him to bits! - p.310-1
The following description is therefore highly ironic, and ultimately mocking:
But Xhenbao wasn't like that; he was logical and thorough. He was, in this respect, the ideal modern man. - p. 255
On the other hand, the irony is also tragic, because these very
traits are in some respects necessary for a man born to a poor family,
and who has to struggle through life to make a success. New
opportunities were made possible by the fall of the monarchy, and for
those willing to work hard and make sacrifices a measure of middle class
success was attainable. So Zhenbao joined thousands and thousands of
others in a quest for a better life. It was still an untrodden road, so
only those who were very committed and dedicated could succeed.
His attitude towards women was already set during his studies in
Britain,.long before he met Jiaorui and Yanli, To be master of his
future, he deemed it necessary also to be master of the women in his
life.
... though he could spend money on her, he couldn't be her master
... later, when Zhenbao had figured out how to get what he wanted out of
a whore, he'd think back to that time in Paris, his first time when
he'd been such a fool. Now he was the master of his own world. - p.
258-9
Some time after his return to China he meets Jiaorui. He quickly
categorises Jiaorui as someone who isn't appropriate for him to marry.
She is too free and without restraint, too demanding, breaks too many
rules, and can't be controlled without a great deal of effort. In short,
to master her would probably cost him his future. Or so he thinks:
... if a man had to forge ahead on his own, as Zhenbao did, such a
woman would be a major impediment. And he wasn't easygoing like Wang
Shihong, who let a woman flout every rule. What was the point if you had
to argue all day long? That was sure to sap a man's energy and drain
him of ambition. Of course ... she was like this precisely because her
husband couldn't control her. - p. 269
On the other hand, he is also aware that he is very attracted to her. She is his type:
He felt quite agitated. He liked women who were fiery and
impetuous, the kind you couldn't marry. Here was one who was already a
wife, and a friend's wife at that ... She was everywhere, tugging and
pulling at him. - p.264
Why then, even though she loves him, does he not follow his heart?
The answer is that, first of all, he must follow his own logic to the
end: he must think of his future, and he finds her too carefree and
irresponsible to allow him to make the necessary effort to achieve his
ambition:
She seemed scatterbrained, like a child who goes out and picks
dozens of violets, one by one, gathers them into a bunch and tosses them
all away. Zhenbao had only his future to bank on, a future he'd
prepared for all on his own. How could he bear to see it thrown to the
wind? - p. 287
When it comes to his heart he is unwilling to take risks for the long
term. Jiaorui's child-like nature (like Rose before her) unsettles him.
Even if he could be her master, it would be at a price, possibly
impeding his future.
When Jiaorui makes a move to break from her husband (Wang Shihong) to
be with Zhenbao, he bolts and uses his mother as an excuse:
... if you love me, then you have to consider my situation. I
can't cause my mother pain. Her way of thinking is different from ours,
but we have to think about her, since she has only me to depend on ...
And Shihong is, after all, my friend – p.293
The adultery with Jiaorui, who is Shihong's wife, is not even an
afterthought. The excuse that Shihong is his friend is for the sake of
Zhenbao's reputation, rather than any moral scruples, or true
friendship. His mother's welfare is his primary stated reason. For her
sake he wants to find a more stable future. His mother's hint to Jiaorui
when Zhenbao is in the hospital indicates that she may have approved of
Jiaorui. Zhenbao's unwillingness is mainly down to his insecurity about
being able to control her.
The tragedy's design sets in when he looks to older, more established
structures to support his future. Those very structures, it would seem,
are no longer as reliable as they were for previous generations.
Nevertheless, he doesn't know this until it is too late. The importance
of his mother is genuine though. His traditional sensibility finds
expression in a secret desire to be adored and praised by many mothers:
He wanted to get ahead, move up in the world .. he'd contribute
something to society ... even now he had a fuzzy intimation of the warm
welcome awaiting him—not just from his own mother but from a whole world
of mothers, tearful, and with eyes only for him – p. 289
He eventually allows his mother to choose a wife for him.
His mother cried in front of him a few times, urging him to marry,
and he put it off for a while, then finally agreed. His mother arranged
the introductions.- p.293
His mother is motivated to marry him to a girl so that she no longer
has to worry about him not taking care of himself. She chooses Yanli for
him, but Yanli is a disappointment and they do not get along. His
mother, showing a strength of resolve to match Zhenbao's own, moves out
of the house. This double blow is the beginning of Zhenbao's deep
disappointment with his life:
Zhenbao was very disappointed in his wife: having married her for
her tractability, he felt cheated. He was also unhappy with his
mother—moving out like that and letting people say he wasn't a good son.
- p. 297
His brother and sister also turn out to be lazy, preferring to feed
off their older brother's endeavour. The esteem and praise he expected
from his family for his good deeds and hard work never materialise. He
is deeply unhappy, and after a period of self-destructive behaviour
wherein he unashamedly takes to drink and women, he reforms his ways—but
still at the expense of his wife.
Most of the story is taken up by his affair with Jiaorui. The
intensity and anguish that accompanies it, and the tears he cries when
they meet once more many years later, illustrate how much more emotion
he felt with her, even though he tried to deny his feelings at the time.
He is the architect of his unhappy destiny though, and therefore, in
this analysis, I have spent more time analysing his relation to the
problem than to the cure he abandoned.
Jiaorui, for her part, followed her heart and found someone else to
love—and now has a family. The narrator would side with her, it seems,
and there is ultimately a sense that Zhenbao wasn't man enough to go for
a feisty woman like Jiaorui—even though he felt attracted to her. She
is the most modern, in that she wasn't afraid even to break up her
marriage to find her happiness, whereas Zhenbao's deference to older
values in the end didn't serve him as well as he'd hoped.
One might conclude by saying that both Jiaorui and Yanli suffer
through Zhenbao's tendencies, but whereas Yanli is permanently
diminished through his idealisation of her as a White Rose, and her
gradual isolation, Jiaorui might reply that she has no need of being
idealised as his Red Rose, that she is happy without him. It merely
reveals his inability to understand and listen to his own heart.
