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Rob_Hugo@PortNWThis descriptive narrative told of a Chinese couple in love during the late 1700s. The couple's love seemed very true, simple, and innocent. They spent a lot of alone time together going out on "date-like" outings. Their relationship seemed one of very few in which an Asian couple made time to spend romantic nights together. From what i perceive, especially during that time period, those who were married did not spend a lot of time in that "we are young and in love" stage...more so, many marriages at that time were arranged, and love seemed to act as a consequence to the marriage. So for Shen Fu to describe his relationship with his wife, Yun, to be very innocent and fairy-tale-like seems to be a rare find. I guess this particular story just goes to show that how some of us perceive arranged marriage and love of the past doesn't fit every case.
AnonymousI am thankful I read this excerpt first, rather than the article on sexual order. What a contrast!
Reading "6 Chapters of a Floating Life" reminded me Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Similarily, Jude marries his cousin who was also very intelligent. For a while, the marriage is "fairy-tale like" until good intentions take a bad turn. It's too bad we stopped reading the excerpt towards the decline of their marriage, I was hoping for a "happily ever after ending" being the sucker for Disney princess movies that I am.
With respect to the article proceeding it, I noticed a difference in terms of a woman's power in the social sphere. It appears that the women have a significantly larger weight on their opinions and decisions in this article. Note that the author tells his mother of his desire to marry Yun, and the mother's meaningful role when she "gave her gold ring as a token for the betrothal". No male figure was presented in this autobiography and the author regrets a not having a lack of proper education...... no mention of a father-figure. Interesting.
The article afterwards is the epitome of Confucian ideology of social hierarchy. Males have the say, women stay chaste to one man and take a backseat. That was my basic impression. What made me laugh was the tentative subject of sex and illicit sex. Who knew the political sphere felt so threatened by the social sphere's subject of sex? This is truly an invasion of privacy with respect to today's modern world. Today's television episodes of "Maury" and "Jerry Springer" might very well have been the Chinese government many centuries ago. Good call for public entertainment at the expense of other people's personal issues.
-Amy
AnonymousI somewhat agree with Amy that the portrayal of the couple is different from what is expected of a married couple at the time. It seems rare that they were able to spend time together and do the things described. From my past readings and movies I've seen, arranged marriages tend to result in a really structured relationship where the wife is almost like a personal "servant" to the husband. I noticed that Yun (the wife in the story) seems to have more freedom in the things she can do. It was suprising to read that her husband not only allowed her to travel with him to different places, but even encouraged her to dress up as a man so that it would be more convenient. Typically, I would think that husbands would denounce the wife from doing such things. So I guess this story is rather different as it gives a different perspective of the relationship between husband and wife during that time.
--Minh
AnonymousAdmittedly, the relationship between the author and Yun is extremely rare. it even says so itself on the article. as a matter of fact, their relationship was clearly an opposition to confucian ideology itself. such close and playful relationships are usually frowned upon, unfortunately, at the time.
some questions i had while reading was, ...how does he recall details so well...being an autobiography i assumed that this would be accurate and factual. surely he's bending some facts...but soon these questions came to be answered when i discovered that his writings were described as 'frank' and 'emotional'. hence, he must've been honest since he was describing his innermost feelings and writing in such a candid manner. he even starts the writing basically saying, 'i'm sorry that my writing level is so lame, excuse my crappy grammar'. this is surely an honest and humble dood.
my immediate following reaction was more positive. realizing that this account was, after all, more than just a fairy tale, i realized we could learn quite a long from Shen fu and his experiences. certainly, this reading had some personal benefit.
Anonymousalso there's the emo factor:
we could examine his feelings in detail and see how marriage really was like for him. i mean, how many of us are married? not many i assume. this was a chance to dig deeper and get some real-life education. i won't go into detail, but there was one thing that caught my eye.
it struck an emo-chord in me when i read the line "i cannot undertand why all old couples must hate each other like enemies. some people say if they weren't enemies, they would not be able to live together until old age. well i wonder!".
seeing that this was written shortly after the marriage began, i can see why he would have such a question. don't we have questions like this. how do so many marriages go bad we wonder. how is it possible that 'eternal love' is so fragile and easily broken.
reading the autobiography, it was nice to know that accounts were given in factual detail. the romance that existed between yun and the author was real and had been recorded into history. reading this article was like peeping into someone's personal life; not just like watching a movie, because movies are usually literred with hollywood storylines.
perhaps to admit that there are no perfect endings to life, the story began to enter problems. though we are not sure what happens between the two main characters of this real life story, one can assume that, like real life, it probably wasn't a perfect close.
in fact i see the story in two main parts. there was the romantic part (like a summer-wildfire romance) and the 'real-life' portion.
i myself, never having been married, am not sure why romantic-love does seem to fade over time. but MAYBE its because real life takes over and the couple wakes up to the fact that they now have problems. for instance, chapter 3 begins to introduce the 'real life' portion. these are things never included in 'disney movies', for instance: yun begins to counter problems with the author's parents. also the couple are running low on money. sigh..although we like to believe love conquers all , this certainly is just a fable. i say this with regard to psychological terms-- psychologists have agreed to a particular list that would constitute a happy and healthy relationship between couples. one of these, unfortunately, is financial stability. =[
AnonymousAs does Minh, I was particularly drawn to Yun and Fu's freeing lifestyle. Their activities caught my attention, because Chinese couples are rarely documented as actually enjoying each other's company and spending time doing leisurely things, with the exception of dynastic rulers. Yun and Fu seemed to spend the majority of their time pursuing their interests, hobbies, and other recreational activities like playing drinking games and writing poems, which runs counter to stereotypical Chinese culture and literature in which the people are known to be hard-working and constantly pursuing intellect, wealth or higher class status: “You will paint and I will do embroidery, from which we could make enough money to buy wine and compose poems over dinner. Thus, clad in simple gowns and eating simple meals, we could live a very happy life together without going anywhere.”
I would also like to raise a few questions on the topic of the concubine (perhaps I missed lectures pertaining to Chinese concubines in GE lecture): Why is Yun devoted to finding a concubine for her husband, Shen Fu? Did primary wives actually cherish concubines and want their husbands to have other women around, especially in the instance of Yun and Fu in which their marriage was so passionate? Also, was Yun’s grief over Hanyuan based on possible homosexual feelings for the candidate concubine? (on second thought perhaps the homosexual theory may be a bit far reaching; did anyone else get that vibe?!)
-VanLin