Feminism in the Chinese Context: Li Ang's "The Butcher's Wife"

Author(s): SHEUNG-YUEN DAISY NG

Source: Modern Chinese Literature , Spring & Fall, 1988, Vol. 4, No. 1/2, Gender,
Writing, Feminism, China (Spring & Fall, 1988), pp. 177-200
Published by: Foreign Language Publications

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 Modem Chínese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

Feminism in the Chinese Context:

Li Ang's The Butcher's Wife 1

SHEUNG-YUEN DAISY NG

As work is to marxism, sexuality to feminism is socially

constructed yet constructing, universal as activity yet
historically specific, jointly comprised of matter and
mind.
Catharine A. MacKinnon2

Among contemporary Chinese women writers, Li Ang is probably the

most controversial figure. Li Ang, whose given name is Shi Shuduan [Shih
Shu-tuan], was born in Taiwan in 1952. She is the youngest of three literar
sisters. Her elder sisters, Shi Shunü [Shih Shu-nü] and Shi Shuqing [Sh
Shu-ch'ing], are a critic and a novelist, respectively. Li Ang began h
writing career at the age of sixteen with the publication of a short story
"Huaji" [The flowering season].3 Now in her mid-thirties, she has gain
both fame and notoriety over the nearly twenty intervening producti
years. Critics have acclaimed her work for its artistry while also severely
criticizing her for its explicitness about sex. So while Li Ang's best-known
novella, Shafu [The butcher's wife],4 for instance, won first prize in t
annual fiction contest sponsored by the Lianhe bao [United daily news], it
has also earned the enmity of "moralists" for its bold descriptions of sexu
scenes. One critic even opined that the novella's sexual brutality migh
traumatize young girls.3

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the Conference on Comparati

Literature East and West: Traditions and Trends, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 4-7, 1988.
I am grateful to Dr. P. K. Leung, Mr. A. Hirvela and the editor and anonymous reviewe
of Modern Chinese Literature for their valuable suggestions on the original version. I a
particularly indebted to Mr. C. S. Leung for his encouragement and comments.

2 Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda fo

Theory," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7.31 ( 1982): 5 15-44.

3 Collected in Hua Ji [The flowering season], Li Ang (Taipei: Hong Fan, 1984).

Li Ang, Shafu [Husband-killing]. English version: The Butcher's Wife, translated by

Howard Goldblatt and Ellen Yeung (San Francisco: North Point, 1986). Subsequent
citations will rely on this text. Another translation of the prologue and first two chapters
Shafu by Fan Wen-mei and John Minford has been published in Renditions 27 & 28 (Spring&
Autumn 1987): 61-75. Extracts of these three chapters of Fan's translation are also found
Geremie Barmé and John Minford, ed., Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience (Ho
Kong: Far Eastern Economic Review Ltd, 1986) 209-17.

5 Hu Yun, "Miji duanping" [Short reviews], Xinshu yuekan [New books monthly] 4 (Ja
1984): 34-35. Lugang Ren rebuffs Hu in "Tan dui Shafu de jige wujie" [On certain misinte

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fig: Li Ang

In fact, Li Ang's concern with sex is very serious. To her, sex is "the
most incisive force breaking through a conventional society."6 In a number
of stories, such as "Renjian shi" [The world of man], "Xunxi" [The mes-
sage], "Zuoye" [Last night] and "Mochun" [Late spring],7 which provoked
particularly vitriolic critical attention, Li Ang attacks sexual taboos operat-
ing in school, family and society (Lin 217). Her probing into the social,
moral and psychological dimensions of sex allows Li Ang to challenge the
values and conventions of society.
Li Ang also grounds her exploration of women's experience in
sexuality. To her sex is "a form of self-affirmation," a vital part in the
process of growth (Lin 214). In many of her stories, sex constitutes an
integral part in a woman's search for identity. Sex also provides the grounds
for Li Ang's literary feminism. It is the basis upon which she exposes the
inequality between the sexes and women's oppression within a patriarchal
society.
In the following discussion I will examine Li Ang's The Butcher's Wife ,
which presents the oppression of women in terms of sexual depredation. I
will argue that it is a feminist novella that discusses the socio-economic
nature of women's victimization.
The terms "feminism" and "feminist," however, demand to be clarified
at the outset. Given the diversity in the development, philosophy and
programs of feminism in different countries and in different periods, it is
impossible to take the term "feminism" as a self-evident one. As Rosalind
Delmar points out,

The fragmentation of contemporary feminism bears ample witness to the

impossibility of constructing modern feminism as a simple unity in the
present or of arriving at a shared feminist definition of feminism. Such
differing explanations, such a variety of emphases in practical cam-
paigns, such widely varying interpretations of their results have emerged,
that it now makes more sense to speak of a plurality of feminisms than
of one. (Delmar 9)

The contradictions and diversities in the meaning and scope of

"feminism" have produced heated controversies over the definitions and
connotations of the term; nevertheless, feminism has in general been
pTe.taüonsoíShafií],Xinshuyuekan 5 (Feb 1984): 77. Lugang Ren argues that the cautionary
and educational message of Shafu is in fact directed at men rather than women.

6 Lin Yijie, "Panni yu jiushu" [Rebellion and salvation], interview, Li Ang, Tarnen de
Yanlei [Their tears] (Taipei: Hong Fan, 1984) 214.

The four stories were all written in 1974. "Renjian shi" and "Zuoye" are collected in Li
Ang, Aiqing shiyart [The test of love] (Taipei: Hong Fan, 1982), the other two in Tarnen de
Yanlei.

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

associated with the development of women's movements in the West.8 In

fact, part of the self-image of contemporary feminism in the West is the
identity between feminism and a woman's movement.
In China, women's movements took place in the context of political
changes and were aligned with other social movements. The emancipation
of Chinese women began in the late nineteenth century. In the face of
Western invasion, policy-makers wooed female resources to increase
productivity and strengthen national defense. Women were given equal
educational opportunities and, with their increasing participation in politi-
cal movements, women's status began to improve. Women played an active
role in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the birth of the Republic.
Yet after the Revolution (1911) the ruling Nationalist Party refused to
make provision for women's suffrage and gender equality in the Constitu-
tion of the Republic. A women's suffrage movement and continued
protests from women's groups failed to effect any change.9
Women's movements once more sprouted during the May Fourth
Movement (1919). Beginning as a patriotic movement of Chinese intellec-
tuals in reaction to domestic turmoil and the threat of Japanese militarism,
the May Fourth Movement developed into the New Culture Movement,
which was an attempt to reform China. The intellectuals challenged tradi-
tional culture, which they believed was the root of many age-old problems,
and turned to Western culture to find new solutions. '"Women's problems'
were also an important issue in the general humanitarian concern of these
reformers" (Ku 1988, 180). They advocated equal rights for women and
condemned old customs such as foot-binding, arranged marriage, con-
cubinage and prostitution. In 1924 legislation was passed giving equal rights
to men and women in law, marriage, education, economic opportunity and
political participation.10 Yet the institutionalization of equal rights for
women did not bring about a substantial improvement in women's lives, for
traditional values were still predominant and resistant in society.
Political and social movements provided the context for the develop-
ment of women's movements in mainland China, but the experience of
Taiwan was different. Taiwan was ceded to Japan by an unequal treaty in
1895. Japan's fifty-year colonial rule "intensified the already existent sub-

8 Many feminists, such as Olive Banks, have considered feminism as a social movement.

9 The Women's Suffrage Association forced an entry into the House and finally resorted
to violence. This incident happened to coincide with the suffrage movement in Britain, and
the British Suffragettes sent a telegram to show their sympathy and respect. The suffrage
movement has been regarded as the first organized and collective expression of feminism in
China (Ku, 1988, 180).

The institutionalization of equality of men and women has been praised as "a bloodless
social revolution" (Yeh 118).

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 Ng :LiAng

missive nature of women's position" in Taiwan (Yao 199).11 In 1949 the

Kuomintang (KMT) and its Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan
after losing to the Communists in the Civil War. To counteract drastic
changes in the mainland, the Nationalist government assumed the guar-
dianship of tradition and cultural heritage. As the government sought to
tighten social control, women were encouraged to play supportive and
subservient roles both at home and in society.1 Not until the 1970s was the
traditional role of women in a patriarchal society questioned.
Women's movements in Taiwan were initiated by Lü Xiulian [Lü
Hsiu-lien] in the early 1970s.13 Lü's involvement began with her writing
articles on two fervently discussed topics dominating in the media in 1971
and 1972: the protection of men against competition from women in the
joint college entrance examination and the overwhelming sympathy shown
to a wife-killer.14 Lü's writing on these topics from humanitarian and
feminist perspectives caused great controversies. From 1972 onwards Lü
made numerous attempts at organizing women's associations and in-
stitutionalizing her ideas of equality, but encountered strong resistance
from both the government and society. Lü was later involved in an open
clash between the political opposition and the KMT in December 1979 and
was sentenced to jail. As a result of Lü's imprisonment the women's
movement in Taiwan was at a low ebb until the Awakening group was
established in 1982 by Li Yuanzhen [Li Yuan-chen], a professor of Chinese
literature at Tamkang University.15
In Taiwan there has never been a large-scale, aggressive, organized
and political women's movement comparable to those of the West. This
has led some to comment that "from the point of view of participation,

11 Although there is no direct reference to Japan's colonization of Taiwan in The Butcher's

Wife, the background of the novella appears to be the time around the Sino-Japanese War.

The Central Women's Department, headed by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, propagated

the maternal image of women and promoted "feminine virtues" through the mass media,
formal education and its women's policy (Ku 1988, 181).

Lü Xiulian was born in 1944. She studied law at the National Taiwan University from
1964 to 1969. She received her Master's degree in Comparative Law from the University of
Illinois in 1971. In the same year she returned to Taiwan.

14 In June 1972 a student studying in the U.S. murdered his wife and returned to Taiwan
for trial.

Reacting to the conservative nature of most women's magazines, which taught women
to accept patriarchal values, in 1982 a small group of women launched a monthly magazine,
Awakening [Fund xinzhi], to raise women's consciousness, encourage self-improvement and
voice feminist opinions (Ku 1988, 182).

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 Modem Ctmese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

strictly speaking there has never been any women's rights movement in
Taiwan. There have only been activities calling for better rights for women"
(Li Meizhi 34). In the conservative society of Taiwan, a women's movement
that advocates some basic changes is naturally regarded with suspicion and
hostility. Because of social and political constraints, feminists follow the
path of mild, moderate campaigns to raise women's consciousness and
effect changes in social attitudes toward women and carefully avoid any
radical image such as the bra-burner. "Feminist separatism" is naturally out
of the question.16 In fact, the feminist convictions held by the leaders of the
women's movement are a far cry from the beliefs of many feminists in the
West. A clear example is Lii's three "Basic Principles" of "New Feminism,"
which consist of the following:

"First become human, then be man or woman."

"What one is [man or woman], like what one should be!"

"Develop to the full everyone's potential [regardless of sex]." (Lü 156)

In these "Principles" and in much of her theoretical work, Lü makes

clear that she does not agree with "American feminists' advocation to break
down sexual differences" and sees no need to question "masculinity" and
"femininity" (Lü 152). Under the pressure of prevalent conservatism, "Lu
[Lü] tried to make compromises by praising feminine attributes such as
being tender, sweet, graceful and loving, while injecting the ideal of equal
access to education, employment and political participation" (Ku 1988,
181). Lü further maintains that feminism is "a human rights [renquan]
movement, not a woman's rights [niiquan] movement" (Lü 156).
Li Ang's views echo Lü's feminist credo. In the Author's Preface to
the translation, The Butcher's Wife, Li Ang restates the position she staked
out first in the Chinese text, namely her express intention that The
Butcher's Wife be a "feminist" work:

I cannot deny that I approached the writing of The Butcher's Wife with a
number of feminist ideals, wanting to show the tragic fate that awaited
the economically dependent Taiwanese women living under the rule of
traditional Chinese society. But as I wrote, I found myself becoming more
and more concerned with larger issues of humanity such as hunger,
death, sex. What I want to emphasize here is that the ultimate concern
of a piece of "feminist literature" is, after all, human nature.

w Barbara Hendrischke defines "feminist separatism" as "a departure from all previous
traditions which are made by men, and the attempt to completely recreate the world from a
female point of view, in particular the forms of language, modes of thinking and artistic
expression as well as patterns of social behaviour" (397).

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Ng: LiAng

Both here and in her essay, "Wode Chuangzuoguan" [My creative stance],
Li Ang takes great pains to assure her readers that she is concerned less
with "femininity" [mixing] than with "humanity" [renxing].17
When applying the concept of Western feminism to the discussion of
Chinese works, it is thus necessary to make adjustments in light of different
cultural contexts. Yet to exaggerate discrepancies in sweeping statements
such as the following is equally misleading: "What is clear is that the
problems that face Chinese women who are emerging from a feudal
Confucian society have nothing to do with the problems of Western women
who are trying to get out from under the thumbs of capitalism and
monotheism" (Kristeva 139-140).
Insofar as "woman is traditionally use-value for man, exchange-value
among men" (Irigaray 105), both Chinese women and their Western
counterparts share the common struggle to free their bodies from being
the property and propriety of men. Feminist scholarship, whether Chinese
or Western, works toward the same goal of exposing the collusion between
ideology and cultural practices and deconstructing predominantly male
cultural paradigms.
In the following I will attempt to read The Butcher's Wife from a literary
feminist perspective, but with sympathy for the author's intentions.18 1 am
here welding two critical tools, which, in Annis Pratt's terminology, are:
"textual analysis" (which determines whether a work is novelistically suc-
cessful) and "contextual analysis" (which considers the relevance of a work,
even if artistically flawed, as a reflection of the situation of women) (12). I
will attempt to show that The Butcher's Wife is a feminist Action that
examines male-female relationship within a socio-economic context and
that it reveals the web of role expectation in which women are enmeshed.
I will also argue that Li Ang's overwhelming concern to portray women's
oppression by men nevertheless takes her away from the central issue,
power between the sexes, with the result that she polarizes the male-female

17 Li Ang, Anye [Dark nights] (Hong Kong: Bo Yi, 1985) 185-86.

18
Elaine Showalter suggests that feminist literary criticism can be divided into two distinct
modes. She calls the first type "feminist critique/' which is concerned with woman as reader.
It offers feminist readings of texts that consider the images and stereotypes of women in
literature and the omissions and misconceptions about women in criticism. Showalter coined
the word "gynocritics" for the second type, which is concerned with woman as writer. It
considers the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by woman. In other words,
the two major foci of feminist scholarship are "deconstructing dominant male patterns of
thought and social practice; and reconstructing female experience previously hidden or
overlooked" (Greene 7). There are many different approaches striving toward these two
aims, as noted by Annette Kolodny and other critics. Interested readers may find KK.
Ruthven's introductory book useful.

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

relationship into a paradigmatic opposition between oppressor and op-

pressed, master and slave.
The Butcher's Wife was written out of a desire "to investigate the
relationship between men and women and to articulate the role and status
of women in a traditional society/'19 The significance of The Butcher's Wife
as a feminist novella, nevertheless, does not lie in any progressive insights
into women's position in Chinese society, but rather in its challenge to the
literary conventions of China. In Chinese literary history women's writing
has always been considered sentimental and trivial, circumscribed by love
and the domestic domain. The Butcher's Wife is an attempt to break away
from the mainstream "feminine" writing and assert itself as a serious
feminist work.

The Butcher's Wife is based on a homicide that occurred in Shanghai

in the 1930s. Li Ang's novella describes the tortured life of Lin Shi, an
orphaned only child turned out to survive in the street with her mother
following her father's death. The specter of starvation in wartime leads
Lin's mother to sell herself to a soldier for two rice balls. When her act is
discovered the clansmen judge her guilty of adultery. The narrative does
not indicate what happens to Lin's mother afterwards. One "source" has it
that she has been drowned in the river in the manner of traditional
punishment of adultresses, another that she and the soldier have been
chased out of Lucheng after a sound beating, a third that she has eloped
with the soldier. Lin remains a maidservant in her uncle's house. When she
reaches the age of puberty, the family trades her in marriage to a pig-
butcher, Chen Jiangshui. The man subjects Lin to unspeakable abuses. Lin
is also ostracized by the entire village community, represented by Auntie
Ah-wang and her friends. The superstitions and presumptions of the
villagers leave Lin no choice but to submit to Chen's ill treatment of her.
Gradually Chen's brutality and Ah-wang's character assassination unhinge
her, and Lin finally kills Chen in a demented frenzy. Since in traditional
Chinese society any woman who murders her husband is presumed to have
done so because of adultery, the authorities execute Lin despite the fact
that there is no proof of an extra-marital affair.
Most critics have agreed with Zhang Xiguo that The Butcher's Wife
forces readers "to recognize the nature of the male-female relationship"
(30-31). The male-female relationship presented in the novella is a
polarized relationship between oppressor and oppressed. Sexual depreda-
tion is thus the index of gender oppression; according to Cai Yingjun,

19 D Ang, Foreword, Shafu, vili.

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Ng: LiAng

"sexual torture represents the most direct abuse and persecution of women
by men in tradition" (98).
Sex can be a weapon of terror because sexuality is a form of power. As
Catharine A. MacKinnon points out, "sexuality is gendered as gender is
sexualized" (1983, 635). Sexuality is a social process that structures gender.
Gender, as socially constructed, embodies sexuality by maintaining a
division of power that institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female
sexual submission. Sexual abuses thus "express the relations, values, feel-
ings, norms and behaviors of the culture's sexuality" (MacKinnon 1982,
533). In feminist analysis, therefore, "a rape is not an isolated or individual
or moral transgression, but a terrorist act within a systematic context of
group subjection, like lynching" (MacKinnon 1983, 654).
Li Ang's portrayal of sex in relation to death in The Butcher's Wife
seems to echo this view of sex as an act of terror. On a number of occasions
when Chen violates her, Lin believes that she is unquestionably going to
die. "Dying" is nevertheless a common euphemism for "coming," the
ecstatic moment of orgasm. Lin's morbid fear of death in ravishment may
thus be read as a parody of the masculinist ethos that women enjoy being
raped.
This perverse view of female masochism is an elaboration of the
pervasive belief that desirability to men is women's form of power. Ah-
wang's claim that "all women have the hots for a man's tool" parrots the
common belief that women's sexuality lies in the capacity to arouse desire
in men (Li 101). While the novella does not digress much on Ah-wang's
sexual behavior, except for a brief mention of her adultery, there is a subtle
suggestion of her as a nymphomaniac pandering to male expectations
through her voyeuristic interest in the Chens' sexual activities.
When Lin surprises Ah-wang creeping off after peeping at the sexual
intercourse Chen has performed on her, Lin sees in Ah- wang's eyes "the
look in Chen Jiangshui's eyes" whenever he makes sexual advances toward
her (Li 43). Ah-wang's gaze is, therefore, a "male" gaze, which establishes
a power relation between the knowing subject (Ah-wang/Chen) and the
known object (Lin). Ah-wang seems to be an exemplary of the Freudian
theory of "penis envy," a phallocentric theory that privileges the penis as
the only recognized sex organ of any worth. The basic assumption behind
this theory is the woman's visual perception of her lack of a penis. The
theory holds that the woman first sees her clitoris as a small penis and then
decides that she has already been castrated. As a result of recognizing this
inherent "deficiency," the woman tries to appropriate the penis for herself.
She seeks the equivalent of the penis by all the means at her disposal, such
as by servile love of the father-husband, by her desire of a penis-child, by
gaining access to certain cultural values that are exclusively masculine, etc.
As Luce Irigaray and other feminists have observed, the Freudian paradigm
theorizes female sexuality only as an attempt to possess the equivalent of

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

the male sex organ (Ingaray 99). Man projects both his fear of castration
and his desire for a reproduction (image) of himself onto woman. Ah-wang,
who apparently experiences vicarious pleasure out of Chen's torturing Lin,
is a monstrous exemplification of the man's image created within such
masculine parameters. What Lin recognizes in this woman is virtually the
"negative," the "mirror-image" of the man.20
Ah-wang's voyeurism provides a foil to men's scopophilia (i.e., love of
looking). Neighbors claim to watch Lin stare foolishly and fixedly at men
and interpret virginal little Lin's vacant gaze as the moony expression of a
lovesick person. One of the men even says that "he felt like he was being
swallowed up by that hungiy gaze of hers" (Li 11). This is an obvious
example of the male projection of libidinal desire upon women. Actually
Lin is overwhelmed by a haunting nightmare and her gaze turns inwards to
her own thoughts. The woman's subjective inwardness contrasts with the
men's presumption of objective knowledge. The men profess to read Lin's
mind by observing her. From the male point of view Lin is a knowable
object, and in MacKinnon's words, "[wjoman through male eyes is sex
object, that by which man knows himself at once as man and as subject"
(1982, 538).
The Freudian notion of the gaze theorizes the voyeuristic desire as a
form of sadistic mastery over a masochistic object. This "gaze" is particular-
ly obvious in a scene when Chen stares at Lin, naked from the waist down
and recovering from his latest assault, as she wolfs down food. In fact,
Chen's gaze operates sporadically. His tyrannical control of Lin is so severe
that he does not need to assure himself of his power by watching over her.
Most of the time Chen does not look at Lin at all. He never greets her on
his return, ignores her at meals and hardly ever addresses her. After
assaulting her, he invariably falls asleep the instant he rolls off her. Lin is
no more than another object in Chen's house.
Sexual objectification obliterates the mind/matter distinction and
reduces woman to mere merchandise for sexual exchange. Chen's sadistic
satisfaction in raping Lin is, therefore, a negation of the woman's being. In
his anger against her attempt to fend off his assault, Chen lets out a steady
string of curses as he ravishes her: "I'll fuck the life right out of you! I'll
fuck the life right out of that stinking cunt of yours! I'll fuck the life . . . fuck
the life right out of you!" (Li 61).
Li Ang denounces the dehumanization of women to mere sexual
objects by comparing violation to slaughter. As Joyce C.H. Liu and others
have pointed out, pig-butchery and sexual intercourse are linked by "recur-

It is interesting to note that the description of the facial features of Ah-wang evokes the
image of a photo negative by the contrast of white hair with dark skin: "The woman, who was
in her fifties, had the typical dark skin of the fishing folk of Chencuo. Her face was deeply
wrinkled and her snow-white hair was coiled into a bun at the back of her head" (Li 22).

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Ng: LiAng

ring overlapping metaphors" (70). Lin's screams of pain on the wedding

night sound to people's ears like "the bleating of ghostly pigs" (Li 13). On
the following morning, one of the slaughterhouse helpers jocosely asks
Chen if his woman squeals like a pig about to be butchered on his wedding
night. As a reply Chen raises his pointed knife, a gesture both menacing
and sexual. Later in the morning Chen goes home and rapes Lin, causing
her to bleed again. The butcher knife reappears on the marital bed overtly
associated with blood: "Next to the spots of blood lay an even more
menacing object - a shiny, long, sharp blade. Chen Jiangshui's butcher
knife which he had casually set down before climbing into bed" (Li 20-21).
The symbolic gesture of plunging a knife deep into flesh is made even
more explicit in a later description of Chen butchering a pig:

This was Chen Jiangshui's moment. As the knife was withdrawn and the
blood spurted forth, he was infused with an incomparable sense of
satisfaction. It was as though the hot stream coursing through his body
was converted into a thick, sticky white fluid spurting into the shadowy
depths of a woman at the climax of a series of high-speed thrusts. To
Chen Jiangshui, the spurting of blood and the ejaculation of semen had
the same orgasmic effect. (Li 75)

Chen's perverse demand that the woman he has intercourse with

"scream her head off the whole time" is reminiscent of the squealing of
pigs in the face of death (Li 80). In fact, the other butchers call Chen
"Pig-Butcher Chen, partly in jest over the way he handled women" but
partly also in concession to his skills in butchering pigs (Li 14). When Lin
refuses to scream for fear that the neighbors may mistake her moans as
lascivious cries, Chen tries every form of abuse to force a cry from her. He
tortures her to the extent that panting hisses escape from between her
tightly gritted teeth, "like the gasps of a tiny animal in the throes of death"
(Li 109). Later he even threatens to take Lin back to the slaughterhouse
and really show her "something good" if she doesn't scream.
Sexual intercourse, a procreative act, becomes brutal annihilation of
the woman's being. Li Ang compares such violence committed against the
woman to Chen's slaughter of a pregnant sow - "[t]he destruction of the
womb, the source of all life under heaven" (Li 121).

II

The metaphor of pig-butchery underlines the economic nature of

women's oppression by men. Pigs are reared and then butchered for the
meat they yield. In a similar way, Lin has been bought, reared and
"butchered" for her flesh. The essence of her marriage as a manifestation
of the flesh trade has in fact been made clear from the very beginning. Lin
is traded like a sow to Chen by her uncle - her flesh is sold for the meat

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

Chen brings to her uncle's door every ten days or two weeks, and "the
neighbors all remarked enviously that Lin Shi was able to exchange a body
with no more than a few ounces of meat for pork by the pound" (Li 12).
The economy of flesh constitutes a specific, material oppression of
women enclosed within the domestic economy of the family. Men trade
women as commodities on the conjugal market. Women's value is primarily
the provision of free labor within the family and free sex for the husband.
It is more than a show of vulgarity when Chen calls his wife a "slut"
In sexual commerce Lin's value as an object of transaction is not much
higher than a prostitute. Chen in fact treats his favorite prostitute, Golden
Flower, more like a wife (indeed, more like a mother) than he treats Lin.
Compared to his inhuman behavior toward Lin, his attitude toward Golden
Flower is strangely "humane." Since both women serve only a single
function, sexual gratification, they are simply interchangeable. Lin's value
to Chen is clearly revealed in the episode in which he starves her to force
her to scream during sexual intercourse:

"When whores want to eat, they have to work, you willing to work?"
"Doing what?" Lin Shi asked, hesitantly, timidly.
"Y ou just moan a few times, like before, and if I find it satisfactory,
well, I'll reward you with a bowl of rice." (Li 126)

Chen's victimization of Lin is sustained by his complete economic

control over her. The feudal system's forced economic dependency of
women reinforces the sexual economy in which women are merchandise.
Women are forced to "sell" their bodies either exclusively to a particular
man on the connubial market or indiscriminately to any man in the flesh
trade, depending on their individual luck. The "value" of a woman and the
form of her "prostitution" are further determined by the paternalistic
"protection" (of father, brother, husband, son and of social values that are
predominantly masculinist) available to her. The material and sexual op-
pression of women in The Butcher's Wife indeed echoes Irigaray's ideologi-
cal argument: "Women are marked phallically by their fathers, husbands,
procurers. The stamp(ing) determines their value in sexual commerce"
(105).
The cases of Golden Flower and Lin's mother in contrast to that of
Ah-wang illustrate this point. Golden Rower was a peasant woman whose
husband died early. Being childless, she was turned out by her late
husband's family and has to make her living as a prostitute. Similarly, Lin's
mother was driven out of her home after her husband's death because she
has only a daughter but no son (the female is not considered an heir in the
feudal system). Forced by extreme starvation, Lin's mother has to sell
herself to a soldier for two rice balls. Ah-wang, on the contrary, has given
birth to a son and thus an heir. Though widowed, she is able to hold on to

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Ng: LiAng

her late husband's property as well as her familial position. She also tries
to consolidate her social status by hypocritically upholding the ethical
values of the patriarchal culture.
Li Ang underpins the economic nature of women's oppression in a
patriarchal culture by closely relating hunger to sex in The Butcher's Wife.
This point is carried to extremes in the episode of Lin's mother selling her
body to a soldier for two rice balls. At first the act is depicted in language
that evokes a stereotype of female concupiscence: "Pinned beneath him
[the soldier] was her mother, whose face, whose haggard face, was flushed
bright red and all aglow with a greedy light" (Li 7). The repeated occur-
rence of "ya" in relation to "kan" (see) is significant. The daughter,
helplessly witnessing the oppression of the mother, cannot escape the same
"curse" on women that passes on from one generation to another.
The apparent impression of the woman's carnal desire is, however,
immediately countered in the following paragraph:

She was chewing on one rice ball and clutching another in her hand. Low
moaning sounds escaped from her mouth, which was stuffed with food.
Half-eaten grains of white rice, mixed with saliva, dribbled down the side
of her face, onto her neck, and down her shirtfront. (Li 7)

The juxtaposition of sexuality and hunger sets off the grim fact of prostitu-
tion for survival. The ravenous look on the woman's face, which seems to
suggest sexual voracity, only signifies her primordial greed for life.
Li Ang adds a deeper irony to this scene by depicting Lin's mother
being clad in her wedding dress, which is all the poor woman has left to
wear. The wedding dress, being red, evokes the metaphor of blood: virginal
blood as well as the blood of a slaughtered pig. The wedding dress also
equates marriage with rape and prostitutuon. Being "quite new and in good
condition, still showing the creases" where it has been folded, the wedding
dress labels the woman as still a possession of a man, albeit a dead man (Li
9). Significantly, the dress is neither torn nor removed during her forced
sexual intercourse with the soldier.
The wedding dress symbolizes the bonds of marriage that lash the
woman to the pillar of traditional virtues. In the same vein, the "memorial

While the English translation deserves applause for its concision, force and immediacy,
it has omitted the important word "ya" (press) appearing twice in the original. A literal
rendering of the sentences in question reads:

Lin Shi could clearly see the man in soldierly unform who was pressing on her
mother's body . . . and then Lin Shi saw the mother who was being pressed
underneath. (Shafu 78-79. Emphases added.)

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

arch" - an obelisk erected in commemoration of a chaste woman in tradi-

tional China - is in reality nothing but a pillar to which she has been trussed.
Lin's last memory of her mother as "dressed in red and tied to an ancestral-
hall pillar as big around as a single embrace" foreshadows her own fate (Li
9). In her torturous life with Chen, Lin is haunted by a nightmare of her
mother clothed in red, and with her lower portion bound by several coils
of a long, thick rope.22
Lin's marriage is in essence a repetition of her mother's forced pros-
titution. The description of Lin's wedding night drives home this point:

She forced herself to bear the hunger as she waited for the last few
guests to leave, but exhausted and famished, she was close to collapse.
Drunk though the groom was when he came to bed, he insisted on
fulfilling his conjugal obligation, causing Lin Shi to exhaust with pitiful
screams what little energy she had left

When it was over, lin Shi was nearly in a dead faint. C

who was an old hand at this, quickly forced some wine
and she came around at once, choking hard. Still groggy
that she was hungry. Chen Jiangshui went into the livin
back with a big piece of pork, dripping with fat, which h
mouth, skin and all. With bloated cheeks, she chew
making squishing noises as fat oozed out the corners of
dribbled down in rivulets to her chin and neck, all grea
then her tears finally brimmed over and ran down her
chill through her. (1л 13)

The nature of marriage as prostitution is, moreove

Chen's contemptuous act of throwing some "deflor
qian ] to Lin. Conventionally presented by a custom
titute who is still a virgin on the first night of trade, the
denotes the value of a woman as an object of sexual t
a price tag on her flesh, the "defloration money" neg
the woman.
It is of metaphorical significance that Lin folds
money" in the oil paper wrapping of the ointment A
The ointment is supposed to soothe the pain in her p
Chen's assaults, making it easier for Lin to stand fur
denial of the instinctive response of pain is conver
her natural body. Both the "defloration money"
therefore instruments of dehumanization severing
body.

There may also be an implied reference to an old superstitious belief of the Chinese that
if a person nurses grievances and dies wearing red clothes, the soul of the person will become
a ghost haunting the earth to seek its revenge.

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Ng: LiAng

Lin uses the "defloration money" she has received from Chen to breed
ducklings, hoping to make some money to provide for herself when Chen
does not bring any food home. Inevitably Lin's procreative enterprise
encounters a brutal end. Chen, who will not allow Lin any economic
independence, slaughters all the ducklings on which she has placed the
hope of making her own living. The bloody slaughter symbolizes the
violence with which Chen has crushed the life and spirit out of Lin.

Ill

Throughout the incidents shown in The Butcher's Wife, Chen does not
once call Lin by her name. Other than treating her as if she were non-ex-
istent, he calls her a "slut." Chen also frequently uses foul language on Lin,
who hardly dares opens her mouth in front of him. Chen's verbal abuse of
Lin is an assertion of his mastery over her. His control over speech and his
perverse naming of his wife as whore demonstrates, in Adrienne Munich's
words, "a paradigm for male dominance over language" (238). Munich
views the masculinist monopoly over naming as "a male will to power and
a willing of female absence" (239). Chen's abominable treatment of Lin
seems to illustrate this point. On many occasions Lin is "apparently forgot-
ten" by Chen who, without even acknowledging her presence, sits down to
eat, drink and sing completely at ease (Li 28, 90).
The patriarchal monopoly over naming leaves no voice whatever for
women. The female is reduced to the level of the silent, the unconscious.
Shortly after she has reached puberty Lin is obssessed by a recurring dream
of pillars. Trying to rationalize this dream, Lin repeats it over and over to
her neighbors. Tired of hearing, people cut her off whenever she attempts
to talk about it. Lacking a listener, Lin grows taciturn. Her silence, which
is induced by social estrangement, is, however, interpreted as "lovesick-
ness" by her neighbors. This provides an excuse for Lin's uncle to marry
her off by accusing Lin of being "in a tearing hurry to get laid," just "like
her mother before her" (Li 11).
Lin is silenced and erased by the patriarchal society, yet Ah-wang
convinces her that her grievances can be voiced after death. Ah-wang
relates to Lin the ghost tale of Chrysanthemum, a maidservant who threw
herself down a well in Chencuo. Instead of highlighting the fact that
Chrysanthemum has committed suicide to escape torment, she diverts Lin's
attention to the kindness and power of the Chen Clan Elder, the deity
worshipped in the Temple, by allowing people who have suffered injustice
to air their grievances after death. The "cosmic order" of deities is, how-
ever, still envisioned as a patriarchal hierarchy. Inevitably, women's voices
are made meaningless within the patriarchal order. No wonder that the
ghost of Chrysanthemum is not "seen" by people as "a terrifying specter
with a horrible bloody face or a frightening long tongue," but instead, is

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

said to be "a melancholic but beautiful spirit," forever wordless (Li 82).
Lin's narveté in invoking the spirit of Chrysanthemum to be her protector
only adds a deeper irony to the muting of her grievances.
Ah-wang complies with the victimizer in silencing Lin. Lin is slandered
by Ah-wang, who tells other village women that Lin's painful cries during
Chen's assaults are but lascivious screams. Overhearing Ah-wang's slur of
her, Lin tries to stifle her moans every time Chen assaults her. The result
is, of course, a stepping up of Chen's abuse. Realizing that she has been
made into a laughingstock among the women of Chencuo by Ah-wang's
malicious slander, Lin avoids the society of the women. Since her uncle has
declared that her family ties ended on her wedding day, Lin has no one to
turn to. Finding neither understanding nor sympathy for her ordeal, Lin is
reduced to absolute silence. Even when Chen brutally slaughters all the
ducklings in which she has vested her hope, she utters not a cry. While Chen
is himself overwhelmed by the terror of his bloody deed and breaks down
into wailing, Lin "just stood there without making a sound" (Li 123).
Finally, when Lin is forced by starvation to beg employment from the
fishing folk, none of the households will accept her for fear of Chen. The
scene in which Lin desolately heads toward "home" represents her total
social alienation: "There wasn't a sound to be heard or a person to be seen.
It was as though the whole of Lucheng had disappeared, leaving her alone
in the bitter cold between the deserted sky and the desolate earth" (Li 131).
The world of the oppressed woman is a world of deadly silence.
Lin's refusal to moan under Chen's continuous physical abuse and
starvation is her last attempt to hold on to her human dignity. Paradoxically,
this attempt is simultaneously an act of dehumanization: a severance of
human emotions and a denial of the true responses of the body. Inevitably,
her last hold on humanity, and hence sanity, is finally overwhelmed. When
Chen rapes her just before his brutal end, "Lin Shi didn't struggle. She just
whimpered softly like a small animal. It sounded to Chen Jiangshui like
moaning, and he was satisfied" (Li 137-38). More than an estrangement of
her words (language) from her body (counter-text to her words), this final
rape alienates the woman not only from her body, but also from her voice
(identity). It is a dehumanization of the human cry (emotions) into the
squeals of a pig, signifying nothing but death. It is therefore important that
when Lin kills Chen, the images that flash into view are first the face of the
soldier who raped her mother, then "a squealing, struggling pig" (Li 138).
By turning Chen into a hog to be butchered, just as she has been
"butchered" like a sow, Lin reverses the process of dehumanization. Her
slaughter of Chen constitutes a breakdown of the phallocratie logic of flesh
for meat.

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Ng: LiAng

IV

Lin and her mother are doomed victims of the sexual double standard
prevalent in society. The ethics of the patriarchal society demands that
women yield their bodies up as sexual tools for men's use but censures them
if they themselves gain pleasure from such use. Just as the clansmen wilfully
mistake the hungry look in Lin's mother's eyes for a lustful craving, Lin's
painful moanings are perversely considered by the villagers as incontinent
cries of orgasmic ecstasy. Even after Lin's voice has been stifled, Ah-wang
still traduces her: "She even stopped moaning toward the end. I wonder if
that means that Pig-Butcher Chen couldn't control her any longer. Heh-
heh, I even heard him accuse her once of taking a lover!" (Li 141).
Lin and her mother are victimized by a society that refuses to listen to
women's sufferings. Their tortured cries are drowned within the deafening
din of phallocentric discourse ironically trumpeted through the mouth of
another woman:

"You know the old saying There's no murder without adultery,"

Auntie Ah-wang intoned solemnly. "Just look how it turned out - mother
and daughter both in trouble for the same reason. I tell you, we women
really have to watch our step."
Her listeners nodded their heads in agreement. (1Л 141)

The causes for the wreck of Lin and her mother are never questioned. On
the contrary, they are made to bear the blame for their suffering. Ah-wang
expresses only contempt toward Lin's ordeal:

"All a woman has to do is put up with it a while, and it'll pass. Who ever
heard of someone yelling and carrying on until everybody in the neigh-
borhood knows and no other woman is willing to speak up for her?
Honestly!" (Li 142)

The irony hidden behind this speech is, of course, that instead of speaking
up for Lin, the women of Chencuo on the contrary speak ill of her. In reality
women are oppressed not only by men, but also by other women.
The fact that women who are unconscious victims of patriarchal
culture invariably become accomplices in the oppression of other women
has been established at the beginning of the novella. Unwittingly, Lin
carnes the ruin of her mother. Noticing the soldier's stealthy entry into the
ancestral hall where she and her mother have taken shelter, the naive Lin
vaguely discerns danger and runs to her uncle for help. She never realizes
that by calling forth her clansmen, she has, in fact, summoned the per-
secutors of her poor mother.
The point that women who have internalized ideological assumptions
of patriarchy are equally victimizes of other women is clearly developed

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1968)

in the character Auntie Ah-wang. The vivid description of Ah-wang's feet

captures the essence of her being:

Although once bound, they had subsequently been freed, which is why
they weren't particularly small. Since there had never been any attempt
to bind them into "three-inch golden lotuses," they were nearly as long
as those of the average woman. The only difference was that she walked
somewhat unsteadily, seemingly lifting her legs straight up, then setting
them straight back down. She could only take small, mincing steps, and
even those took a great deal of effort, so for her the simple act of walking
was hard work, (li 24)

The deformation of the feet symbolizes the disfiguration of the mind.

Like her feet, which have been bound so long they have lost the ability to
cany a woman's weight even after they have been freed, Ah-wang has been
steeped in phallocratie values to the point where she is shockingly insensi-
tive to other women's suffering. She is also characterized by "a full set of
teeth, so gleaming white they looked more false than real" (Li 22). This set
of gleaming white teeth recurs in later descriptions with a menacing
suggestion of Ah-wang's ingenuity in calumnies.
Ah-wang preys on other women so as to uphold herself as the archan-
gel of morality. The values she appears to champion, such as women's
obedience to their husbands and female chastity, are overwhelmingly
phallocentric. Although her own behavior is a far cry from the principles
she proclaims, Ah-wang seeks to submit other women under the iron rule
of patriarchy. Herself an adultress, Ah-wang condemns Lin's mother for
adultery. She also pries into the sexual life of Chen and Lin, malevolently
vilifying Lin as a slut.
By aligning herself with men in oppressing other women, Ah-wang
exploits the double standard of morality to her own advantage. She further
safeguards her power by implanting in other villagers superstitious fears.
When Harmony, her defiant daughter-in-law, exposes her adultery, Ah-
wang vindicates herself by pretending to hang herself. Ah-wang's fake
hanging is a maneuver of the so-called traditional "weapons" wielded by
women: "First, cry; second, make a scene; third, hang yourself' 'yi kit, er
nao, san shangdiao]. Through staging this act of attempted suicide, Ah-
wang relates herself to the hanging ghost to frighten other women. She
clearly achieves her aim, as even the insolent Harmony is subdued by fear
of antagonizing Ah-wang's hanging ghost: "Fearing the ghost might seek
her out for revenge, Harmony's attitude toward Ah-wang had changed

Although the translators have given as close a rendition as possible, the adjectival phrase
"baisensen" in the original carries a menacing undertone that the phrase "gleaming white"
cannot convey. The conventional use of the adjective "sen" in combination with other
adjectives to form phrases such as "senran" [awe-inspiring] is to suggest grimness and
gloominess.

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Ng: LiAng

radically - she was now the model daughter-in-law, a study in obedience"

(Li 96).
Ah-wang's association with the hanging ghost is highly ironic. Since
the hanging ghost is conventionally envisioned as a specter with a long
bloody tongue, the image vividly portrays the horror of Ah-wang's malig-
nancy. The hanging ghost serves, furthermore, as a foil to the silent spirit
of Chrysanthemum, who represents the silenced, suppressed women like
Lin.
The image of the hanging ghost lays bare Ah-wang's sin and unveils
the ludicrous nature of the notion of "divine retribution." Under the
influence of Buddhism it was widely believed that people committing the
crime of calumny would be punished by having their tongues cut off in the
netherworld. The fact that Ah-wang can turn around superstitious beliefs
and use the hanging ghost to manipulate people through their fear reveals
the falsity of the logic of "divine retribution."
Ah-wang is able to escape social punishment for her adultery by
assigning her blame to the hanging ghost: "Not that I want to sing my own
praises, but not long ago there was that problem with the hanging ghost.
Luck was with me and I escaped with my life, but Pig-butcher Chen, he
wasn't so lucky" (Li 141). Guilefully exploiting the susceptibility of the
villagers, Ah-wang stamps out any reasoning by attributing everything to
"luck."
Superstition can be a weapon to induce blind submission in women
and thus perpetuate the hegemony of patriarchy. Right at the beginning of
their acquaintance, Ah-wang threatens Lin with the idea that she will have
to share Chen's infernal punishment for pig-butchery in the netherworld.
Ah-wang persuades Lin to offer up sacrifices to expiate part of Chen's sins
at the Temple of the Chen Clan Elder, a deity representing the patriarchal
rule. Ah-wang also exalts the benevolence and authority of the Chen Clan
Elder for allowing oppressed women such as Chrysanthemum to voice their
grievances after death. Cherishing the illusion of vindication in the other
life, Lin continues to endure Chen's torture and offer sacrifices to deities.
The idea of offering sacrifices is ironic. The "cosmic order," formed
by male deities such as the Chen Clan Elder, is but a patriarchal hierarchy.
Both the social order and "cosmic order" command women to offer
"sacrifices" to both men and male deities; otherwise they will be punished
for their "sins." By assuming the responsibility for instructing Lin in sacrifi-
cial offerings, Ah-wang plays the role of an adroit sorceress who wields the
enthralling power of superstition to induce fear in people.
During the Festival of Dead Souls, Ah-wang leads a group of women
from door to door to compare the sacrificial offerings displayed by each
household. Stopping at Lin's door, Ah-wang completely ignores Lin's warm
and sincere greeting, but "turned to the offerings on the altar, closely
scrutinizing and evaluating each and every item" (Li 94). Her criticism of

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

the sacrifices Lin offers on the altar echoes her criticism of Lin's "sacrifices"
to Chen. Ah-wang turns a blind eye to Lin's suffering, but criticizes Lin for
not having "enough sense to count her blessings," telling other women "I
don't know how many generations of virtuous cultivation it takes to be able
to live that kind of life" (Li 141-42). The injustice done to Lin is, however,
justified by the notion of "divine retribution" and all too easily explained
away:

"It was her cruel fate, that's what it was. The mother got into trouble, and
since theirs was a family short on luck, the daughter wound up commit-
ting murder for the same reason. It was in the cards, I tell you, it was
divine retribution!"

and Ah-wang's audience readily rejoins:

"How true! It was divine retribution," the others agreed. (Ii 142)

A priestess jealously guarding the absolute sovereignty of the patriarchy of

which she is a parasite, Ah-wang defuses any doubt toward the uprightness
of social order by invoking the arbitrary order of deities. The "divine
retribution" imposed by the "cosmic order" is, after all, a male system of
retaliation. Women who commit the "sin" of not offering enough
"sacrifices" to men/male deities are severely "punished."

Lin's sacrificial offerings to her mother in the murder scene subvert

the order of phallocracy. Lin's slaughter of Chen symbolically inverts the
male logic of women "expiating" their "sins" by offering up sacrifices to
male deities. Along with the paper figures and clothing and bowls of food,
Chen is "sacrificed" at the altar to redress the grievances of Lin and her
mother.
Some critics have viewed Lin's murder of Chen as a restoration of
balance in the power struggle between the sexes. Zhang Xiguo, for in-
stance, interprets the murder as a rite: "Through such a rite, the sexual
oppression of women by men is expropriated" (30). Zhang considers the
rite of mariticide (husband-killing) as comparable to the rite of patricide
(father-killing) in some primitive societies, and that "some forms of 'the
rite of husband-killing' are essential to women's awakening" (30). Another
critic, Gu Tianhung, also views Lin in the light of an avenger establishing
justice on the scale of "divine retribution": "With a swing of the knife, Lin
Shi ends all the grievances 'yuari' and sins 'nie' - the oppressed finally
emerges in a heroic image" (43).
The point, however, is that the rite of mariticide does not lead to an
awakening of Lin or other women. I agree with Cai Yingjun that "even up

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Ng: LiAng

to the moment of gripping the knife to slay her husband, Lin Shi has not
reached any self-awareness" (98), and further, with Joyce Liu, that Lin's
breakdown "does not mean any triumph of her self-awareness or self-asser-
tiveness, but a total collapse" (73).
The "grievances and sins" of the women, moreover, do not end with
the mariticide. Although Lin appears to have avenged the oppression of
her mother and herself by killing Chen (who is, after all, only one of the
victimizers), male dominion in society has not been overturned. In fact,
Lin's victimization continues after her own unjust execution by the
authorities. She is falsely accused of adultery, the only possible motive
considered by both the authorities and society for a woman to murder her
husband. Ah-wang's slander on Lin's character simply echoes the prevalent
view in society as represented by the two fictional news reports included as
a prologue to the story. One of these delivers the following paternalistic
moral:

Even without proof of her in&delity, the public exhibition of an

adultress-murderess can serve as a warning against immorality, and in
the final analysis, the parading of Chen Lin Shi was a necessity. Surely
all the women who saw her will take heed and refrain from imitating
foreign women, who are always clamoring for equality and the right to
attend Western schools. Such demands are actually little more than
excuses for a woman to leave house and home and make a public
spectacle of herself. They comprise a mockery of the code of womanly
conduct and destroy our age-old concepts of womanhood.
We hope that the parade will inspire concerned citizens to redouble
their efforts in the fight to stop the decline in womanly virtues. (Li 4) 24

Ah-wang and the village women of Lucheng accept such views and refuse
to understand Lin's predicament. They concur with the news reports that
the wife's murder of a husband has always been the result of her adulterous
affair. The rite of mariticide, therefore, has not aroused any awareness in
other women. On the contrary, the unjust execution of Lin only reveals to
other women the "divine retribution" of patriarchy imposed on the uncon-
forming ones. The tyrannous grip of patriarchy is henceforth strengthened
rather than weakened.
I would argue that in refusing to allow Lin and other women insight
into the nature of the women's oppression, Li Ang wishes to convey her
pessimism on the headway Chinese women have made since the 1911
Revolution. Like Ah-wang's disfigured feet, the minds of Chinese women
in the modern era continue to be distorted by phallocentrism rooted in

In traditional China, as a means of propaganda, a convict sentenced to death is escorted

to the execution ground by a parade. It was hoped that people witnessing the horrifying end
of criminals would be frightened and refrain from committing crimes.

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Voi. 4, 1988)

society. Historical change has not changed patriarchy, as Lin's recurring

nightmare seems to suggest:

Several pillars, so tall they impale the clouds, disappearing into a pitch
darkness that stretches on endlessly. Suddenly, a rumble of thunder,
moving inexorably nearer and nearer. Then a loud boom. Not a trace of
flames anywhere, yet the pillars become instantly charred, without so
much as wobbling. Finally, after the longest time, dark red blood begins
to seep from the cracks in the blackened pillars. (Li 10)

The pillars, symbol of the morés of patriarchal tradition, remain erect

despite the thunder, which suggests the onset of the Sino-Japanese War
and a change of era. This may be read as Li Ang's bleak view of the
liberation of Chinese women in the first half of the twentieth century.
What is at stake, for Li Ang, is more than manufactured optimism or
character development, both accounts on which The Butcher's Wife has
been criticized. The heart of the matter lies in feminism as the basis of
political and ideological power: "Women become feminists by becoming
conscious of, and criticizing, the power of symbols and the ideology of
culture," Maggie Humm has written recently (4). My point is that because
Li Ang's feminism is severely circumscribed, she cannot envision a relation
of women to power that is not a simple matter of female victimization.25
In The Butcher's Wife, Li Ang seems to be concerned only with
exposing the injustice women suffer in traditional Chinese society. She has
stressed that "a writer should only raise questions, not solve them."26 Thus
I would argue that her "feminist concerns" fall within the scope of "literary
feminism" but no further. As Agate Nesaule Krouse notes:

literary feminism is indirectly of service to the feminist cause because it

provides documentation that the traditional definitions of women are
inadequate or that women suffer injustices because of their sex. It need
not deal with feminists themselves, nor does it need to provide a positive
blueprint for the reform of society. (282)

25 As Toril Moi points out in her discussion of another writer's work:

[WJomen's relationship to power is not exclusive^ one of victimization. Feminism

is not simply about rejecting power, but about transforming the existing power
structure - and, in the process, transforming the very concept of power itself.
The extreme polarization of the powerful and the powerless in the novella seems
to me to be a simplification of the complex roblem of power and a reduction
of sexual politics into mere sexual antagonism between the oppressor and the op-
pressed.

26 Li Ang, Foreword, Shafu, viii.

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Ng: LiAng

In fact, Li Ang's feminism itself reverberates the understanding of

feminism in Taiwan generally. In this popular view feminists are regarded
as female avengers. Feminists are, moreover, being looked upon as West-
ernized women who adopt particular manners of dress, haircut and uncon-
ventional (even anti-social) behavior, particularly in sexual relationships.27
The pressure of being a feminist, and especially one who voices the
unavoidable question of sex, is obviously tremendous in the relatively
conservative society of Taiwan. Thus even Lü Xiulian, the pioneer feminist
in Taiwan, refrains from direct challenge of culture-specific questions and
traditional assumptions about gender behavior.
Li Ang and Lü converge in viewing feminism as being only an expres-
sion of humanitarianism. They are wary of criticism that confínes them to
the ghettoized world of woman. Their fear of marginalization reflects the
popular view of feminism as being confined to the narrow world of woman
and separated from the general field of human endeavor. There is very little
recognition of feminism as a serious intellectual current and a large body
of speculative theory. As a result, feminine writing (writing by women) is
frequently confused with feminist writing. Feminism in the Chinese context
has yet to be created as a gender-specific way of thinking and accepted as
an intellectual tendency.

27 In fact, Li Ang has been troubled by the attitude of the public toward The Butcher's
Wife. She says in the Preface to Dark Nigtus:

When I was writing Shafu [Mariticide], I also planned to write another novella,
Shaqi [Uxoricide], with the same aim of employing a feminist perspective to exam-
ine social phenomena and the essential question of male-female relationship. The prize
awarded for Shafu, however, has caused me a great deal of unnecessaiy disturbance
and severe criticism from moralists. As a result of this, although I have collected all the
material, I have put off the writing of Shaqi.

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 Modem Chinese Literature (Vol. 4, 1988)

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GLOSSARY

Auntie Ah-wang

Chen Jiangshui jjcg*

Chencuo

Chrysanthemum щ ^
Golden Flower

kaibaoqian MS*
Li Ang £ tf,
Lin Shi ijr
Lü Xiulian о
Shafu - Lucheng Gushi « #4 À - Jit iÄ, & ^ »
yi ku, er nao, san shangdiao - Я. , - Щ , 2. _L íj»

200

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