Woman Warriors of the Classic Chinese Novel Shuihu Zhuan
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Woman Warriors of the Classic Chinese Novel Shuihu Zhuan BY Charles Sherwood Abstract: The classical Chinese novel Shuihu zhuan, widely published by the end of the sixteenth century, has long been popular with the Chinese public and as such has been the subject of much scholarly analysis and debate. Within the existing literature on Shuihu zhuan much has already been said about the novel’s hostile, misogynistic portrayals of women. Yet, most scholars studying women and gender in the novel have focused only on the overwhelmingly negative representation of sensuous women and how it is contrasted with the positive image of an asexual, masculine brotherhood of heroes. Little attention however has been paid to the woman warriors that join this brotherhood and how they are presented in the novel. By examining the case of each woman warrior in full, this paper seeks to show why these women are allowed to be heroes despite the hostile tone of the novel and how their positions as heroes are circumscribed by their positions as women. In doing so, this paper proposes that portrayals of women in the novel, though still largely misogynistic in nature, are more diverse in both form and implication than what previous literature has conveyed. 2 Introduction This paper analyzes the place of women, and especially woman warriors, in the classic Chinese novel Shuihu zhuan which is also commonly known in English as The Water Margin, Outlaws of the Marsh, or All Men are Brother. This novel is considered one of the four classic Chinese novels along with Dream of the Red Chamber, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West. Like the other masterworks, Shuihu zhuan has had a long-standing cultural influence on generations of Chinese from all walks of life. As such, the novel has been analyzed by a variety of literary scholars grappling with its underlying themes, portrayals, and ideological content. Among the analyses of Shuihu zhuan, a significant portion have dedicated time to analyzing portrayals of gender in the novel. However, the majority have focused on how the novel portrays men and masculinity. Multiple studies, for example, have analyzed the concept of brotherhood in 1 Shuihu zhuan and the sexual abstinence seemingly required for membership in the brotherhood. Where women have been analyzed in Shuihu zhuan, it has generally been to show how overwhelmingly masculine and dismissive of women the novel is. C. T. Hsia, for example, made the argument in 1968 that Shuihu zhuan has a “pronounced streak of misogyny”, that the women in the novel are “punished for being women, for being such helpless creatures of lust” in contrast to the self-disciplined and desexualized masculine heroes of the novel.2 Subsequent scholars have generally followed Hsia’s take, focusing their analysis on how women are positioned as a 1 See, for example, Geng Song’s “Masculinizing Jianghua Spaces in the Past and Present” and its discussion of the “homosocial morality” of the Shuihu Zhuan brotherhood. 2 Hsia, pg. 98. 3 danger to men and to the brotherhood maintained in Shuihu zhuan. In these analyses, the focus has generally been on women such as Pan Jinlian, who exemplifies the trope of dangerous beauties. A much less explored aspect of Shuihu zhuan is the presence of women beyond the archetype of dangerous seductresses and the ways in which these women are allowed to exist within the confines of a novel well-known for its misogyny. In this paper, I analyze the presence of women in the novel who defy the regular portrayal of women as dangerous creatures of lust who, in the end, are defenseless against masculine retribution. Analysis will follow the three main heroines of the novel, Hu Sanniang (“Steelbright”), Gu Dasao (“Auntie Gu”), and Sun Erniang (“the Ogress”), as well as the secondary heroine character Jade Arrowtip.3 These women all defy the usual position of women in Shuihu zhuan as dangerous Other without contradicting the more common portrayal of seductresses seen in the novel, and thus allow for a minor counter-current to exist against the prevailing misogyny without upsetting the gender hierarchy itself. C.T. Hsia claims that “such amazons are “heroes” in their own right and are no longer viewed as objects of male hostility”. This paper will interrogate this claim, whether it is true and, if so, what aspects of each “amazon” allow them to avoid the hostile male gaze cast on other female characters.4 The Text: Shuihu zhuan in the Literary Tradition Shuihu zhuan has been subject to decades of scholarly work and analysis, but there is still much uncertainty about the piece’s origins. Shuihu zhuan is itself based on a cycle of oral storytelling 3 Names derived from the Dent-Young translations of Shuihu Zhuan, discussed below. 4 Hsia, 82 4 that originated sometime during the Southern Song period (1127-1279), though the earliest textual precursor still extant is the Xuanhe Yishi of Yuan dynasty origin (1279-1368).5 There is also evidence of a sub-genre of Yuan zaju dramas dedicated to stories of the Shuihu cycle, showing that over a long period the legend of Song Jiang and his band was a rich source for new creative works.6 Sometime between the genesis of the original legends and the 16th century these stories were collected into a form similar to the Shuihu zhuan that was passed down to us today. Authorship and dating of Shuihu zhuan is widely disputed, with some following traditional sources in attributing the work to Luo Guanzhong or Shi Nai’an (or sometimes both) from the 14th century,7 though the earliest extant editions date from the Jiajing Era (1522-1566).8 Adding to the confusion, the popularity of the Shuihu stories has led to a dazzling variety of editions existing over the centuries including revisions, abridgements, and expansions of the Shuihu stories commonly ranging anywhere between 70 to 120 chapters in length. These different editions arose decades after the first evidence of a full version existing, and over time more events were added to the novel as is was republished. Analysis in this paper is based on two editions that have been translated into English, a 100-chapter edition translated by Sidney Shapiro9 and a 120-chapter edition translated by Alex and John Dent-Young.10 The 100-chapter version existed at least as early as the Jiajing Era along with some of the earliest known editions, while the 120-chapter version was first published in the Wanli Era (1573-1619).11 This 120- 5 Ge, pg. 6 6 Geng, pg. 39-40. 7 Plaks, pg. 293-295. 8 Ibid., pg. 281-283. 9 Sidney Shapiro, Outlaws of the Marsh. See bibliography for more details. 10 Alex & John Dent-Young, The Marshes of Mount Liang. See bibliography for more details. 11 Hsia, pg. 73-74 5 chapter version adds in two main narrative events, the expeditions against rebels Tian Hu and Wang Qing, both of which constitute 10 chapters. For the purposes of this paper, a few things deserve note regarding the origins of the text and the impact it will have on analysis. First, the stories of Shuihu zhuan developed over a long period of time and cannot be placed firmly into one historical context for analysis. To analyze Shuihu zhuan as only a product of the Ming would ignore the greater context of its synthesis. Additionally, at least some sections of Shuihu zhuan developed as part of a larger pool of stories and traditions transmitted both orally and textually. The stories that would come to make up Shuihu zhuan did not develop in isolation from other stories of the time, and in fact various Shuihu stories share tropes, themes, or even exact parallel passages with other stories told during the time. Ge Liangyan, for example, has pointed out both textual and thematic similarities between the tales of Wu Song slaying Pan Jinlian in Shuihu zhuan and similar events recounted in the short story Ren the Filial Son (任孝子烈性为神), including parallel scenes with almost exactly identical text.12 Ge identifies these forms of textual similarity as stemming from “a shared pool of story-making material, which the works in early vernacular literature both contributed to and drew from”.13 Shuihu zhuan, then, is linked to literary developments that took place over the course of centuries and with the creation and polishing of other stories, tropes, traditions, and cycles. Analysis of this work, then, is likewise linked to this shared pool of stories and bears significance beyond simply understanding Shuihu zhuan itself. 12 Ge, pg. 115-117 13 Ge, pg. 115 6 Despite murky authorship and the above-mentioned need to consider Shuihu zhuan within a collection of other stories and literary developments, we must also consider Shuihu zhuan as a unified novel that, if not attributable to one author, has unifying structural elements that distinguish it from the Shuihu story cycle itself. Andrew Plaks in his The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel shows a consistent narrative structure runs through the novel even in the variable closing chapters (whether that be chapter 70 or chapter 120), following a pattern of building up followed by accelerating dissolution and sober reflection.14 Further, Shuihu zhuan casts an ironic tint onto the source material that is different from other treatments of the material, openly portraying the troubling implications of the bandits’ actions without wholly condemning them.15 As analysis here relies primarily on English translations of the source material, some attention must also be paid to the origins of translations used. The Sydney Shapiro translation was sponsored in the PRC and published by the Beijing Foreign Language Press in 1981, while the Dent-Young translation was done for the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong over a period from 1994 to 2002.