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Home , Li Kui (Water Margin), Mount Liang, Pan Jinlian, Song Jiang, Sun Xin (Water Margin), Tian Hu

Woman Warriors of the Classic Chinese Novel Shuihu Zhuan

BY

Charles Sherwood

Abstract: The 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 , Outlaws of the Marsh, or All Men are Brother. This novel is considered one of the four classic Chinese novels along with , Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and . 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 ’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 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 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 origin (1279-1368).5 There is also evidence of a sub-genre of Yuan dramas dedicated to stories of the Shuihu cycle, showing that over a long period the legend of 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 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 , Outlaws of the Marsh. See bibliography for more details. 10 Alex & John Dent-Young, The Marshes of . See bibliography for more details. 11 Hsia, pg. 73-74 5

chapter version adds in two main narrative events, the expeditions against rebels 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 Song slaying 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 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. Both editions contrast not just in terms of sourcing, but also in terms of translation philosophy and context in which it was written. In their analysis of portrayals of cannibalism in both translations, for example, Yunhong Wang points out that the Shapiro translation generally took a conservative approach to topics sensitive to Communist party sponsors or foreign readers.16 In contrast, the Dent-Young translation was written with an eye towards addressing general readers while aiming to “strike a compromise between the adequacy of the source text and the acceptability of the target text.”17 Where the Deng-Young translation

14 Plaks, pg. 309-10 15 Ibid, pg. 319-320 16 Wang, pg. 12-13 17 Ibid, pg. 13 7

retains (though sometimes understating) all instances of cannibalism analyzed by Wang, the

Shapiro translation wholly deletes over 90% of mentions of cannibalism.18 Using these translations, produced in different contexts and with different source editions, to check against each other will serve to limit how dependent this paper’s analysis may be on any one translation.

This paper will uniformly cite the Dent-Young translation, but analyzed sections are checked against the Sidney Shapiro text where possible.

Sun Erniang, “The Ogress”

The character Sun “The Ogress” is the first of the woman warriors to appear in the Shuihu zhuan narrative. She is briefly mentioned in Chapter 17 by name but makes her first appearance in the midst of ’s story in chapter 27. Wu, while being escorted to exile as punishment for killing Pan Jinlian, encounters Sun and her husband as innkeepers along the road. Sun and her husband, Zhang “the Gardener”, continue to serve as major side-characters in the story of how

Wu Song joined the outlaws. After Wu Song joins the outlaws, Sun appears in minor roles throughout the rest of the novel until her death in chapter 118 (or chapter 98 in 100-chapter editions). Although Sun does not follow the portrayal of women in the novel as dangerous temptations and as enemies to the bonds of brotherhood, she does so for reasons that seem to reinforce, rather than subvert, the misogynistic character of the novel. In the Wu Song story, Sun is portrayed in a largely negative light as part of the comedy of the section. At the same time, any martial strength she may have—a key aspect of respect among the bandits—is minimized both then and throughout the book.

18 Wang, pg. 7-8 8

When Sun is introduced, We are told that “her waist is coarse as a pulley block, her arms and legs clumsy as a workman’s mallet… gold bracelets bind the she-devil’s arms, a red skirt reflects her hellish nature”.19 Meanwhile her nickname, translated into English variously as “the Witch”,

“the Ogress”, or “the female yaksa” is 母夜叉 (Muyecha), a term applied to women that means

“hideous and fierce-looking”. At the same time, she is portrayed as having largely negative qualities. Above all she is noted for her “hellish nature” and labelled a “she-devil”, and she is described as bearing a “jealous spirit”.20 Thus, in terms of beauty Sun does not present the sexual threat other women do in the novel. She bears a jealous nature that paired with beauty may have set her up as a dangerous woman to be around like Pan Jinlian or Yan Poxi, but with her ugliness it only serves to lower her character and place her as a target for ridicule.

In her most significant scene, Sun and her husband run an inn together where they poison unsuspecting customers, steal their goods, and cook them into meat pies. Wu Song is to be the latest victim but, suspecting something is up, he goads Sun into trying to poison him and manages to trick Sun into thinking the poison had knocked him unconscious. When Sun approaches him, he immediately seizes her and she “squealed like a pig having its throat cut… all the fight had gone out of her.”21 Wu continues to pin her down with just one foot as her husband Zhang enters the scene and negotiates her release, after which Sun prostrates herself to

Wu. This scene, despite or maybe even because of its morbidity, is played off very comedically.

In goading Sun, for example, Wu Song states that “There are some hairs in this pie meat, and they look to me remarkably like pubic hairs”.22 The negative portrayal of Sun is key to the

19 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27 Paragraph 19 20 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27 Paragraph 50 21 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27 Paragraph 39 22 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27 Paragraph 30 9

comedy of the scene. Her ugliness, for example, is played upon when Wu riles her up by pretending to flirt with her.23 Likewise her smug internal thoughts as she plots to poison Wu

Song, as well as the fierceness in how she is described (“she-devil”, “her hellish nature”, “jealous spirit of the Ogress”) are contrasted directly with the reader’s knowledge of Wu Song’s plans and prowess. This makes Wu’s instant reversal of her scheme all the more satisfying to the reader.

Among the 108 outlaw-heroes of the novel,

Sun’s introduction is unique in that in her first fight she does nothing at all. She is immediately taken down and, other than screaming like a pig, does not struggle or fight back—Wu Song carries on a full, unimpeded conversation with her husband

Zhang while keeping her pinned by one foot. In fact, of the three woman warriors who are part of the 108 main outlaws of the novel, Sun appears to fight the least overall and is treated as the least significant of the three, perhaps reflecting her primary importance as a temporary comedic Figure 1: Wu Song Subdues the Ogress character. Unlike the other woman warriors, she never has a significant fight scene. This

23 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27 Paragraph 61 10

difference between Sun and the others is made most clear in two scenes late in the novel when the woman warriors as a group face parallel, enemy woman warriors. When fighting the Tatar-

Liao princess in chapter 89, for example, all three woman warriors are described as leading a company together. In the dramatic duel between the princess and the woman warriors, however, only the other two—Steelbright and Auntie Gu—are actually described fighting the princess.24

The same occurs in chapter 98 of the 120-chapter edition, during which Steelbright and Auntie

Gu duel against the woman warrior Jade Arrowtip (see below: Jade Arrowtip section) with Sun conspicuously absent from the entire scene.25 Even Sun’s death doesn’t warrant a fight-scene, as she is briefly described as having succumbed to throwing daggers in chapter 118 (chapter 98 in the 100-chapter edition) in a post-battle accounting of casualties.26

Thus, although Sun does not follow the portrayal of women in the novel as dangerous temptations and as enemies to the bonds of brotherhood, she does so for reasons that seem to reinforce, rather than subvert, the misogynistic characteristics of the novel. Sun is an ugly, jealous woman who serves as the butt of jokes while having minimal influence as a warrior. She is not a threat to the brotherhood because she is not attractive either in appearance or personality, and her lack of demonstrable fighting skill places her low on the hierarchy of outlaws. She does not so much avoid the hostile male gaze discussed by C. T. Hsia as she does receive the hostile gaze in a different manner than the female beauties of the novel.

24 Dent-Young, Volume 4 ch, 89 pg. 464-466 25 Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 98 pg.100 26 Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 118 pg. 419 11

Hu Sanniang, “Steelbright”

Steelbright is the second woman warrior to appear in Shuihu zhuan. While Sun is a mostly clear- cut comedic character and not much of a “warrior”, Steelbright is a warrior through and through.

She first appears as part of the Hu-Zhu family alliance that defends itself against attacks from

Song Jiang and his outlaws in chapters 47 and 48; she joins the outlaws in chapter 50 after the

Hu and Zhu families are both thoroughly defeated. Befitting of her characterization as a skilled warrior, she continues to appear throughout the novel with important roles in various battles until her ultimate death in chapter 117 (chapter 97 in 100-chapter editions). Thus, unlike Sun,

Steelbright may present a countercurrent to the prevailing sense of misogyny and gender hierarchy embedded in the novel and satisfy C. T. Hsia’s claim of not being viewed as an “object of male hostility”. Yet, despite positive portrayals of Hu’s martial capabilities and achievement, the circumstances under which she is allowed to join the outlaws limit her subversive power and demonstrate that only very special circumstances allow her to escape the male hostility of the novel.

Steelbright is first mentioned when Song Jiang and his men size up the Hu-Zhu alliance facing them. Of the entire group, Steelbright is described multiple times as being the most formidable potential threat to the outlaws’ plans.27 Song Jiang is informed, for example, that of the Hu family “Most of the lot aren’t up to much, but Miss Hu, the daughter, known as Steelbright for the two bright swords she uses, has true worth”.28 Steelbright, then, is set up as a major antagonist and a respectable warrior before she even faces the outlaws. When Steelbright does

27 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 47 pg. 70, 84 28 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 48 pg. 94 12

appear on the battlefield, she holds up to the expectations set for her. She manages not just to capture her first opponent, or

“Short-Arse”, but also to almost capture

Song Jiang himself. It takes the efforts of multiple outlaws to prevent her from taking

Song Jiang and capture her.29

Steelbright differs from Sun Erniang not just in terms of martial strength, but also in terms of beauty. She is not described as ugly or unattractive in the slightest. Instead, she is described as “exceedingly handsome”, a

“slender force” with a “willowy waist” who

30 is “radiant as the crab-apple in flower”. As Figure 2: Steelbright captures Wang Ying such, she presents a potential threat to the masculine sexual abstinency that characterizes much of the outlaw band. In fact, her entry into the outlaw band is marked by that very same issue— there is a fear that her entry is sexualized and will subvert the principles of the outlaw band.

When Steelbright is bound up and sent to the outlaws’ lair, the chieftains assume that Song Jiang intends to marry her himself.31 When the issue comes up in conversation , one of the main enforcers of masculine order in the novel, expresses his discontent that Song would consider that

29 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 48 pg 97 - 102 30 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 48 pg. 97 31 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 48 pg. 102 - 104 13

“bloody woman” for marriage. Song responds with equal disdain for the idea, telling Li “Stop talking such bollocks. What do I want with the woman? I’ve got other things in mind.”32

Song’s “other thing in mind” for Steelbright is his plot to induce her into the brotherhood in a way that reinforces rather than subverts the sexual order of the outlaw band. Steelbright, whose entire family at that point is either missing or dead at the hands of the outlaws, is first adopted by

Song Jiang’s father. With Steelbright now a female relative, Song Jiang is then able to legitimately offer Steelbright in marriage to the very same outlaw that Steelbright had earlier captured, Wang Ying.33 With nowhere else to go and restricted by her new “familial” relations,

Steelbright is essentially forced to accept. Steelbright’s entry into the outlaw band was thus entirely predicated on the power that men within the family held over women in the traditional family and on Steelbright’s own gendered subjugation.

Furthermore, who she marries also does much to neutralize the potential subversiveness of

Steelbright’s entry into the outlaw band. Wang Ying is distinct from the other members of the group because of his strong lust for women. In his first appearance, he is described as “Haughty in mien but in nature most coarse / covetous, lustful, strong as an oak”.34 Wang, before joining the main group of outlaws chooses to raid a passing caravan against the judgement of both Song

Jiang and fellow bandit leaders in hopes of seizing a woman. When persuading Wang to release the woman he had seized, Song Jiang states that “In general, a hero indulging in fornication provokes ridicule… If it’s a wife you want, I can find you a much better one later.”35 Song Jiang,

32 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 50 pg. 138 33 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 50 pg. 143 34 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 32 Paragraph 97 35 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 32 Paragraph 142 14

Wang, and his bandits are later betrayed by the woman they released, upon which Wang seizes her once again and is only stopped from claiming her when she is decapitated by a fellow bandit leader. Song Jiang warns Wang that “If you had kept her by you, sooner or later you’d have come to regret it” and reminds him that he is “ going to find you a better one”.36 Thus, Wang is portrayed as a weak link in the outlaw brotherhood—his lust leads him to make hasty decisions and willingly associate with the kinds of deceptive women that, even when kidnapped into the band, are still presented as a clear danger to the brotherhood. As C.T. Hsia puts it, Wang is “the only hero openly censured and ridiculed by his comrades” for this very same reason—his lustfulness breaks one of the very few moral codes the outlaws have.37 Rather than subverting the order of a sexually abstinent brotherhood known for dismissing or even killing attractive women, then, Steelbright’s marriage into the band actually serves as a solution for Wang’s own subversive lusting. When the other outlaws praised Song Jiang as a “true gentleman” for arranging the marriage, they likely did so not just because Song Jiang upheld his promise, but because he closed off a potential problem within the brotherhood.38

Thus, while Steelbright continues to present as a strong female character throughout the novel, she does not fully escape the hostile male gaze of the novel. Unlike some other characters, who are allowed to join the outlaw band after being captured with little to no resistance, Steelbright’s entry into the band requires Song Jiang’s clever machinations to go forward specifically because

Steelbright is presented as an attractive woman that may subvert the sexual abstinence of the

36 Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 35 Paragraph 13 37 Hsia, pg. 82 38 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 50 pg. 144 15

band. Hostility towards Steelbright only ends when Song Jiang transforms her femininity from a problem into a solution for the larger issue of Wang’s lustful attraction to women.

Gu Dasao, “Auntie Gu”

Auntie Gu is the third of the warrior women, appearing with an important role in chapter 49 just after Steelbright’s appearance in chapters 47 and 48. She is introduced as a cousin of the Xie brothers, who have been imprisoned wrongfully and seek her help in escaping. Gu helps spearhead a prison break and she, the Xie brothers, and her collaborators all join the outlaw brotherhood en-masse. In terms of appearances afterward, she lays somewhere between Sun

Erniang and Steelbright. As mentioned in the Sun Erniang section, she takes action in battles that

Sun does not, but overall she is never as prominent in battle as Steelbright. Auntie Gu makes it all the way to the end of the novel, the only one of the three main woman warriors to do so.

When the other living outlaws are given official posts, Gu is granted an honorary title of nobility, and she retires with her husband back to her home in Dengzhou.39 In many other ways she also represents a middle-ground between the portrayals of Sun Erniang and Steelbright. In terms of attractiveness, for example, she is not portrayed in as negative of a light as Sun is, but she is never described in the attractive (and thus dangerous) terms Steelbright is either. Overall, Gu best matches C.T. Hsia’s claim that the woman warriors of the novel might escape the hostile male gaze and be treated the same as the male heroes.

39 Dent-Young volume 5, ch. 120 pg. 449 16

Auntie Gu is introduced as a strong, impetuous woman who is willing to do whatever it takes for her family. The two Xie brothers have a letter smuggled to her from prison, as not only is she

“the one person we [Xie brothers] really get on with”, she is also “a match for twenty or thirty men”, including being able to best her husband .40 When her character is introduced, it is said that “Sometimes when she’s angry she pulls up one of the rails from the well and beats her old man around the head with it… This one was not born to handle a needle and thread; she has turned staff and spear play into woman’s work.”41 Further, we are told she runs a joint gambling den, inn, and butchery. From the beginning, then, she is portrayed rather similarly to male outlaws throughout the novel—the emphasis is on her toughness and her temper, two very common traits among the outlaws.

As the story progresses, Auntie Gu shows even more similarities with some of her male comrades. Not only is Auntie Gu impetuous, she is impetuous for reasons that resemble the reasons of other outlaws. When Gu learns that her cousins the Xie brothers have been imprisoned she immediately summons her husband to plan their escape. When she learns that they might be killed at the hands of bribed prison officials, she intends to immediately attack the prison with no plans.42 When the possibility of running off to join the outlaws after saving her cousins is put on the table, she states that “I’ll go anywhere with you, as long as we can rescue my cousins.”43 She is willing to do whatever it takes, including running off into the wilds, in order to save her cousins—hers is a mission not just of familial loyalty, but of righting a wrong imposed by the corrupt state.

40 Dent-Young Volume 3 ch. 49, pg. 114 41 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 49, pg. 114 42 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 49, pg. 115-7 43 Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 49, pg. 118 17

Auntie Gu plays an important role in both gathering a group to conduct the prison break and in executing the break itself. She infiltrates the prison by playing on her role as a woman, presenting herself as a harmless visitor bringing food to a relative. Once she is inside and freed the Xie brothers, she doesn’t hesitate to participate in the slaughter of the jail’s workers and accompanies the entire group as they seek to join

Song Jiang and his outlaws. After joining the outlaws, Gu makes occasional appearances as a warrior, but especially reoccurs in roles similar to her initial one infiltrating the prison. In chapter 69, for example, Auntie Gu is asked to contact the outlaw Tattooed Dragon, who is feared to have been captured and imprisoned in the city of

Dongping. Gu disguises as an old woman and enters the city. When she finds that Dragon is in Figure 3: Auntie Gu (back-left) & prison, she once again uses her perceived accomplices escape with Xie brothers harmlessness as a woman to enter a prison on the pretext of bringing food.44

In the end, then, Auntie Gu presents the best evidence for C.T. Hsia’s claim that the woman warriors of the novel “are no longer viewed as objects of male hostility”. More than any other woman character, Gu is treated in a similar manner to the men of the novel. Where Sun serves as

44 Dent-Young, Volume 4 ch. 49, pg. 120-121 18

a comedic character and Steelbright’s induction into the band is problematized by the issue of her attractiveness, Auntie Gu suffers neither issue. At the same time, Gu’s gender is not just unproblematized, it is wielded as a weapon against enemies in the two most significant scenes in which Gu appears—the two prison infiltrations. Auntie Gu is a minor character overall in the novel, which limits the subversiveness of her presentation within the novel, but her relatively equal treatment with other minor outlaws sets her up as the best available counter-example among the three main heroines to the horrible treatment most other female characters receive in the novel.

Jade Arrowtip

Finally, Jade Arrowtip is a character introduced at the end of chapter 97 in the 120-chapter edition of Shuihu zhuan, part of the section from chapter 91 to chapter 110 which differentiates the 120-chapter edition from the 100-chapter edition. Although she is not one of the 108 main outlaws, she is treated as an important member of the outlaw band during the sequence in which she appears. She serves as a pivotal character in the Tian Hu section from chapter 97 to chapter

101, attaining awards and praise from both Song Jiang’s army and the imperial court as she serves a critical role in ending Tian Hu’s rebellion. She continues to appear as a character on the heroes’ side as they fight the rebellion and conveniently exits the narrative in chapter

110, when the 100-chapter and 120-chapter edition storylines re-converge. Unlike the other woman heroes of the novel, the narration lavishes Jade Arrowtip with praise for her appearance at every turn without ever problematizing it. When introduced, she is described as “a lass 19

beautiful as a flower”45 and later has a poem dedicated to her declaring that “Her fingers are soft as lotus in the pool, / Her waist more flexible than branches of the willow on the belvedere, /

Her gliding steps allure”46 Even in the midst of battle, her fierce weapons-play coexists with descriptions of her “willowy waist”.47 In a novel where beautiful women are presented as a constant danger, Jade Arrowtip is heaped with praise both for her heroics and her beauty. In a novel where the attractive Steelbright is placed under the hostile male gaze and only allowed to join the outlaw band after the “problem” of her attractiveness is solved through marriage to the lustful Wang Ying, Jade Arrowtip faces no such Figure 4: Jade Arrowtip (far-left) hurls a obstacles. Even further, Jade is allowed to stone at Steelbright and Auntie Gu intrude on the brotherhood of the gallant fraternity in a way that none of the other female heroes are able to-- the scene in which she enters the bridal chamber with her new husband, Hotshot, is one of if not the only positive portrayals of sexual relations with a woman portrayed in the novel.48

45 Dent Young, Volume 5 ch. 98, pg. 94. 46 Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 98, pg. 110. 47 Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 98, pg. 102. 48 Ibid, pg. 110. 20

What allows Jade Arrowtip to get away with being so powerful while still maintaining her femaleness, unlike other woman heroes in the novel? One obvious answer is the difference in authorship and origin of story. While the first 70 chapters of Shuihu zhuan constitute a core that has strong origins in an oral tradition dating to the Southern Song, the 20 new chapters of Shuihu zhuan added in the Wanli era came into being within a rich environment of already existing print editions. While one might think that Jade Arrowtip reflects, then, a more positive and even liberated image of women within the novel, Jade Arrowtip actually reflects a more traditional portrayal of women in Chinese storytelling traditions. The story of Jade Arrowtip, if isolated from the rest of Shuihu zhuan, can be easily identified as a standard female knight-errant or nüxia (女侠) story with roots in a long-standing literary tradition.

Although Shuihu zhuan is closely linked with the xia (侠) tradition and is even considered one of the groundbreaking works in the xia genre, it does not overlap much with what some scholars have studied as the nüxia or female knight-errant story. In his book on the history of female knight-errant stories, Roland Altenburger even claims that it may not be “purely incidental” that

Shuihu zhuan formed into a novel at the same time in history that female knight-errant stories seemed to hit a lull in interest.49 Yet, the story of Jade Arrowtip tracks so closely with “female avenger” type story that its isolated form could be used as a typical example of the story type.

The story of Jade Arrowtip is defined by Jade seeking revenge for her parents’ death at the hands of the rebel leader Tian Hu. Revenge is so key to Jade’s story that her family name, Qiu (仇) can be read as Chou (also written 仇) which often takes meanings related to revenge.50 This places

49 Altenburger, pg. 127 50 For example in the term 报仇, a verb meaning “take revenge” or 仇杀 which means “kill in revenge” 21

Jade Arrowtip within a tradition of vengeance-seeking nüxia that stretches back to at least the third century CE.51 Since around that time, stories of righteous female vengeance-- particularly in avenging parental death-- appeared not just as poetry or prose, but as part of official histories such as the “Biographies of Exemplary Women” section of the Hou Han Shu or Book of Later

Han.52 These stories of woman avengers embodied a “fundamental tension between femininity and ethical duty”, allowing women to “transgress her designated space of domesticity” for the duty of familial revenge.53 Throughout the story of Jade Arrowtip, Jade is repeatedly praised as

“filial” by the narrator and characters in the novel. In the end, even Emperor Huizong was “full of praise for Jade Arrowtip’s virtue and filial piety” and when Arrowtip was finally able to offer

Tian Hu’s body on an alter to her parents, she did so with an approving crowd that was “moved to tears”.54 Thus, the story of Jade Arrowtip takes up a familiar form in its praise of filial virtue.

The martial acts Jade takes part in to avenge her parents may still be heterodox to a prevailing

Confucian mindset, but the circumstances (she being the only blood relative willing to avenge her parents) set these actions as part of the orthodox virtue of filial piety, particularly the overwhelming duty to avenge one’s parents present in other tales of female avengers.

Conclusion

This paper, in its analysis of the women warriors of Shuihu zhuan, has revealed a range of portrayals much more diverse than what may have been expected if one followed C. T. Hsia’s and others’ broader claims regarding the portrayal of women in the novel. It is clear that each of

51 Lin, 494. 52 Luo, 581 53 Ibid., 580-581. 54 Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 101, pg. 142. 22

the woman warriors in the novel is treated in a somewhat different way, but always in such a way that any possible subversion is either moderated or prevented entirely. There is, throughout the novel, a clear effort to preserve intact the misogynistic character of the novel and the sanctity of the brotherhood’s celibacy, and the treatment of the woman warriors in the novel allows them to exist within this space.

Overall, a variety of strategies are employed by the author(s) of Shuihu zhuan that reflect differing purposes for each woman figure. Where Sun Erniang is treated harshly in the eyes of the novel as a comedic character, Jade Arrowtip is lavished with praise as a female paragon of state-sponsored virtues such as chastity and filial piety. Lying in-between these two extremes,

Steelbright is allowed to exist as a strong female warrior in exchange for her subordination as a solution to a break in the brotherhood’s obsessive celibacy, while Auntie Gu is allowed to exist as a mostly “normal” minor hero in exchange for general obscurity. These women are all allowed to escape the regular portrayal of women as dangerous creatures, but in doing so largely reemphasize the gendered, misogynistic nature of the novel rather than fully subvert it. By analyzing the woman warriors of Shuihu zhuan, one can see that the gendered portrayals of the novel are at times much more diverse and subtle than what may be expected from the famous tales of dangerous beauties such as Pan Jinlian, but that these portrayals still exist within the bounds of a male-dominant lens that views certain kinds of women as potentially subversive.

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Picture Credits

Figure One: Dent-Young, Volume 2 ch. 27

Figure Two: Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 48 pg. 98

Figure Three: Dent-Young, Volume 3 ch. 49 pg. 123

Figure Four: Dent-Young, Volume 5 ch. 98 pg. 101

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Shi, Nai’an, Guanzhong Luo, John Dent-Young, and Alex Dent-Young. The Marshes of Mount Liang : A New Translation of the Shuihu Zhuan or Water Margin of Shi Naiʾan and Luo Guanzhong. Chinese University Press, 1994-2002.

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