A Problematic Appropriation of the Mulan Folklore Kang-Hun (Brett
興大人文學報 第五十四期，頁 29-46 二○一五年三月
A Problematic Appropriation of the Mulan Folklore in The Woman Warrior1
Kang-hun (Brett) Chang*
Abstract
Raymond Williams, one of the leading Left thinkers in Great Britain during the twentieth century, once said that the question of resistance is the problem of incorporation. If we judge Maxine Hong Kingston’s feminist ideas as expressed in The Woman Warrior in light of this perspective, it is without doubt that hers amount to a resistant or oppositional stance against any gender inequality a maligned weaker sex has suffered. This resistance starts to manifest itself in “White Tigers (「白虎山學道」) ,” the first section of her so-called memoir published in 1976, when the famous Mulan Folklore was rewritten and appropriated. Fa Mulan (花木蘭), the girl who substituted for her aged father to fight bravely in the battle- field, and her tale, positively confront derogatory remarks, like “cowbirds,” “maggots in the rice,” and “slave,” which Maxine Hong Kingston heard during her childhood, as well as gender discrimination in general. Nonetheless, this appropriation of Mulan Folklore is problematic because it is also a problem of incorporation—or, in Stephen Greenblatt’s words, a typical example of “the production and containment of subversion and disorder” by hegemony. In fact, the dominant class in Chinese society had already incorporated the folklore in its politically correct language, not to mention Mulan, the 1998 animated Walt Disney film version. Perhaps the popularity of The Woman Warrior could be viewed as the triumph of a global patriarchal order when most of its readers have accepted Kingston’s controversial treatment of her heroine in “White Tigers.”; or, it is probably an example of the incorporation of feminism by mainstream commercialism. The purpose of this paper is to examine the tricky relationship between Mulan Folklore and Maxine Hong Kingston’s version about a female general in The Woman Warrior, and subsequently the complicated ties between power and literary texts.
Keywords: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, Mulan Folklore, Raymond Williams, incorporation, the production and containment of subversion and disorder
* PhD Candidate, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University. (Received August 20, 2014; Accepted January 20, 2015) 1 The first draft of this paper was presented at the 35th (2011) Anniversary Conference of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature.
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I. In Marxism and Literature, while discussing the complex interrelations among the dominant (or the hegemonic), the residual, and the emergent elements in culture, Raymond Williams indicates that any cultural or political hegemony, albeit “always dominant,” has never enjoyed a state of “total” or “exclusive” control (113). In reality, a “lived hegemony” has “always” been “a process,” and it actually holds sway before the presence of cultural or political “counter-hegemony” and “alternative hegemony,” before the residue of previous social and cultural elements, and before the emerging new meanings and values (Williams 112-13). That is to say, “forms of alternative or oppositional politics and culture exist as significant elements in the society” all the time while “no dominant culture” permanently “includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention” (Williams 113, 125). Certainly a “static hegemony” could “ignore or isolate such alternatives and opposition,” yet “the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate them” when they are too powerful and threatening (Williams 113). As noted by Dick Hebdige, the incorporation of punk subculture by the mainstream consumer capitalist culture best exemplifies Williams’ point about the dominant’s efforts to tame, transform, and include any intimidating, menacing counter forces.2 Neither the punk subculture, which emerged in the mid-1970s with its idiosyncratic antiauthoritarian features, nor other challenging cultural elements which arise from time to time could seem to win their battle against the dominant culture. As a matter of fact, in order to survive, “any hegemonic process” has to be “especially alert and responsive to” counter-hegemony, alternative-hegemony, the residual, and the emergent social or political forces (Williams 113). Thus, more often than not, the question of resistance is the problem of incorporation in any cultural process. Next, a residual cultural element not only has functioned as “an effective element of the present,” but is also “active in the cultural process” though it comes into existence in the
2 See Hebdige 62-72.
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 past (Williams 122). Normally distancing itself from the dominant culture, a residual cultural element could pose a danger to the hegemonic if it originates from “some major area of the past,” and, as a result, it must “be incorporated if the effective dominant culture is to make sense in these areas” (Williams 123). The residual is tolerated or consented because of its “incorporated meanings and values” serving the interests of the hegemonic which, in fact, “cannot allow too much residual experience and practice outside itself” (Williams 122-23). Furthermore, Williams notices that the phenomenon of “selective tradition” in every cultural process is no more than a result of “the incorporation of the actively residual—by reinterpretation, dilution, projection, discriminating inclusion and exclusion” (123). The tradition people maintain and follow arises out of “an intentionally selective” process defined and controlled by the dominant, and, likewise, the creation, changing, development, and keeping of a literary canon, “‘the literary tradition,’” have hinged upon a similar process (Williams 115; 123). Interestingly, the Fa Mulan folklore in Chinese culture, already a text of the literary tradition, also represents an attempt by the hegemonic to reinterpret, dilute a subversive feminist story, and afterwards to appropriate it for use of helping maintaining the present order.3 If we consider the impact of selective tradition as manifested in the Mulan folk tale, Maxine Hong Kingston’s appropriation of it in The Woman Warrior will be problematic and questionable.4 II. Published in 1976, The Woman Warrior has long since been viewed as a feminist tract
3 “Fa Mulan” is also spelled as “Hua Mulan” in both Hanyu Pinyin system and Wade-Giles Romanization system. However “Fa Mook Lan” is Kingston’s rendition which clearly denotes the Cantonese sounds she heard from her mother’s chanting of the ballad. See Kingston (I Love a Broad Margin to My Life) 127, 191, 210, or 217. 4 Not every critic has been a fan of Kingston’s revised Fa Mulan. For one, Frank Chin, arguably Kingston’s biggest literary nemesis, still claimed that her Fa Mulan is “fake” or “phony” in his blog in March, 2007, as persistent as ever in his criticism of her use of myth or folklore. See Chin. Yet, here in my paper the question of historical authenticity or inaccuracy will not be the focus. For another, Shirley Chew wonders if all Kingston’s woman warrior will achieve is to “do little more than return us to the old conservative order” (139). Meanwhile, other critics, such as King-kok Cheung, Robert Lee, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, David Leiwei Li, and Deborah Woo, deal with Kingston’s revised Mulan respectively, albeit not the main argument, in their works.
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期 about a writer reflecting on her formative years in an immigrant neighborhood in Stockton, California, and her experience as a Chinese-American woman in search of her own identity. Partly sick of regularly hearing the derogatory remarks like “cowbirds,” “maggots in the rice,” and “slave” sneered, and shouted at herself and her sex as well while she was growing up (Kingston 46, 43, 20), its author, Maxine Hong Kingston, has utilized writing as a means of “[bringing] forth once again the theme of the injustices women suffer as a sex and the issue of female anger” (Hunt 8). This so-called memoir, more or less, represents a vindication of both women’s right and freedom of choice in the Chinese-American families, and this well-written account about her life and her relationship with her mom and other female relatives of her family “becomes [Kingston’s] way of being a woman warrior on her own behalf and perhaps on behalf of other Chinese girls and women” (Hunt 11). Moreover, if she “identifies the function of her classical Chinese swordswoman with that of the writer,” the overlapping not only shows that “‘writing is fighting,’” but also implies that her pen, like an Excalibur or a Hrunting, will help her serve as a female spokesperson for a maligned weaker sex in the literary battle ground (Cook 55). In “White Tigers” of Kingston’s autobiography, her successful and valiant female general constitutes as much a fighter-writer as the manifestation of female potentiality. The eponymous woman warrior there is quite obviously modeled after Fa Mulan, a legendary brave girl who first pretended to be the son to replace her elderly father in the emperor’s conscription. In the story, Mulan then fought for her country, returned home awarded after serving in the army for twelve years, and eventually resumed her normal life as a woman. It has generally been agreed that this legend “originated in the [Dynasty of] Northern Wei, sometime during the fifth to the sixth centuries” AD (Lan 231). No one knows for sure the exact time of its happening, but some scholars assume that the legend could begin as early as the year “429 AD” (Lan 231). The Northern Wei (AD 386-534) is a country (dynasty) established by a tribe called Xianbei (or Hsienpei in Wade-Giles Romanization system), whose people, regardless of sex and age, were able to not only ride
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 on the horsebacks but also specialize in bows and arrows.5 Therefore, Xianbei women had always been more than just dutiful housewives or daughters at home, and because of their lifestyle, they can easily become soldiers in an emergency. People leading a nomadic lifestyle often were better fighters than their agrarian counterparts when horses greatly improve the issue of mobility and personal hunting skills are conducive to the training of combatants. Meanwhile, Feng Lan contends that Mulan “is a Northern girl with obscure ethnic origins” (235). If Mulan turns out to be “a Han-Chinese” woman, but not a Xianbei, it would still be easier for a Han woman in the Northern Wei to become a soldier than her ethnic sister living in the south because the northern Hans then were greatly influenced by their ruling barbarian aristocracy and their tribal customs.6 Later writers first recorded Mulan’s story in the form of a ballad after her tribe had been assimilated by China. Since then, Mulan’s story, either in folklore spread orally or in book form circulated widely, has permeated the Chinese minds in various and sundry versions.7 The earliest written text—approximately around 568 AD—of the ballad “is no longer extant,” leaving the twelfth century version as the oldest available text (Lan 231). With the unavailability of an authentic original version, the various written texts afterwards do not amount to much; at best, they signify the efforts of later Han writers to construct, create, and Sinicize a tale which they virtually know very little. At first, Kingston learns of this story from her mother’s chanting—in Cantonese—of the famous Mulan poem in her childhood (Kingston 20). Feeling unsatisfied with her daughter’s bragging about her excellent academic achievement and believing that the Chinese should be self-effacing, Brave Orchid, her mother, chooses the moment of her daughter’s show-off to her as the occasion for a parent to instill the importance of filial piety into the mind of her American born offspring by unfolding and retelling the story of a girl
5 Hereafter, the spelling of Chinese words in parentheses follows the rules of Wade-Giles Romanization system. When there is no parentheses next to a Romanization of Chinese words in my paper, this means that the two systems—Wade-Giles and Hanyu Pinyin—are the same in spelling those words. 6 The Xianbei people were barbarians in the eyes of the Hans. 7 There have been about five different notable versions of the Mulan story. See Lan 229-245.
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期 devoting herself to the welfare and security of a family as well as a nation (Kingston 45). She certainly hopes that her daughter will be attentive to her valuable teaching. Kingston, as a listener, instead ignores the undertone of obedience, sacrifice, loyalty, and filial piety conveyed in her mother’s story. She finds out that Mulan—a woman warrior—symbolically constitutes an alternative—other than becoming “wives” or “slaves”—for her after she grows up (Kingston 19). Furthermore, contrary to what she has constantly been taught in the past, in her parents’ motherland, women are neither maggots nor slaves, but they are capable, if given chances, of fulfilling their potentiality even in the battlefield, a site which is supposed to be man’s monopoly. Clearly, what the legendary Mulan might have inspired her is that girls are as good as, or even better than, boys—all that they need is full equality and a proper training. Hence, not surprisingly, years later when she sets out to write The Woman Warrior, she adapts, expands, revises, and rewrites the original Mulan story to so large an extent that her version is perfectly suited for her purpose of showing the world that women are neither inferior nor weak. Her version, with a flavor of magic realism, is blended with other traditional elements—the magic “gourd,” the old martial art teachers, and the training in nature—of popular Chinese martial art novels and the legend of general Yue Fei (or Yueh Fei, AD 1103-1142) of the Southern Song (or Sung) Dynasty (AD 1127-1279). Meanwhile, she even tries to merge the voice of the narrator, Kingston in her childhood, with that of her Mulan at the beginning of “White Tigers,” and later in the same chapter, under her depiction, she seems to incarnate the heroic Mulan in a fictional China (Kingston 20-1). Obviously, Kingston uses her revised Mulan, not merely a soldier anymore, as the proof to demonstrate the unlimited potentiality of woman. Her female general in “White Tigers,” the second chapter of the memoir, also doubles as a sharp contrast with her drowning aunt in “No Name Woman,” the first chapter. Her aunt, killing herself and her newborn love child, who comes to the world in a pigsty just several hours earlier in the night, is dubbed by Kingston as “my forerunner” in the female struggle for equal treatment and freedom amid village Grundyism and panopticonism in a patriarchal society (Kingston 8).
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By contrast, it seems that Mulan is also Kingston’s other forerunner and a better alternative in that struggle. Probably due to the subversive meaning the Mulan legend contains, Kingston thereby appropriates it for her tale in The Woman Warrior, though it is quite understandable that she could not fully grasp the extent of its threatening qualities. Initially derived from the folklore of a nomadic tribe, the Mulan legend represents a deification of a heathen female fighter. Consequently it poses a threat to a patriarchal order based on both the agrarian lifestyle and the division of labor when it praises the capability of a woman warrior whose transvestism or roving has never been appealing to any authority which has saddled its girls and women with roles as obedient and dutiful daughters, wives, and mothers at home, and which could constantly monitor, as well as prevent, any possible disruption of this order by gender role-crossing. If this statement is true, why has the circulation of the Mulan legend always been allowed, in oral or written forms, throughout China in later times? Raymond Williams’ theory of incorporation as mentioned above could offer a reasonable explanation to this question. III. The favorable view from the ruling class towards the ballad is because it “certainly affirms behaviors and values that Confucianism could easily appropriate,” with its celebration of “a young person’s dedication to the family and her determination to protect an aging father” (Lan 232). The parallel between a father, the head of a family, and a king, the leader of a country, has been emphasized in any male-dominant society, so what Mulan has achieved just reveals her filial piety to her father, as well as her loyalty to the ruler. Hence, there have been continuous efforts to appropriate and revise the folklore of the Northern Wei by later state-sanctioned Han writers, because, except that it is undoubtedly a good tale, beneath its unusual, subversive admiration of a woman warrior lies the subservient idea which any ruling class will teach to its subjects. Only by looking back at those numerous rewritings of the Fa Mulan story could we understand that the incorporation
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期 process of subversive ideas has never been ceased: from the emerging state of a thought to the residual state of it after being tamed and included, an authority will persist in containing politically incorrect ideas.8 As soon as an emergent idea or a residual value cannot be beaten, it must be transformed or contained. Conversely, if an oppositional thought is found not to be harmful to the domination, it will not be worthy of official vigilance, let alone efforts to incorporate it. Meanwhile, though the Mulan poem features the potentiality and success of a woman as a fighter—a subversive idea in the eyes of the patriarch—the female protagonist always embraces the traditionally-assigned roles in a family at the end of the story, possibly spending the rest of her life weaving before a loom at night, helping household chores, working all day in the farm field, behaving obediently to her parents and husband, or even giving birth to children and rearing them. Prior to a censorship system, Han writers would certainly highlight this ending in their revisions and creations. By contrast, her military career is only an abnormal deviation from an ordinary path, so this should not be a problem with any authority which demands that women hasten to pick up weapons to fight with the invaders in a dire situation just like Mulan has done in the place of her father. Mulan’s military adventure, in short, poses no threat as long as she returns to the traditional roles which a patriarchal order assigns its women—submissive daughters, wives, or mothers—ultimately. IV. Other than Williams’ theory of incorporation, his student Stephen Greenblatt has proposed a term—“the production and containment of subversion and disorder”—to explain the phenomenon of the performance and appearance of radical ideas, seemingly undermining the established order and the rule of kingship, in the state-sanctioned theaters during the sixteenth and seventeenth century England (40). Greenblatt argues that, though
8 It appears that “the second Mulan poem,” written by “a high-ranking Tang official,” bespeaks the authority’s first attempt “to Confucianize” the ballad (Lan 232-33). There are various politically correct revisions of the Mulan poem produced during the Song (Sung) Dynasty and Ming Dynasty as well. See Lan 234-235.
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 the king-killing scenes or transgressions such as female transvestites are definitely intolerable to any ruling class, their theatrical production and performance are granted permission because the legitimacy and the glorification of the present order have usually been indirectly preached to the audience at the end. Likewise, the Mulan ballad, similar to Shakespearean or English Renaissance plays, though replete with “subversive voices” or thoughts, is “produced by and within the affirmations of order; they are powerfully registered, but they do not undermine that order” (Greenblatt 52). The various revisionist versions or creations of Mulan, as observed by Feng Lan, have been, to a certain extent, the end products of repeated “efforts to Confucianize” the original barbarian story (232). In Williams’ words, it exemplifies a never ending venture by the hegemonic to reinterpret and dilute texts with threatening ideas. Thus, after the proper －or politically correct － modification of the original story, the various versions of “‘Confucian Mulan’” are not only allowed to spread but also promoted by the later authorities (Lan 229). In a nutshell, its popularity exhibits the authority’s intention to consolidate the current order, and the many versions of it epitomize the production and containment of subversion and disorder by the ruling class. In other words, if we look at the perennial attempts of revisions and reinterpretations with the theory of incorporation in mind, it will lead us to the same conclusion with a different phrasing and rhetoric describing how authority first appropriates a tale about a nomadic woman warrior and then includes the revised version of it in its dominant culture for the sake of maintaining its perpetual control. Consequently, once Kingston decides to utilize the Mulan legend for her purpose in The Woman Warrior, she has already been trapped in a well-disguised and perfectly camouflaged maze of official saying. In fact, the ballad of Mulan reveals nothing but the construction and creation of Han writers. The real Mulan has been silent; she is given a Chinese voice. The voice Kingston’s mom, grandmother, or great-grandmother in turn had heard and repeated is possibly picked up from unreliable texts created by intellectuals greatly influenced by traditional Han teaching. Moreover, the preaching about traditional patriarchal ideas, as displayed in the revised story, is exacerbated in Kingston’s version after
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期 she ends the story of her brave female general—unlike an ordinary solider in most accounts about Mulan—by sending her back to the role of a dutiful wife. Kingston’s Mulan, after accomplishing the task of overthrowing the tyrannical emperor in the capital city and the incompetent baron in her hometown province respectively, retires to her husband’s home in southern China and happily accepts the roles which the old system—still unkind and cruel to her sex—has assigned her: Wearing my black embroidered wedding coat, I knelt at my parents-in-law’s feet, as I would have done as a bride. “Now my public duties are finished,” I said. “I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons.” (Kingston 45) While kowtowing to her parents-in-law, she even avoids the mentioning of more daughters—maggots, slaves, and cowbirds according to the traditional view—in her statement. Her act here almost signifies a betrayal, and as observed by Feng Lan, Mulan’s final choice, which subverts much of what she set out to achieve when embarking on the career of a woman warrior, is doubtless disappointing to those who would like to see her carry to the end the cause of feminism or liberal individualism. (242) Later, when she visits her own parents, who, following the example of the famous Yue Fei (or Yueh Fei) and his mother, had “[carved] revenge on [her] back” before she led a northern expedition undertaken by an army made up of peasants, she seems to tell us her true intention in becoming a woman warrior: what she really cares during the training and subsequent battles is whether she will still be seen as “maggots in the rice” in the eyes of her parents or others (Kingston 34). Besides, what she yearns for is a name to be remembered and respected in the future, and she even thinks that, due to her bravery and “perfect filiality,” she will be immortalized, like Mulan before her, in the minds of her villagers and their descendants (Kingston 45). Herein, if we judged from the passage above, it seems that all Kingston wants to do is to change the slandered and unfavorable view towards her. Like “straight A’s” in school,
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 the success of becoming a fearless woman warrior metaphorically becomes Kingston’s way of proving her values as a human being at home and in the neighborhood. It never occurs to her that she at least could try to end the patriarchal order in her fantasy of becoming Mulan. As the most powerful leader of the peasant revolution, she—the Mulan incarnate—can certainly begin a reformation that, in the long run, would either relieve or terminate the suffering of her sex. Had she not helped “[inaugurate] the peasant” to become the first ruler of a new dynasty, she could have easily been the first empress of her own dynasty and thereby started a new era (Kingston 42). Obviously, only by becoming a queen, or a female ruler, herself can she have the power and authority to start changing the status quo. However, she seems to feel contented about her own role as a king-maker, completely forgetting her mission to solve the problems of “grievances,” “hunger,” and the injustices women suffer as a sex (Kingston 37). In a sense, after she happily lives as a wife and daughter-in-law, she just “turns a revolution into a restoration” (Lan 242). After all, the cause of the peasant rebellion is the current “socio-political system,” but, in Kingston’s presentation, Mulan’s peasant “uprising” simply fails to “change substantially” the source “that caused the uprising in the first place” (Lan 242). As a brave war leader, Kingston’s Mulan not only “[inspires her] army” but also “feeds them” (Kingston 37). She even sings songs, transmitted to her mind by heaven, to his men at night in order to cheer them up and to maintain their fighting spirits (Kingston 37). Furthermore, her leadership is fittingly complemented “by the fifteen beads” which will help her and the soldiers survive any dilemma (Kingston 33). It can be inferred that she simply wins their confidence in her overall skills as a commander, and they worships her. Thus, owing to her popularity among her men, she can ascend the throne herself and usher her fellow countrymen into a new era. Even if her soldiers know that their beloved general is female, this leaking of the truth will not lead to a mutiny because no one will dare to fight against a leader possessing magical power. The appearance of those beads will convince her superstitious followers that it is a sign that divine providence has sided with their leader. So, if Wu Zetian (or Wu Tsetien, AD 624-705) could be an empress ruling the Tang Dynasty
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期
(AD 618-907) and its people, why not Kingston’s Mulan? It has been usually the norm in the long history of China that a successful general has ended up seizing the power and becoming the founding father of the next dynasty. Moreover, if we take the history of the USA into account, no sooner had successful generals, including George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, won their respective battles than they grasped the key to the door leading to the presidency. For them and many founding emperors in China, successful career as generals are surely a solid foundation for a greater political future. Nevertheless, Kingston does not want her heroine to travel on that road. Instead, she chooses the road less traveled for her powerful Mulan—that is, returning to the life of an ordinary girl. This kind of closure in Kingston’s version of Mulan, in a sense, is quite illogical, incongruous, and unimaginable: how can a woman warrior, fresh off a glorious career as a victorious leader, possibly adjust herself to be a compliant and dutiful wife? Whereas Kingston’s Mulan may try, her immense power will not permit her to be a housewife, not to mention all the people intensely ambitious, obsessed with the idea of becoming king or members of the ruling class of a new regime. They will cajole her into revolting again, and as for the emperor, the peasant she assisted in ascending the throne, he will never want a powerful, capable war leader leading a normal life in his territory. It is plain that she constitutes a potential challenger to her anointed king. At the end, the only thing laudable about sending the most powerful leader of a revolution home in Kingston’s interpretation is nothing but that her Mulan controls her fate and comes back, of her own free will, to the patriarchal domesticity. Although the appropriation of Mulan folklore enters a new phase with the publication of The Woman Warrior when international readers could easily assess the Sinicized legend, the incorporation of it by the dominant likely reaches the apex in 1998 when it had an animated film adaptation released globally by the Walt Disney Company, which succeeds in marketing, promoting, and selling the Confucian Mulan to a lot of viewers around the
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 world.9 Unsurprisingly, following the traditional ending, or like the closure in “White Tigers” of The Woman Warrior, the film version sends Mulan back home, waiting for her suitor Li Shang to propose—in anticipation of an upcoming happy married life. This kind of finale not only dims whatever positive visualization of female potentiality the movie provides in its depiction of an exotic, oriental woman fighter, but also parrots the dominant, patriarchal values and ideas of confining woman to home. Unlike its Chinese predecessor, Kingston’s version of Mulan in an Asian American text could not be said to typify either resistance against or incorporation by the dominant in ancient Chinese culture, but the problematic closure of a female general’s heroic endeavor definitely confirms again the traditional values of the universally powerful patriarchal order, and these values have also been deeply entrenched in the mainstream American culture. Perhaps the popularity of The Woman Warrior could be viewed as the triumph of the global patriarchal order when most of its readers have accepted Kingston’s controversial treatment of her heroine in “White Tigers.” The Disney adaptation, furthermore, obliquely epitomizes the combined effort of the patriarchal order and the commercialism to preach the old values of amenable women. It is probably an example of the incorporation of feminism by the mainstream commercialism universally. V. Assessing how Kingston revises and appropriates the Mulan legend for her use in The Woman Warrior, we may say that she is quite conservative with the patriarchal ideas she detests. Rufus Cook is not far-fetched in this remark when he notes that “[subversive] as [Kingston’s] work might at first appear to be of traditional cultural values like filiality, the truth is that in many crucial respects it is still perfectly faithful to those values” (57). Though Kingston claims that marriage and child-bearing will benefit her woman warrior, whom she views more as an idealized, androgynous fighter than as a mere female warrior,
9 With a worldwide gross income of $304 million, the movie has been a hit globally. For further details about Mulan (1998), the animated film adaptation of Hua Mulan, please check the following website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762/business
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期 kowtowing to the patriarch and obedience to the husband are still far from any progressive feminist or individualism ideas. Perhaps, Kingston is a typical instance of the literary “‘fellow travelers’” as defined by Leon Trotsky in his Literature and Revolution (62). The literary fellow travelers do engage in addressing thorny issues, like class struggles or ideology, in their works, yet “the question always comes up—how far will he [or she] go” (Trotsky 62)? However, contrary to this evaluation, critics such as Linda Hutcheon will probably think labeling The Woman Warrior as conservative is biased. Hutcheon holds that it is common for the existence of self-contradictory elements—“the doubleness” or “ambidexterity,” as she terms them—in the post-modern fiction such as Kingston’s, so commentators, depending on their political stance, will readily find a post-modern fiction either revolutionary or neoconservative (207, 223). Arguably, there are critics viewing Kingston’s Mulan as a perfect representation of the freedom of choice because she chooses to be an amenable housewife, despite the fact that she could have easily become the most powerful woman in Kingston’s imaginary China. The supporters point to the fact that Kingston’s rendition of Mulan is the best among the various interpretations so far and will see hers as a successful revisionist account because Kingston is the first writer to grant the heroine a free will to choose. The heroine decides to kowtow to the patriarchal values she detests at the end, but at least it is her choice. In fairness, if we take Hutcheon’s ideas into account, neither a revolutionary feminist tract nor a neoconservative one will be a suitable name tag. Unless we mull over the ambidexterity—which “both [installs] and [subverts] prevailing [artistic and ideological] norms”—as witnessed by Hutcheon in the postmodern fiction, any kind of branding on Maxine Hong Kingston will be partial (222). Yet, perhaps this is not so much a question about whether Kingston is conservative as a question either about the incorporation of subversive ideas, texts, and practices in culture, or about the futile effort of any resistance. John Cougar Mellencamp once sang in his “Authority Song” that “I fight authority, Authority always win”; this seems to echo the pathos of any resistance. In spite of implacable opposition, what usually counts has been
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題 the problem of incorporation. Maybe, thinking in a quixotic way, we could still be the Miltonic Satan and soothe ourselves with the lines as follows: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n./ What matter where, if I be still the same” (Paradise Lost 1. 254-56). At least we shall be able to dream. John Lennon once said that: “You may call me a dreamer, but I am not the only one.” Although Maxine Hong Kingston is conspicuously a dreamer, she is simply afraid of fantasizing big time. After all, Kingston’s problematic closure in her version of Mulan, like many other predecessors’, displays or unveils that writers, like texts, have already been “pre-shaped” by the selective tradition, the politicized Confucianism hereupon (Williams 115). It seems implausible to relate an Asian American writer to the selective tradition of the ancient politicized Confucianism, yet, through Kingston’s mother, the American-born daughter is indirectly conditioned to accept the dominant thinking of domestic compliance. Consciously or unconsciously, she is incorporated—that is, the hegemonic ideas have already been internalized ideologically and culturally. Therefore, even in her dream, all she wants is not a reformed world where her maligned sex will suffer no more injustice and unfair treatment, but a restoration of an old order in which her Mulan will return home from a glorious campaign to be a compliant, servile wife with a wish of bearing more sons, not daughters, for her husband and elders. At the end, resist one may, but incorporate the dominant will. Kingston’s appropriation of Mulan Folklore, as well as Walt Disney Company’s animated film adaptation, has again shown the incorporation of residue, or the containment of subversion, in culture. Being a typical example of Williams’ so-called selective tradition, the Mulan Folklore will still be sung, read, spread, remembered, and praised in the future; the tale about a brave woman warrior will constantly be passed from one generation to another generation, for the sieve of the hegemonic has already strained out the politically and culturally hazardous ingredients, turning it into a politically right and correct story.
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期
Works Cited Cheung, King-kok. “The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism?” Conflicts in Feminism. Ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller. New York: Routledge, 1990. 234-51. Print. Chew, Shirley. “Forum: ‘Double Binds Around My Feet’: The Enormity of the Everyday in Women’s Writing and Writing about Women.” Journal of Gender Studies 14.2 (2005): 137-46. Print. Chin, Frank. “Explaining Gutless AALit to China.” [Chin Talks]. blogspot, 6 Mar. 2007. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.
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《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題
229-245. Print. Lee, Robert. “The Woman Warrior as an Intervention in Asian American Historiography.” Approaches to Teaching Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. New York: Mod. Lang. Assn., 1991. 52-63. Print. Li, David Leiwei. Imagining the Nation: Asian American Literature and Cultural Consent. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1998. Print. Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: Norton, 1975. Print. Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. 1925. Ed. William Keach. Trans. Rose Strunsky. Chicago: Haymarket, 2005. Print. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. 1977. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. Print. Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and the Chinese-American Autobiography Controversy.” Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives. Ed. James Robert Payne. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1992. 248-79. Print. - - -. “Kingston’s Handling of Traditional Chinese Sources.” Approaches to Teaching Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. New York: Mod. Lang. Assn., 1991. 26-36. Print. Woo, Deborah. “Maxine Hong Kingston: The Ethnic Writer and the Burden of Dual Authenticity.” Amerasia Journal 16.1 (1990): 173-200. Print.
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張剛琿 興大人文學報第五十四期
《女戰士》中挪用花木蘭民間傳說的問題
張剛琿*
摘 要
英國批評家雷蒙‧威廉斯曾經說過：抵抗的議題即是收編的問題。如果我們以他 的論點切入來看華裔美籍女作家湯婷婷帶有自傳性色彩的《女戰士》，這本小說無庸置 疑地表達出對於女性遭遇性別不平等待遇或歧視的對抗和無法苟同的姿態。這種對抗 的姿態開始顯現在這本出版於 1976 年小說裏第二部分「白虎山學道」中。湯婷婷在此 篇中挪用並改寫了中國歷史上的花木蘭民間傳說，代父出征沙場，勇敢殺敵的花木蘭 和她的故事，是正面地反擊作者從小開始聽到對女性歧視與貶低的措辭如：「米蟲」、 「奴」、「鳩」的利器。然而借用花木蘭民間傳說來創作，可以說是反而陷入父權社會 既定的框架中。因為花木蘭民間傳說即有遭收編的含意，或可以視為史蒂芬‧葛林布 萊陳述：文化霸權的「顛覆與包容」理論的典型例子。事實上，中國社會裏的統治階 級早已將花木蘭民間傳說收編在其政治正確言論中，1998 年美商華德‧迪士尼公司動 畫改編版本又重新宣傳此一政治正確的女戰士故事。或許，當眾多讀者不質疑「白虎 山學道」文中，女將軍故事充滿爭議的結尾時，此舉就可視為世界父權秩序的勝利， 或可視為女性主義遭主流文化收編的例子。本文旨在探討湯婷婷《女戰士》裏的女將 軍和花木蘭民間傳說之間微妙的關係，以及權力和文本間的複雜聯繫。
關鍵詞：湯婷婷、 《女戰士》、 木蘭民間傳說、 雷蒙‧威廉斯、 收編、顛覆與包容
* 國立成功大學外文系博士候選人。 (收稿日期:103.08.20;通過刊登日期:104.01.20)
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