Ha Jin In Broad Daylight Analysis

Shen Fu’s work doesn’t construe the treatment of women during this time, but provides a glimpse into an exception to the rule. Women were harshly treated and received little attention during the Qing Dynasty. They were regarded as property and not allowed to leave the house without a man to accompany them. It was highly discouraged that they learn to read or write and they were not allowed to lead fulfilling lives, as they were bound to their husbands. Shen Fu does express some of these characteristics, such as being with courtesans and other mistresses, but he truly had a heartfelt love

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

Madam can be perceived as a greedy woman who undervalues women and portrays them as a merchandise. In the beginning of the story, Du Tenth had a Madam who was trying to manipulate Du Tenth into getting rid of Li Jia. At the time Li Jia had spent all his money to keep company with Du Tenth. Du, was touched by Li Jia’s actions and believed that a man that would spend all their money for her was someone who truly loved her. Nevertheless, Madam was angered that Li Jia no longer had money and was taking up all Du Tenth time. This affected Madam since Du Tenth was no longer making money for

However, there is another person who gets punished, Doctor Tang, Mr. Hsu’s teacher. Dr. Tang is the host teacher of the private school, and lives with all his students, taking charge in the supervision of his pupils. During the tribunal, Judge Dee told Doctor Tang, “You, a man of wide learning and many years experience, have failed miserably in your duties as a tutor. The crime of adultery took place in your house, and, as it were, under your very eyes…….you are strictly forbidden ever again to engage in the teaching of students.” [4]The Judge then proclaims to Mrs. Bee(though does not in fact punish her), “You failed in your duty of supervising the conduct of your daughter-in-law, and consequently two heinous crimes were committed in your house.”[5] This relates again to the Confucian theory of right relationships. The elderly should play his/her role as an older person in the Chinese society, or else the society will go without order, and though Mrs. Bee doesn’t get punishment, the words Judge Dee says clearly portray interpersonal relationships in Chinese society.

In Six Records of a Floating Life, Shen Fu writes of his wife, “Yün came to this world a woman, but she had the feelings and abilities of a man.” (Fu: 89) Shen Fu and Yün considered each other to be intellectual equals. However, their relationship was still constrained within the gender roles set by their society. They lived during the Qing dynasty, which was a prosperous time for China (“The Manchus”: 266) but also a time when, as Professor Scarlett states in the lecture Daily Life in Imperial China, “the outside world was for men and the inside world was for women.” Shen Fu and Yün’s relationship was pushing the bounds of their culture, but they still kept (mostly) within the lines of social acceptability.

In contrast, during the era of The Story Yingying, the cultural norm for a woman was to be submissive, patient, and passive. Yingying upheld all of these cultural standards. After meeting Zhang for the first time Yingying showed no interest in him at all but overtime Yingying finally gave into Zhang and fell in love and they became engaged. Unfortunately, Zhang had to leave for a year to go take a civil service examination, but he promised her he would come back to her. She waited patiently and after a year, her fiancé returned but shortly after had to leave again to retake the examination. Again she waited patiently for his return, but he never came back. After waiting for years for her fiancé to return, she became eager to

Furthermore, instead of arranged marriages that only benefited the patriarchal head, intellectuals pushed for marriages based on love which would create happy and productive citizens . In addition, based on her mother’s experience, Bao Qin rejects arranged marriages and intends to only marry for love . After hearing of two concubines who drug Cousin Hu’s mother to feign adultery and gain the favour of her husband, Bao Qin is enraged by the historic “powerlessness of women, [the] barbarity of age-old customs, cloaked in tradition .” With the broad shift from tradition as well as her own personal experience, Bao Qin rejects traditional gender roles and seeks to create her own. Furthermore, as China became divided into separate spheres of influence and opened to international markets, British and American industrialization brought new ideas of opportunities for women, challenging established gender relations . With new economic opportunities and education, women could become self-reliant, broadening their choices and their role in society. Consequently, after disobeying her parents’ command to attend Mr. Liu’s funeral, Bao Qin was able to support herself by enrolling in a new teacher training department . Reducing patriarchal control, industrialization allowed children to head to schools and factories, no longer needing to rely on their parents for education and work . As a result, while foreign

In the chapter “Waiting Between the Trees” Ying-ying’s past in China that she has kept from her daughter is revealed. When she was young she believed that she was too good for any man, however eventually she realized she had to settle and married an indecent man, despite her being extremely vain. She had given up herself for this man, only for him to

In the movie, Mulan, she is caught between having to stay at home and become a wife, which is her proper role in society or go fight in a war in her father’s name. After a while, they discovered that she had been a woman the whole time. I feel like they were more angry that she was a woman and fought better than most of the men there. They kicked her out, of course, and later saved them and the emperor, but was still shunned. Chi-Fu told Shang, “Tis a woman. She will never be worth anything.” This shows that Chi-Fu wants her to be a woman, just like he thought she should be. He even admitted that she would not be worth anything or be a impacting role in society. This shows even if she did risk

Men and women have always been different. Society shaped men into the breadwinners, gave them the ability to progress past their social status no matter how bad of a reputation he may have had, and ultimately they have the ability to not be tied down by anyone. Women will remain loyal throughout every peak and pitfall with her husband. In the story, “The Journey of the Corpse”, it depicts the life of a man by the name of Wu Pao-an, who so desperately wants to save the life of one of his friends. He leaves his wife and one-year-old child with no home and no money so he could go out and find his friend Chung-hsiang, who was taken for ransom by barbarians. Sometimes, the need to help a friend or remain loyal to him can trump a mans loyalty to his family, as is done in Chung-hsiangs story. Later in the story, after Madam Chang, Wu Pao-an’s wife, has fought for ten years to survive all alone with her child, she has the

In Confucianism, it was expected that a woman should always be correct in manner and upright in character, and that by following these traits, she could bring honor to her family. One of the first scenes in the beginning of the film has Mulan preparing to impress the matchmaker. During this process, the servants sing of the right traits a proper woman should possess, such as “calm” and “obedient”. For followers of Confucianism, woman must always speak appropriately and with respect, especially towards elders and men. In the movie, Mulan’s father walks outside of his home and is commanded by the emperor’s soldiers to join the war effort against the Huns. Concerned for the wellbeing of her father, Mulan talks back to the presumably older male soldiers, begging them to allow her father not to fight. Although Mulan does the exact opposite of what a Confucian follower should do, Chi-fu’s scolding towards Mulan’s father, as well as the latter’s disappointed reaction provides the movie with historical accuracy concerning the expectation of womanly behavior. A final example of the expectation of womanly behavior is the scene in the alps, when it is revealed to the soldiers that “Ping” has secretly been a woman all along. The reaction from the men is one of disgust and anger, which is a fit reaction because, according to Confucian values, women are supposed to work at

If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.”

Women in the book The Death of Woman Wang, were not seen as equal, they were viewed as lesser human beings than men. Women did not have the same rights; they did not have any freedom really. In this era women were expected to get married, have kids, and stay home with the children. They did the cooking, cleaning, washed clothes, and taught their daughters to do the same thing. “When she was young she worked hard at her spinning, and even when she was old and had bad pains in her

An example of a great relationship in the story is the marriage of Hsi-lu and Kao. Hsi-lu says to her husband Kao, “Would you be willing to give up attending to our family’s business affairs and let me look after them?” Kao let her take over; for six months everything went well with the family’s affairs, and Kao praised her” (Spence 63). Hsi-lu did such a good job with what Kao asked of her to do that he praised her very much. He let his wife take care of the family’s expenses and pay the bills. During this time woman running the household and paying bills is unheard of. No man would let a woman do the job that he was supposed to be doing, but Kao saw how smart his wife was and let her do her thing. It turned out for the best. Along from this relationship, other women in relationships, along with widows, are treated very poorly. Men were considered higher up and better than women so men and women were not equals. Spence has been able to show throw the novel The Death of Woman Wang the positive and negative sides to these relationships that took place in seventeenth century China.

In this time in China, the role that women and men had were very different from each other. Women were expected to be quite, obedient, and respectful. While men were the provider, the intellectual and the decision maker in the family. In Shen Fu and his wife, Yun marriage it started out like the typical relationship in eightieth century China, each one fulfilling the roles that society had in place for them. But as they became to know each other more, Shen Fu saw Yun real personality and wanted someone to experience life, so he started to encourage her to be herself and told her she didn’t have to live up to this gender stereotypes for women. They both were always