Comparison of Cultural Standings
February 22nd, 2011In this post I will discuss and compare the personalities, attitudes, and roles of two characters, O-lan from Pearl S. Buck’s book The Good Earth and Shu-Lien from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
In traditional China women weren’t seen as equals to men. In many cases, women were seen as material possessions. The majority of women in traditional China were born into a life of servitude and owing their lives to their father or brothers. If and when they married, they would still be in a position of servitude of their husband. In the situational case of O-lan and Shu-Lien they are playing two very different roles. One character conforms to the average Chinese woman in traditional China. The other character is seen as a modern (9th Century A.D.) fictional hero that plays a recurrent theme that is present in today’s stories.
The character O-lan, was sold as a young girl at the age of ten to the Great House of Hwang, where she worked much of her time as a kitchen aide. Her face is rough and wide, her skin is coarse, and she is seen as a larger woman. When O-lan is in her 20th year, she is sold by the Ancient Mistress to a poor farmer by the name of Wang Lung. Being a slave woman, O-lan’s feet had not been bound by custom and for this alone when she was seen by her new husband,
“he saw with an instant’s disappointment that her feet were not bound.” (Buck, pp. 18)
When O-lan leaves the hou
se of Hwang and moves in with Wang Lung and his father, she takes upon all of the house duties that Wang Lung had previously managed. She takes the role of a house wife immediately and prepares water for them to drink, food for them to eat, and water for bathing in the morning. She also patches their clothing and mends their shoes.
There was a small sense of freedom that she acquired from leaving the life of a slave in the house of Hwang, however many of her previous roles continue in her new home. In the kitchen of her former home she is a work horse and at her new home she feels she must contribute to the farm duties on top of the house duties she’s required to do as a woman. O-lan feels a sense of accomplishment, however, through it she helps her husband cultivate a successful harvest early on.
Upon the first night she is taken by her husband and night after night repeats itself. It is not long after that O-lan is pregnant with her first child. Before she becomes pregnant though, O-lan accepts her role as a child bearer. Just before she departed from the House of Hwang, the Ancient Mistress told her that she must
“Obey him and bear him sons and yet more sons.” (Buck, pp. 19)
When she responds to the Ancient Mistress it’s in a very submissive form, as if she is still her slave. There is a hidden aspect here that we don’t quite see. Once O-lan has borne her husband sons, her sexual responsibility is theoretically done. In traditional China, it was very common for the master of the house to bring in concubines that would generally relieve her of such things. Once the master of the house had successors the wife’s role could be relieved by a slave if she died.
O-lan’s character portrays a very direct personality. She is from the start a hard working, cautious, soft spoken and genuine woman. While she lives a very intriguing and dramatic life, pieces of her attitude fall together like a puzzle. Her loyalty and faithfulness to her husband stays true even after he has all but forgotten her and she lies on
her deathbed. Through most of her life she suffers in some way or another and rarely brings it up. She only looks to her family first before considering her own self. It’s because of this that she was seen as the pillar that held the family up. When she was gone her family began to fall apart. As for her role in the traditional Chinese family, you can see how important a women such as herself were, but the credit is not duly given.
The character Shu-Lien first makes her appearance in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, when her friend Li Mu Bai visits her business as she is preparing a convoy to Beijing with her security company. Her betrothed was a fellow student with Li Mu Bai and died trying to save his life. Ever since the incident she has been bound by the ethics of her practice as a Shan Tao Master. Shu-Lien is seen as a very beautiful and graceful character. The strange occurrence of Shu-Lien is that she sits at a higher level of rank in her time, as she doesn’t follow into the traditional path of Chinese women.
She has somehow fallen into the world of Giang Hu, which is a fictionally based theme that Wuxia writers became popular for in the 9th Century A.D. In her environment certain crimes occur and the law fails to succeed in bringing them to justice. While she alone is an anomaly to the traditional culture of women, she is bound by two very important influences. The world of Giang Hu and her Buddhist practices as a Shan Tao Master. She shows a deep passion for the character Li Mu Bai throughout the movie, but cannot open her feelings to him, as it breaks the code she must follow. In this sense she shows a very traditional aspect of a woman in traditional China.
They live in a fictional world that another character by the name of Jade Fox describes as, “That’s how we live, kill or be killed.” (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) In such a world, the character Shu-Lien cannot conform to all of the customs and traditions of her time. What is interesting though, is that she shows many indications that she is a woman of traditional China. These indicators come directly from her personality and attitude. Shu-Lien being a Shan Tao Master shows a very well formed, responsible, and professional approach to her surroundings. In the case that she is assigned to by Sir Te, a nobleman of Beijing, she gradually approaches a thief instead of being explosive and causing embarrassment to the Governor’s family.
The way the character Shu-Lien handles each situation in the movie shows that her attitude is very cautious and respectful to the people in her environment. While she hides her sorrow at the same time through out the entirety of the movie, there is a great connection between her and O-lan from The Good Earth. While O-lan is not able to hide her sorrow and erupts into tears multiple times, she does hold in a very deep grief of having murdered her own child after birthing it. We’re left with the impression that this is done to be merciful, as the child was born deep into a famine. When paralleled to Shu-Lien in one of the final scenes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she has the girl Chiao-lung at knife point and makes the decision not to kill her, but shows her mercy even though she caused immense trouble for Shu-Lien.
When you look at O-lan in her last scene, she holds herself from dying until she knows that her last son is betrothed. Unlike Shu-Lien who didn’t let vengeance become her, O-lan’s last words before she dies are very bitter and are directed at the character Lotus, even though she is not present.
“Well, and if I am ugly, still I have borne a son; although I am but a slave there is a son in my house. How can that one feed him and care for him as I do? Beauty will not bear a man sons!” (Buck, pp. 286)
While this is not vengeance showing, but more of a regretful statement. O-lan spent most of her time being silent and observing the happenings of the house rather than speaking out about them. She maintained the social standard of a woman.
While looking at Shu-Lien spending the last living moments with Li Mu Bai, the side of her that she has kept hidden for so many years is released into a tragedy. Both characters suffered greatly, through numerous forms. While Shu-Lien was an outcast by her lifestyle and in more of a mental struggle with her love for Li Mu Bai. O-lan had to endure physical hardships of famine, abuse, child birth, as well as watching her husband move on to another woman.
Both characters in the end seemed to be regretful of their past, as their emotions broke out. Many of the traits that these characters shared such as being soft spoken, cautious, kind, faithful, and merciful, assisted them throughout their lives as women in the traditional sense. I believe that one of the more commonalities that these two share their dedication to their role, as their calloused hands had shown. Li Mu Bai made a comment to Shu-Lien directly, “Your hand is rough and calloused from practice.” (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) O-lan’s husband thinks of her in a similar way, “Plain though her face was and rough the skin upon her hands the flesh of her big body was soft…” (Buck, pp. 27)
In closing, the evident fact is that both characters are bound by unwritten laws and were not free to do as they pleased. Both share many of the same personalities and attitudes that assisted them in their lives, though very different from each other. The depiction of the traditional Chinese woman, however, is similar through both life styles; It took a tragic event in both cases for either character to have a release.
Works Cited
Buck, Pearl. (2005). The Good Earth. New York: Pocket Books.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Dir. Ang Lee. Perf. Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zahng Ziyi, Chang Chen, Lung Sihung, Cheng Pei Pei. Columbia TriStar Home Video, 2000.
ough the layers of Chinese government. Not that this is a surprising thing, because I believe it exists throughout every government in place, but the consistency of this problem spans across all of China. The vast majority of China’s population relies on the Yangtze and Yellow rivers for many facets of life. Along these rivers you can find just about anything China has to offer. On both rivers many cities and towns that are striving to increase their economy and living standards cannot or will not accept some of the laws that are being passed down to them. This is in part due to payoffs, corruption, and other flaws in the governing systems. “…many other ministries effectively control parts of the environmental agenda, resulting in competing priorities and lack of discipline and coordination.” (Lieberthal, 283) The Chinese government’s overall lack of coordination and ability to follow through I think has lead this to being one of the biggest problems China faces today.
vers, and wetlands are becoming dried up and polluted at alarming rates, leaving China with very little quality in their water resources. The deforestation has also caused much of this pollution, without the natural filtering systems being in place, we can hardly expect the same results with no replacement system.