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156 wiersze
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Plaintext
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Amanda Bates
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November 11, 2008
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Madame White Snake: East Asian Femme Fatale of Old
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The Chinese legend of Madame White Snake, the snake demon that takes human form and
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becomes the wife of a man, has exerted a lasting influence over East Asian folktales
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and fiction for centuries. Two quintessential novellas, “The Lust of the White
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Serpant” from Ugetsu Monogatari by the Japanese author Ueda Akinari and “Eternal
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Prisoner under Thunder Peak Pagoda” a traditional Chinese story, are both relatively
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complex and demonstrate not only the evolution of the White Snake figure to become a
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more believable human, but also what aspects may have given her enduring appeal.
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While both these stories are ostensibly morality tales about the dangerous beauty of
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this femme fatale, the true source of pleasure from these narratives is the femme
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fatale’s transgressive behavior, not her eventual punishment for it.
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Early tales of Madame White Snake appeared in China as early as the Song Dynasty, and
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initially her portrayal was fairly direct, as a villainous demon who drains the life
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force out of her human husband.
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Lai, Whalen. "From Folklore to Literate Theater: Unpacking "Madame White
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Snake"." Asian Folklore Studies 51, no. 1 (1992): 52.
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But over time, characterizations of her became more complex, and the persona
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of Madame White Snake became more sympathetic, and perhaps even a model of the ideal
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Confucian wife, particularly in “Pagoda”. Whalen Lai notes, “She was a loving wife, a
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caring mother, rescuer of her family from the first flood, and, at that point, a
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general benefactor of man. She took on the virtues of a traditional Chinese female,
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particularly forbearance”.
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Ibid., 53.
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But if she were really an ideal wife, why could she not live happily with her
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human mate? Her dangerous sexuality is the key.
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Femme fatale might seem an unusual term to apply to a character from pre-modern
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Chinese and Japanese literature who may exemplify the virtues of an ideal Confucian
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wife, since it is primarily associated with film characters, particularly those of
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the film noir genre. But this term, which is relatively speaking, a neologism (The
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earliest uses were around the beginning of the 20th century
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Oxford English Dictionary, “Femme, ” Oxford University Press,
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http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50083541/50083541se3?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=femme+fatale&first=1&max_to_show=10&hilite=50083541se3
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), is an apt description of the depiction of Madame White Snake and all her
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incarnations. It refers to a woman who is dangerously attractive, and lures men to
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their downfall with her sexual attractiveness. In both incarnations of Madame White
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snake, the authors depict her as bewitchingly beautiful. Toyoo, her human lover in
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“Lust of the White Serpant” cannot shake the image of her beauty from his mind and
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dreams of her, and finds himself “disturbed and agitated” by her “ethereal
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beauty”.
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Ueda, Akinari. Ugetsu Monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain : A Complete
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English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the
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Supernatural. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1974,
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162-164.
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In “Eternal Prisoner,” Madame White Snake’s bewitching beauty follows her
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lover Hsü into his dreams, and the next morning “he was so distracted that he could
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not concentrate on doing business.”
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“Eternal Prisoner under the Thunder Peak Pagoda.” Trans. Diana Yu, in Y. W. Ma
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and Joseph S. M. Lau. Traditional Chinese Stories : Themes and Variations.
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Boston: Zheng & Zui Co, 1986, 358.
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Both of these stories align negative connotations with her beauty, suggesting
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that her sexuality is the cause of their distraction.
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In addition to distracting sexuality, the irregular characterization of Madame White
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Snake might be another trait her character has in common with the archetypical noir
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femme fatale. In her essay analyzing the noir film from a feminist perspective,
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Christine Gledhill writes “Not only is the hero frequently not sure whether the woman
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is honest or a deceiver, but the heroine’s characterisation is itself fractured so
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that it is not evident to the audience whether she fills the [femme fatale]
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stereotype or not”.
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Christine Gledhill, “Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism,”
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in Feminism and Film, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (New York: Oxford University Press,
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2004), 81.
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While both stories each characterize Madame White Snake fairly consistently
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within their narratives, the uneven characterization in film noir perhaps mirrors the
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evolution of her character over time: readers may not be sure whether she is a pure
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villainess or whether she is a good wife who is badly treated by society, because
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there is evidence of both throughout her legend. She is a loyal wife to her husband
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as she has promised, but she also causes him to find trouble with the law and
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deceives him about her supernatural nature.
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The complications in her character serve to undercut the ostensible didactic intent
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of these stories. A simple reading of the story might produce the idea that Madame
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White Snake represents dangerous female aggression and sexuality that traps the man,
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and she must be defeated and punished by society. This is quite similar to the
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expected end for the femme fatal character in films - she is punished in some way so
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that social order and proper gender roles are restored. In both stories, Madame White
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Snake’s secret is uncovered and a monk comes to exorcise her, and she is eventually
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rendered powerless and trapped under a pagoda. Her husband becomes a monk, and this
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further implicates Lady White Snake, this time from a Buddhist perspective. Female
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beauty is a dangerous thing that ties men to the transitory world and prohibits them
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from being free from desire and ascending to Nirvana. Furthermore, Lady White Snake’s
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lover is far from the ideal man. He is weak-willed and not particularly useful. In
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“Lust,” the priest informs Toyoo “Those creatures took advantage of your fair looks
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and tempted you. But you, yourself, owing to a lack of courage and spirit, fell
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victim to their temporary form”
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Ugetsu Monogatari, 177-178.
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. The implications of this are that a stronger, more capable man would not
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fall for the Lady’s trickery. But are the morals of these stories entirely sincere?
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If they were, Madame White Snake would be unmistakably depicted as an evil
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character.
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Instead, both these stories feature many moments where readers have great sympathy
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for her, despite her depraved sexuality. Certainly, readers admire her patience and
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loyalty: “I searched everywhere, and now that at last I’ve found you, I’m very
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happy,”
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Ibid.,173.
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she gushes to him in “Lust.” Readers must also acknowledge that her human
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lover is breaking his promise to her when he leaves her. She pleads with him, “We
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have a love bond between us, as constant as the T’ai Mountains and the Eastern Sea,
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and we must live and die together. Please, since we are already married, take me
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back, and let’s stay together the rest of our lives. Wouldn’t that be
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wonderful?”
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“Eternal Prisoner,” 369.
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In another traditional vernacular story, “Tsu Shih-Niang Sinks the Jewel Box
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in Anger,
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“Tu Shih-Niang Sinks the Jew Box in Anger,” trans, Richard M. W. Ho, in Y. W.
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Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau. Traditional Chinese Stories : Themes and Variations.
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Boston: Zheng & Zui Co, 1986, 358.
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” the male protagonist breaks a promise he made to his concubine lover, and
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suffers for it, suggesting that traditionally, loyalty and keeping ones word was
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valued on the man’s part as well as a woman’s. So her husband’s failure to follow
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through on his end of the bargain, completely forgetting the love he once had for
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her, makes readers more sympathetic to Madame White Snake’s plight.
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However, no matter how much sympathy Madame White Snake may gather from readers, the
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story still ends with her trapped under the pagoda. These stories draw from the long
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tradition of supernatural and ghost stories, which usually end with the demon
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destroyed or at least subdued. In the initial versions of this story Madame White
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Snake harmed her human lover, so her entrapment under a pagoda by a Taoist monk or
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later, a Buddhist monk
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Lai, 53.
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would have been a satisfying ending. Readers of early versions of the story
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might have been cheering for the defeat of this demon disguised as a beauty, and
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would have enjoyed reading the stories for the lurid horror details and later her
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crushing defeat. Conversely, the authors of the two stories examined here do not give
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readers motivation to wish for the death of Madame White Snake, so the pleasure of
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the narrative - to borrow appropriate phrasing from film theory - comes not from the
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death of the insubordinate, disruptive force, from watching the transgressions
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themselves.
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In an essay on the femme fatale heroines of film noir, Janey Place argues that the
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strong behavior of the female characters supersedes the moral lessons supposedly
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imparted by their morals at the end. She writes, “the final ‘lesson’ of the myth
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often fades into the background and we retain the image of the erotic, strong,
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unrepressed (if destructive) woman.”
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Janey Place, “Women in Film Noir” in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
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(London: British Film Institute, 2003), 48.
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In these two stories, the femme fatale Madame White Snake is going to live on
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in the minds of readers not as the shrunken snake trapped under a pagoda, but the
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sexy, aggressive woman who took a weaker human man as her lover.
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This resistant reading of the text may be too colored by modern viewpoints, since it
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is impossible to know for certain what readers in the past enjoyed about these
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stories. However, consciously or unconsciously, these authors created a female
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character who fits the characteristics of a feisty heroine. In fact, Communists in
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the PRC in the 1970s reclaimed her as a feminist symbol for women who rebel against
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the patriarchy.
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Lai, 52.
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Just as the dangerous femme fatale of noir films has reemerged as a heroine
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in her own right, rather than the sexy death trap for the male protagonist, so too
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Lady White Snake should be reclaimed for her sexual assertiveness and life slightly
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outside the bounds of conventional social expectations.
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