Ep 06: Lu You’s struggle with In-law relationships
Today we are going to talk about a famous poet in Chinese history. His name is Lu You(陆游). Lu You is not only famous for being a prominent and prolific poet from his time: Southern Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) but also for writing about the greatest love story ever: one between he himself and his cousin Tang Wan(唐琬), who is also a famous literary figure at the time.
The love story could very well be a modern drama: childhood companions fall in love and realize they are the one for each other—> They got married but the girl cannot bear children—> Mother in law was angry and jealous so she split up the pair—> The love birds parted ways and remarried other people—> They had a unexpected yet unforgettable reunion—> They never saw each other again, yet their love poems to each other (written many years apart by both of them) are inscribed on the walls of an important garden called Shen Yuan, which is where their unexpected reunion ten years after their divorce was.
Today I don’t want to examine the pair of love poems though. Those have been studied well enough. I want to talk about the terrible in-law relationship between Tang Wan(唐琬) and Lu You’s Mom. We have all heard of scary mother-in-law stories, but what’s the nature of it in Lu You(陆游)’s case? Does it deliver any wisdom for future generations puzzled by similar problems? Funny enough, Lu You(陆游) himself wrote a long poem about it. I have attached it here:
夏夜舟中闻水鸟声甚哀若曰姑恶感而作诗
女生藏深闺，未省窥墙藩。
上车移所天，父母为它门。
妾身虽甚愚，亦知君姑尊。
下床头鸡鸣，梳髻著襦裙。
堂上奉洒扫，厨中具盘餐，
青青摘葵苋，恨不美熊蹯。
姑色少不怡，衣袂湿泪痕。
所冀妾生男，庶几姑弄孙。
此志竟蹉跎，薄命来谗言。
放弃不敢怨，所悲孤大恩。
古路傍陂泽，微雨鬼火昏。
君听姑恶声，无乃遣妇魂？
Translation
A girl grows up hidden in far-off rooms,
no glimpse of what may be beyond her wall and hedge.
Then she climbs the carriage, moves to her new lord’s home;
father and mother become strangers to her then.
“I was stupid, to be sure, yet I know
that Madam, my mother-in-law, must be obeyed.
Out of bed with the first cock’s crowing,
I combed and bound my hair, put on blouse and skirt.
I did my work, tidied the hall, sprinkling and sweeping,
In the kitchen prepared their plates of food.
Green green the mallows and goosefoot I gathered---
Too bad I couldn’t make them taste like bears’ paws.
When the least displeasure showed on Madam’s face,
The sleeves of my robe were soon damp with tear stains.
My wish was that I might bear a son,
To see Madam dandle a grandson in her arms.
But those hopes in the end failed and came to nothing;
Ill-fated, they made me the butt of slander.
Driven from the house, I didn’t dare grumble,
Only grieved that I’d betrayed Madam’s kindness.”
On the old road that runs along the rim of the swamp,
When for fire flimmers through the drizzling rain,
Can you hear the voice crying “Madam is cruel!”?
Surely it’s the soul of the wife sent home.
A close reading of Lu You’s poem seems to depict a dichotomous performance by its speaker and the author, one that both highlights the inequities and suffering of being a woman and a wife but at the same time reinforces and reaffirms these societal roles. By the end of the poem, we see that Lu You’s poem posits a society where there is a need for “others,” in particular the need for human beings to play the role of husband and wife and organize their bodies and lives around the role of male and female. The greatest source of grief for the “girl” in the poem (which he is really referring to Tang Wan唐琬), after all, is her failure to please her mother-in-law, to perform her gender identity and role as a wife successfully. However, the husband is absent. By placing the tension of the poem within the boundaries of failing to perform one’s designated societal roles, it also masquerades what at first read appears to be sympathy toward a woman’s difficult societal role with a deeper, grimmer affirmation that what is most important still is the performance of such identities, even if it results in tremendous grief and suffering.
These roles -- girl as wife, girl as supplicant, girl as woman -- allow for a clear societal boundary to be seen, and for one’s own sense of identity to be reassured, especially that of the poet’s: Throughout the poem, and by its end, one can sense both an overriding sense of sympathy but also a kind of reassurance as it affirms the speaker of the poem and the poet’s masculine gender identity and role as husband while clearly depicting its opposite, female gender identity of woman and the woman’s role as wife. Crossing this gender boundary within the poem, where the speaker tells a narrative of a “girl,” is symbolic but not literal, it belies true sympathy by depicting boundaries that in the end are affirmed with “the soul of a wife sent home.” For the poet, the birdsong that became a girl that became a wife that became a failed wife is, by poem’s end, birdsong once more. The illusion cast by Lu You’s poem is that it tries to convince the listener that the words he shapes into the narrative of a girl’s life is real and distinct, when in fact it highlights not the complex and rich life of an individual, but the brutal masterplot that many women in the society of his time have had to tread.
As a male and a husband, Lu You is an astute observer of women’s struggles, including his wife’s struggle, to meet the impossible standard set for them. Yet, Lu You chooses to represent via symbolism and extended metaphor, and does not or cannot depict the speaker of the poem literally sharing the girl’s burdens, nor does the speaker offer a solution. The poem depicts and dramatizes not a single woman, a singular person, but a type of woman that society has constructed a tragic narrative path they might be fitted into. Lu You has constructed a poem where, through the voice of the poem, he has indirectly cast himself as the storyteller of the girl, quoting her voice and speaking out as if he truly understands how she feels. But what overrides the girl’s own individuality and personality, like her longing for treats like “bears’ paws,” is the plot imposed upon her life: leaving “her father and mother,” moving to “her new lord’s home,” acknowledging that “mother-in-law must be obeyed,” and ultimately failing to “bear a son,” and “driven from the house.” Even though the girl suffers in her husband’s household, the narration can also serve as a kind of masochistic manifesto where she declares, via the poem’s speaker, to the reader the course of life that dutiful women should follow. Lu You’s decision to write this poem, and his intention or hope for it to be more widely read, illuminates a sobering phenomenon: Not only are women pressured into performing impossible tasks to meet the expectation from others; they are also encouraged to embody their weakness, marginality and “cruelty” as their dominant, most recognizable, and sometimes sole identity.
The absence of the husband in Lu You’s poem is deliberate. Lu You does not write explicitly about his affection toward his wife in the poem. Yet. the fact that the speaker of the poem is so touched by the sound of a water bird seemingly crying “Madam is cruel” that, unbidden, he begins to recount a narrative of a girl’s life, shows the poet likely feels powerful emotions about the accusation of cruelty leveled at the mother-in-law. What is left unanswered is why Lu You does not express these feelings, which can even be actual disapproval of the mother-in-law’s cruelty, explicitly. The line that most clearly makes the husband complicit in the mother-in-law’s cruelty is when the girl describes herself as “ill-fated, they made me the butt of slander.” The use of the third person pronoun suggests the mother-in-law has made a group of people complicit in slander against her to drive her out of the household. While the line does not explicitly say her husband participated in attacks on her, it does make clear at the very least his silence, his inability to stop the maltreatment of her character at the very least contributed to the decision for her to leave, mirroring or echoing Lu You’s actual divorce from his wife at his mother-in-law’s behest.
It is possible that Lu You, through the narrator of the poem, is able to indicate indirectly that he does harbor thoughts about arguing with his mother about her cruelty towards his wife, but he considers the respect for his parents to come before his wife’s dignity and happiness, which shows the dominant nature of filial piety within early Chinese culture. It is telling that the voice of the poem says, even after being driven out of the house by the attacks of many, the girl, the Madam’s daughter-in-law, still “didn’t dare grumble,” she still feels a sense of grief over “betray[ing] Madam’s kindness.” While filial piety benefits only older generations, the bonds of kinship work to the advantage of nearly all immediate members of the family, particularly in the case of men. The husband’s role in their inability to conceive a child is not questioned, nor is he named directly in the expulsion of his wife from the household. The idea of filial piety also assumes a boundary between the two generations which leads to the social hierarchy within the family, with wife being the most powerless, as seen in the poem.
The family system exerts on the wife an expectation of a hard life meeting extraordinarily difficult expectations, yet the husband agrees it is necessary that she perform these responsibilities. Throughout the poem, the speaker’s greatest display of sympathy for the girl’s suffering is recognition. A boundary set between husband and wife seemingly prevents the absent husband in the poem from intervening in the other’s, in his wife’s social responsibilities. Perhaps the social boundaries which fix the separate roles of male husband and female wife can help explain his absence in supporting his wife both verbally and physically in the poem when she needs help. This boundary within the family not only helps reinforce the hierarchy between husband and wife it also provides security for the husband in his dominant position. While the husband is secured from the day he is born into a place in his own family, there is no secure setting for a woman. Not only does the wife have to depart her own natal family for her husband’s house, divorcing her identity as a daughter, she must perform hard work to secure her identity as a wife. Although she is a temporary member of her husband’s household, she is not a member of his family until her own son grows up and take the role of husband. A woman’s position within her family was more significant than her gender in determining her social role, and woman has to earn the roles. Most importantly, she must provide the links in the male chain of descent, to better secure her standing. As is written in the poem: “My wish was that I might bear a son, to see Madam dandle a grandson in her arm.” No matter how good her performance, how dutifully she serves in her role, to not produce a son is a failure that overrides her past, present, and possibly her future: It becomes the story of her life.