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Two Emancipated Phaedras: Chou Fan-yi and Abbie Putnam as Social Rebels
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
It is small wonder that Thunderstorm (Lei-yü), first published in 1933 and performed in 1935, should have enjoyed enduring popularity among Chinese readers and theatre-goers. For the play, despite its artistic flaws, touches upon two of the most sensitive issues involved in the May Fourth Movement: a socialist concern for the plight of the workers under capitalist exploitation, and an individual effort to assert personal freedom and happiness under the crippling weight of patriarchal society. In short, Thunderstorm was so ruthless in its attacks upon traditional Chinese morals and social system that the government, on three occasions, felt impelled to place it under a ban.
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1966
References
1 For readers unfamiliar with the story of Thunderstorm, a summary of its plot is given at the end of this article.
2 Thunderstorm first appeared in serials in the Literary Quarterly in 1933 before the Cultural and Life Publishing Company in Shanghai published it in book form in 1934.
The first performance of this play was given in 1935 by the Fu-tan University Dramatic Club in Shanghai under the direction of Ou-yang Yü-ch'ien and Hung Shen. In 1936 the China Travelling Dramatic Troupe took it over for professional presentations.
3 See Scott, A. C., Literature and the Arts in Twentieth Century China, New York, 1963, p. 42.Google Scholar
4 Yü, Ts'ao, “Preface,” Thunderstorm, Shanghai, 1934, P. iiiGoogle Scholar. (In rendering this Preface into English, I have made liberal use of the existing translation by Yao Hsin-nung, which appeared in T'ien Hsia Monthly, Vol. III, October, 1936.)
5 Ibid., p. iv.
6 Ibid., p. xi.
7 Ibid., p. xii.
8 Sewall, Richard, The Vision of Tragedy, New Haven, 1962, p. 45.Google Scholar
9 Brooks, Cleanth, “Introduction,” Tragic Themes in Western Literature, ed. Brooks, Cleanth, New Haven, 1960, p. v.Google Scholar
10 Auden, W. H., “The Christian Hero: Contrasting Captain Ahab's Doom and Its Classic Greek Proto type,” in Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Michel, Laurence and Sewall, Richard, New Jersey, 1963, p. 336.Google Scholar
11 O'Neill, Eugene, Plays of Eugene O'Neill, 3 Vols., New York: Random House, p. 221. Hereafter, Plays.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., p. 222.
18 Even in their tenderest moments together before the child is born, this consciousness of self-interest keeps them apart, as on one occasion shortly before the consummation of their illicit relation Eben says, “This is her [his mother's] hum. This is her farm.” To which Abbie rejoins, half-unconsciously, “This is my hum. This is my farm!” Plays, p. 242.
14 Plays, p. 221.
15 Ibid., p. 240.
16 Ibid., p. 243.
17 Clark, Barrett, Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays (rev. ed.) New York, 1947, p. 99.Google Scholar
18 Countering Eben's charge that she sold herself to Cabot like a “harlot,” Abbie retorts, “Waal—What if I did need a hum? What else'd I marry an old man like him fur?” Plays, p. 226.
19 Plays, p. 229.
20 Thunderstorm, p. 89. (In translating the quotations from this play I have benefited from the translation by T. L. Wang and A. C. Barnes, published by the Peking Foreign Language Press in 1958.)
21 Ibid., pp. 45–46.
22 Ibid., p. 90.
23 Ibid.
24 Commenting on the question of incest between stepmother and stepson in Hippolytus, David Grene writes: “It is not necessary to debate whether, to the fifth-century Greek, sexual relation between step-mother and step-son would be technically incestuous or not. It is enough that we can be sure that they involved an extreme violation of the trust and affection between father and son, and something worse than that, even if the evil cannot be exactly charted.” See Introduction to “Hippolytus,” The Complete Greek, Tragedies (Vol. 3), Chicago, p. 158Google Scholar. Though Chou P'ing's relation with his father is a far cry from “affection,” it is nevertheless an “extreme violation” of trust for which he now feels remorseful.
25 Thunderstorm, p. 88.
26 Plays, p. 266.
27 In his Preface to Phèdre Racine wrote: “Ce que je puis assurer, c'est que je n'en ai point fait où la vertu soit plus mise en jour que dans celle-ci; les moindres fautes y sont sévèrement punies; la seule pensée du crime y est regardée avec autant d'horreur que le crime même; les faiblesses de l'amour y passent pour de vraies faiblesses; les passions n'y sont présentées aux yeux que pour montrer tout le désordre dont elles sont cause; et le vice y est peint partout avec des couleurs qui en font connaître et haïr la difformité.” Tragédies Choisies de Racine, New York, 1962, p. 267Google Scholar. Perhaps precisely because Phèdre was punished by Racine for a crime more imagined than committed that prompted Roland Barthes to assert that Phèdre is a “nominalist tragedy” and that “evil is a tautology.” On Racine, New York, 1964, p. 116.Google Scholar
28 In this respect Abbie has what E. M. Forster calls “the incalculability of life about it—life with in the pages of a book.” She is, according to this judgment, a “round character … capable of surprising in a convincing way.” Aspects of the Novel, New York, 1954, p. 78.
29 Abbie Putnam's refusal to shirk judicial responsibility as an expression of the Self Will strikes a curious note of resemblance to Kirillov's suicide in Dostoevsky's The Possessed. For Kirillov, in a world governed by the divine caprices of God, the only freedom one can assert without frustration is to take his own life at will, which is also an act to spite God.
30 Her agony of will is apparent in her confession to Eben, “I didn't want t’ do it. I hated myself fur doin’ it. I loved him … But I loved yew more—” Plays, p. 261.
31 Rougemont, Denis de, Love in the Western World, New York, 1957, p. 12.Google Scholar
32 I refer particularly to Webster's New World Dictionary which defines a crime as an “extreme violation of the law” and a sin as “the breaking of religious law or moral principle.” Thus it can be main tained that our first association of the term “crime” is more often juridical than religious or moral; and it is on these definitions that the distinction of Abbie's respective responsibility to the self and society will be drawn.
33 Plays, pp. 243–244.
34 Ibid., p. 237.
35 Thunderstorm, pp. 198–199.
36 Ibid., p. 75.
37 This is evident in a highly melodramatic scene in Act One in which Chou Pu-yuan commands Chou P'ing to beg Fan-yi on his knees to drink the herb medicine which is supposed to help ease her mind. The question of Fan-yi's sanity is brought up by Chou to no clear purpose. Our first reaction, guided perhaps by our familiarity with the techniques of Hollywood's murderous movies, is that Chou wants to get rid of her by turning her into a paranoiac. This surmise is supported by his inviting the German brain specialist to treat her: we suspect immediately an underhanded collaboration in murder. Later develop ments, however, disappoint our expectation and Chou's motives still remain cloudy as ever. But whatever his purpose, this persecution incident follows the logic of the plot and heightens the dire aspect of the patriarchal system with its abuse of power. Also, it might be that this madness motif is intended as a counterpoint to accentuate Fan-yi's passion.
38 Thunderstorm, p. 89.
39 C. T. Hsia has written an illuminating article on the traditional Chinese storytellers’ uncertain attitudes toward the conflicting claims of the self and society, especially in those stories that deal with illicit love in the Ming collections. While his honesty urges him to respect the importance of fulfillment of the individual's instinctive needs, the storyteller must at the same time demonstrate his public loyalty to society either by openly deploring the lovers’ lack of restraint or chastising them with a severity often greater than their behavior deserves so as to uphold order and morality. Thus how far should the claims of love and nature be pushed without betraying his private sympathy for his characters’ pursuit of happiness become for the storyteller not only an artistic problem, but an emotional one as well. The result, as Hsia points out, is that “though illicit love is still deplored, and though compulsive lust and excessive debauchery are actually viewed with horror, the young lovers at least, insulated in a world of mutual delight to which the claims of honor and religion are for the moment completely irrelevant, are described with gusto and treated with generous sympathy.” See “To What Fyn Lyve I Thus? Society and Self in the Chinese Short Story,” Kenyan Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, 1962.Google Scholar
40 “Preface,” Thunderstorm, pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar
41 Thunderstorm, p. 91.
42 Ibid., p. 93.
43 In addition to the explosive social issues, the commercial success of Thunderstorm owes a great deal to the strategy of the well-made play. The common assumption of this genre is, to quote Fergusson, Francis, “to hold an audience for two hours; hence the art of plot-making is the art of making an exciting arrangement of incidents with carefully controlled and mounting suspense.” The Idea of a Theatre, New York, 1955, p. 246.Google Scholar
44 Wagner, Richard, Tristan and Isolde, tr. Jameson, Frederick, London, 1886, p. 26.Google Scholar
45 Love in the Western World, p. 27.Google Scholar
46 Ibid., p. 41.
47 Ibid., p. 139.
48 In contrast with Abbie Putnam, Fan-yi has the appearance of what E. M. Forster calls a “flat” character because she is “constructed around a single idea or quality.” Hence she is easily “recognized by the reader's emotional eye, not the visual eye” whenever she comes in. Aspects of the Novel, pp. 67–68. The term “flat character,” however, does not denote failure; flat characters can be highly successful if they appear in comic situations handled by a skilled artist. But “a serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore,” Forster flatly concludes, for “each time he enters crying ‘revenge’ or ‘My heart bleeds for humanity” or whatever the formula is, our hearts sink.” Aspects of the Novel, p. 73.
49 Thunderstorm, p. 226.