Chinese women defined in Cass book
By Sadie Jo Smokey, Outpost Contributor
What started out as an interest in learning a new language has turned into a book about the social condition of Chinese women who didn't follow the rules.
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Victoria Cass signed copies of her book, Dangerous Women, at Boarders bookstore March 31 in Reno. Photo by Sadie Jo Smokey |
Dr. Victoria Cass was at Borders in Reno March 31 for a book signing of her new book: Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming. Before starting the slide show presentation, she explained her own introduction in China and the Chinese language.
In the early 1960s Cass said she was an American high school student interested in learning a new language. She signed up for a special summer science program designed to teach the Chinese language, Mandarin, to students. She said it was there that a seed was planted for her book.
"They locked 40 of us up in this little schoolhouse for the summer," Cass said. "I think they were trying to teach Chinese and Russian to high school students and then we could be used as spies for defense of the nation. We were going to be little soldiers in service of the country.
"It was in my first Chinese language class that I had where I met this archetype. (The teacher) was pure force, pure drama. I was stunned at how she ran our lives that whole summer. We learned Chinese and we loved it and that was my first exposure to the dangerous woman. That started the riddle of "Where did this woman come from?""
Instead of becoming a "little soldier" Cass decided to specialize in Ming and Qing fiction, vernacular literature, cultural and women's history. She now teaches Chinese literature and culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In Dangerous Women, Cass wrote about the social conditions and roles of Chinese women. She said that dangerous women, women who didn't obey, are well known through folklore and legends but academic study of the subject is limited because accessible information is scarce. Cass said she researched though private journals, Imperial documents, local histories and popular fiction in order to single out each of the multiple identities of Chinese women.
"I had to go to outside orthodox sources," Cass said. "Some of the journals I used were banned in China but preserved and reprinted in Japan. It wasn't suppressed in the Ming. But there had to be a lineage of publishers and in the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus used Chinese culture against (the Chinese).
In the seven chapters of her book, Cass informs the reader of the social attitudes that limit the potential and understanding of Chinese women. She then recounts stories, observations, myths and popular gossip that celebrate the diversity of women. She said she relied on work about women by women.
"If was woman was very filial to her mother-in-law, she was written about," Cass said. "I needed to find that counter-tradition and counter-culture (for her book). Many sources are women, but some are men."
Photographs, woodblock prints, paintings and color plates illustrate the beauty, strength, wisdom and independence these women shared with the world.
"This is the perfect picture of a granny," Cass said of color plate 5 in Dangerous Women. "They had a reputation of being trouble makers, and rightly so. They're going to stir things up and gossip about you. But they were also the healers of the community. They weren't trained in medical schools like men, but they were important members of the healing class."
Similar to the United States, Cass said, the occupation opportunities available to women relied on her talents and where in the country she lived. In Dangerous Women, Cass wrote that in large cities like Shanghai or Hong Kong, women were hired as healers, teachers, worked as merchants, midwives, wet-nurses, florists, matchmakers and entertainers. But there was always the underlying fear that women, no matter what her role, was a predator, a were-animal.
"There were warnings of these creatures who shape-shifted between women and animals," Cass said. "In the White Snake stories, she's a warrior, a healer and a seductress. Of course, the men are always innocent in these stories.
"One of the most dangerous was the new daughter-in-law. She's young, fertile and she's going to disturb the hierarchy in the household. When they are new, sexual, fertile that is when they are the most trouble. It was the mother-in-law's responsibility to teach and regulate her."
Cass delved into the extremes that shaped woman's identity in her community.
"One of the things I learned is that all of these roles are transmutable," Cass said. "No pigeon-holing, that's what academics do. It's a big fat lie."
Anna Tsu, of Reno, said she was pleased when she found Dangerous Women at Borders. She taught English in China and had looked for information on different roles of women in China to no avail.
"I couldn't find any books on women martial artists until this book," Tsu said. "I had an image of Chinese culture that was one sided. There were things I couldn't access. I was so happy to see (Cass') book."
One section of Dangerous Women discusses the fanatical attitude that encouraged women to commit suicide after the death of a loved one.
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A drawing of The Lady East-of-The-River, a geisha named Liu Shi, who dressed as a man in order to gain acceptance for her poetry. She was famous as both poet and visual artist. Photo by Sadie Jo Smokey |
"The family would get a plaque recognizing and celebrating the death," Cass said. "From 1368 to 1644, the state compensated the families of over forty thousand female suicides."
Despite popular misconception and misunderstanding, Cass said, the geisha were not prostitutes. They were dedicated female artists or performers who often started out in geisha districts at a young age, much like Olympic-aspiring gymnasts.
"Geisha didn't have sex," Cass said. "It was forbidden by law for these women to marry, they could not be concubines. These women were celebrities, they were worshipped and collected hard cash. They were fabulous divas."
The more popular they were, the sooner a geisha could gain her independence and become an entrepreneur. Cass said most women were thrust into a geisha lifestyle by crisis such as poverty or the death of her parents, getting out was always a goal. One way to do that was to start their own geisha house or become master teachers of their craft.
She's lived in Taiwan and visited China as recently as last summer.
"Marxism is very straight laced, so they don't like these kind of dangerous women, though it's OK to be a soldier," Cass said. "Popular culture is still where these women live. Hong Kong movies, Taiwanese TV has a series on the geisha and their importance. They really glorify dangerous women because people can't get them out of their imagination. There's plenty of stories about them and people will know them."
Posted April 7, 2000
Copyright 2000 Nevada Outpost
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