After the death of her father, Heaven light shares a conversation with a well known general throughout China, which earned her a recommendation to be one of the emperor's concubines. During the ancient times polygamy was widely accepted. The Emperor was a big promoter of this, having hundreds of wives at his bidding. I personally believe polygamy is wrong. First off, polygamy was only acceptable if a man had more than one wife, never a woman with more than one husband.
In a female's point of view, how can you accept the fact that you have to share your husband? A husband having more than one wife should make his wives feel as if they were a possession, or more of a part of a collection that he can keep adding to. Women probably had no right to say anything and were forced into arranged marriages by parents, so it is not their fault. This leads me to conclude that lives of women in China were completely oppressed.
For the men who choose to marry more than one wife, why is there a need to do that? You already have one wife, who will cater to your every needs, isn't it selfish to make another woman suffer?
Right now in society, true love is something many desire, to find that one person who completes you. Do you think it was possible to find love during the ancient times, where a man had more that one wife and a woman had to share her husband? Would you be able to love someone you had to "share”?
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Since the start if High school, we have read most books centered on American and European culture, we never really touched base with Asian cultures in our reading. So, in the posts, I will give my views on certain aspects of the Chinese culture I read about in the books I read for this independent reading assignment.
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credits
- http://www.pagesofink.com/images/2006/MidAutumnFestival14.jpg
- http://bp1.blogger.com/_vI2GIp44VoE/RyvVAs3aMpI/AAAAAAAAAAM/_hGISgz487A/s1600-h/211-bjo5SFL__OU01_SS160_.jpg
- http://books.google.com/books?id=m296w0GA5O0C&dq=empress+a+novel&psp=1
- http://www.the-gallery-of-china.com/chinese-bamboo-painting-B6022.jpg
- http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/tpsd/wallpaper/images/fig17.jpg
1 comment:
I definitely agree with you that polygamy is an abhorrent term no matter which angle you look at it from. First off, the idea that men are allowed to have “wives,” and women can only have a “husband” is sexist; a man is not made by the amount of women he can have. Looking at today’s society, polygamy is not publicly accepted, but looking at it from a perspective other than through marriage; I can clearly see that society supports the idea of having more than one partner. Having more than one girlfriend, and sometimes boyfriend, is socially rewarded by some. It may not agree with the actual meaning of polygamy, which according to Encarta.com is “the custom of having more than one spouse at the same time,” but it is a way to interpret it if we talk about today.
A polygamist may be seen as an admirable character, but only to men. Females were not given a choice, whether they supported polygamy or not. The husband doesn’t have to be concerned about the what the women thinks, rather not thinking about what she thinks is what makes him able to have numerous wives. Even though Chris McCandless’ father was a polygamist, he was a bigamist, and as the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer shows, Chris did suffer from his father actions as well as his mother. Into the Wild wasn’t written to express disapproval to Chris’ father, but it was to glorify or simply just record the life of McCandless. No matter what the purpose was, we can see that bigamy or polygamy affects others than just wives.
Also, as you had mentioned before, “This leads me to conclude that lives of women in China were completely oppressed.” This can also be seen in other works of literature such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. She was born in America, but her parents were both Chinese. She explains that because she is Asian American she can see what her culture believes clearly, she shares with the reader the idea that if a mother gives birth to a girl they will most likely reject this baby. In the Chinese culture to have a girl is to have another person to take care of, rather than having a boy which would mean to have another source of income. Kingston also explains that families wait for a girl to be old enough to find her a husband and from this marriage, obtain something in exchange. Women were highly oppressed in China, because as we see in other cultures, females are still considered to be the “weaker” sex.
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