"We women are expected to love our children as soon as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt the dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were sour? We may love our daughters with all our hearts, but we must train them through pain. We love our sons most of all, but we can never be a part of their world, the outer realm of men. We are expected to love our husbands from the day of Contracting Kin, though we will not see their faces for another six years. We are told to love our in-laws, but we enter those families as strangers, as the lowest person in the household, just one step on the ladder above a servant... All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my country know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality. " (59) It’s a universal expectation for a mother to love her children. But, it was interesting to find out that in the Chinese culture, the strains that a woman went through just in loving her children, as a mother. Of course a mother would love her daughter, having a strong bond just because of the commonality of being women, but it is understandable for the mother to have some kind of disappointment of not having a son. Let’s face it, in their time, sons were so cherished, it was hard not to be inclined to have a boy. This passage explains the role of the common Chinese women. As women they are already given a fate according to the norms of the society in Chinese culture. They, themselves, must have felt the unfairness of being a girl, but all they could have done was deal with it. Looking at their daughter’s unfair life, they can say ‘been there done that’ but all they can do for their daughters is to set a good example of how women “should” be in their society, in hopes of having them accept their fate. With all these expectations, they are pressured to fall into being a slave for others and in the end become slaves to their own emotions, having such limited freedom. This must be the reason for why they created secret messages, which was there escape from the suppression of their daily lives. Notice how Lily says “All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude…” She emphasizes a lot about love from duty, respect, and gratitude, but she leaves out true love; love that comes from just pure emotions. Interestingly enough, Chinese women today learned to live life loving with more emotion, which is evident in their drama serials. |
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
We women...
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