摘 要

作为美国文坛的一股新兴力量，美国华裔文学从萌发之初就一直处于美国文化的边缘，直到二十世纪六十年代，以汤亭亭为代表的一批美籍华裔作家出现，华裔文学才迎来了春天。汤亭亭在其作品中大量地改写中国民间传说，这种写作策略引起了国内外学者的广泛关注。本文运用荣格的原型批评理论，从英雄原型和流亡原型角度，首先对比分析了汤亭亭作品《女勇士》中花木兰与蔡文姬和中国传统故事中这两位女性形象的差异。在《女勇士》中，汤亭亭把忠孝仁义的花木兰改写成一个反抗压迫的斗士，把流亡匈奴、愤世嫉俗的蔡文姬塑造成一个主动融入匈奴文化的同化者。其次，本文揭示了这两位女性形象的隐含意义，最后探索出汤亭亭改写中国民间传说对于打破华裔作家的失语境地，为华裔作家寻求种族认同和自身文化身份认同的意义。本文是荣格原型理论应用的一次实践，旨在为理解美国华裔文学提供一个新的视角。

关键词：美籍华裔作家；汤亭亭；《女勇士》；原型理论

Abstract

As an emerging force of American literature, Chinese American literature had been always on the margin of the American mainstream culture since its very beginning. Until the 1960s when a group of Chinese American writers, take Maxine Hong Kingston for example, came into view, Chinese American literature ushered in a spring. Maxine has greatly rewritten Chinese folk tales in her works, which has arrested attention from scholars both at home and abroad. Based on the archetypal theory of Jung, this paper firstly analyzes the differences between the images of Mulan and Cai Wenji in The Woman Warrior, and the Chinese traditional images from the perspective of hero archetype and exile archetype. In The Woman Warrior, Maxine converts the image of Fa Mulan from a woman with faith and filial piety into a fighter against oppression, and reshapes the image of Cai Wenji from a cynic in exile to an assimilator in Xiongnu’s mainstream. Then, this paper reveals the implied meaning of these images. Finally, this paper explores the significance of rewriting Chinese folktales in breaking the silence of Chinese American writers and seeking their racial and cultural identity. This paper is a practice of utilizing Jungian archetypal theory, to provide a new perspective of understanding Chinese American literature.

Key Words: Chinese American writers; Maxine Hong Kingston; The Woman Warrior; Archetypal theory

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Maxine Hong Kingston and The Woman Warrior 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

2 Highlights of Archetypal Theory 3

2.1The Development of Archetypal Theory 3

2.2 Collective Unconscious 3

2.3 Archetype 4

3 Archetypes in The Woman Warrior 5

3.1 Hero Archetype 5

3.1.1 Fa Mulan: A Heroine 5

3.1.2 Implied Meaning of Fa Mulan: A Fighter against Racism and Sexism 7

3.2 Exile Archetype 8

3.2.1 Ts’ai Yen: An Exile 8

3.2.2 Implied Meaning of Ts’ai Yen: An Assimilator to the American Mainstream 9

4 Significance of “Rewriting” Chinese Folktales 11

4.1 Breaking Silence, Regaining the Power of Discourse 11

4.2Questing for Self-identity 12

4.2.1Questing for Cultural Identity: Chinese American 12

4.2.2Questing for Gender Identity: Chinese American Woman 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

The Interpretation of Chinese Folktales in Chinese American Literature: A Case Study of Maxine Hong Kingston

1 Introduction

1.1 Maxine Hong Kingston and The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in Stockton, California in 1940. She is regarded as a brilliant Chinese American writer with her literary attainments. Due to her family background, Maxine received bilingual education when she was young. Her father, a laundry house owner, influenced his daughter with his profound literary knowledge. Maxine’s mother also was an excellent story teller and her story pool covered most of Chinese folktales, such as the story of Nuhuo mending the sky, Hou Yi shooting down suns, Kua Fu chasing the sun, Jing Wei filling up the Sea, etc. At the same time, Maxine attended the white school and received an western education and graduated with a BA in English in 1962. So she was greatly influenced by both Chinese traditional culture and American mainstream culture. The bilingual background provided her with rich materials for her later writing.

Maxine showed her talents in literature when she was young. When she was attending middle school at age of 14, she luckily won a reward by “Girl Scout Magazine” for an article she wrote titled. With the publication of her first semi-autobiographical novel The Woman Warrior in 1976, Maxine caused an extensive concern from the white society and was awarded the National Book Critics Award for Nonfiction that year. This novel was praised by Bill Clinton as “An epoch-making great work” and was regarded as the peak of Chinese American literature. Now, it is still utilized as textbook in college. Just as the title The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts shows, this novel is a semi-autobiographical nonfiction which is made of author’s fragmented memories. Maxine recalls those stories that her mother told her when she was young, and writes down those story in a form of story-telling. Divided into five interconnected chapters, this novel represents several real and vivid female characters, such as no-name woman, Fa Mulan, Brave Orchid and Ts’ai Yen, to express the theme of breaking the silence of Chinese American and seeking for their identities.

1.2 Literature Review

Early scholars have clarified the concept of Chinese American literature from different angles, but the majority of the definitions share these following features. First of all, the writer is a Chinese immigrant or Chinese immigrant descendant. Secondly, the writer holds U.S. citizenship. Finally, his works are written in English（程爱民，2003）. With the publication of the autobiographical novel When I Was a Boy in China written by Lee Yan Phou in 1887, Chinese American literature generally stepped onto its stage from the end of the 19th century. Nevertheless, it didn’t emerge as a literary power in America because of the enactment of Chinese Exclusion Act by the USA government in 1882 until 1960s when a huge chunk of fictions came into view like the Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan), Pangs of Love (David Wong Louie) and Typical American (Gish Jen). These works, almost without exception, contain Chinese folktales more or less. Among these works, one of the most influential and representative works should be The Women Warrior written by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Early scholars, at home or abroad, have been studying this fiction since the 1980s, and most of the researchers have conducted their researches at all levels from different perspectives such as deconstructivism, inter-cultural communication, feminism, colonialism, archetypal criticism and post-modernism, etc. Some scholars claim that Kingston changes these Chinese stories into American forms, so as to search for her identity as a Chinese American; feminists apply trauma theory to analyze the causes of the Chinese females’ frustration, sadness, miserable life and the way they overcome trauma; postmodernists research this novel on its postmodernist features from the perspective of intertextuality. Some scholars study this fiction under the guidance of archetypal criticism, while some others probe into the work from the angle of writing strategy of rewriting Chinese folktales separately. Nevertheless, few researches have combined these two perspectives together. Thus, this paper will focus on the details of the strategy of rewriting with the guidance of archetypal criticism, to explore its significance to Chinese American literature.

2 Highlights of Archetypal Theory

2.1The Development of Archetypal Theory

The word “archetype” can be defined as a model, a prototype or something serves as a pattern for other things. The archetypal theory is a type of critical theory which is aimed at analyzing the myths and archetypes implied in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types. It was put forward in 1934 by Maud Bodkin in his Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. Originating from psychoanalysis and social anthropology, the archetypal theory probes the common things in human beings. When mentioned the archetypal theory, we should never neglect the following figures: James.G.Frazer, Carl G. Jung and Northrop Frye.

Frazer puts forward that there are practices shared among primitive and modern religions from the anthropological perspective. In different cultural mythologies, there is a death and rebirth pattern which is acted out as the seasons and vegetation. By doing this research, Frazer lays a sound basis for archetypal criticism in material terms. In contrast, Jung focuses on its immaterial term. He studies the connection between archetype and myth from the perspective of psychoanalysis, and distinguishes the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, thus creates the theory of “Collective Unconscious” and “Archetype”. Frye breaks from both Frazer and Jung in a way of focusing on the fiction and effect of archetypes rather than their origins. He updates the death-rebirth myth. In his view, summer symbolizes romance, and it means the birth of the hero; autumn symbolizes tragedy, and it stands for the movement towards death or defeat of the hero; winter symbolizes irony or satire, and it means the absence of hero; spring symbolizes comedy, and it means the rebirth of the hero.

2.2 Collective Unconscious

Jung’s main contribution to archetypal theory is to view it from the perspective of psychology. His theory distinguishes the personal unconscious from the collective unconscious, and the collective unconscious is particularly developed into archetypal criticism. As Jung quotes in his work, the collective unconscious is the psyche in all men and it constitutes a psychic substrate of a person’s nature which is common in everyone. It is an universal psychic substrate, that is to say, every human being has been born with this psychic substrate. It is obtained innately by heredity rather than education or other conscious activities. It is a priori, inborn forms of intuition, performing as a plenty of memories, instincts, and innate feeling that hide in the unconsciousness of all people. This is why people from different backgrounds may show the same respond to the same myth and stories (Jung, 1975).

2.3 Archetype

Archetype is a Geek word meaning original pattern. In Jungian theory, “The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its color from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear.”(Jung,1975) In a word, archetype is the content of the collective unconscious. They are psychic innate feeling to represent human behavior. Archetypes manifest themselves in the form of various archetypal images. They may exist in human dreams or visions. An archetype is the model image of a person or a image, including the mother figure, father, wise old man and clown/joker, etc.

3 Archetypes in The Woman Warrior

3.1 Hero Archetype

The archetypal hero exists in all mythologies, religions, and literary works of the world. It is a part of our personal and collective unconscious, as theorized by Carl Jung. All archetypal heroes have the similar characteristics. For example, a hero always has an unusual circumstances of birth, leaves her/his family or land and lives with others in an alien environment. There is an traumatic experience leading him to quest for truth or justice. He will try many times and fail several times but will succeed in the end with supernatural help and a special weapon or ability. Take King Arthur for example, he shows the typical characteristics of a archetypal hero, who born into the Celtic Royal families of Britain with a special appearance. He was destined to heir to the throne, but the baby Arthur was raised in a secret place by the wizard Merlin. When he grew up, he found a magic sword Excalibur which symbolized the crown. With the sword, he succeeded to the crown and led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders. Other figures, such as Luke Skywalker in America, Hercules in ancient Greek, Moses in Abrahamic religions, William Wallace in Scottish and Fa Mulan in China, share the same characteristics like King Arthur. Thus, heroic stories in different cultures are similar because heroes express a deep psychological aspect of human existence. They can be seen as a metaphor for the human search of self-identity.

3.1.1 Fa Mulan: A Heroine

In the second chapter of The Woman Warrior, Maxine recounts a story derived from the tale of the legendary Chinese heroine Fa Mulan, who disguises herself as a man to take her aging father's place in the army. In Ode to Mulan, Mulan’s old father is required to join the army when the invasion of enemies comes. Fa Mulan is faced with a dilemma that her father is too old to be drafted into the army while she has no elder brother in her family. Out of love for her father and loyalty to her motherland, Mulan masquerades as a man, joins the army and becomes a soldier. After involving breathtaking combats and arduous struggles, Mulan returns home in triumph twelve years later and restores to a beautiful woman. Here, Fa Mulan embodies the “loyalty” and “filial piety” in the dominant idea: Confucianism. However, in The Woman Warrior, the image of Fa Mulan is different from that of China in many aspects.

One of the big differences is the plot. In The Woman Warrior, Mulan is rewritten as a swordswoman. She is only seven years old when she is guided by a magic bird and leaves her motherland to go into the mountains. She encounters an old man and a woman who treat her as their own child and teach her martial art. Soon she has successfully acquired the skills of controlling external forces and became a real warrior. Later, she returns her home but finds that her father is drafted. Without hesitation, she takes her father’s place and disguises as a man. She leaves for battle with “oaths and names” carved by her mother on her back. She is invincible, brave and valiant in battles, inaugurating a new emperor. She even gets married in the army and gives birth to two children. Then she goes back to her village, fighting with a greedy baron who drafts her brother and terrorizes villagers, killing the tyrant and revitalizing the village to normal. Finally, she returns to family and becomes an ordinary women who serves both the husband and the children.

The second difference is that the author Maxine expresses her heroic complex and individualism by shaping the image of Fa Mulan. Maxine imagines herself as Fa Mulan and narrates Mulan’s legend in the first person. In the author’s growth process, she was indignant when she knew that girls could only choose to be a wife or slave to men. She thought that women could be heroines and swordswomen who fight against social discrimination. When her father’s laundry was forced to be overturned into the parking lot, the author was fantasizing about raging across the United States to take back the laundry. The depiction of Fa Mulan uniting with her husband, bearing a son, and revealing her identity in the army can be considered totally creation. Here, Fa Mulan is a western woman warrior, and this woman warrior has a strong desire for equality, revenge, individualism, and making achievements without being fettered by feudal ethics. She is struggling to seek self-identity with the spirit of individualism.

Despite these differences, there are still many similarities between these two versions of Fa Mulan, and these similarities are precisely what a heroic archetype owns. For example, there is an event, sometimes something traumatic, leading the protagonist to adventure or quest. Whether in the original story or in The Woman Warrior, Fa Mulan is faced with the invasion of enemies and she fights for justice and peace. This irresistible force drives her to give up her comfortable life and involve in combat. Secondly, a hero always has a supernatural help and special weapon or ability. Here, both eastern Mulan and western one own a special martial skill which contribute to their success in battles. Finally, a hero archetype will meet the Belly of the Whale: the person’s lowest point or the most fearful and darkest hour. The Belly of the Whale stands for a change from the old self to the new self. In Ode to Mulan, life in military campsites is difficult and Mulan experiences the darkest hour, while in the woman warrior, Mulan is also faced with the lowest point: “It is a lonely time, when any high cry makes the milk spill from my breasts, that I get careless.” (Maxine, 1976: 54-55)

3.1.2 Implied Meaning of Fa Mulan: A Fighter against Racism and Sexism

In Chinese tradition, women in predominantly patriarchal society are traditionally meant to be demure and they are inferior to men, but Fa Mulan has proved that women can be as brilliant and brave as men with her transformation to a fighter in man’s guise. Fa Mulan is a woman who honors her parents and is loyal to her country. She embodies the core of traditional Confucian thought of ethics and morals: loyalty and filial piety. Thus, she is an idealized subject that feudal lords advocate. However, Fa Mulan can’t be regarded as an idealized woman because she cannot get rid of the shackles of the feudal society and finally cannot find the real road for individual emancipation. In Woman Warrior, Maxine creates a female image that transcends patriarchal stereotypes. Here, Fa Mulan is not only a dutiful daughter to her father and a loyal defender to the country, but also a fighter against tyrants and an idealist seeking for woman rights. Maxine views herself as Fa Mulan, by portraying the figure of Fa Mulan, she tries to show her dissatisfaction with her living condition, rejection to sexual and racial discrimination, and quests for self-identity. As one of the second-generation immigrants, Maxine wants to fight against the racial discrimination and oppression from the white society. Here, Fa Mulan acts as a spokesman of the author and the second-generation immigrants. Meanwhile, by reshaping this figure, she highlights the Chinese American virtues, bitter struggles and contributions to the western world, claiming the recognition from the mainstream culture. Through writing this heroic story of Fa Mulan, Kingston tries to prove that Chinese American are actually as brave and intelligent as any other races, and she tries to show the westerners that Chinese American are not only the cheap labor, but also the creators and masters to the new land.

3.2 Exile Archetype

“Exile” means the fact or state of being expatriated, proscribed, expelled, deported, or leaving one’s homeland implies and being separated from one’s native country for a long time. It is derived from the French word during the time of Norman Conquest. There is a great quantity of exiles whether in reality or in literature, and most of them follows the lost-discovery-regression model. The most serious exile in western history should be traced back to the Babylonian exile happened between 597 and 538 BC. In the Bible, exile is closely linked to redemption. The most famous exile is the exile of Adam and eve for their disobedience to God. In the history of the Hebrew kingdom, the exile of Moses and his people opens a new chapter for this kingdom. Thus, exile is a process of reaching redemption, spiritual awakening and self-evaluation. As an oft-occurring archetype in literature, exile archetype attracts a large amount of scholarly attention.

3.2.1 Ts’ai Yen: An Exile

In the last chapter of The Woman Warrior, the heroine Ts’ai Yen is an exile. In this chapter, Maxine rewrites the story of Ts’ai Yen. In Chinese tradition, Ts’ai Yen, also known as Cai Wenji, is an excellent poetess born in 175 A.D in Han Dynasty. She is the daughter of the famous Minster and writer Cai Yong. However, when she was twenty years old she was captured by barbarians and was forced to live in the North Huns. Later, she had lived in Xiong Nu for 12 years and gave birth to two children by a chieftain. The barbarians had a tradition of sitting around the fire at night and singing. So after she returned to Han, tortured by parting from her husband and children, she composed a heartbreaking poem, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Reed Pipe, to show her anger and humiliation at being an exile and a wife in the invading tribe, and her deep yearning for her children. At the end of the story, she was married to Dong Si and lived a peaceful life since then.