To begin, McMahon introduces us to Chinese literature as a story about the evolution of polygamy, though perhaps it's better to say that it's not polygamy or even sexuality that he is interested in so much as what the characters in love stories -- especially male consorts and remarkable women -- represent in terms of social and philosophical value.
Chapter 1, "Sublime Passion and the Remarkable Woman" begins with the general proposition that the rhetoric of qing in late Ming and Qing fiction is the rhetoric of a "radical subjectivity," as we can see from the "evanescence" of the female characters, all of whom are remarkable women. The proposition is similar to one in Lee Haiyin's Revolution of the Heart (Stanford, 2007), but McMahon focuses on the egalitarian streak that, in his interpretation drives, male consorts to toward femininity and receptiveness and remarkable women towards agency and service as ontological focal points for anxious males.
He proposes that the figure of the "wanton woman" (yinfu), best exemplified in Jin ping mei's Pan Jinlian, is a type of remarkable woman as much as any of the honorable courtesans or women warriors, because wanton women steal male energy. The point is that the remarkable woman as a narrative unit symbolizes men's ontological crisis. Courtesans, for example, help contain the nostalgia and longing of fallen dynasties. (In women's hands, though, (as we see in tanci) courtesans supply complaint and resistance, which shows that more than the male perspective is at work. How does this fit in McMahon's larger argument?)
McMahon's readings from Pu Songling's Liaozhai zhiyi illustrate his interest in the representation of ontology in the appearance of the woman, which is always liminal (cf. evanescent), rich in "visible affects," and contains at least one scene of the "frame" of sexual possibility into which she enters, crossing over (as Zeitlin has described) boundaries. The effect of the ontology is on the man, who transforms, as from a blank man to one with sexual knowledge, or the spineless man destroyed by the shrew. According to McMahon, there is a "gesture of severance" common to many types of Pu Songling story that illustrate the close relationship between qing and...nothingness. There is a profound proposition at work in the stories about the "empty core" at the bottom of any individual self. (This implies a Lacanian reading, which he will introduce in time, and to which I frankly have to play catch-up. Skeptical catch-up.)
I'm eager to play with many of these ideas, both to continue setting up my own reading list and to understand how the actions and appearances of remarkable women and male consorts work in modern Chinese writing. Two basic ideas to consider further:
- Yang Jiang self-fashions as a "remarkable woman." How does she transform and adapt "gestures of severance" to yield agency for herself? (Is that even a good question?)
- Yang Jiang sketches Qian Zhongshu as imbued with "foolishness," a plain fact that connects with McMahon's discussion of foolishness which Paul Rouzer alluded might exist in a conversation last year: "Marriage or love only work in Liaozhai if the man is in some way foolish and blank, the best example of which occurs when a woman literally bestows sexual capacity upon the man." (29)
Reading list from chapter 1:
- Comments on qing by Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, and Feng Menglong
- Selected Liaozhai stories
- Jinü, "The Weaving Girl," for the luminescent erotic image, framed, its entry, and the mistake the male makes to lose her. (Also there's a horny homosexual old lady -- a new motif of interest!)
- "A Bao" and other stories which feature "foolish" men
- "Le Zhong" for its non-sexual sublime passion which McMahon leaves us as a teaser
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