Eileen Chang's "Red Rose and White Rose": Reflecting on the Age Significance of Love in the Conflict of Cultural Consciousness

"Red Rose and White Rose" is a short story written by Eileen Chang in 1944. The story mainly tells the encounter between a man named Tong Zhenbao and two women when he returned to Shanghai to work as a textile engineer after studying in the UK.

What is love? It is the great question and reflection that this novel throws up. In fact, from the very beginning, when Zhenbao went to study in the West, his behavior could be used as an interpretation to explore this issue. That is, when Zhenbao was visiting Paris, he met a prostitute and had a relationship with her.

This is a very simple plot in the novel, however, it has great significance for the character Zhenbao. Except because this may be Zhenbao's first love experience in the book, it is this experience that makes him experience the consequences of submissive emotions. Although he had a sex with a prostitute that he longed for in the past, the pleasure of the flesh failed to restrain the shame of his inner morality, and even made him feel humiliated. Obviously, the reason is not because the sex itself is not pleasant enough, but because his behavior seriously violates the social norms he has experienced in the past and affects the social image he has established for himself.

The incident with the prostitute sheds light on the impact of social norms on Zhenbao, allowing readers to see how huge a person's culture can be. Even if you come to a place with a completely different culture from before, it is difficult to break free from the past and change your mind to enjoy another kind of freedom. In addition, it also made Zhenbao begin to question the feelings that love has caused to him. Can the pursuit of sex that is not socially regulated in love really reflect that our pursuit of love is free? Or is it just a reflection of our deepest innermost beasts that have been imprisoned by society for a long time? Because if love is a display of beautiful and free emotions, why is he deeply ashamed at this time? Is this freedom bad? Isn't that what you should pursue?

Although such questions are not written in the book, they can be more or less felt from the monologue of the protagonist:

 In retrospect, it should have been a very romantic thing, but for some reason, he couldn't remember the romantic part, so he chose only the annoying part to remember.

This "I don't know why" is to show Zhenbao's confusion about his emotional contrast, and it also makes him dare not step into the love relationship between Rose and Wang Jiaorui. It can be said that this simple prostitute plot, although small in length, seems to be the prologue of this novel. In addition to uncovering and starting Cheng Zhenbao's exploration of love, it also implies that the result of this exploration will eventually be due to social and cultural factors. Cause back to the origin.

It is also from here that personal feelings and reflections on inner emotions begin to conflict and compromise with cultural value consciousness. After experiencing the prostitute incident, Zhenbao met a woman he called Rose, and developed a relationship with her. But even though they love each other, Zhenbao doesn't want to continue because of the difference in values. Before the separation, there was a scene description that Zhang Ailing wrote very interestingly:

 The rose hangs tightly around his neck, always feeling that something is not right, changing the position, changing the position, I don't know how to stick it tighter, I want to be born on him, embedded in him...

At first glance, this narration is describing the lingering behavior of the two when they parted, but it is the opposite side. Under the impact of the value of love between the East and the West, people are at a loss, hated and confused. like not being able to find the right pose).

After Tong Zhenbao returned to Shanghai, he met his friend's gorgeous wife, Wang Jiaorui, because of his borrowing. Unlike ordinary women who grew up with traditional Chinese values, Wang Jiaorui, because she had also studied abroad and had been exposed to the Western world's emphasis on personal freedom, atmosphere and environment, her personality was contrary to the image of a quiet Chinese woman. In addition to being articulate and good at communication, she was more often bold. , to show their own charm to pursue and seduce the man they like, and to satisfy their own desires. Such a pungent personality coupled with a beautiful and sexy figure soon attracted Zhenbao. And as the two get along, it may have been just a playful love, but it has gradually penetrated into each other's hearts. Especially for Jiaorui, it is impossible to extricate herself. He even asked for a divorce from her husband in order to marry Zhenbao. Trying to abandon everything he has to fulfill his love for Zhenbao. However, Jiaorui's determination was not recognized by Zhenbao, but made him feel great fear. He realized that his and Jiaorui's marriage, which at first glance was a bright future for lovers to be married, was actually a terrible disaster. Because such a marriage was not recognized by the culture at the time, once they became husband and wife, they would soon face pressure from all levels of society. So later decisively refused to communicate and abandoned this relationship.

The irony is: Abandoning this relationship makes Zhenbao immune to social condemnation, but even if he returns to social norms, he is still not immune to social oppression.

Under his mother's wishes, Zhenbao later married Meng Yanli, who was also beautiful but had a completely opposite personality to Jiaorui. Although their marriage was full of blessings from the family and society, not only did their later life fail to be happy, but their emotions seemed to be drained and gradually atrophied. For Zhenbao, although the oriole is beautiful, it makes him boring in many aspects of life and getting along. The book states that she is always very quiet and has no thoughts. Although she behaves properly, she always treats her husband with a humble attitude, but it is difficult for people to get close. She is "like a white screen in a hospital" and "there always seems to be separated by a A white membrane", as if to say, such love seems to be living in a huge hospital (marriage). And sex, for Yanli, is not a desire for desire, but only an obligation to inherit the family as a wife. In other words, in Oriole's values, the most important value of love is to play a social function, to continue the survival of human beings, and to exchange corresponding pleasures through social recognition. But for Zhenbao, who had been with Jiaorui after returning from studying in the UK, love is not just that. Although his past loves were fruitless, he also realized from these experiences that true love has deep emotions and meanings that many social norms ignore, and that (for him now) should be what drives people to live an active life source of power.

But Jiaorui had already married another man and gave birth to a son. For his marriage with Yanli, he did not have the courage to divorce, so at the end of the novel, even though his heart was full of regret and sadness, Zhenbao still succumbed to the ruthless social order. good man".

The "good man" in this sentence is undoubtedly a sarcastic word, implying that Zhenbao is not actually "good" at all, but a "gentleman" who conforms to social norms and abandons his emotions (suggesting that the saint Liuxia Hui, who was mentioned at the beginning of the novel, is just It is an empty image to conform to social representation). It can be said that Eileen Chang took advantage of the traditional expectations of people in society to expose people's inner emptiness and emotional falsity under the norms.

It is not difficult to feel that this novel has been using contrasting methods to show the conflict between personal emotions and social norms, forming a tension and capturing the reader's attention. The title of the book - "Red Rose and White Rose", uses two different colors of roses to point out completely different love emotions: one is a passionate, unrestrained and romantic red, representing the love for a lover; the other is indifferent but pure White, representing marriage recognized under social norms. And through the contradictory differences in the treatment of the two women (Jiao Rui is Zhenbao's beloved lover, but is regarded as immoral by the society; and Yan Li is not loved by Zhenbao, but she is a wife blessed by the society). The irony of love and the social system (marriage) revealed in the text means that many marriages, although they meet the expectations of society, are actually an illusion of emotional emptiness. The truly desirable love is completely blocked by worldly concepts, and it is still difficult to obtain even if you sacrifice everything. In addition to irony, it reveals a sense of helplessness towards the times.

Many people may think that although the perspective of this novel is a male, it is using the futile love fate of women to highlight the ruthlessness and badness of men, and then criticize androcentrism. Especially when writing about Wang Jiaorui's sacrifice of everything and still unable to restore Zhenbao's love, many people feel uneasy resentment towards Zhenbao. However, I always think that this understanding is not complete. In fact, even Zhenbao didn't get the love he really wanted in the end, and he didn't get satisfaction from a marriage that gained social recognition. On the contrary, he was still deeply suffering from this social recognition (not to mention Meng Yanli). .

In other words, in this novel, both men and women, their emotions are reduced to the objects of slaughter and exploitation by the social system, and they are forced to become completely different people from themselves, wearing false masks (marriage) to cover up their love the void. It was also at this time that Eileen Chang's novel reminded us that in fact... the enemy of feminism is not men, but the system of patriarchy. Regardless of whether it is a man or a woman, in fact, their enemies can both be the patriarchal system. The ruthlessness we see in the book does not come from specific individuals or groups of men, but exists collectively socially among men and women deeply influenced by patriarchal traditions. Under such circumstances, not only men are always acting as the oppressors who exploit women's various rights and emotions, but also notice that some women are also depriving and persecuting men's emotions and rights in another hidden form. Taking "Red Rose and White Rose" as an example, such a female representative is Zhenbao's mother who asked Tong Zhenbao to give up Wang Jiaorui and marry Meng Yanli.

This is interesting, and it is also the place where Eileen Chang's book is worth pondering. We will be surprised to find that in Eileen Chang's books, the role that represents the patriarchal position is often a woman (mostly mother-in-law, aunts and aunts, etc.), and let this woman use her scheming to oppress the women in another book. And men disappeared. Hiding in the shadows of women. In fact, patriarchy is not equal to men, but the different manifestations of the whole set of norms in men and women at the same time. It specifies how men should be, how women should be, and so on. In this way, not only women are the victims of the patriarchal system, but at the same time, there are also many men whose temperament and behavior do not conform to the norms of patriarchy for men (should be empowered, independent, not weak, etc.). etc.) and become victims. From this point of view, Eileen Chang's novels describe the vicissitudes of many women's experiences, but at the same time present the dilemma that men and women encounter in the love of the changing times. It also makes us understand that women and men are not purely antagonistic. In fact, as long as they can face each other, feminism that resists androcentrism can not only speak for women, but even rescue men who are still in the predicament of gender norms and dare not speak up ( Like Tong Zhenbao in the book, although he was later reluctant to respond to Jiaorui).

The story of "Red Rose and White Rose" makes us reflect on the meaning of love from the conflict of cultural consciousness. The love he discusses is actually not the love in the general sense, but the meaning of love produced under the interlacing of a contradictory culture. Furthermore, it was originally just a story of little love and little love, but in the end, with the development of the plot bit by bit, it exudes a taste of a big era. This is not to say that the plot that takes place here can make a big difference to an era, but to say that just by reading it, one can realize how much the change of the times affects the development of this story and the characters. and influence. In this, the reason why love and marriage are distorted is not because they are so, but because they jumped out of the consciousness of another culture and realized it. The same is true of the mutual exploitation and oppression between men and women. The conflict in the book (whether it comes from the power structure of gender or the structure of personal and social norms) is not just the inner conflict of two or three characters for the reader, but also directly refers to an issue of the times ( And especially for China at that time).

The content and structure of the story full of irony and contrast make this "Red Rose and White Rose" a complete and thorough presentation of the conflict and impact of the changing times on personal life and heart. A topic for deep reflection. But in order for a novel to truly achieve high achievements, it is necessary to spread out more and deeper details to deal with and express the inner emotions. It can be noticed that when Eileen Chang writes the emotions of the characters, she rarely writes the feelings of the characters directly. If there is, most of them are also describing the thoughts between the characters, rather than the feelings directly experienced. For example, when Zhenbao first met Jiaorui and found that he would be attracted by her involuntarily, in order to express Zhenbao's uncontrollable desires and fears. Although Zhang Ailing wrote that Zhenbao noticed and realized that she had such a mood, she did not spend a lot of adjectives writing what these fears and desires felt like in his heart. Instead, it is directly used to describe the effect of fear on Zhenbao by using the behavior of Zhenbao who has been swaying outside, not daring to go downstairs to answer the phone, etc. In the end, when I finally couldn't help going downstairs to answer the phone and saw Jiaorui's gorgeous appearance just after taking a bath, the author did not directly describe Zhenbao's current amazement and admiration, but let Zhenbao monopolize the objective scene he saw:

 She turned to stand, her hair swept down in a tangled mess. The complexion is yellow like a gilded idol, the eyelashes are lowered, and the shadow of the eyelashes is like a small hand on the cheek... A leather shoe was kicked off, and one foot without a shoe stepped on the back of the other ... there are traces of prickly heat powder under the ankle...

In this narrative, there is no sentence describing Zhenbao's fascination with Jiaorui, but through Zhenbao's delicate observation of Jiaorui from head to toe, Zhenbao's strong fascination with Jiaorui is repeatedly expressed.

Or, when describing the first outbreak of passion between Zhenbao and Jiaorui:

 Jiaorui was playing the piano there... Zhenbao walked back and forth on the balcony with both hands in his pockets. There was a lamp on the piano, illuminating her face, he had never seen her face so quiet... He stood at the glass door and looked at her for a long time, tears welling up in his eyes... Zhenbao suddenly reappeared. It was angry, but also afraid... He came closer, helped her to play the piano score, and intentionally disturbed her, but she ignored it... He sat next to her on the piano bench, stretched out his arms to hug her, and pulled her over. The sound of the piano came to an abrupt end...they kissed. Zhenbao pushed her hard against the keys, banging a series of chaotic thunder...

There is no dialogue or gorgeous rhetoric in this scene, but through Zhenbao getting closer, more and more anxious behavior, and the sound of the piano at the beginning, the sound of "playing" comes to an abrupt end, and then touches Hong again. transformation. It shows his desire for Jiaorui and the conflict between traditional etiquette and morality. In addition, in addition to conveying and symbolizing the confusion of Zhenbao's desires, the sound of the piano also conveys Jiaorui's seduction to Zhenbao, and uses the word "sound thunder" to express the moment when the two people's emotions reached a climax. Turn the original monotonous and indifferent passages into scenes full of tension and imagination. In another paragraph describing melancholy and sadness, Eileen Chang wrote:

 Her words made him cry, but the tears were still foreign. (Another paragraph) Zhenbao didn't answer, just touched the place where it was cooked. It's almost dawn, and the whole city is crowing.

From these passages, it can be found that Eileen Chang rarely directly describes the so-called feelings in the book. Instead, she often describes the actions and behaviors of the characters, or adds sound special effects through the nature of some objects and scenes (for example, the above The sound of the piano and the crowing of the rooster), and then to describe and describe the emotions of the characters. The novel has a very depressing atmosphere, because the narrative in the book always deliberately does not describe people's feelings, but uses various behaviors to form a cover up, making the characters appear opaque, and people have to pay attention to the scenes and events. The meaning of the character, and even doubts about the character's behavior and words and deeds.

But why use repression? What is the character hiding? When we ask this question, the issue of environmental and social oppression immediately emerges. Let us understand that repressed emotions are intended to express the oppression of social norms, thereby creating an impression of an environment in which personal emotions are restricted everywhere. This technique not only echoes the topic that the novel seeks to explore, but also enables the reflection on the topic to be described in more detail. In addition, in addition to the descriptive techniques of suppressing emotions, Eileen Chang is also good at using the properties of various color words, so that some of the feelings she wants to convey are more profoundly expressed. For example, she used "like a white screen in a hospital" to describe the appearance of the oriole in Zhenbao's eyes, and then expressed the deadly emotions of the two, like the cold atmosphere of the hospital, which is a profound example.

The reason why many so-called literary classics can be highly praised in the academic circle is not entirely because their plots are extremely exciting, but because they describe the emotions contained in the works with extreme delicacy and harmony. profound. For example: In the novel "Snow Country" written by Yasunari Kawabata, in order to express the protagonist Shimamura's feelings of being attracted and intimidated by the gorgeous beauty of Ye Ye, the other heroine in the book, Kawabata did not directly use a monologue to show Shimamura. Instead, the protagonist's obsessive mentality is expressed through the protagonist's constant gaze at the faint shadow of the woman reflected on the train glass window throughout the journey. Although this method is complicated and requires the reader's special attention and thinking, it can also deepen the sensibility of reading, so that readers not only know a story, but also gain some experience from it.

After such a comparison, it will be found that what really makes Eileen Chang's novels appear to have depth, in addition to the design of the story, in the end, what is more important is the helplessness and authenticity revealed through the description of the suppressed atmosphere. Because of these techniques, the story of "Red Rose and White Rose" is full of contrasts and conflicts, but also full of lingering and repressed emotions. Create a huge drama, thus establishing the status of this book's literary classics.

(The article is simultaneously published on the following blog)

Medium: https://pse.is/R7YT3

Square: https://vocus.cc/1111/home

FB Fan Special: https://pse.is/PEVPU