Pu Songling`s View of Love - Essay Example

 Pu Songling`s View of Love Pu Songling was born in 1640 at the Shantung province. Songling passes his first imperial examination prior to turning twenty years old, ye he wasn’t able to pass the second one which was a very critical academic degree for him, yet he failed due to the ignorance in context of the study. For this reason, he was unable to attain the lucrative public office, though he did attain an appointment for a short span of time on the position of the aide to a country in Kiangsu. However, after that, he came back to the home town where he was working as a private tutor. In his personal life, he was deeply interested in supernatural tales and stories. For this reason, most of the stories narrated by Pu Songling were mere re-collections from the older tales which he heard from the Tang Dynasty and the ones before that.60 of the stories of Pu Songling have been translated in English by Herbert A Giles, who is also quite popular for the development of a Wage-Giles system which transliterates the Chinese characters in the Roman Script. Around He was also an alcoholic and being a good listener was one of his strongest traits from the beginning. He has also narrated the fact himself, where he says, ' in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile’ (Pu and Giles 1969). However, he doesn’t obviously reproduce the tales as such, rather he adds to his collection of tales and stories where he adds an element of his own personal style along with the personal ideologies, for instance his perspectives on how a relationship between a man and woman should be. One of his works, i.e. The Liaozhai Zhiyi which is translated as ‘Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio’ is a collection of around 291 tales in entirety. Originally, his book was available only in the form of manuscript, and until years there were no efforts to constitute a publication out of it. However, it was in 1740 that his work was finally published by his own grandson in the 1740`s (Pu and Giles 1969). An alternate title to the book was also proposed i.e. ‘History of Foxes and Ghosts’ since his writings strongly used fox spirits as the central characters. Furthermore, in the writings of Pu Song, the fox spirits can often be sensed where they seem to exist in male as well as the female form. However, the most popular tales incorporate these fox-spirits in the form of beautiful and young girls. Also, in this context, out of the total 491 tales, the mention of foxes was in around 86 tales where 34 of them somehow touched the subject of sexuality. These tales also touch on the subject of probing tributes to pure love and faithful partners, where men and women are bound by a beautiful relationship free of impurities. Also, he hails those who fall in love and are willing to strive hard for it. There are many stories which represent the theme out of which a few include The Crow Hear and the Xihou. In addition, the Tales also include various stories on the fox fairies and the goddess of flowers who fall in love with the humans. In his works, the women characters are portrayed as beautiful beings with a noble mind, for instance the Hongyu, Qingieng, Yingning, Jianona and Lianxiang are a few of such characters pursued via the tales. Also, these women are also portrayed to follow their own values which may also dis-regard the typical feudal ethics codes and rather tend to express themselves with a sense of freedom. They are also the ones striving for the betterment of the status of women. Furthermore, Songling seems to be the true advocate for the mutual feelings of love between man and woman. Since not many authors and poets were writing about the theme during the era, such kind of a utopian love in his writings holds quite significance. In this context, analyzing the tale of Hong-Yu who was the Fox Fairy would be relevant since it would help explaining how Songling narrated the theme via his tales. Hong Yu, the Fox Fairy begins as a supernatural tale where she gets involved in a one night stand. In this myth, the fox fairy robs the man she sleeps with where he loses his jing, which is representative of life and his masculinity, in other words his sperms so now the man is unable to live his life in completeness. In these tales, these fox spirits would take up the role of a beautiful woman where they would look for male elements to balance their internal urges. Furthermore, these spirits would indulge the males into multiple orgasms during the night and would slip off once they again take up the form of a fox by dawn. However, this particular story takes a different turn when Hong-yu doesn’t flee by the next morning. Rather, when she gets scorned by the father of the man, she finds him another woman to seduce him. Next, the father befalls a great tragedy when the substitute wife is kidnapped by a powerful man who commits her murder. The suspicion of the murder falls on the father and his son instead. In this scenario, Hong-yu appears as their savior and rescued the son, also helps his father recover from the loses. Thus, by the end, though Hong-yu was a fox-spirit only concerned about her own well being, yet once she gets involved she is faithful and thus, helps the family. (Pu and Giles 1969) Another tale may also be of significance in this context. Generally, the fox spirits are in quest of Yin which is only possible after excess sex. Another being who benefits from excessive sex is a prostitute, thus Watters finds Foochow where a temple is dedicated to the prostitutes for prayers. In the tale, Miss Lien-hsiang also known as Lianxiang guises herself in the form of a prostitute is also quite interesting. In this story, the fox spirit doesn’t undergo the typical behavior where they drain the men of their vigour (Pu and Giles 1969). Rather, she points out to the fact that such an over-indulgence will deplete the man of their masculinity. In this particular tale, Miss Lien hsiang become a part of another love triangle where two of the girls are involved with one of the scholars named Sang Tsu-ming. However, Pu Songling adds another interesting angle to the story. In his version, one of these lovers is a ghost who is also virginal known as Li. Li comes from quite a noble family. On the other hand, the other lover who is Lien-hsiang is quite experienced sexually. However, as opposed to common belief it is the ghost Li who causes over indulgence in terms of sex instead of Lien-hsiang, and here too hsiang takes up the role of the savior who tends to rid the scholar Sang of his miseries. Similarly, the tale of the Laughing Girl where Ying-ning is the central character is another story of love, where the fox spirit drives the character away from sexual over-indulgence of men. Ying-ning is quite a different kind of a character who is naïve in her own ways and is always found laughing. Also, she is quite fond of flowers. During the Lantern Festival, there is a scholar known as the Wang-Tzu-fu. The scholar finds himself bewitched by a beautiful fox-spirit, Ying-ning who traps him by spraying plum blossoms over to the ground for him. Thus, Wang is ailed severely, after which his cousins aims at placating him via Ying-ning who lives in a village situated around 10 miles away. Wang thus recovers and wishes to visit Ying ning, who always finds excuses to avoid the interaction. However, Wang himself visits the village, and declares his love for Ying-ning after which he takes her as his wife. Though Wang loves her laughers, yet the parent in law are bothered and upset. Since Ying-ning is obsessed with flowers, she often visits the trellis in search of roses (Pu and Giles 1969). One day on her way to the trellis, a neighbor sees her and confuses her laughter with flirtation after which he invites her for tryst. That night, while he embraces her and penetrates her, however, in reality, he had embraced a hollow tree where a scorpion was hidden, and as a result he dies soon after. Shattered by the experience, Ying-ning now obeys her mother in law and stops her laughters, and thus commits herself to becoming a dutiful wife. Similarly, in another similar tale, the character of Hsiao-tsui Xianocui is a spirit who is trying to adapt to her new family after seeking marriage. However, in this tale she is married to the idiot son of one man who had protected her body from lightning earlier sometime. In this tale, the capacity of these supernatural wives to own passive husbands takes another extreme. Hsiao is so much in love with her husband that she loves to dress him up and role play with him, though she takes up these bizarre games to annoy and enrage the parents in law of hers. Also, she isn`t able to bear children which further alienates her parents in law (Pu and Giles 1969). Since the issue lies with the idiotic and naïve son, Hsiao tends to cure the son in which she succeeds. Thus, even in this case, she acts as a savior for her own husband. However, after having cured the son, she again becomes victim to her parents in law`s anger when she tends to break a vase. This time, she leaves the family of her husband and comes back to the foc world, where she replaces herself with that of a human bride who gradually takes up Hsiao`s looks. Her, another perspective of love is commented upon, i.e. the woman loves her husband to a great extent and is also loyal and faithful yet they fail to be faithful in return and makes her return back to her fox world. Another story may be quotes in this context, which is The Painted skin, over which Luo Hui quotes, “It is arguably the only widely known Liaozhai story that has a well-developed narrative and yet focuses not on a beautiful ghost, but on a hideous monster—or more precisely, a hideous monster in the disguise of a beautiful ghost. It is, as Lu Xun suggested, zhiguai in the chuanqi style” (Pu and Giles 1969). This is a tale about a cheating husband who is sleeping around with other women until he gets killed by a monster who comes guised as a beautiful young woman. However, Wang`s wife is yet so faithful and loving that she calls a priest to bring him back to life. Over this, an interesting comment has been made , ‘How foolish are the common people who take an obvious monster for a beauty! How silly are the fools who regard obvious truth as if it were a horror tale! Is it any wonder that the wife of a cheating husband has to swallow the spit of other people? Or that punishment falls upon the sinners?’ (Pu and Giles 1969). This again implies that such faithful women are glorifies in the stories and tales of Songling for being faithful and loving. Thus, conclusively, from the Stories And Tales Of Songling, the view of Songling about love is clear enough. He is a proponent and a savior of the utopian kind of love, where both man and woman are faithful enough. However, he gives more credit and freedom to the women, who in stories are mostly supernatural beings and tend to act as saviors of their men. Men, or more particularly their families can be selfish towards them, yet true love surpasses the lust factor and tends the supernatural women to save their men and their families as well. Therefore, Pu Songling is an optimistic being evident from his writings, when it comes to the subject of love and belonging. Works Cited: Pu, S., & Giles, H. A. (1969). Strange stories from a Chinese studio. New York: Dover Publications. Read More