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Viewpoints Was Jane Austen Chinese?
Viewpoints Was Jane Austen Chinese? | Was Jane Austen Chinese? |
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| Sunday, 16 January 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Miss Ong, sit down! You don't know what you're talking about," barked my Literature professor. I could only congratulate her for being worthy of her job as she has astutely assessed my situation. For somebody like me who loves to read, I never got the hang of Literature, with a capital and snooty "L". I could not get past the imagery, subtleties and symbolism of Homer, Shakespeare, Nick Joaquin and NVM Gonzalez. Give me Steele, Sheldon, and Christie anytime. I just want a story with a beginning, middle and an end in plain English!
After graduation, I thought that was the last of my encounter with Literature dismissing it as something written by tortured and pained souls for the also tortured and pained souls which seems to be the running theme in Literature including Philippine Literature.
What do I, a middle-class Chinese-Filipino raised in a sheltered Protestant city environment, know about misery, poverty, war, addiction, prostitution, and the rural life? So I stayed away from Literature until I saw "Clueless" and fell in love with Jane Austen so I bought her books in one swoop and fell out of love with the same rapidity.
Miss Austen made me feel stupid. She made me feel like I needed to go back to English 101 yet I was at this time already an English-writing magazine contributor and copywriter. I subsequently donated the books to an obscure provincial school library and shut the door on Literature. Little did I realize that Ms. Austen had her elegant foot on the door.
I don't know what possessed me (although looking back, it was probably what possessed the millions of Janeites throughout these 200 years) but I found myself buying Mansfield Park and Persuasion - the DVDs, not the books. I watched the BBC classics and still did not understand their English although I did get a bit of the plot but this time rather being discouraged, I was mesmerized.
I scoured Manila and Hong Kong for more Jane Austen films and in just two months completed the 70s, 90s and 00s versions of all titles except the last two Mansfield Park due to bad reviews. In the same period, I also built a shrine in my room filled with Jane Austen's guide books on life, love and romance.
Additionally, may I boast of having gone through her novels as well? If I was not reading them, I was listening to them in my car. I became such an evangelist preaching about the genius of Jane Austen to my friends. Alas I was not successful as I had not converted anyone - not yet anyway.
So what is it about Jane Austen that captivates me so much? I could give the same reasons that my fellow sisters in the cult have but as a Chinese-Filipino, it was because I saw myself.
Literature is supposed to speak to us and for us but it can only succeed with me if it speaks the same language as I do. Perhaps there is no appreciation on my part for Juliet, for the Man in the Iron Mask, for Hester Prynne, for Maria Clara, or for the woman who had two navels because I don't have the same experiences.
Of course, Literature is also supposed to bring to us new or different experiences through catharsis but I also want to see myself for once in a very familiar circumstance. I want to see if the characters will also feel the same or make the same decisions if they are in my circumstances.
Perhaps my circumstances are so normal that there is not much to develop a story - no wars, no dueling families, no political upheavals and no corrupt friars - I thank God I have none of them in my life. So all this time, I felt invisible, forever relegated to being a spectator to other people's experiences as portrayed in fiction until Ms. Austen came into my life.
Ms. Austen's critics decry that she wrote too much of ordinary life in the midst of the great Napoleonic Wars. There had been debates as to why she did this and I will not venture to give an opinion. I am just thankful that she wrote her novels the way she did otherwise the shrine would not exist in my room today. I would have regarded her books in the same way as El Filibusterismo, War and Peace, and Doctor Zhivago - Literature that is beyond me, and that which emphasizes my invisibility and my ordinariness.
Although Ms. Austen wrote about the ordinary, her works were not ordinary. Even Sir Walter Scott acknowledged it, "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." (March 14, 1826)
Jane Austen did not pretend that the ordinary was anything but, but she created stories and even a world that a person like me separated from her by two centuries can relate to:
● I see myself in the woman who has perhaps lost her bloom.
● I see myself in the book lover who is sometimes carried away by the romance of the fiction.
● I see myself in the daughter who is left with a widowed father.
● I see myself in the person surrounded by people who are more beautiful and lead more exciting lives.
● I see myself in the person who has let pride and prejudice cloud my judgment.
● I see myself in the person who has to govern her feelings.
I just don't see myself in her novels though; I see the Chinese life in them:
· Every Chinese knows a well-meaning mother like Mrs. Bennett who cannot rest until all her daughters are married.
· What Chinese family won't suffer an upheaval should a member do a Lydia? A Chinese father won't be as civil as Mr. Bennett though to welcome the newlyweds back so soon after such a scandal that has brought the family shame.
· The concern about a man's fortune may seem offensive and unromantic to the modern Western reader but it is a cause for consideration in a contemporary Chinese family for the same practical reason that people in Austen's time had.
· There is still the preference for a male heir in the Chinese family but fortunately no Chinese daughter would be deprived of her inheritance like the Elliot and Bennett women in case there is none.
· The situation of Fanny Price being taken in by better off relatives is not uncommon to the Chinese tradition. A family need not even have better resources to raise a relative.
· Engagements are considered as good as a marriage commitment in the Chinese tradition and breaking it off would cause shame. Eleanor's firm grasp of palabra de honor sits well with the Chinese.
· Elinor Tilney would find kindred spirits among the Chinese women who fall in love with someone not approved by the family.
· Emma's strong sense of filial obligation would earn her a place of honor among the Chinese wherein the younger generation has to take care of the older generation.
· A Chinese Harriett of unknown background may be welcomed as a family friend but would invite Mr. Knightley's arguments should a family member wants to marry her.
With all these similarities, is it any wonder then that Jane Austen has found a convert in me?
I do not love Jane Austen as a form of escapism but as a way to affirm that it is okay for me to be in my situation and to feel the way I do. If a person from the 19th century can think and feel the same way as I do, then I am normal.
Of course, I realize these are just fictional characters but their appeal wouldn't still linger on in our touchscreen world if their feelings were not real, would they?
Elizabeth Ong
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