The egocentrism of a mother such as Sing-ki in The Unusual Love, who prioritizes her desires and violates the mother’s code of conduct, is a recurring
narrative motif in taiyu pian melodrama. This peculiar characterization of the mother figure deviates from those in Japanese haha-mono, mother films, which constitute a major sub-genre of postwar gendai-geki melodrama about contemporary life, aligned closely with Hollywood’s woman’s film. As outlined by Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie, the mother in haha-mono leads a despondent life as she suffers for her husband and children. Her anguish dissolves only when her husband changes, but this rarely happens.
She may also recover her happiness due to her children’s success, yet her children often have no concept of what she has sacrificed to help them achieve their goals. In some cases, a single mother must resort to prostitution to raise her children, but this morally deficient occupation results in contempt from her children, rather than appreciation. She feels totally betrayed when her children choose to leave home; therefore, the mother seeks reconciliation between all her family members, and family restoration is her ultimate panacea. Drawing from Tatsuhiko Shigeo, Anderson and Richie conclude that in haha-mono where the mother dominates, “the highest attainment a woman can reach is becoming a mother” (318-319). It is important to note that this image of the mother is idolized rather than pitied. The mother character reflects the feminisuto tradition that underlies the fundamental role of the mother in Japanese culture, where a woman is expected to suffer ungrudgingly for virtuous causes. The devoted veneration for a suffering mother downplays the “individualizing mechanism of the oedipal complex”
and reinforces the attachment between a mother and her children (Russell,
“Insides and Outsides” 146-147). Anderson and Richie also note that the mother figure in Japanese hana-mono differs from that in Western films in the degree of physical and emotional attachment that mothers have to their children (391). Interestingly, the representation of the mother in taiyu pian melodrama is closer to that found in Western films.
Although Anderson and Richie do not specify any Western films as examples, the image of the mother in Hollywood’s maternal melodramas in the 1930s and 1940s can serve as a starting point for us to reconsider the configuration of the mother character in taiyu pian melodrama. The types of mothers in taiyu pian melodrama follow the topology used in Hollywood’s maternal melodramas. They occupy the same moral position as in Hollywood films, where a bad mother “demands her own life and is punished for the violation of the desired patriarchal ideal” and a good mother is “nurturing and
self-abnegating” and often “marginal” (Kaplan 468). The following discussion examines Stella Dallas (dir. King Vidor, 1937), the most representative text of Hollywood’s maternal melodrama, to illustrate how mothers in taiyu pian melodrama are closer to those in Hollywood than in Japanese melodrama.
Similar to the characterization of Helen Morrison in Stella Dallas, the female protagonists in taiyu pian melodrama represent the ideal mother as virtuous, loyal, and devoted to their families, although, like Morrison, they are not the birth mothers. In contrast, the character of the birth mother is similar to that of Stella, who refuses the designated maternal position and whose desire exceeds her social status (Kaplan 469; Doane 75). In A Wife and a Concubine (dir. Wu Feijiang, year unknown)21 and Great Lamentation (Xin Qi, 1967), Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí both give up motherhood to fulfill their pecuniary and sexual desires, respectively. Working as a hostess, Tshiu-hûn abandons her family and child for an opulent patron, hoping to increase her social mobility. In Great Lamentation, after losing contact with her missing husband (who we know is imprisoned in Thailand), Ing-bí is seduced by a male friend and decides to leave her family and child. Like all of the “bad”
mothers in Hollywood films, both Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí later return to motherhood out of self-interest, which, once again, violates the patriarchal myth of the caring and devoted mother, who, once having left, is supposed to stay away from her children for good (Kaplan 474). The selfish yet regretful Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí are not given the same second chance as Stella, who resumes the role of the good mother by pushing her child away for the sake of her daughter. Early in the respective films, Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí are lambasted for their inadequacy because of their promiscuity and proclivity toward consumption; in the second half of these films, they are loathed for their excessive mothering. In comparison to the “good mother,” they are meant to be condemned.
If one jointly examines the three abovementioned mother characters, Sing-ki, Tshiu-hûn, and Ing-bí, all together, it becomes clear that their characterizations correspond to the general idea of the “new woman” defined in Japan and other parts of the world: young, middle-class, out of the home, with a heightened awareness of self and a hope for controlling their own
21 This is a literal translation of the Chinese title, but the story revolves around the fight between the birth mother (also the ex-wife) and the stepmother (the current wife) over the child. The title suggests that the male protagonist has never filed for divorce since his ex-wife ran away, but this point remains irrelevant to the main storyline.
destiny (Lowy 8). There are shared characteristics among the notions of the new woman in different cultural contexts, for the emergence of the new woman is closely related to a modernization that transforms the rural, agrarian society into an urban and industrial world where women are consequently given opportunities to work outside the home.
However, the mother character of Sing-ki differs from Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí toward the end of The Unusual Love. While all three characters relinquish their maternal obligations, Sing-ki is given a second chance (like Stella) to resume her mother role; even better, she successfully regains her daughter. Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí, on the other hand, are treated in a more typical way as erotic objects of desire that need to be punished for being threatening or destructive. The seemingly inconsistent development of the character of Sing-ki could be regarded as a combination of the Hollywood and Japanese paradigms of the mother character. However, I argue that Sing-ki’s transformation from a “bad mother” to a “good mother” that makes her distinct from Tshiu-hûn and Ing-bí pertains to the way in which she is contained within the patriarchal and national discourses as a way to nationalize and negotiate Western-originated modernity. A similar narrative structuring device can be found in the treatment of the new woman in Japanese melodramas, and it is the specific patriarchal and national discourses in 1960s Taiwan that also make Sing-ki different from Katsue in both the 1938 and the 1962 versions of The Love-Troth Tree.
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano argues that the characterization of the new woman in the woman’s film in interwar Japan reflects the nationalization of and negotiation with Western-originated modernity (84-86). Wada-Marciano’s argument helps to shed light on the characterizations of Katsue in the 1938 version of The Love-Troth Tree. Katsue in Hiromasa’s 1938 version represents a utopian combination of the Japanese feministuo tradition and the modern ideal of a woman who has a sense of self-determination and self-sustainability.
She symbolizes the image of an early version of the new woman prevalent in the Meiji period, within the parameters of “good wife, wise mother” (Lowy 4-7). Balancing her multiple roles as a mother, lover, and career woman, Katsue is a feminine ideal that “would contribute to economic growth by emphasizing frugality, hard work, and productivity along with modesty and submissiveness” (Nolte and Hastings, quoted in Lowy 4). The same character in Nakamura’s 1962 version, however, chooses her care-giving duties over her
career achievements. Katsue’s withdrawal into domesticity in the 1962 version helps to reinstate the dwindling masculine authority in postwar Japan (Otilia 15).
A gender discourse containing nationalist sentimentalism can also be found in the portrayal of modern women in taiyu pian melodrama, if we compare Sing-ki in The Unusual Love with other bad mother figures, such as Tshiu-hûn in A Wife and a Concubine and Ing-bí in Great Lamentation. The bad mother figures both aspire to be released from their family constraints and become some form of new woman who enjoys luxury and freedom. Their sexuality becomes the primary means by which they feel a sense of individuality as women existing outside the imposed patriarchal consciousness. Their untraditional femininity, accentuated by their flaunting of their sensuality, aggressive personalities, and penchant for material abundance, erodes masculine power and undermines the traditional family.
Raising her child alone as a working single mother causes Sing-ki to appear as a modern woman, but in effect, she is passive and self-restrained.
She fits the image of the “new woman” defined by the KMT’s conservative gender politics: women must be educated, productive, and even publically-involved.22 Yet, this is done for the well-being of their husbands, children, families, and the nation. As mentioned above, Sing-ki differs from Katsue in the 1938 The Love-Troth Tree because her struggle does not contain an optimistic overtone of individual triumph. In this sense, it can be argued that she follows the characterization of Katsue in the 1962 version. However, this similarity is not necessarily a simple imitation. Sing-ki’s compliance with traditional femininity represents the ideal form of the modern woman recruited into the Sino-centric national project that resurrected the root values of Chinese culture while seeking to suppress the anti-Confucian and feminist spirit developed after the May Fourth Movement. Traditional Confucian femininity, which exalts the wise mother and good wife and denies female sexuality, was officially inculcated through education and various forms of intellectualization projects (Diamond 11-16). Nevertheless, Diamond also points out that women encountered feelings of ambivalence and frustration about their roles as mothers and housewives because they involved
22 The gender policy of the KMT appeared to have a feminist sensibility since it advocated women’s rights to education and to participation in public affairs, but this advocacy of gender egalitarianism needs to be understood as part of the nation-building project.
considerable social isolation (22-23). This sense of discontent is reflected in what drives Ing-bí in Great Lamentation and Tshiu-hûn in A Wife and a Concubine to leave their families, but the image of the disobedient woman signals a moment of “the return of the repressed” that cannot always be contained within the doctrine of the KMT’s gender ideology.