madwoman in the attic
II. Lily: A 20th-Century Wife and Mother
When Lily first meets Tak Sing in the classroom, she appears as an angelic figure that overpowers him. In Tak Sing’s impression, Lily is “more than beautiful than the images of the goddess Kuan Yin” and immediately enchants him (129). He is so mesmerized that he does not notice Lily’s addressing until she is looking at him
“the way a teacher would look at a student, with inquiring eyes” (129). They play different roles in the classroom, which manifests the power relation between them:
nicely dressed goddess-like Lily as a teacher overpowers humbly dressed ordinary Tak Sing as a student. The classroom, as a conceived space for education, besieges Tak Sing with inferiority complex by recalling his family background: “. . . I, a refugee from Guangdong, who had spent most of my life in the country, whose feet, as the crude saying went, had been steeped in cow’s manure” (130). But the class difference is not an obstacle precluding him from loving her. Instead, he looks back at her with his “penetrating gaze” which obfuscates her (130). His gaze has challenged the power relation premised on their classes, successfully making her dodge his eye contact (131). In order to retrieve her power, one day, Lily greets Tak Sing in a superior manner so as to turn down his love for her (131). On the one hand, the angelic figure of Lily asserts her being a sanctified and idealized lover difficult to approach. But on the other hand, it anticipates her tragic role in the domestic space, a life in bondage, after marrying Tak Sing.
40 See Chapter 1 for the difference and correlation between place and space.
One night on the way to select a dining place with Tak Sing after class, Lily chooses roadside food stalls where the patrons are very different from her. She registers fascination with the roadside food stalls which are mostly “patronized by coolies and manual laborers” (132). Tak Sing immediately notices that she has never dined in such a place due to her social background. Lily is decently dressed with a
“pink sweater set and fitted grey skirt” and eats elegantly (132); a patron in samfu (traditional Chinese outfit) sitting next to them, on the contrary, is “sitting with one bare foot on the bench . . . and loudly slurping soup from a bowl” (132). The huge contrast highlights that she looks “so foreign” among the patrons because, to Tak Sing, she is a sanctified goddess who should not mingle with the ordinary people (132).
Their interaction at the food stalls fortifies the sanctification of Lily and also connotes the hidden “madness” in her body. Thinking of dining with his idealized woman, Tak Sing is exhilarated on the grounds that he perceives himself
“monopolizing an hour of her life, commanding her undivided attention while it lasted” (131-32; emphasis added). His perception of monopolization and
commandment suggests his desire to surmount Lily and to view her as a potential angel in the house in the near future. During the dinner, Lily poses herself with a low profile; she confesses: “there’s a lot in life you can teach me, for you have
experienced so much, while I have lived a sheltered life, like a frog looking up from the bottom of a well” (134). The sheltered life she has been living suggests that she is cultivated as an angelic figure by her family—a devoted daughter with filial piety to her parents. Therefore, she chooses to eat in roadside food stalls because this space could free her from the bondage of her family and releases the hidden, enthusiastic self who cares no formality, a feature that is conventionally labeled as “mad” and supposed to be cured or rectified. Lily enjoys sampan congee and stinky tofu, food that are never on the list of her family cuisine. This suggests Lily’s yearning for the
emancipation from her angelic appearance and the freeing of the hidden madwoman.
Lily introduces her name to Tak Sing after the dinner, which indirectly informs him about the angelic and mad aspects of herself, but unfortunately he only takes notice of the former. Her English name, Lily, symbolizes purity and flawlessness, and corresponds to her angelic image. Yet, her Chinese name, Poon Kit Lin (潘潔蓮), implies a totally different image: it can be an allusion to a Chinese historical female figure Poon Kam Lin (潘金蓮).41 Poon Kam Lin was a stunningly beautiful and remarkably intelligent noblewoman in Ming Dynasty but is stigmatized and demonized in Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase written by two male authors.42 Since the day of the publication of these two works, Poon Kam Lin has become the archetype of a licentious and malevolent woman in Chinese culture. Poon Kam Lin has two contrasting images: one is an angel who is submissive and
domesticated, and the other one is a madwoman who is passionate and kills her husband to fulfill her sexual desire. Both Poon Kam Lin and Lily share a Chinese character lin in their names, literally meaning lotus flower. Lily’s name alludes to a Chinese classical poem “In Praise of the Lin Flower”: “From a distance, it gives out a
sweet fragrance. Elegantly it stands alone, to be admired from afar, not touched up close” (135). These two lines indicate the importance of distance while admiring the
lotus. Its elegance and its solitude convey a sanctified sense of the lotus, and the forbiddance of touching it implies the alienation of the lotus from ordinary people whose hands would contaminate its purity. This interpretation is from the spectator’s viewpoint, not from the lotus’s, similar to how Tak Sing looks at Lily, without the consideration of her feelings. He recites the poem: “I alone love the lin flower41 Poon Kit Lin and Poon Kam Lin are the Cantonese romanization. In Mandarin, the pinyin for the former is Pan Jie Lian and for the latter is Pan Jin Lian, which sound much more alike.
42 For a historical account of Poon, see Lo, Wen-Hsing in Works Cited. Both authors portray Poon as a shrewd, cunning, malevolent, and lascivious woman who commits adultery and plots to kill her lawful husband.
because it arises from the soil and yet is pure and untainted” (135). Lily is sanctified
as an angel whose beauty and purity draw his attention, making him “hopelessly, irrevocably in love” after meeting her (135). But if we focus on the feelings of Lily, what can be argued is that she, just like the lotus, stands alone and is not willing to be touched, as she insists on preserving her passion, the hidden “mad” self, andremaining untainted.
So when their romance begins, Lily is torn between the mutually contradictory selves in her personality. Like the ballerina in the film The Red Shoes,43
Lily is torn
between her love to Tak Sing and her loyalty to her parents: “She was touched by a poor man’s love. And torn between two loyalties, like the ballerina in The Red Shoes”(287). Serena believes the forces tearing Lily apart are the two loyalties; but in addition to this inter-relational interpretation, the intra-forces between being a conforming angel and being a passionate madwoman are noticeable in Lily’s life.
While watching the film at the theater, Tak Sing embraces tearful Lily who leans on him for comfort (137). This manner not only suggests that Lily surrenders herself to Tak Sing who is eager to play the role of a protective knight, but also foreshadows Lily’s suppression of the madwoman in her so as to play the role of the angel in the house. After marriage, Lily, the lotus flower, no longer stands alone but is touched by Tak Sing, a person from a lower class, gradually letting go her individuality and eventually taking her own life. Serena concludes her mother’s life by alluding to the symbolic connotation of the color in Red Shoes: “Red, the color of blood, the color of sacrifice and martyrdom, the color of love” (287).
The concept of the angel in the house is intensified when Lily brings Serena with her and pays a visit to Tak Sing’s father in China. Once she arrives at Tak Sing’s
43 The film revolves around a ballerina named Vicky who is torn between her affection for Julian, her lover, and her career as a dancer. Failing to handle this dilemma, she commits suicide at the very ending.
house, she kowtows to her father-in-law and to the photo of Tak Sing’s deceased mother, and offers two cups of tea, one to the former in person and another to the latter placed on the table, “as a sign of respect” in Chinese custom and ritual (158).
During their stay, Lily and Serena pay respect to the tomb of Tak Sing’s mother; the tombstone is crafted with an inscription by Tak Sing: