Cultures of Face and Cultures of Honor:Representations of Violence*
2021-11-11MichaelSteppat
Michael Steppat
Abstract:Recently social scientists have carried out substantial research concerning the world’s cultures of face in relation to cultures of honor.It offers a range of data for the psychic or physical violence which in our time is built into each of these cultures,on a fairly global scale.Yet such research takes no notice of imaginative literature.Hence this essay asks:are we to assume that literature has nothing to contribute to an understanding of such forms of violence?Could we expect fictional works to offer insights of their own?Using social science as well as historical literary sources,the essay firstly aims to clarify what is meant by face and honor as cultural characteristics,focusing especially on personality and selfhood categories and on norms guiding social conduct.Then,secondly,the essay discusses instances of fictional works of our time and the recent past which,in a comparable manner,do indeed thematize key principles of face and honor cultures.It becomes apparent from research and fiction,in complementary ways,that these principles feature a notable gender imbalance.In many parts of the world,in so-called honor cultures,honor is often a prominent value in the context of women’s assigned sexual and familial roles as they are dictated by a traditional family ideology.Thus,in such cultural contexts we can observe a direct link between male reputation and the female body,leading in effect to a gap between a woman’s and a man’s honor by setting double standards.Face cultures share a number of features with honor cultures:with a collectivistic orientation,they have traditionally encouraged a maintenance of strong family ties and social harmony,effectively resulting in similar double standards.Accordingly,the focus in this study is especially on notions of obedience and of infertility,to understand how these affect women.Fiction has recently been called an important source of inspiration for psychology as well as for sociology,and the analysis shows that imaginative works can indeed contribute valuable and original insights into harmful cultural practices.We should note that our own cultural positionality,wherever we are located,is at stake in this comparative process,which pushes us toward rethinking the assumptions that we ourselves,as researchers and as readers,bring to bear on our observations.
Keywords:face cultures;honor cultures;social sciences;imaginative literature;comparative method;Mo Yan;Khaled Hosseini;Elif Shafak
In recent years,cultural psychologists have carried out substantial research concerning the world’s cultures of face and cultures of honor.Such research is also conducted in a context of management and organization studies and in sociology.The research highlights salient characteristics of these two types of culture,accounting for both intra- and inter-culture variants of behavior.It also provides data for the psychic or even physical violence which is built into each of the cultures.Yet owing to its disciplinary range of orientation,such research takes no notice of imaginative literature.Does literature have nothing to contribute?Could we expect fictional works to offer insights of their own?It is time to explore these questions.
I
To provide the necessary context for these guiding questions,we first need to ask:what is meant by face and honor as cultural characteristics?In this psychological map of the globe,the relevant cultural values are highly significant for many millions of people,seeing that they influence lives on a global scale.This significance calls for a comparison of interaction norms in different cultures,and how the norms affect social practice.The first sections of the essay will attempt to do so,making use of social science and partly of historical literary sources.
For an accurate description,personality and selfhood are especially useful categories,allowing us to focus firstly on the significance of face.“Face”is traditionally used as a way to understand key aspects of Chinese culture.In Mandarin,the term has different equivalents,most frequent among these being“lian(脸)”and“miàn-zi(面子).”Erving Goffman,anthropologist and sociologist,takes face to refer to“the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact.Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes.”It is“the rules of the group and the definition of the situation”which are decisive,in light of judgments by other participants.Sociology has found that face work becomes a chief purpose of social engagements,not only an effect of everyday social interactions.Recent research has shown that Chinese people are“miànzi
sensitive”regarding a respectable status,which appears in terms of social interactions between family members and between social groups and not only of individual conduct.As Yvonne Chang states in her summary of the research,in Chinese culture“lian
embodies a moral dimension and is often ‘internalized’;whereasmiànzi
represents a social image and is often ‘externalized.’”Evidently,the two concepts are complementary to each other.Moreover,it has been shown that“face”is a field concept:it recognizes the manner in which an individual is embedded in“the social network.”Accordingly,in face cultures,the idea of the self is“informed and defined by others’ judgments,”so that“fostering harmony within the group”is a critical task.People,that is,“prioritize understanding the self through the eyes of others and may resist knowing the self through their own eyes.”This pertains especially to East Asia,notably China,Japan,and Korea,as well as to migrants from there as in the case of Asian Americans.The way others view the self is thus“an integral part of the self,behavior,and social interactions.”Chief characteristics of such cultures are known as the three H’s,viz.,Hierarchy,Harmony,and Humility,though in logical terms these are not necessarily congruous.In this context,members of face cultures tend to pursue the value of harmony“within the hierarchical social structure,”while humility is a consequence of doing so.Yet it should be clear that not all citizens of the countries mentioned are automatically supporters of face culture values,and that culture is never completely congruent with a whole country and its borders.That said,the value of harmony is“intertwined with the concept of ‘saving face,’”which is accomplished when a person fulfills“expectations of assigned roles”and thus refrains from transgressing group norms,which may be invisible and implicit.This does not have to be entirely restricted to specific cultures of face.Sociologists have in fact argued for the pancultural importance of the face construct,which can become highly significant for people from various cultural backgrounds so that the mutual knowledge of a public self-image can be encountered universally.A similar concept is advanced in communication study:Stella Ting-Toomey has developed the core assumption that in all cultures people make efforts to maintain and negotiate face or how we want others to see us.
Hence we are dealing with interactivity between cultural formations,composing an intercultural dimension which we can see in the way Goffman discusses honor in a context of“face-work.”What is more,in the“Arab mind,”in order to be honorable a man“must beware of allowing his ‘face’ to be ‘blackened’;he must always endeavor to ‘whiten his face,’ as well as the face of the kin group to which he belongs.”Bearing in mind this cultural universality,we will concern ourselves here with the manifestation of such efforts in a large cultural region,as face“assumes a particular importance”in East Asia.Of course Chinese readers may be well aware of traditional codes of face culture,and may hardly need reminding about these.Yet that is not the case in other cultures around the globe.At this point,we should not allow ourselves to become misled into thinking that the cultural norms and ideals are nothing more than a harmless matter of politeness protocols—they include a repressive and harshly punitive dimension.A failure to fulfill expectations will result in sanctions and various forms of punishment,since the consequences of“losing face”can be“devastating”:they amount to an experience of shame with a corresponding public damage to or denial of a person’s self-worth.A study of the motivation of male persons in China who have used severe violence against their female partners emphasizes their face orientation,as they report being responsive to“needs of face and their social image,”becoming furious in situations of face loss.In face conflict,significantly,“the more the actor is perceived as directly responsible for initiating the conflict cycle,the more that person is held accountable for the face-threatening process.”
Before we can go on to inquire about the meaning of honor culture,we need to look at some further research findings about the cultural reality.The scientific account is generalizing and seems abstract,but it is crucial for an adequate understanding.As should already be apparent from the brief account above,in face culture there is a strong emphasis on hierarchical layering in society.In systematic terms,psychologist Harry Triandis has analyzed Vertical Collectivism as a typical feature of face cultures:while the individual in this cultural pattern regards the self as an aspect of an in-group,the members of the in-group are different from each other,because some enjoy a higher status than others.Of course this does not imply that hierarchical structures occur only in face cultures,but the way they become socially effective there has characteristic consequences.We need to go back all the way to the classical era for the sources of these codes of social conduct.Confucian society in its ideal form emerges from a hierarchical order of subordination and superordination.Accordingly,the principle ofLi
(originally 禮)becomes manifest as“rules of proper conduct”or“rules of propriety,”and it consists of a body of special protocols of behavior which reflect a person’s status and thus lead to a differentiated notion of honor or reputation.It is a pattern of behavior suited to distinguishing the noble from the humble,being taught and implemented in the feudal era by education,ethics,custom,as well as social and legal sanctions.In this system,each individual receives a status which determines a characteristic way of life,with particular rights and obligations.Preserving status difference was considered to be vital,historically,in order to maintain a stable social order.Accordingly,the head of a family ortsu
was granted the highest authority in the family unit.Disputes would frequently be brought first to the head to be judged,and they would only be brought to a court of law if the head was not able to settle the issue.The government recognized this family authority,so that the head was responsible for the actions of any member of the family.When a provocation occurred,in a face culture context,individuals were not encouraged to respond or retaliate directly.Doing so was not deemed proper because such action would undermine the idealized harmony of the social system.Yet it is clear that traditional values are no longer valid in modern China.Since the feudal system came to an end in China in 1912,when some Western cultural and legal values were imported by means of widespread social and official efforts,the Confucianist concept of society has been continuously reformed.In our time,we can experience alignment and partly conflict between Marxism and traditional assumptions of Chinese civilization,enabling a restructuring process in society.Fan Ruiping maintains that China is“on its way to capturing and rearticulating the Confucian moral and political commitments that lie at the foundations of Chinese culture.”A gradual reform with traditional elements interacting with modern principles has resulted in“a unique logic of the open society different from any other country in the world.”Li Youmei concludes:“In such a society,no institution and way is radically new,no system and life is stable traditionally;instead,all seemingly contradictory factors dramatically intertwine with each other,being both oppositional to and dependent on each other.”While modern China has in fact judged many ConfucianLi
norms to be outdated and illegal,the long-held behavioral codes related to them appear to have left deep imprints.“ In everyday interactions,individuals constantly make conscious or semiconscious choices concerning face-saving,face maintenance,and face-honoring issues across interpersonal,workplace,and international contexts”;face is playing the role of a“ social interactional identity,”directing people’ s verbal and non-verbal behaviors that“protect/save self-face,other-face,mutual-face,or communal face.”This is not only the case in China.Nonetheless,the inherited preference for hierarchy has not entirely evaporated in the modern era,and this may explain why the“Power Distance”dimension in Geert Hofstede’s country comparison tool ranks fairly highly for China.Moreover,in interpersonal conflict situations the Chinese ethnic group uses a significantly higher degree of an avoidance/withdrawal style than other cultural groups which have been investigated.We have already seen how face concerns can acquire a gendered dimension.This dimension,especially,needs our attention;it enables comparison with the codes of honor culture.Again,we have to go back all the way to the classical era for the sources,and to some classical literature.The Confucian guiding rules of proper conduct(Li
)demand that a woman be submissive,gentle,and fertile,while they require the following for a man:Kindness on the part of the father,and filial duty on that of the son;gentleness on the part of the elder brother,and obedience on that of the younger;righteousness on the part of the husband,and submission on that of the wife;kindness on the part of elders,and deference on that of juniors;with benevolence on the part of the ruler,and loyalty on that of the minister.
These requirements make a subtle distinction between duties inside and outside a family.A male person is first expected to manage family affairs efficiently,as a foundation for his capacity to handle social relations outside his family.A woman’s“submission”is further specified in the Confucian classicBook of Etiquette and Ceremonial
(Yi-li
),which identifies three major obediences as a woman’s guiding moral principles:obedience to her father before marriage,to her husband after marriage,and(for widows)to her son.It is similar in theRites of Zhou
.In feudal China during a very long period,from the Qin(221–206 B.C.)to Qing(1644–1911)dynasties,it was parents,especially fathers,who would make decisions about their children’s spouses,so that the wedding day would be the first meeting between such a new couple.Wealth and social status were prominent among the marriageability criteria(again,by no means only in China).Marriage procedures would get under way after a matchmaker’s activity and subsequently the parents’consent on both sides,whereupon the procedures would advance through the conventions of“Three Letters”(a betrothal letter,a gift letter which would include a gift list,and a wedding letter)and“Six Rites”(Proposing,Birthday Matching,Presenting Betrothal Gifts,Presenting Wedding Gifts,Selecting the Wedding Date,and Wedding Ceremony).All these elaborate stages would be a standard requirement to ensure a valid marriage.Li
and law together forbade children to disobey parents’ decision about their marriage.(A focus on modern literary works will follow below,beginning with“Face:Literary Depictions of Obedience.”)Do cultures of honor have any features in common with face cultures?Their origin and also their geographical position,after all,are quite different.Yet here,too,the focus is on a person’s sense of worth and the importance of the“social image”:the socialization process emphasizes“a concern for others’ opinions,represented by a sense of shame.”Accordingly,the external honor system gains priority,subordinating the purely internal.Honor can be understood as a social and relational process,which relies on a person’s“internalization of the identification with the value that the group has so inscribed.”Such internalization can proceed to individually differing degrees,however,and thus cannot be taken for granted.Members of such cultures are expected to behave“in ways that protect or maintain their social image,”which means knowing the accepted ways,and as in the case of face culture the expectation is inseparable from forms of psychic or physical suffering in that,if individuals fail to live up to their required image,they are likely to be ostracized and discriminated against—being viewed as inferior and“despicable.”Especially important in this regard is the expectation that women demonstrate“modesty,chastity,sexual fidelity,and obedience to authority,”qualities that belong to“the bedrock”of honor cultures.If a threat to one’s honor becomes apparent,it calls for“action that in some way ‘cleanses the stain’ of dishonor.”A family’s honor can be stained by“real or merely alleged dishonorable conduct”on the part of female family members,requiring punishment to protect family honor.Honor-based violence has been studied in sociological contexts.In Jordan,for instance,it has been found that 40% of adolescent boys believe it acceptable to“kill a female family member who has dishonored the family,”so that violence is regarded as a tool to preserve honor and to protect the ideal of female chastity,which stands for family honor.In keeping with these values,an experience which is closely associated with the loss of honor is shame,which is expected as a suitable response to a“threatened social image”as in the case of a lack of sexual modesty.Cultures of honor are commonly understood to be encountered especially in the Mediterranean regions of Greece,Italy,and Spain,in parts of the Middle East,in North Africa,and also South America.
The prevalent codes in cultures of honor are not directly related to religion.Yet it is useful nonetheless to be aware that the Quran,as a key religious source text for the Middle East and much of North Africa,assigns specific roles to the sexes:“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women,because Allah has made one of them to excel the other,and because they spend(to support them)from their means.Therefore,the righteous women are devoutly obedient(to Allah and to their husbands),and guard in the husband’s absence what Allah orders them to guard(e.g.,their chastity,their husband’s property,etc.).”The requirement of obedience thus derives from respectable authority,as in the case of face culture.In practice,as well,it becomes most apparent in the expected conduct of girls and women.An“imbalanced set of social rules”applies to men and to women in the Middle East and adjacent areas;women’s sexuality is strictly regulated in societies with honor-related value systems.If a girl or woman does not live up to behavioral guidelines,her conduct will have an effect on the accepted functioning of her family in society,provoking the symbolic violence of masculine domination(as diagnosed by Pierre Bourdieu).Masculinity,that is,tends to be constructed in terms of female chastity.Thus honor almost by definition becomes a collective concern.It is a highly fragile group value which needs to be defended and(after a transgression)to be restored,as soon as a female person transgresses honorrelated codes by conduct which is deemed to be immoral.In such a situation,saving a whole family’s public reputation is viewed as a collective responsibility which most directly concerns male family members but which at times may require female help and support.In honor cultures,this understanding extends to social differences in evaluating men’s and women’s conduct:men who do not control their sexual desires,who make unwanted sexual advances,or who are accused of rapeare often judged less harshly than women who behave in similar ways.
A loss of honor results from any form of disobedience to the honor-related rules,which are designed to ensure a respectable social appearance.The family,as already suggested,is an essential social unit in this context.A study conducted with university students shows that normative ideas concerning the female body and a woman’s appropriate behavior in public“are most likely formulated from early childhood within the societal structures of the family and the community.”The protection of her honor is thus a chief task to be fulfilled by a girl or woman during her life,and it prominently consists of obedience to rules which have been laid down by her parents.It is not only and sometimes not even chiefly the father whose responsibility it is to ensure a thorough acquaintance with such rules.In cultures of honor,it is frequently the duty of mothers to make their daughter(s)understand the importance of the values of sexual purity and innocence,and thus to provide them with internalized guidelines to govern their life:“[w]omen are also expected to protect thenamus
[i.e.,honor as chastity]of other women and girls related to them,for example their daughters and granddaughters.”A mother will be concerned to prove her own honor by educating her daughter(s)toward obedience:“The purity of the daughter reflects that of her mother,and thereby,the honour of her father.”As this suggests,honor is assumed to have a hereditary character.Sana Al-Khayyat emphasizes that in the“socializing process”of girls,“the most important issue for the mother—and other adults in the family—is how to make them totally submissive.A girl is taught to be obedient from an early age and will be punished if she refuses to do what adults in the family demand of her.It isaib
(shameful,immodest)for her to disobey,although it is not necessarilyaib
for a boy.”Educational practice serves the need of social appearance when a family’s honorable public reputation rests on children’s upbringing,especially the moral training of daughters,and the effectiveness of warnings regarding the negative consequences of disobedience.Parents are strongly aware that a daughter’s inappropriate behavior will bring shame on their family’s name,not only on herself,and such a failure will be put down to inadequate parenting techniques.A hierarchical order is strongly evident,and it is strengthened in the culture’s patriarchal structure which leads to unequal upbringing of boys and girls:from an early age children learn that man and woman,brother and sister,and also father and son are not equal.(A focus on modern literary works will follow below,beginning with“Honor:Literary Depictions of Obedience.”)So far,then,we might assume that research in social science,mainly psychology and also sociology,buttressed in places by works of historical literature,should be suited to enabling a general grasp of the prevailing behavioral codes in face culture and honor culture.The research should also facilitate an understanding of key analogies between these cultures,alongside palpable differences.But if any modern literary representations of these codes and of their social implementation can be found,how can such works enable a better understanding?What would their purpose be?No sustained or comparative attention has been previously given to such representations.Hence:why should we inquire,at all,about imaginative literature in this context?A recent study calls psychology and literature“two branches of social science studying human behavior,”and claims that they are“interrelated and mutually beneficial.”Fiction is then“an important source of inspiration for the science of psychology which tries to explain human emotions,behaviors and mental processes.”Badegül Emir names Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventhcenturyTale of Genji
among fictional works which are capable of illuminating the mutual benefit of psychology and literature.Indeed,this famous tale,though not modern,happens to have bearing on our inquiry:it shows the Japanese hero secretly cuckolding his father,who is the Emperor,and he thus becomes guilty of familial as well as political disobedience.As a consequence,it is“the burden of society’s condemnation”which he fearsso that he decides he must escape from the court“before I suffer any greater shame.”He prays to the gods“[t]o right a wrong and restore my honor.”Thus the tale represents the connection between male honor loss,which can only occur when a transgression becomes publicly known,and the sense of shame.By doing so,in fact,it also suggests analogies between face and honor concerns.As for psychology,another researcher reminds us that this science makes use of classical literary works“to provide multi-faceted analyses.”Carl Gustav Jung for his part has called the human psyche“the womb of all the sciences and arts”;for Jung,“[p]sychology and the study of art will always have to turn to one another for help,and the one will not invalidate the other”—the psychologist can“never make good”his full scientific claim because“the creative aspect of life which finds its clearest expression in art baffles all attempts at rational formulation.”Sociology offers clear answers to the question about the significance of fictional works.Mariano Longo as a sociologist explores literature as a form of empirical material:his analysis recommends thinking of fictional narratives as“tools that a sociologist may adopt to get in contact with dense representations of specific aspects of the social.”We can regard narratives,that is,as a process by which“the description of singular events and actions is useful to explain other contexts and actions,”beyond a focus only on particular characters and situations.Complementing sociology’s own methods of understanding social phenomena,narratives are able to give“a plausible representation of social reality and intercourse,”presenting events and themes as an“areferential”representation of the referential world.Accordingly,for social science fictional narratives do appear able to provide“new perspectives from which to observe and understand reality.”
The new perspectives dwell in a function which is characteristic of literature,quite likely even unique:fiction often represents“typical deficits,blind spots,imbalances,deformations,and contradictions within dominant systems of civilizatory power”;it stages and semiotically empowers what is“marginalized,neglected or repressed in the dominant cultural reality system.”In a similarly meaningful way,it can be argued that“[a]s critics,readers and writers,we contribute to the disordering of dominant discourses by recognizing,pointing to and pushing the limits that dominant narratives would impose.We contribute to the remembering of erased and forgotten experiences and voices by pointing to the traces and echoes left by these acts of violence and historical forgetting.”We can,indeed,identify this as the chief purpose to be expected of any imaginative literature that deals with the codes and social realities of cultures of face and of honor —a purpose of creating awareness,of calling attention to the“ erased and forgotten experiences,”incurred under conditions of suppression and suffering which remain somewhat abstract in scientific accounts.
II
If imaginative literature is acknowledged as being a useful tool for social analysis,then,we can come back to our initial question:does it have anything to contribute to a better understanding of face and honor cultures?Classical and feudal-era literary sources may be pertinent,as we have seen,but what about our own time?We can begin with face culture.When we recall the ancient notion of obedience as a woman’s guiding moral principle,isn’t it a value so outdated that fictional representations of our era would not consider it a topic worth writing about?
Yet Jiang Lanfang 姜兰芳,for instance,is an author who can teach us otherwise.In the 2013 Online Fiction Award–winning novelHun Shang
《婚殇》(Death in Marriage)
,we find an arranged marriage prominently depicted in the narrative action.The work’s female protagonist Xiao Jinyan dutifully goes through most of the marriage rites—which we have specified above—with Zhang Tao before her wedding,but then finds out that he has a flawed personality.Such pre-wedding rites are viewed as parts of marriage,establishing a marital relation between the couple;we can understand rituals as arising from the valorized body.Zhang Tao attempts to have sex with Xiao but is strongly rejected,provoking him to assert angrily that she belongs to him in accordance with the rites.Xiao is resolved,however,to annul the engagement for marriage,and this attempt is equivalent to disobeying her parental preferences.She has a high school education,strengthening her determination to violate the inherited rules.The matchmaker is shocked,calling her excessively bold and exclaiming that there is no precedent for a woman daring to even speak of breaking off an engagement.Xiao’s close friend,too,urges her to rethink her resolution,arguing that engagement is equivalent to marriage so that the two categories cannot be separated.As for Zhang Tao,his father is furious for another reason:canceling the engagement would offer neighbors a reason to suspect the health of his son.Zhang Tao himself gets drunk and intends to rape Xiao,provoking her to rush out of the house;she publicly accuses the father of not putting an end to the engagement speedily.Xiao’s public indictment leads the community to believe that her father is turning against the marriage rules for some purpose.She then suffers from the social and moral sanctions which are in place in the event of a violation of the rituals.Owing to the sequence of marriage rites,she is assumed to be adequately enough prepared to enter a marital relationship.Thus when she terminates her engagement in public,her act brings shame—not only to herself but also to her nuclear family,especially her father,and her clan,with a communal dimension.As a consequence of his loss of public approval,Xiao’s father is subsequently excluded from public events or activities in the community,though he formerly used to be respected and was sometimes invited to preside on various occasions.This severe punishment of her family for her own failure to adhere to the rules of obedience makes Xiao eventually reconsider her sense of what is right,and persuades her against continuing to attempt to challenge them:she develops a profound sense of guilt and does indeed consent to the marriage,which then for many years only results in a bitter life for her—owing to her determination not to cause any further suffering for her parents.To compensate for her supposed transgression,Xiao thus settles for putting up with and concealing the reality that she is being abused,in order to maintain the façade of a marital relationship.Her undisclosed suffering protects her father’s reputation from being hurt again,and the pressure which she keenly feels to protect her father’s face is powerful enough to induce her to pay whatever cost it requires,even as far as the“death”named in the work’s title.
Author Jiang Lanfang’s own narrated experience lends an additional dimension to this nominally fictional representation.We learn from her textual rendering that she herself became trapped in a suspicion of adultery,which in the face context extends our obedience theme.Jiang was born and lived in rural Shaanxi province.She herself was a farmer and later ran a small grocery store,while her literary talent gradually received attention.At home,she suffered from abuses,and as a consequence she felt it necessary to render in her novel the abuse narratives of women whom she interviewed.We thus have a case of extratextual normativity which becomes fictionally effective in enabling the text to disclose the fissures of social interaction,the represented world of praxial involvement.An aged man called Uncle Chen,whose daughter committed suicide because of her own experience of family abuse,came to know Jiang’s secret history of being victimized.Out of sympathy,but also out of his appreciation of Jiang’s literary talent and her passion for writing,Uncle Chen made every effort to help Jiang and her family through a number of difficulties in their social life.However,as a consequence some gossip about adultery between Jiang and Uncle Chen began to circulate in the community.Influenced by this,community members mocked Jiang behind her back—and also to her face.Her relatives were subjected to humiliation and face loss on account of her alleged conduct,and they demanded that she terminate the relationship.(In honor cultures,in a similar way,it is mostly the girl or woman who is accused of“bringing dishonor”to her family.)In her postscript,Jiang recollects how sad she was owing to the gossip,which she was utterly powerless to refute.There was nothing left for her but to avoid any further contact with Uncle Chen until his death in 2011 from a heart attack.Thus,even though she was a fairly public figure,being a member of the Shaanxi Province Writers’ Association and winner of nineteen awards for fiction,Jiang herself could not avoid becoming a victim of suspected improper conduct.Her account,accordingly,reaches out to recipients of her work,in creating voices that become able to speak of oppressive conditions to which they are subject.Gayatri Spivak has spoken of“the radical impulse”which the study of literature can bring about,in that learning to read fictional works can enable a“permanent parabasis,”a mode of addressing readers which is unlike the purpose of the social sciences.
A girl’s disobedience is also narrated in Fan Yusu’s 范雨素 autobiographical essay(2017).When she was twelve years old,she“walked away”from her parents’ home“to see the big world,”having learned about its alluring variety from reading English as well as Chinese literary works.“Once I came back,there was only my mother who would still love me with her caring eyes,but my father and eldest brother hated me to the bone and said I had made them lose face.In the village,my oldest male cousin from my father’s side went to my mother and said I had made the entire family Fan lose face and that she should give me a good beating and drive me away.”From this experience,Fan Yusu draws the conclusion that,unlike boys,when girls disobey parents as in this case they will be treated“like the eloped criminal from classic novels.”The metafictional discourse level is significant in the autobiographical sketch,as it illustrates the power of fictional works to motivate actual conduct and also to give the girl’s experience a signification which is strongly aesthetic—the social reality needs to be read through the lens of fictional discourse to give it any meaning.
Concerning the demands of female obedience in our time and the recent past,fictional works in honor cultures,too,cast light on how it translates into social practice.Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun inL’Enfant de Sable
(1985)depicts the life of Mohammed Ahmed,who(despite her name)is actually the eighth daughter of Hajji Ahmed Suleyman.Her father would have much preferred a son,so that he decides to make sure she is raised as a boy,with all the accompanying rights and privileges.The protagonist stresses that all female members of the family have been brought up to be obedient and keep silent(“Dans cette famille,les femmes s’enroulent dans un linceul de silence....[E]lles obéissent....Mes sœurs obéissent”).Sudanese author Leila Aboulela’sMinaret
(2005),which traces the life of university student Najwa,offers the reader Najwa’s statement“I was a girl and Mama’s responsibility....I was going to get married to someone who would determine how the rest of my life flowed.”The flow trope suggests a smooth course after agreeing to marry,as well as an awareness that she would not be able to carve the flow’s channel herself.Preventing disobedience and rebellion is a frequent concern,which in other cases turns into hostility to a girl’s access to education.Indeed,an important reason why female family members tend to believe themselves inferior to boys and men is lack of education.Here,mothers are responsible,and it is they who usually keep their daughters from attending any school,or from attending for long.Desirable skills for girls are rather cooking and doing chores,rather than cognitive advancement,the motivation being to prepare them with the required qualities enabling them to be eligible for marriage.The mothers clearly feel they are acting in an especially caring and responsible manner.Turkish author Elif Shafak’s novelHonour
(2011)and Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns
(2007)share a common feature:both include a focus on mothers who are strongly opposed to their daughters’ gaining a school education.In Shafak’sHonour
,Naze is convinced that acquiring intellectual skills would reduce her daughters’ perspective of attracting a future husband,seeing that the girls might be enticed to cast doubt on masculine authority and thus start to rebel against the time-honored behavioral codes:“Meanwhile,their mother,Naze,didn’t see the point in their going to such lengths to master words and numbers that would be of no use,since they would all get married before long.”We have seen in a recent work of face culture literature how a high school education induces a young woman to turn against her family’s received rules.What is more,inHonour
the mother character is concerned about the material damage that becomes increasingly real as the girls walk to their school:“‘Every day they walk all that way back and forth.Their shoes are wearing out,’ Naze grumbled.‘And what for?’”Education thus is not an intellectual quality but is reified instead in the shape of a commodity that threatens to drain the resources which the whole family needs.From such an orientation,the question on the mother’s mind as regards the perspective of a girl’s cognitive development is simply“How’s that going to help my daughters get married?”A similar attitude can be found in the case of the mother character Nana in Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns
.A mullah has advised“Let the girl have an education”;yet she is convinced she has better advice for her daughter:“What’s the sense schooling a girl like you?...There is only one,only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life,and they don’t teach it in school....And it’s this.Tahamul.Endure.”This creates a pronounced continuity from one generation’s experience to the next,as a bond between mother and daughter.Hence the mother commands:“No more talk about school.”Like Shafak’s character Naze,Nana shows a hardly acknowledged awareness that education would enable a degree of self-determination both in mind and in social status which might motivate a girl to resist the inherited patriarchal system,effectively risking her honor and thus endangering both the girl and her parents.Withholding school education from a girl is,accordingly,a frequent tendency which prevails outside urban and metropolitan areas,since the inhabitants—as Shafak describes it inHonour
—“would like their daughters to be modest and virtuous,and yet they wanted them to get married and have children in due course.”This rendering suggests that there is an inconsistency,calling attention to the actual rupture within the demands to which daughters are subjected,yet the catenation of ideals appears coherent enough in a mother’s mind.The dissonant character of such maternal demands is suggested in the advice expressed by a mother named Fariba in Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns
:“The reputation of a girl,especially one as pretty as you,is a delicate thing,Laila.Like a mynah bird in your hands.Slacken your grip and away it flies.”This evokes the notion of the girl’s holding a bird tightly in order to prevent its escape,yet doing this would not allow her to use her hands to fulfill duties expected of her(such as household chores).In Shafak’s novel,Naze’s efforts to teach her daughter the acceptable form of conduct meet with success.Daughter Pembe,as an adult,uses every occasion to teach her own daughter the received code of female honor and the consequences of violation:“It would be one of the many ironies of Pembe’s life that the things she hated to hear from Naze she would repeat to her daughter,Esma,word for word,years later”even in a Western cultural environment.Hence Naze’s obsession with obedience and reputation results in a durable imprint on her daughter.Yet the sense of shame is embedded within the imprint.It engulfs Pembe when she dares to embark on an affair,thus violating what she has been striving to maintain.Her son Iskender can“touch her guilt”and“smell her shame,”so that he inscribes the received norms on her physical frame.She finds herself“smoothing down her skirt beneath her knees as if she suddenly found it too short,”a gesture which subconsciously expresses her awareness of shame.Hence the norm of obedience and self-denial is fragile and can shatter at any moment.Nonetheless,the larger chain of transmission is not easily broken.In her novelDésorientale
(2016),Franco-Iranian author Négar Djavadi traces the family story of Kimiâ Sadr,who as a child flees Iran to live in exile in France.She speaks of an inequality between boys and girls which is characteristically cemented by their mothers,who are responsible for their upbringing.Djavadi joins the ranks of authors who highlight the way behavioral codes have been passed on from one generation to the next in order to regulate the way children are to be raised.The gender-specific rules enjoin girls to help their mothers(“fille qui aide maman”);desirable girls are those who are docile enough to do as they are told.Here,too,we find a palpable focus on teaching a girl how to become an excellent wife and mother who one day can teach her own daughter obedience,modesty,and decency,and this bond of identification explains why the manifestations of female honor retain their dominance across generations.Social inequality between boys and girls,as we have seen,is also a feature of face cultures—while it may very well be global in its further reach.We should also point to the fictional work of Algerian author Yasmina Khadra,who offers trenchant insights into the lives of Algerian women during the twentieth century.These women are often shown to be victims of male abuse,causing protracted suffering.The male protagonist Younes in the novelCe que le jour doit à la nuit
(2008),a film version of which appeared in 2012(directed by Alexandre Arcady),describes how every adult female is expected to wear a headscarf in order to protect her good reputation.His obedient mother rarely speaks at all,in keeping with the way she is“hidden behind a veil,barely distinguishable from the sacks and bundles.”She is accustomed to vanishing noiselessly when her husband happens to enter their home with male friends:“In our world,when men meet,women are expected to withdraw;there is no greater sacrilege than to see one’s wife stared at by a stranger.”This mother figure,accordingly,is not an isolated case,and her virtues are passed on effectively to the younger generation.A male character like the broker(“a vulture waiting to grow rich on other people’s misery”)will make his arrival known by loudly clearing his throat,in order to give the household’s women enough time to leave the room:“[He]asked us to wait in the street,then cleared his throat loudly to let the women know to disappear—as was the custom if a man was about to walk into a room.”This is shown to be a smoothly operating and generally accepted practice.In these communities,people are not simply forgiven when they are found or supposed to be involved in unbecoming behavior.When they lose their community’s esteem,they are no longer allowed to appear in public.There is a socioeconomic aspect governing such norms:with increasing poverty,a male person’s self-esteem comes to depend on the unharmed reputation of his female relatives.In this coding,a woman’s chief moral strength is her modesty,an expression that is associated with the expectation of obedience and,as“pudeur,”occurs in several instances in Khadra’s work.In“Misfortune in the Alley”(2005),Yemeni author Ramziya Abbas al-Iryani depicts the situation of a girl who is punished for supposed disobedience.The story creates a setting of darkness due to a power outage in“a long,narrow alley covered with dirt and scraps of paper,and littered with trash.”Readers can be expected to collect this spatial information into a cognitive map,and thus attribute symbolic meaning to a narrative setting.The narrow alley brings the whole neighborhood together when Hajj Abdallah yells that his daughter Samira has vanished.His wife Latifa,who is the girl’s aunt,provides sufficient material for community gossip when she tells anyone who is listening,“I saw her myself yesterday talking to a cab driver.And the other day I saw her getting out of the same cab.”By this means she denounces the girl as a sinner who is guilty of a lack of obedience.Yet neighbor woman Safiyya shouts at the aunt,“What you say can ruin her reputation!”while Nuriyya the baker defends the girl,describing her as a victim:“Samira cannot be blamed if she ran away today.You beat her every day,so she became fed up with her life.The housework and the care of your children are upon her shoulders.”She is seconded by Fatima the henna painter:“God will take care of her and ease her way.The blood that dripped from her nose and mouth yesterday is still visible on the stairs.Surely you haven’t forgotten that you pushed her down the rooftop stairway!”During this time Hajj Abdallah has been searching for his daughter,without success,and he now reappears looking“to the right and left in humiliation and dejection as tears silently rolled down his face.”The implication is that the tears are damaging to his masculinity,in the traditional understanding.Latifa’s“malicious,vengeful voice”breaks the silence:“I tried to go after her.Death before dishonor.”
But her husband now hits back:“Your hypocrisy killed my daughter.I used to believe you and go to extremes in punishing her.You broke her spirit and destroyed her life.”He turns against the assembled community and actually blames them for not having protected the girl,in a rather unexpected turn of events:“What have you done other than whisper and gossip about what goes on in my house?”Finally,a symbolically charged ray of light bursts onto the alley scene,as a sudden noise allows the father to find Samira,who is hiding just outside a neighbor’s house,“crouching among the spiky pieces of firewood,blood dripping from her hands and legs!”He cries out his relief:“Come out to show them that my honor is well protected,and that shame did not and will never enter my house!”Evidently Samira cannot believe that“she would escape punishment”—at least for once.This vividly narrated incident demonstrates the precarious nature of the father’s honor,as well as that of the daughter,and the aunt’s fear of her niece’s potential rebellion against the received norms.Community gossip,as in the face culture fiction,is shown to be the standard response to a disruptive family situation,which involves a girl’s alleged transgression.
This narrative is unusual in depicting some community members as turning against the oppressive aunt,to vindicate the father’s honor.There are not many cases portrayed in fictional works where a father defends his daughter and where community members lend moral support to the female victim.This rendering does not seem to be particularly realistic,yet we may consider it as a case where fiction endeavors to demonstrate a solution,a way out of an impasse caused by received norms,where the social reality does not.There is another rare case of a male character shown to disapprove of female obedience,and this occurs in Tahar Ben Jelloun’sLa Nuit Sacrée
(1987)where the protagonist’s father describes his wife as having been brought up to be meekly serviceable to a husband;he thinks of her as being very obedient but tedious,without character and joy,always carrying out orders without any resistance.Not far from the concerns of obedience are those of infertility,however willful such an association appears to the modern mind.Like obedience,fertility or its lack is an issue that enables comparison with honor culture literature.The connection between obedience and fertility appears in the face culture context from an early time:Mencius(Mengzi)specifies“having no male heir”as the gravest of three cardinal offenses against the requirement of filial piety(4A.26,“不孝有三,无后为大”).The feudal Seven Conditions for Divorce decree that failure to give birth to offspring,especially a male,is an unpardonable fault in a woman which can justify a compulsory divorce,in the event that the wife refuses to agree for her husband to take one or more concubine(s)who are indeed capable of bearing a child.The logically separate concerns of infertility and of male offspring curiously tend to blur in the cultural imaginary.In this context,we should keep in mind the historical context of the emergence of consanguine hierarchical patriarchy.Robert Paul Churchill surmises that the widespread tendency to give special value to a male birth originated“in the greater labor value and defensive abilities of sons and,hence,the greater net profitability of sons over daughters”—especially when there was a preponderance of female births within a family or a clan.Yet the tendency has far outlived the original conditions.The strong valorization of a male heir is,of course,no longer acceptable in modern China,yet it does seem to have survived into the modern era.In modern China,not only is“ One husband,one wife”a constitutional principle,but from 1978 on the national Constitution began considering birth control as a basic obligation for married couples(see articles 25 and 49).Yet despite its enlightened intentions,the law cannot quite eliminate the traditional values of marriage,among them being the production of a male heir as a desirable goal.We should note that surrogacy is not expressly permitted in China.Yet the illegitimacy of surrogacy cannot altogether prevent male heir pursuers and sometimes women from resorting to it.
The celebrated Chinese author Mo Yan 莫言,who won the 2012 Literature Nobel Prize,thematizes this context in his 2009 historical novelWa
《蛙》(Frog).It covers similar ground to that of the novelThe Dark Road
by Ma Jian(2012),while both works present a policy or even a country“that has lost its way”(Lovell).Yet Mo Yan’s work is more subtle and more differentiated.The title alludes to the folklore symbol of fertility and regeneration.Mo Yan’s novel describes how the one-child policy,which naturally reduces the likelihood of a couple’s giving birth to a son,is put into practice and how it has developed,encountering private or even public resistance from people who especially desire male heirs.The novel is set during several decades of the People’s Republic.For the purpose of his depiction,Mo Yan uses three Chinese characters whose pronunciation is similar but which have different meanings:“蛙”meaning frog,“娃”meaning baby,and“娲”meaning the primogenitor goddess.The novel’s protagonist is Wan Xin,an obstetrician who is skillful and respected.The aesthetic representation mythologizes this woman as a goddess who delivers babies,and she is also addressed as Gugu(respectfully connoting“Auntie”).When the party leadership grows increasingly aware that China’s population explosion could strain the nation’s resources in future years,Wan Xin is appointed associate director of the Reproduction Planning Office and thus becomes a chief enforcer of the new onechild policy,performing hundreds of vasectomies and also abortions including near-term fetuses and often affecting unwilling patients.This practice could remind us of the theoretical twinning of biopolitics and what Michel Foucault has called a“power of death.”Yet it does have an effect on her mind.An attack by frogs one night plunges Wan Xin into a hallucination of seeing these frogs as 2,800 unborn or aborted babies.Important in the context of the frustrated desire to have offspring is Wan’s most faithful assistant,who is referred to as Little Lion.This woman is a victim of infertility,causing her to try to find a surrogate mother,unknown to her husband,in order to remedy her shortcoming.Yet her effort is discovered and she gets beaten,whereupon she furiously rounds on her husband:“If that’s what you’re capable of,then a dog has eaten your conscience.I did this for you”,she said.“You have a daughter,but no son,...and having someone else bear your child is the only way I can make that up to you.A son will carry on your bloodline,extend your family for future generations.”
While her embryo is growing in another woman’s womb,Little Lion fantasizes that it is actually developing within her own.Responding to her plea,Wan professionally examines her condition:
When she was finished checking her,she placed her hands—hands that Mother had praised many times—on Little Lion’s abdomen and said,“Five months,I’d say.It sounds good,clear,and well positioned.”“Past six months,”Little Lion said with notable embarrassment....She gently patted Little Lion’s belly....“A woman whose child has not passed through the birth canal misses out on much of what a mother should feel.”
At such a highly curious moment,these two enlightened“new women,”each of whom seems to take part in a strongly valorized hallucination,find shelter in a psychic comfort zone in accordance with ancient convictions:“a woman is born to have children.A woman’s status is determined by the children she bears,as are the dignity she enjoys and the happiness and glory she accrues.”The agency of a commercial company is instrumental in Little Lion’s surrogacy,a business which operates under the cover of a frog-breeding enterprise.It thus enables not only traditional surrogacy but also gestational surrogacy,in which case there is no actual family relationship between an embryo and the surrogate.With the help of advanced reproduction technology,then,traditionalLi
values with their sense of face and reputation can become effective in guiding people’s conduct in modern China.Mo Yan has been criticized for not depicting“typical characters in typical environments,”so that he appears to have“distorted the Chinese history and reality”with a“wild and exaggerating”fictional discourse.There is a critical stance which resembles charges brought against some Middle Eastern authors:“though not intentionally bowing to Orientalism,Mo Yan has in effect confirmed the Occidental imagination of a backward and filthy East.”Yet against such criticism,Song Binghui vindicates Mo Yan’s creation of“a symbolic mixture rich in meaning”which features a“genuine concern for human nature as engrossed in the specially Chinese socialhistorical reality”;“existents and events of Mo Yan’s narratives do have their reference in the real world.”These values in terms of a woman’s suffering from her lack of a son and hence a male heir were thematized earlier for instance in the feudal-era dramaThe Contract
,which is based on aHuaben
novel in the Sung Dynasty(960–1279)and which became adapted in the shape of a vernacular novel by Ling Mengchu 凌濛初(1580–1644)in the seventeenth century.Yet such beliefs have not simply evaporated,as we can recognize in the prominent case of the novelistic characters Wan Xin and Little Lion,who nominally both subscribe to and implement revolutionary and strongly rational perceptions of the world.In honor cultures,the condition of infertility is closely associated with a loss of honor.We can learn from Robert Paul Churchill that in such cultures women who do not get pregnant or who only have daughters feel the pressure of their relatives and of the community:they are judged to be deficient wives,lacking essential female qualities,and thus bringing shame to their husband by not providing him with a male successor.As future head of the family,such a successor is expected to assume the role of defending the family’s good reputation and thus perpetuate the honor cycle.Owing to this inherited structure,if a husband turns to another woman because of his wife’s infertility,his conduct is regarded as socially acceptable so that it cannot diminish his male honor,whereas the woman’s honor is clearly lost since she has not managed to keep her husband by giving him a son.The social sciences highlight the belief that the women’s chief duty is“giving birth to children,”and that their social status will rise especially when they give birth to a boy.Pierre Bourdieu describes how“[a]girl’s value rises with the number of her brothers,the guardians of her honour(in particular of her virginity)and potential allies of her future husband.”That husband would respect her for having“seven men on her side.”
The problem of lack of fertility repeatedly receives fictional treatment,as in Franco-Afghan author Atiq Rahimi’sSyngué sabour.Pierre de patience
(2008).This work addresses the harsh condition of women who do not become pregnant,demonstrating how such a situation tends to be regarded as being shameful.The novel is written in the style of a theater play,a genre choice which enables the unnamed female protagonist to engage in extensive monologues.These offer the reader unsettling flashbacks about the woman’s past with her husband,a wounded soldier who is now lying in a coma.The marriage was an arranged one,a situation we have encountered in the face culture context.Even so,the soldier’s wife conscientiously cares for him in his brain-dead condition,and gradually gains an increasingly self-confident voice as she reveals her longsuppressed desires,secrets,and pains while in the streets outside chaotic military violence reigns.She speaks of her aunt,who during two years of marriage failed to present any child to her husband(a conscious choice of phrase which reveals the husband’s mentality)and who was hence regarded as good for nothing.Because she is thus unable to perform satisfactorily in becoming a mother,she loses her honor and her father-in-law abuses her.Finally her anger explodes against him,as a result of which she is expelled,being spurned by her family as a dirty stain.Knowing that a suicide is generally assumed to restore the honor of her relatives after her alleged crime,she pretends to take her life.The experience,like others we have seen,is cyclical:this woman’s niece,who is the work’s protagonist,then experiences a similar situation.She is believed to be infertile,so that her husband and her mother-in-law make life difficult for her;the latter encourages her son to search for a second wife.She insults her daughter-in-law,insisting that this will be the young wife’s final opportunity to save her husband’s reputation by giving birth to a son.Accordingly,the mother-in-law compels her to consult a so-called wise man,a Hakim,whom she expects to offer a remedy for barrenness.The man lives up to the expectation,but in an unexpected way:he advises the young wife to have intercourse secretly with another man,and as a result of contriving this she does indeed become pregnant and succeeds in giving birth to two daughters(who are actually illegitimate).In social terms,her honorable status is thus restored—yet this is only possible owing to a major transgression of the same code.It is important to realize that it is not the husband’s honorable reputation that is ever doubted because his potency,so far as anyone knows,is apparently intact.Some works emphasize the desire for male offspring.In Khaled Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns
,in which motherhood appears as a“final,cherished province,”Mariam’s husband Rasheed(after six miscarriages)sees no reason not to choose a second wife,Laila,so that he might finally gain a son.Thus Mariam loses her honored status,while she accuses herself:“She became furious with herself for sleeping in the wrong position,for eating meals that were too spicy,for not eating enough fruit,for drinking too much tea.”All these supposed causes would strengthen the notion that she is at fault and has therefore justly lost her good reputation.We can find fictional representation also of the notion that giving birth to daughters rather than sons is a woman’s shortcoming which is no less damning than being barren.In Tahar Ben Jelloun’sLa Nuit Sacrée
,the protagonist’s father’s wife gives birth to seven daughters,yet not a single son.Her husband calls this failure of her womb a disability.He prides himself on his affectionate and morally elevated decision to refrain from taking a second wife,as he could have done legitimately as a response to this situation.Here we find an expression of the idea that a woman is not a“true mother”and not a princess,with an elevation to a position of some power,until she gives birth to a son.In Elif Shafak’s novelThe Bastard of Istanbul
(2006),similarly,giving birth to three daughters is presented as“an introduction before the real thing,”rather unintentional in the manner of“an accidental prelude in their parents’ sex life,so determinedly were they oriented toward a male child.”In the same author’s workHonour
we can find a comparable condition:whereas Naze has eight daughters,she has“still not a single son.”In a desperate effort to influence events in her favor,she allegorically names the newborn twins“Destiny and Enough.”This naming is intended as a message to divine authority that“she had had her fill of daughters and the next time she was pregnant,...he had to give her a son and nothing but a son.”Indeed,Naze uses her time to make careful preparations for the long-awaited day when she will finally be granted“her perfect little boy,”in keeping with a notion of divine compensation:after giving birth to such a number of girls,surely Allah“was going to make it up to her.”It becomes abundantly clear that giving life to the children she now has contributes nothing of value to her life,seeing that her honor status rests chiefly on presenting her husband with a male successor,as he deserves.She eventually pays for this denial of value with loss of her own life:“Her ninth infant,the child who killed her and then quietly passed away in her cot,was another girl.”Evidently,only the achievement of bringing a son into the world would protect a woman from despair,from indifference and resignation,as characteristic responses to the loathsome sight of a newborn daughter.Négar Djavadi explains inDésorientale
that the Orient appears as the world of prophets and misery,a world which longs for a boy whose arms can perform labor,who can acquire a dowry,and who has a name to pass on.These advantages are decisive for a family’s reputation,as becomes especially apparent in economically less privileged regions.For these reasons,as already suggested,a wife who fails to give birth—especially to a son—is expected to accept her husband’s divorcing her or his finding a further wife.In the cyclical system,the additional or new wife is subsequently under the same pressure to preserve the man’s honor by giving birth to a son.We might add that in the available accounts conducted by social scientists,it is not easy to find in-depth analyses of the honor loss that infertile women have to undergo in cultures of honor.Likewise,there is scanty information on the shame process which is brought about by the birth of each daughter recurrently until(if at all)the first son eventually comes to be born.Fictional works,by comparison,do represent key insights into this phenomenon,connecting a woman’s inability to fulfill her expected maternal and patriarchally prescribed role and the damage to or loss of her honor.Losing honor over infertility,however,is not only the experience of women.At this point,we can come back for a moment to Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novelL’Enfant de Sable
since this work clearly shows the connection between a lack of sons,infertility,and the lost honor of the father/husband.Fear of dishonor and shame when only daughters are born leads to burying such children and hence killing them.The protagonist’s father weeps silently over his evidently diminished virility,and he feels he is regarded as blameworthy for being infertile and celibate.Having daughters thus amounts to denial of a man’s fecundity.Not only in his family,also in his community does his manly status depend on how many sons he has;the culture’s dominant religion,and hence the highest authority,has no pity for a man without an heir.He blames his wife,of course,for his loss of honor.Since the reality is unbearable,this husband(in a certain analogy to what we have seen in Mo Yan’s novel)escapes into fantasy:as already briefly mentioned,he decides to pretend that his next born child will definitely be a boy,even if this should not be supported in mere terms of biology.That,he is sure,would rehabilitate him and restore his desperately needed honor,rendering him“réhabilité”and“recouvré.”He could then eventually pass away with a feeling of confidence regarding his family’s economic status.Acting on the patriarchal notion that girls are just deficient boys,the father names his eighth child Zahra“Ahmed.”The child accordingly receives a dual gender identity as both son and daughter:“mon fils,ma fille.”There is thus a polyphonic meaning in the child’s existence,going beyond any individual identification and at the same time interrogating the inherent absurdity of the received honor code regarding aspects such as fertility and son preference.Conclusion
The purpose of this analysis is not to suggest that the risk of honor loss has only affected cultures outside of Europe.As we have seen,an important requirement for a daughter which follows from obedience is to submit to her parents’ choice of a husband.In the medieval culture imagined by Richard Wagner inDie Walküre
(1870),which thus becomes effective in the later nineteenth century,Siegmund’s record of honorable deeds in Act 1 includes his defense of the life of a girl who had rejected such a parental choice:in this alliterative verse,Siegmund describes how her clan wanted to arrange the girl’s marriage without her agreement to such courtship and how he went forth to protect her rights against coercion(“vermählen wollte der Magen Sippe/dem Mann ohne Minne die Maid./Wider den Zwang zog ich zum Schutz”).Siegmund succeeds in slaying the girl’s brothers,yet ultimately he is deprived of his weapons and cannot save her life from her clan(“Wund und waffenlos stand ich;/sterben sah ich die Maid”).We have seen the comparable ways in which imaginative literature from cultures of face and of honor reveals the violent underside of received cultural norms of conduct.These cultures have some crucial features in common.In both,a dependence on appearances,on communal or public judgment is characteristic,while transgression against social expectations can easily result in gossip,leading to shame,and usually to some manner of punishment because all family members concerned are deprived of the ability to play their once accepted respectable roles in the community.It is usually a male family member who is not only in charge of his relatives,but who also has a responsibility to protect and restore the unit’s reputation—if necessary by more or less violent means,psychic or physical.Yet alongside such similarities between these types of culture,social science studies as well as imaginative literature indicate some differences between them.In traditional face cultures we can find a comprehensive requirement of obedience and loyalty,and this includes a strict understanding of hierarchical structure as reflected for instance by the Three Obediences principle and theRites of Zhou
,which play no role in enlightened modern society but which nonetheless retain a subtle hold on some populations especially outside urban centers.In honor cultures,violent confrontations may occur in order to assert the necessary degree of power in a family for the sake of protecting or restoring the honor of family members,including its women,while in face cultures the public profile of family harmony is prioritized.The fictional works show how,in each case,the dominant codes operate in social practice,but they also reveal how the codes feature cracks and inner contradictions which make them appear absurd.Comparative intercultural inquiry is likened by Ming Xie,adapting a metaphor proposed by T.S.Eliot,to being on both sides of a mirror at once:this is
as much to see what is reflected in the mirror as to see what is literally behind the mirror,what makes the mirror function as a mirror.It is also to glimpse the other that is reflected in the mirror of one’s own speculative instrument,to seehow
one sees,to see what enables one to see in a particular way.To be on the rear side of the mirror is also to see one’s own“blind spot”or“ignorance”precisely as a condition of possibility for knowing the other and hence oneself.Our own cultural positionality,wherever we are located,is thus at stake in this comparative process,which pushes us toward rethinking the assumptions we bring to bear on our observations.The literary dialogue in which we have now become engaged ought to strengthen our sense that we as recipients have a collective cultural responsibility:in this way,as Derek Attridge has claimed,literature can have a role to play in bringing about significant social changes.
