The Feminine Critique: Women and the Absent Men in Chinese Family Life
Award-winning writer Yao Emei portrays the dark, brutally honest reality of women’s struggles in Chinese families, often due to men, in her latest short story collection, “The Unfilial”
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获奖作家姚鄂梅在其最新短篇小说集《家庭生活》中描绘了中国家庭中女性挣扎的黑暗、残酷的现实，这些挣扎往往源于男性姚鄂梅《家庭生活》英文版“The Unfilial” | 四个东亚家庭分崩离析的过程
“The men in our family are cursed,” recounts the unnamed narrator in the short story “It Runs in the Family,” explaining why her sister advised her to change her son’s name to something feminine.“Ever since I was small, the men of this family have brought me nothing but shame, not a button’s worth of good,” Sister says. There’s Father, who was jailed for racketeering and ruined Sister’s relationship with her police officer boyfriend. Sister’s eventual husband lost his job when the factory went under, and can barely make ends meet. Her brilliant brother Pingzhi died young in a landslide, and her only son Zichen was admitted to a mental institution for killing his girlfriend.![]()
This woeful life story is just one of the four chilling accounts of women in Shanghai-based writer Yao Emei’s latest translated short story collection, The Unfilial: Four Tragic Tales from Modern China. The Chinese version, published in 2021, boasts a glowing score of 8.5 out of 10 from over 8,000 users on China’s biggest book review platform, Douban. Readers praised Yao for painting a grim yet accurate picture of how different women’s destinies are shaped by the troublesome men around them. “The four short stories capture the experience of millions,” writes one reviewer.If you’re looking for encouraging tales of feminist empowerment, this is not the book for you. The women in the stories not only assume the roles of mothers and daughters, but are also wives, girlfriends, older sisters, and in some cases, mistresses. Compared to the English title The Unfilial, the book’s Chinese name, which translates directly to “family life,” seems to capture the essence of the stories more accurately.![]()
In the first story, the first-person narrator, “I,” is romantically involved with her married college professor, who repeatedly impregnates her. In the third and longest story in the collection, “Skeletons in the Closet,” 34-year-old Wei Yuqing starts an affair with the director of a local hospital, who also happens to be her colleague’s husband. Readers can’t help but feel for these characters, despite them being the “other woman” in their relationships. The college professor takes advantage of the innocent “I,” while Wei is victimized by both the director and his wife, the kind and elegant-looking Ms. Cheng. She chooses Wei as one among many “legitimate mistress” for her husband, then conspires to marry off Wei and replace her with another girl after the couple’s son develops feelings for her.“I reversed the typical moral values assigned to the wife and the mistress, but I said nothing about the man who is loved and protected by both women,” said Yao of the story in a 2022 interview with the Shandong-based media outlet The New Times. “Perhaps, in the realm of marriage and family, men have become so privileged that they no longer feel the need to act.”Men’s privilege and inaction are recurring themes throughout Yao’s works. In a 2007 article published in the academic journal Literary and Artistic Contention, literary critic Zhu Xiaoru pointed out that Yao’s male characters always appear “diminished.” Zhu attributed the reason for this portrayal to the idea that “once men leave the battlefield or the business world, where they can fully display their heroism, and instead retreat into the daily routines of family life, how could they not feel stifled?”—a belief shared by many of the male characters in The Unfilial.This belief is most evident in the father character of the last story, “You’ll Do the Job with Skill and Ease.” Despite losing his job, all the family’s money, and their house to gambling debts, he disappears for a whole month instead of taking responsibility for his actions and helping to save for a new home, then expects the whole family to upend their lives once he has returned: The son to be sent off to boarding school; the mother to sleep at the bookstore after working night shifts. While he believes his heroic act will make their life freer and more adventurous, this attempt at modern “homelessness” quickly falls apart, with both the father and mother getting fired from their jobs. “It’s like the Chinese version of Parasite,” reads one comment on Douban, referencing the 2019 Academy Award-winning film.It’s hard to find any decent male figure in the four stories in The Unfilial. Yet it is not a book praising the greatness of women either. Though the men in their lives cause them never-ending misery, the women in the book never seek to break free from the patterns they have established, adopting instead the attitude of stoic (if not sadistic) self-sacrifice while allowing the men to easily redeem themselves by the slightest show of remorse: Sister in the first story takes care of her father once he has been released from prison, and hires a highly capable lawyer to get her son off his murder charge; Li Nan, the protagonist of the second story, “Gran is on Her Way,” also continues to support her boyfriend following his release from jail, despite his calling her ugly and unworthy of bearing his child. In the last story, the mother considers it immoral to leave her penniless husband.“A woman’s nature often leads her to see the family as her main battleground,” says Yao in her interview. “She loves her family deeply, worries about everyone, and when someone gets into trouble outside, she is the first to bring them back, tend to their wounds, comfort them, and send them out again only when they’ve fully recovered.” While the stories already read more like cautionary tales than accounts of feminist awakening, comments like these from the author only further distance the book from the feminist standpoint perceived by readers. Born in 1968, Yao worked as a bank clerk and secretary before she started writing in the 1990s. Even after 30 years of writing about marriage and family, she has made it clear that she does not consider herself a feminist and denies that her work has a strong feminist conscience. “I’m never avant-garde nor trendy. In fact, I’m always a step behind the trend,” she said in a 2009 interview with writer Ma Ji.She acknowledges that she cannot avoid the female perspective because she is a woman, but she disapproves of framing female writers in this way, as male writers are rarely discussed in terms of their gender. “I believe true equality isn’t achieved by simply talking about it or shouting about it. It’s when you accomplish something, and your presence is needed, that equality is realized,” said Yao in the 2022 interview.Regardless of Yao’s interpretations of her own stories, it’s up to the readers to form their own takeaways from the book. Certainly the top comment on Douban, with almost 500 likes, has made up its mind: “In every broken family, there’s a cowardly, useless man.”《家庭生活》书评
按下开关的同时，我们必须适应自己的位置
卡夫卡曾经给父亲写过一封将近一百页的、不曾寄出的信，慎重而又失控般地回忆了父子之间生活和矛盾的诸多细节。卡夫卡将婚姻称为“迄今为止生活中最可怕的事”，他在信中说，自己无法开启家庭生活最重要的障碍在于，他已深信抚养家庭必须具备父亲的一切品性，而这些正是他所不具备的。
曾在卡夫卡笔下呈现为幽暗的地穴、断裂的表达或隐蔽的空间的父子关系和家庭生活，在若干次逃脱失败的尝试后，由畏惧、憎恶和怀疑重新演变为某种信任和依赖。这是家庭关系悄无声息的传承，似乎也是对于命运的归附与轮回。
“一个人有什么样的家，人就会长成什么形状。”姚鄂梅在新近创作的中篇小说集《家庭生活》中如是写道。据说，在所有动物中，唯有人类会对自己的镜像产生迷恋。人类善于模仿，并易于对同类产生好感；在某种程度上，所谓家庭关系似乎与这一特性有着深刻的勾连。家庭是一个由镜像组成的密闭空间，在这一空间中，人类的命运如同代际间的面孔，以某种相似的原则被不断书写。在这里，每一个个体都是一间密室。
《家庭生活》通过书写四个“非典型性”家庭内部的现实境遇和生存困境，致力于探讨个体——特别是女性个体与家庭、社会甚至命运的自洽。
《家庭生活》共收入了《基因的秘密》《外婆要来了》《柜中骷髅》和《游刃有余》四部中篇小说。姚鄂梅保留了她一贯“贴地飞行”般平实而犀利的风格，语言简洁晓畅，直截坦率，节奏跌宕有致，干脆利落，以细致的笔触通过“家庭生活”为切口深入冰山之下式的社会事件，产生了一种奇特的美感与阅读体验。
“家庭生活”是这四部作品共同讨论或涉及的主题，或关于家庭关系的悖谬，或关于完整家庭的零落。“家庭”是姚鄂梅长期以来创作的重要关注点之一，她曾在其中一部的创作谈中提及对于这一主题的理解：家是最温柔也是最狂野的地方，家最包容最单纯，也最自私最赤裸，家是港湾，也是巨大的风暴中心。
《家庭生活》集合了一个普通家庭中或明或暗的安全隐患，其潜伏于理所当然的安逸表象下，随时可能将一个家庭或其中的个体推向深渊。
女性是涉足“家庭生活”这一题材时无法回避的话题。四部小说对于女性形象的塑造是浓墨重彩的，亦给读者留下了深刻的印象。《柜中骷髅》是其中较为典型的一部。这是一个极具文学意味的题目——“柜中骷髅”，即“家丑”的别称；在极具沾染性的、百味杂陈的峡口大风中，隐蔽着的一段关于一个家庭和两个女人的“家丑”，小魏应同事程姐邀请为程姐的儿子辅导书法，不想与程姐的丈夫互生情愫，“意外”成为其情妇，而这一切竟来自于程姐的授意。姚鄂梅用大量笔墨对程姐进行详细的外貌描写，使“一尊丝绒与珍珠的旧时代肖像”跃然纸上。通过程姐和小魏着装、谈吐、举止微末之处的对比，小说将两个不同年龄、不同身份、不同地位的女人间的困境呈现为一种矛盾而又和谐的尴尬关系，从而使得两个女性在不对等情感关系中的反噬水到渠成。
《柜中骷髅》和《外婆要来了》更为鲜明地体现了作为家庭角色的女性所面临的反噬与矛盾。程姐将婚姻的失败归结为自己因疾病丧失的性功能和女性器官，为了维持家庭和名存实亡的婚姻，程姐不惜主动为丈夫寻找情妇。在程姐身上，模糊的生理性别和清晰的心理性别似乎形成了某种奇特的对立。程姐也没有名字，小魏有一个动听的、却从不会被人唤起的名字，这似乎象征着她们在社会关系中缺乏凭靠和归属的存在——换言之，她们更适合跻身于“洞中”。小魏因一间“地洞”成为了程姐丈夫的情妇，付诸全部感情，并通过被动的情感付出获取自我安慰。在某种程度上，《外婆要来了》中的女主人公李南有着相似的情感经历或称情感体验。面对自私冷漠的情人，李南一厢情愿地坚持着对爱情的幻想，并渴望为之投入、付出甚至牺牲；即便认清了他的本来面目，她也未能顺利斩断与他的勾连。强烈的他恋，似乎成为了女性自恋即自我保护的方式。家庭关系中畸形的情感分配产生于性别的社会规训，也为小说中女性角色的生长提供了可能。
关于对女性角色的创作，姚鄂梅曾有过一个生动的说法——盯住女人，就是在一面镜子里审视着全人类。在《家庭生活》中，姚鄂梅试图通过女性与家庭的关系或女性进入家庭的方式对女性独立的可能性发出质询。四部小说中，出现了两类女性形象，如《基因的秘密》中的“我姐姐”，《柜中骷髅》中的程姐；再如《外婆要来了》中的李南。前者归附于家庭，而后者试图跳脱禁忌、破除障碍，追寻被建构起来的虚幻情感，最终落入深渊。这是因为社会对于女性有着双重规范，她们被要求强大、付出，同时被要求柔弱、依附。在这样的矛盾下，归附于家庭似乎是唯一一个可以同时满足全部要求的选择。
事实上，姚鄂梅自认为不是一位自觉的女性主义者，她也很反对用“女性视角”这个概念来谈论女性作家的作品。在某种程度上，对于女性主义的分析和讨论往往会成为对于女性作家写作的一种限制。而在女性作家笔下，对于女性的关注作为一种创作角度常常呈现为一种本能。当然，这并不影响姚鄂梅重点刻画女性角色以及强调其主体意识的事实，然而小说以家庭生活为切入点，关于个体、家庭与社会关系的思考，同样值得重视。个体何以在家庭中跻身，家庭何以在社会中立足；当个体脱离了家庭，又何以存有于社会？其中的千头万绪，是可以理清的条条框框，亦或是命运使然？
《游刃有余》看似是一个超现实的故事——然而又似乎讨论着某些现实层面的生活方式，并落实在了一个极为具体的社会问题上。一个平凡的三口之家因意外脱离正轨，他们试图重构起某种不被规范的、“游刃有余”的家庭生活——事实上，他们不得不担负起各自“应有”的责任：父亲为大额保险付出生命；母亲渴望回归厨房，甚至不惜以交换肉体为代价；而小说的叙述者则采取了某种冷静旁观的态度——作为儿子的“我”，面对左支右绌的生活，似乎并无发声的打算。小说突如其来又预料之中的结尾有如一个惊叹号，随着父亲的车祸，全书四部小说中四个家庭重构的可能性似乎一同坠毁。
这是四个故事中最为寻常普通、随处可见的家庭，一点尚不值得歌颂的善念，和几分人皆有之的欲望，便足以将其轻易毁灭，因此更使人感到惶恐。小说似乎尝试以一种奇特的、真假倒置的象征回答家庭关系与社会关系的联系。当一个人丧失了家庭关系时，他的社会关系也将是紊乱和崩塌的，即便家庭是如此脆弱、混乱、不堪和难以为继。这也印证姚鄂梅对于家庭的一种认识：家让我们归心似箭，又终生都在梦想着逃离。
随着个人意识的强化，社会中对于原生家庭的讨论似乎不断升温。“家庭”——具体为一间房子，抽象为某种关系，是个体认知世界的起点。一个独立个体身上不可避免的、难以磨灭的烙印，除了一幅面容，大概只有家庭。姚鄂梅试图以这样一个日常化的主题发出某种质询：禁锢女性或者说禁锢性别/个体行为方式的，究竟是什么？无论是代际关系、社会关系，亦或是性别的建构，我们始终无法回避这样一个事实，在按下开关的同时，我们必须适应自己的位置，并最终尝试扮演家庭生活中的另一个角色。正如《基因的秘密》所讲述的那样，在家庭内部的丛林法则之下，每一个人都将成为规则的制定者、实施者和牺牲者。
“命运是什么？”
这是姚鄂梅在《外婆要来了》结尾借女主人公李南之口提出的问题。
在老鲍的理解中，李南的命运是她的情人一飞，自己的命运是抛弃他的亲生父母。渴望逃脱一飞的李南最终选择了幻灭和逃避。女人的命运是男人，男人的命运是宗姓，他们共同的命运是家庭。那是一种同时渴望逃脱和归附的命运。
https://iyuedu.top/posts/books/jia-ting-sheng-huo/
