The Peony Pavilion

"The world is open wide like a door, like a fire it burns, embrace the flame - don't be ashamed of your desire to learn."
- Amy Hedges, Libertine

Another night that I'm up too late, another entry where I just want to talk about a book. This time, it is Peony In Love by Lisa See.

In looking for the quote I wanted to use to start this entry, I happened across part of the Author's notes in which See explains that not only is the opera used throughout the story a real one, but the three wives of the male protagonist were real women who really wrote something called the Three Wives' Commentary (or, Wu Wushan's Three Wives' Collaborative Commentary of The Peony Pavilion). I was very surprised to learn this. I almost never read the author's notes in books I like because it often ruins things for me - an excellent example being the novel Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher: Asher reveals that he was going to name the girl Anna, but then decided there were too many suicidal Annas in teen books, so he named her Hannah, which bothers me both because it's a really dumb name change, and because I had been entertaining thoughts that Hannah might have been a childhood friend of the author. Essentially, I had romanticized the naming of her character because I thought it had to be important, only to find out that her name was actually a cheap knock-off of the name Asher had originally intended to use.

Now that I know Chen Tong and the other women in this novel were alive once, I can't really remember what I wanted to say. I think I'm having particular trouble accepting that these women were real because Peony In Love is a ghost story. Tong dies within the first third of the story, and after that we as readers follow her ghost across twenty years as she watches over the lives of her family, her intended husband, and the two wives he takes after her death. She possesses the second wife, Tan Ze, so that she can continue writing the commentary on the opera that she had started before her own death. Then Ze dies, and Tong possesses the third wife, Yi, to finish the writing project. So now I need to accept that this book actually exists and was actually written by these three women. Right.

Thanks to the way I jump from thought to thought, I just found a song I forgot I liked (the one I used to open this entry) and at the same time remembered what I wanted to say about the book.

Peony in Love talks a lot about the rightful place of women. The book takes place in 17th century China, so although the characters are all advocating for women to stay in the "inner realm", the author makes it clear that the free expression of women is a beautiful thing. Even as the women in the story tell each other that they shouldn't learn to think critically or express themselves through the written word, they find happiness, love, success and independence through exactly those means.

There is one quote that really strikes a chord with my latest round of paranoid thinking. "We let women read and then what happens? Do they aspire to noble thoughts? No. They read plays, operas, novels, and poetry. They read for entertainment, which can only impair contemplation." Of course the majority of the book is pointing out that that perception was false. But on the same day that I read the passage in which that conversation was had (because that wasn't the narrator's opinion) I had been thinking for the umpteenth time about how I never catch myself thinking seriously about anything. Instead of teaching myself about current events or politics or anything relevant, I am reading and rereading novels. Books about love and friendship and families and fluff. Okay, that may be a little harsh. Some of my books touch on serious things, like The Book of Negroes and The Help. But today I started reading Emily Giffin's Baby Proof. What is that about? True love and the compromises people learn to make. Sure, Giffin has some real insights about relationships; her protagonists are always expressing thoughts that I have gotten close to but never quite been able to articulate. One such gem is when she describes how in relationships there is always someone who loves more. Which person it is can switch back and forth, and it is impossible to quantify love and truly determine who loves more, but love is "seldom - almost never - an equal proposition." The point that I'm trying to reach, though, is that I'm reading chick lit and then beating myself up for not knowing anything about anything. What I think I should be doing is trying to figure out why I'm not just making an effort to make the improvements that I want  to see in myself. I want to be more informed. So I read about a third of Maclean's magazine through the course of a week and then abandon it, unfinished, when the next issue comes out. I could be watching or reading the news every day or every couple of days. I could be doing all kinds of things, but I'm just not, and I don't understand why.

It's 5 am, I can't remember where I was going with this entry. I hope I got there, I guess.