Late Ming Urban Life and Wanton Women in Huang Fangyin’s Short Plays

Abstract

With a foreword by Ma Lihua, a courtesan from the Qinhuai entertainment quarter, the dramatic works found in Huang Fangyin’s Short Plays from the Studio of Wayside Flowers (Mohuaxuan zaju, mid-seventeenth century) epitomize late Ming literati pursuit of pleasure and unconventionality, and like many other works they disappeared from view under the moral strictures of the Qing. All six plays in this collection concern unconventional sexuality including the training of prostitutes, prostitution by women of good family, illicit sexual practices of monks, male same-sex prostitution, as well as a woman seeking sexual satisfaction through repeated remarriage. This paper will address the representation of wanton women in two of Huang’s plays. In Leaning in the Doorway (Yi men) the playwright depicts a woman who enters prostitution as a means to satisfy her sexual needs, while in Serial Monogamy (Zaijiao) another woman continuously separates and remarries in search of satisfying sex. Both plays assume comparisons between chaste and wanton women while subjecting conventional attitudes to parody and ironic reflection, and they may even be read as praising a wanton woman’s courage as against the insipid life of chaste women. As distinct from narrative representations, the placing and depiction of wanton women and their desires in dramatic works will be considered alongside the broader backdrop of late Ming dramatic depictions of female desire.