Exemplary Erotics in Guwangyan: Volume Six and the Authenticity of Urban Commoner Women

Abstract

In this paper I will focus on the joined stories of a Madam Yin and her daughter Jiaojiao, which take in a wide social spectrum including shopkeepers, catamites/actors, gentry, local tyrant, officials, hangers-on, servants, clerks, monk, and housewives of different classes. As a result of her early sexual experimentation the mother finds herself married to an invalid catamite/actor, and later the daughter, following similar misadventure, marries an impotent hanger-on in a Nanjing gentry household. Mother and daughter both develop multiple extra-marital relations but maintain an understanding with their husbands through bonds of mutual reliance. Like the case files discussed in Matthew Sommer’s Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China (2015), blending instrumentality and passion our episodes thread together a convincing narrative of survival where marital stability is more readily found in deviating from standards prescribed by the state. In these versions of “queer domesticity” the women are able to seek sexual pleasure outside marriage while selflessly supporting weak husbands. I will argue that the acceptance of contradictions in these episodes can be interpreted as a sign of honesty (or authenticity): the women are portrayed as promiscuous but will fight for the integrity of their household, are easily cheated and bullied by men but at the same time ruthless in seeking revenge or justice. Given the way they are isolated within the overall framework of the novel, we also need to consider what the position and function of these stories is in relation to the author’s larger narratorial aims.