Peony in Love
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| Peony in Love | |
| Author | Lisa See |
|---|---|
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Random House, Inc. |
| Publication date | 2007 |
| Preceded by | Snow Flower and the Secret Fan |
Peony in Love is the most recent of Lisa See's five novels. Her first three (Flower Net, The Interior, and Dragon Bones) make up the Red Princess Mystery series. These books feature Liu Hulan, top level Chinese security investigator, and David Stark (her lover and later husband) as they solve mysteries related to the complex relationships between modern China and the U.S. See's two most recent novels (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love) emphasize the difficulty 19th and 17th century Chinese women had in achieving freedom and identity in a society that was both male dominated and rigid in its gender expectations.
In Peony in Love the opera The Peony Pavilion by Tang Xianzu, The Three Wives' Commentary on The Peony Pavilion [1], and the theme of love all play important roles. Of the latter, See has said: "I wanted to explore different aspects of love: gratitude love, pity love, respectful love, romantic love, sexual love, sacrificing love, duty love, and finally mother love". [2] See also states that The Three Wives' Commentary had a special influence on her as she researched the large amount of writing done by Chinese women in the 17th century, most of it largely unknown today. "Then I came across The Three Wives' Commentary -- the first book of its kind to have been published anywhere in the world to have been written by women -- three wives, no less. With that, my interest turned into an obsession". [3] The three wives of Wu Ren in the novel -- Chen Tong (Peony), Tan Ze, and Qian Yi were, in fact, the real women who wrote The Three Wives' Commentary. [4]
The opera presents the love of Du Liniang for a young man named Liu Mengmei, whom she meets in a dream. Unable to turn her dream into reality, Liu wastes away and dies, haunting Lui as a ghost. Eventually he finds a way to bring Liniang back to life, allowing them to find ultimate happiness.
The novel begins with Peony's father, a wealthy, cultured man with important political contacts, planning a performance of The Peony Pavilion on his estate. This is seen by many as controversial because the opera may influence young women into imitating Liniang, starving themselves to death in hopes of finding love.
Unfortunately, this is just what happens to Peony. She is deeply moved by the text and performance of The Peony Pavilion, having extensively written about her feelings and reactions to love in her copy of the text. On the evening of the opera performance, Peony accidentally meets a handsome young man. After four nighttime meetings, Peony falls in love, but she also falls into deep despair because she feels doomed because of being trapped in an arranged marriage. Following the example of Du Liniang, she starves herself to death, only to learn right before her death that the man her father has picked for her is Wu Ren, the man she loves.
Most of Peony in Love takes place after Peony's death. Because her funeral rituals are not concluded properly, she becomes a "hungry ghost", who wanders far beyond the inner world of women that constrained her in her youth. In the process, she encounters a number of women writers who lament the difficulty of getting their voices heard in a male-dominated world. From her dead grandmother, she learns many painful details about her family's past as the Qing Dynasty violently replaced the Ming Dynasty, details later amplified by Peony's mother. Peony comes to learn about the courage and extreme suffering both older women experienced during the fighting and that the sternness her mother treated her with as a girl was only her attempt to protect her daughter from the evils of the outside world.
Peony shows her enduring love for Ren by her influence on his second and third wives, who add their personal responses to The Peony Pavilion, thus becoming sister wives, although Peony remains first wife. Given the appropriate funeral rites at last, Peony is no longer a hungry ghost but a spirit who looks forward with great joy to meeting her husband again in the afterworld.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Zeitlin, Judith T. "Shared Dreams: The Story of the Three Wives' Commentary on The Peony Pavilion. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, June, 1994, pp. 127-79.
- ^ "A Conversation with Lisa See", Random House Reader's Circle. Peony in Love, p. 287. Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2008.
- ^ "Author's Note". Peony in Love, p. 275.
- ^ "Author's Note", p. 278
[edit] External Links
- Sven Birkerts, "Dead Flowers." The New York Times, July 22, 2007
- Bernard Holland, "Music: Hard Work, The Virtue of a festival" -- treats the 1999 Lincoln Center production of The Peony Pavilion
- Diana Raabe, "Seeing Ghosts: A Conversation with Lisa See"
- Lisa See, "China's Lovesick Maidens" (video)
- Jessica Treadway, "Female Voices from China's Past Silenced No More", The Boston Globe, July 1, 2007
[edit] References
- "A Conversation with Lisa See", Random House Reader's Circle. Peony in Love, pp. 287-294. Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2008.
- Delbanco, Nicholas. "Ghosts in the Garden: A Young Woman in 17th-Century China Returns After Death to Fulfill Her Destiny." The Washington Post, 06/24/2007.
- Kelly, Susan. "Haunting Piony Unearths Ghosts of Culture and Love." USA Today, 07/03/2007.
- See, Lisa. "Author's Note." Peony in Love, pp. 275-280. Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2008.
- See, Lisa. Peony in Love. Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2008.
- Xianzu, Tang. The Peony Pavilion. Mudan ting, 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
- Zeitlin, Judith T. "Shared Dreams: The Story of the Three Wives' Commentary on The Peony Pavilion. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. June, 1994. Vol. 54, Issue 1, pp. 127-79.
