Asian Literature

The Good Earth is a novel written by Pearl S. Buck, an award winning American writer who spent majority of her life in China, which illustrates family life in a Chinese Village before the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution. The novel, which won Pearl S. Buck the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in the early 30s, has a poignant and realistic portrayal of a poor farmers life and his bond with the land he is cultivating. It depicts rural China and the lifestyle of an average Chinese peasants in the early 1900s. The story revolves in the character of Wang Lung, a man who follows morals and Chinese traditions such as piety and duty to family, and his wife O-Lan, who represents Chinese women during the traditional China. Despite his simplicity as he conforms to Chinese traditional lifestyle, he is a man with many complexities illustrated by his relationship with his wife, his children, his father and his village or community. Aside from the preciousness of the land where the main protagonist equates it with his own self worth, the novel also subtly discusses womens position and social constructed roles during the early 19th century illustrated in the character of O-Lan, Wang Lungs wife. Dominantly through the character of O-lan, the writer explores womens position in traditional Chinese culture, focusing on the hardships and limitations faced by women, their powerlessness from abuse in childhood to servitude in adulthood. The writer illustrates the individual experience of O-Lan to emphasize her subtle political message about how tradition and culture during early times limits women.

    Women in Chinese tradition is viewed necessary for procreation and to fulfill the household needs. When a wife bear a girl child, they consider the child as an unlucky one. Wives can even bring shame to the society unable to produce a boy. During hard times young girls were often the ones sold into slavery or worse. Even though the writer admire the beauty of the Chines simple lives during the early times of industrialization, her outrage at the conditions of the women is apparent.  Although Wang Lungs thoughts are a bit more liberal than the readers might expect, he still maintains his distance, displaying neither open affection nor love for the woman who shares his life.

     Since Buck devoted herself to humanitarian causes and constantly fought on behalf of womens rights, it is unavoidable to assume that truly the novel contains political messages about how women is treated in the society during early times (Henkes 89). In traditional Chinese society, women were automatically assigned a position inferior to that of men. The qualities that were valued in women were obedience and loyalty especially towards their role in motherhood and domesticity. Little was expected from them in terms of physical and intellectual capabilities since men were believed to be the ones who will gratify and fulfill that. During the times in which the novel takes place, Chinese society is also showing signs of modernity while still remaining deeply connected to ancient traditions and customs. In order to acquire a deeper understanding about how women were treated in early Chinese tradition, it is significant to look deeper on the character of O-Lan.

    O-Lan in many ways is perhaps the most memorable character in the novel since she exemplifies womens situation in traditional China. She sacrifices a great deal even though she will never acquire a reward just to adhere to cultural notions of feminine respectability. Even though it may seem that Wang Lung is the main protagonist, O-Lan has the most meaningful character as she illustrates the experiences of womens subtle oppression and injustices that was constantly unnoticed during those times. O-Lan is a slave in the Great House of Hwang. Since she is a girl, she is automatically the one chosen to be sold and brought to the House of Hwang in the year of the great famine when her father needs money to feed the rest of the family. It is apparent from the novel that the birth of a girl was not greeted by the family with as much pleasure as that of a boy. The wife would be blamed for her failure to produce a son. Apparently as the novel demonstrates, it is not peculiar or unusual for an infant girl in a poor family to be sold or smothered into slavery.

    In the initial part of the novel, Wang Lung decided to buy and marry O-Lan, a poor woman who used to be a young slave in the house of Hwang, since he could not afford a wife from higher status. Wang Lung did not expect much but just a woman who would cook for him and his father, who would help him in the fields and a woman who would give him sons. O-Lan is apparently the woman that Wang Lung exactly needed, a woman who works even without being told to work. Since they are both hardworking, O-lan and Wang Lung are pleased with each other, although they only exchange few words. Even from the very beginning, Wang Lung is disappointed since O-lan does not have bound feet. Young girls in traditional Chinese families faced a painful experience growing up, they were required to have their feet bound.  The practice of binding the feet began among the aristocracy in the tenth century and spread throughout China. This tradition, which resulted in broken and misshapen bones, was extremely painful and resulted in deformed feet  (Conn 29). But the crippled foot was looked on by Chinese men as a most desirable thing since it symbolizes beauty, femininity and vulnerability. Women with bound feet is also perceived to be easily controlled. Even though O-Lan is aware that there is no emotional attachment between her and Wang Lung, she sees the marriage arrangement as a relief. She is a Chinese wife in everything except in one thing, she is ugly and has big feet. Her physical inferiority makes her work harder to make up to the beauty that she lacks. Apparently beauty for Chinese men is a great point since they find refuge in it. Women were seen as a form of pleasure by husbands especially after their long day in the field. The culture makes them believed that women should be regarded as  wife  who take care of their physical needs at the end of the day.  Wang Lung represent the usual men who regards women as inferior.

    Sometimes, working over the clods in the fields, he would fall to pondering about     her. What had she seen in those hundred courts What had been her life, that life     she never shared with him He could make nothing of it. And then he was  ashamed     of his own curiosity and of his interest in her. She was, after all, only a woman      (Buck)

Apparently in the novel, Wang Lung, though kind, sees her wife  only a woman  who is more incapable than he is. He couldnt imagine her wife in a higher position which depicts that men truly have little expectations towards their wives. 

    O-lan spends her life working for an endeavor for which she never acquired a reward. O-Lan throughout her marriage life gives all her effort and applies all her considerable capability to improve Wang Lungs position and the well being of her family but she receives neither loyalty nor passion from him in return. Her husband instead constantly insults her unbound feet and ugliness. During her pregnancy to her second baby, Wang Lung is even annoyed, fearing that his wifes condition will keep her from working in the fields. O-Lan even makes the hardest decision in the novel-- she is forced to kill and smother her infant daughter to spare food for the family, for example but endure this hard decisions with admirable posture and fortitude. Wang Lung meanwhile also became unfaithful and a concubine but O-Lan never reproached him for doing that even though she is badly hurt by his act. She is proud, strong and willing to keep her posture but the only time when she breaks down and starts to cry is when her husband took the pearls she was keeping for their daughter. Still she focuses on raising her children, on taking care of the household and fulfilling her responsibilities that conforms to the Chinese culture.

    She was like a faithful, speechless serving maid, who is only a serving maid and     nothing more. And it was not meet that he should say to her, Why do you not     speak It should be enough that she fulfilled her duty (Buck)

In the household, O-Lan does her work without complaint. But when her health started to deteriorates and when she became very ill until it was too late, her husband offer to buy the best medicine and to find the best doctor but O-Lans refused, justifying that her life is not as significant as the new land they could buy with the money.  No, and my life is not worth so much. A good piece of land can be bought for so much  (Buck 256). Apparently O-Lan sees little in the value of her life. She is used to believe that her life is not as significant as the land. The way her husband and the society treat her greatly influenced her mind setting towards herself. In the novel there is apparently a special connection between O-Lan and the earth. She gave herself as the earth gave and took nothing in return. But once O-Lan, the pillar of the family, was gone, the whole family started to deteriorate.

    Conspicuously O-lan spends much of the story in the position of victim who uses silence rather than speech to indicate the extent of her inner pain. She acquired a great deal of dignity in the readers due to endurance towards her husbands behavior. O-lan never complains about Wang Lung s cruelty in insulting her feet but she does immediately begin binding her daughter s feet in order not to disappoint her father. Her daughter often weeps because my mother binds a cloth about my feet more tightly every day and I cannot sleep at night (Buck). Her mother however warns her daughter not to complain in order not to disappoint her father. Apparently even though Olan is in extreme pain, her main objective is still to fulfill her duties not to displease her husband.  The readers see the extent of O-lan s fortitude and bravery when she makes no complaint for years about the grave illness that swells her belly. O-lan with her level of endurance represents the dignity and courage of the marginalized wife.

    Apparently, the novel is more than just the illustration of just one mans struggle to rise for economic purposes. But rather the underlying theme focuses on the depiction of Chinese women during those times. The novel portrays these women with great realism by including traditional Chinese practices like foot binding, wife purchasing or marriage arrangement and concubinism. Their roles in the male dominated world are limited to motherhood and domesticity which limit them to explore their full potentials. But women can be admired in terms of their emotional endurance and pride. Though O-lan appears to be submissive and obedient to Wang Lung where she works incessantly in silence and without complaint, O-Lan has a rich inner life. She is clever, resourceful and fiercely proud and  is no doubt the primary responsible for the survival of her family during times of starvation, and also silently helping her husband to accumulate wealth and status. This novel depicts the strength of women as the pillars of home who keep the families together and also illustrates how the old culture of China limits and controls women.