Wild Swans

7 Pages 1824 Words

Wild Swans
Jung Chang in Wild Swans gives the accounts of three generations of women in China during the 20th century through herself, her mother, and her grandmother. The stories of these women reflect the changes in society and politics that were occurring in China during the time. Chang expressed her history in this novel to reveal the treatment of women, the experience of political duress, and the conditions of adversity that resulted from that repression.
Chang begins the book with the life of her grandmother. Her grandmother was born in 1909, at a time when Chinese women were required to be compliant and subservient to men. She was subjected to the painful ritual of foot-binding, which forced women to walk in an “erotic” manner, emphasizing their defenselessness and need for protection. Her parents sold her as a concubine to a warlord named General Xue Zhi-heng. She did not want to be a concubine, but “it was unthinkable to oppose one’s parents” (30). She hardly ever saw her warlord master and it became clear to her that he regarded her as nothing more than a plaything. Her life as a concubine was depressing, but due to the social pressures it was impossible for her to do much. When General Xue died, she escaped his wife’s household with her young daughter, Chang’s mother. Later, she eventually married a well-to-do doctor named Dr. Xia.
The situation for women had changed somewhat by the time Chang’s mother, Bao Qin, reached maturity in the mid-1940s. For example, she refused to accept her parents’ choice of a mate for her, because she “had made up her mind to choose her own husband” (81). Also, she was able to leave home without being married, which was something Chang’s grandmother would never have been able to do because of lack a job market for women. By contrast, Chang’s mother was able to get work as a teacher. During that time, Bao Qin became a follower of Mao Zedong, and she m...