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A review by lkateo
Red Rose, White Rose by Karen S. Kingsbury, Eileen Chang
5.0
A neat little novella that evocatively uses its late-modernist, Western-influenced-yet-still-Chinese, 1940s Shanghai setting to elaborate on the opening passage:
"There were two women in Zhenbao's life: one he called his white rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other a passionate mistress. Isn't that just how the average man describes a chaste widow's devotion to her husband's memory - as spotless, and passionate too?
Maybe every man had two such women - at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is 'moonlight in front of my bed'. Marry a white rose and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart."
Chang's novella is, among other things, a subtle examination of how gender dynamics shape relationships. Zhenbao's women are divided into polar extremes reminiscent of the 'Damned Whores and God's Police' of Anne Summers' book of that name. I liked how Chang cleverly tantalises the reader with a closer, more rounded examination of the female characters, only to have Zhenbao re-enter the scene and pull the character profile back into the male subjectivity where the characters are once again viewed through his judgement.
"There were two women in Zhenbao's life: one he called his white rose, the other his red rose. One was a spotless wife, the other a passionate mistress. Isn't that just how the average man describes a chaste widow's devotion to her husband's memory - as spotless, and passionate too?
Maybe every man had two such women - at least two. Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is 'moonlight in front of my bed'. Marry a white rose and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark just over your heart."
Chang's novella is, among other things, a subtle examination of how gender dynamics shape relationships. Zhenbao's women are divided into polar extremes reminiscent of the 'Damned Whores and God's Police' of Anne Summers' book of that name. I liked how Chang cleverly tantalises the reader with a closer, more rounded examination of the female characters, only to have Zhenbao re-enter the scene and pull the character profile back into the male subjectivity where the characters are once again viewed through his judgement.