The River-Merchant’s wife: A Letter (1)
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead (2)
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers (3)
You came by on bamboo stilts (4), playing horse (5),
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums (6)
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion (7).
At fourteen I married My Lord (8) you.
I never laughed, being bashful (9).
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to (10), a thousand times, I never looked back (11).
At fifteen I stopped scowling (12),
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever, and forever.
Why should I climb the look out? (13)
At sixteen you departed,
you went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies (14),
And you have been gone five months (15).
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead (16).
You dragged your feet when you went out (17).
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August (18)
Over the grass in the West garden,
They hurt me.
I grow older,
If you are coming down through the narrows (19) of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you,
As far as Cho-fu-Sa (19).
(1)The poem is in the form of a letter written by a Chinese girl to her
husband. The poem is a direct translation from a Chinese poem by
Pound.
(2)Being an imagist, Pound tells us that she is a little girl by referring
to her fringe- the style little girls cut their hair.
(3)Picking flowers. She is pictured as playing outdoors.
(4)Two long bars, especially of wood, with a projected piece on each
bar to support his feet as he is walking with them.
(5)Another game he is playing.
(6)They are probably in a garden or a place with plum trees.
(7)These two adjectives might refer to their feeling towards each other or
might describe their innocence since they are still very young.
(8)Note the way she addresses her husband. In Chinese culture male
members used to be highly merited.
(9)She does not even laugh because of being shy. She is still a child.
(10)Her husband had been calling her.
(11)Most probably because of being shy or her reluctance.
(12)Frowning and looking in anger.
(13)She is saying why she should look for a new husband.
(14)The river swirls downwards.
(15)She is now sixteen years and five months old.
(16)Monkeys are usually famous for chirping; that being a happy sound not
a sorrowful one. But as a result of being sad, she perceives their sound
as being gloomy.
(17)He might have been reluctant to leave.
(18)They are getting old.
(19)Narrow ways of the river Kiang.
(20)As if she is not willing to come any further or the river might show a
limitation.
ANALYSIS
‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter,’ following Pound’s tradition of being
open-ended, could be looked at from different critical approaches such as
feminism, psychoanalysis and Marxist critical theory.
The poem is an appropriate dish for feminists who search for traces showing
women’s low status in a patriarchic social system. In the first stanza, we
encounter a little boy and a girl pictured as playing children games, yet
it seems to be the beginning of their acquaintance as mere play mates. As
early as the first stanza we see that the boy enters the scene on bamboo
stilts geometrically higher than the girl and playing games related to
boys, ‘playing horse.’ The theme of men being superior to women seems to
start here.
In the second stanza, the girl’s play mate has turned into ‘My Lord you.’
They are married but she does not seem very pleased about the marriage: ‘I
never laughed.’ In Chinese traditions in the past most probably the wife is
obedient to her husband in a way modern women might regard as foolish. She
does not even look up, ‘Lowering my head, I looked at the wall’, or reply
back to her husband’s calls.
The third stanza begins with her getting used to the situation, ‘At fifteen I
stopped scowling.’ She is pictured as falling in love with her husband since
she should yield to the fact that he is her husband. As a result we witness
some romantic lines, ‘I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/ Forever and
forever, and forever.’ However, she quite unconsciously confesses why she
should look for another husband, ‘Why should Iclimb the look out?’ As if she
is not totally pleased with her marriage, yet this feeling has sunk down to her
unconscious. Personally, I believe that this troubled unconscious is crying all
through the rest of the poem in the sound of the monkeys, the phrases,
‘And I will come out to meet you/ As far as Cho-fu-Sa’ and ‘Why should I
climb the look out?’
Finally in the last stanza, boundaries the society set for her are incarnated
in the sentence, ‘And I will come out to meet you/ As far as Cho-fu-Sa.’
Though a very simple poem at first sight, it brings to screen a patriotic society
in which women have no choice in deciding who to marry, when married shall
regard their husbands as gods, and when they are left for any reason,they
should await their husbands and remain loyal to them no matter how long it
takes like a poor and desperate creature who has no other way.Interestingly
enough, she cannot even proceed any further than Cho-fu-Sa.
From the psychoanalytic point of view, the poem could be worked out in three
levels. Firstly the superego, ego and id, secondly the fear of abandonment,
low self esteem as the core issues together with the defenses of selective
memory, and denial as the third one. Tracing superego, ego and id in the
poem, the girl could stand for the ego which tries to make a balance between
her superego, the society, that makes her marry the boy, strongly believes
that she must be obedient to her husband and remains loyal to him although
he is away , and her id, which, although trodden heavily by superego, is
present in the poem in phrases like, ‘I never laughed’ ‘Why should I climb the
look out?’ and its struggle with the superego in, ‘monkeys make sorrowful noise’
and ‘As far as Cho-fu-Sa.’ In another reading of this phrase could also mean that
she does not wish to go any further than ‘Cho-fu-Sa’ which shows she is not
as poor and desperate as the first meaning of the phrase indicates. The phrase
follows the two themes of women as the ‘other’ race who are to be obedient
to their husbands ‘Forever and forever, and forever,’ and at the same time it
implies a resistance towards social prescriptions: the same troubled unconscious.
The growing moss might in a way represent the id since with her husband gone,
it has started growing. She can make the harmony between two extreme forces
only by coming to meet her husband at a definite place and no further than that.
The tone of sadness is observable throughout the poem since her husband has
already left. The fact that she is seeking her husband and the sadness that we
become aware of by her projecting her sorrow on the monkeys’ sad noise and the
yellow butterflies that are getting on with age could be said to result from the
fear of abandonment. Moreover, she never speaks highly of herself. At the same
time the presence of a godly figure, that of her husband, is obviously shown
in the second and third stanza. The fact leads us to the issue of low self esteem.
The poem starts with a good memory of their childhood, and we should bear in
mind that she never speaks about her bad memories. Her dissatisfaction with her
marriage in stanza two and three is only implied from the clues we are provided
with. Actually she is soothing herself by remembering only the good memories.
Her not saying directly that she does not love her husband is the result of
denying her true feelings. The former is the selective memory and the letter, denial.
Finally, the poem could be approached from a Marxist viewpoint from the level
of ideology and the laboring of the working class. The former can be traced
in the idea that the society creates for its members, and people have naturalized it
in a way that they are never aware of it. In a patriarchic society such as this,
women are given very limited freedom and understand themselves to be inferior
citizens who are to remain servants to their husbands perpetually; at the same
time they regard it as natural. This Marxism tends to be more a feminist-Marxist.
Regarding the latter, we are faced with a worker, a merchant, who has to leave his
young wife and everything behind to make money. Their goal would be that of
earning money to be able to live on, so they have to make some sacrifices, say
their own life.
‘The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter’ following the Poundian manner is open to
many interpretations like feminist, psychoanalyst and Marxist critical approaches.
A lonely, sorrowful, abandoned wife of only sixteen and a half who had no choice
in her husband and now can only cry the days away until he comes back. As the
result of all the repressions she has faced, there are some psychological disorders
that are quite observable and can be worked out. Finally considering Marxist
and feminist-Marxist we see that a laborer, who is not old enough, has to go and
make money and be the bread winner of the family instead of enjoying his youth.
Maryam Akbari