Knowing One’s Identity by Knowing Others’ Culture and Literature

The story of Balzac and The Little Seamstress is that at the height of Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of the Phoenix mountains, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down the precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin and, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor. However, it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. In addition, after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed.
The historical background of this novel was Mao's Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and continued until the dictator's death a decade later. It was intended to get rid of the educated class and directed specifically against the “Four Olds”: (1) old ideas, (2) old culture, (3) old customs and (4) old habits. The urban bourgeoisie were deemed enemies of the people, and so-called young intellectuals, youths who had attended secondary school, were sent to the country to be “re-educated” by the supposedly virtuous peasantry. Between 1968 and 1975, some 12 million youths were thus “rusticated.”
Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker who was re-educated during the Cultural Revolution. In 1984, he left China for France, where he has lived and worked ever since “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,” his first novel, was an overnight sensation when it was published in France in 2000, becoming an immediate bestseller and winning five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in nineteen countries, and it is soon to be made into a film. I think the author is able to write this award-wining novel because he is first, Chinese author and filmmaker. Then, has lived and worked in France since 1984. Finally and most importantly, was one of these young intellectual men. He spent the years between 1971 and 1974 in the mountains of Sichuan Province. Thus, turned his experiences into a poetic and affecting novel “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” which was first published in France a year ago, to huge acclaim.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is more like a fable with a theme of hope. Moreover, this novel is saying that if we keep ourselves only in our very own literature and culture, we will makes ignorant, impotent, and illiterate of who really we are, and the way for us to achieve a total understanding of ourselves is through learning and embracing the Western Ideologies. We know our identity by knowing others’, so to speak. Ironically, the seamstress is only enlightened of her identity by knowing the Western culture and literature.
To analyze and prove these statements, I used the thematic analysis (in a way of trying to bring forth the theme of the novel) and characterization (in a way of studying and analyzing the motivation and actions of the characters). Along with this analysis are some of the literary criticism approaches like post-colonialism, in general, and the theories of post-colonialism by Homi K. Bhaha.
Post-colonialism is an approach to literary analysis that concerns itself with literature in formerly colonized countries. This theory (1) looks at the canon and (2) rejects the universal Western canon, (3) points out colonization, (3) deals with hybridity, (4) depicts ethnic differences and perspectives, and (5) exposes “the other”. In this study, side-by-side with Bhabha’s theories, from the Post-colonialism, I would only use numbers three (3) and four (4). The term ‘post-colonial’ is used to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression.
Bhabha is a leading voice in postcolonial studies and is highly influenced by Western poststructuralist theorists, notably Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault. In Nation and Narration, he argues against the tendency to essentialize Third World countries into a homogenous identity. Instead, he claims that all sense of nationhood is narrativized. He has also made a major contribution to postcolonial studies by pointing out how there is always ambivalence (fluctuating choice whether to accept Western Ideologies or not) at the site of colonial dominance. In the Location of Culture, Bhabha uses concepts such as mimicry (tendency of the Third World countries to imitate the Westerns), interstice (the overlap and displacement of domains of difference), hybridity (the national identity being not pure but a mixture), and liminality (the in-betweeness, the middle of two conflicting and competing cultures). All of these are influenced by semiotics and Lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent.
I have three major objectives in this paper. First, I would present the bird’s-eye view of the novel, to prove that it is more like a fable. Then, a thematic analysis would be presented to extract only one theme from the novel and that is hope. Finally, I would have critical analysis using the post-colonial approach and the theories of Post-colonialsm by Homi K. Bhabha to prove that the novel is saying that if we keep ourselves only in our very own literature and culture, we will makes ignorant, impotent, and illiterate of who really we are, and the way for us to achieve a total understanding of ourselves is through learning and embracing the Western Ideologies.
“Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” is a worthwhile book, but in many ways an unsatisfactory one. Its problem is that the tale is more interesting than the telling. The author has elected to present his story as a fable rather than a realistic novel, a perfectly respectable choice except that the descriptions of life in this strangest of times and places are so fascinating that the reader longs for more. His decision to streamline his narrative, withholding all but the most significant details and his coy habit of giving his characters epithets rather than names, work against the very real power of his material. However, he delivers an important message: “Any system that fears knowledge and education, any system that closes the mind to moral and intellectual truth, is evil and will prove in the end to be impotent.” This message will be discussed further in the latter part of the paper. This is brought beautifully home to us when the narrator meets a doctor who has also read Balzac. Their brief conversation makes the narrator weep, and it takes him a moment to understand why “It was hearing the name of Fu Lei, Balzac's translator -- someone I had never even met. It is hard to imagine a more moving tribute to the gift bestowed by an intellectual on mankind.” Somewhere along the line, as mainstream Western culture “matured,” we seem to have determined that the fable is a lesser form of literature. Like children, we have outgrown “fairy tales” and, indeed, think of fables merely as kiddie lit. In other cultures, however, the fable remains a respected literary form, and in the hands of artists who understand that its simplicity can be provocatively deceptive, the fable can be both vital and compelling, even for contemporary Western audiences. The dictionary defines fable as “a narrative designed to enforce a useful truth.” Yet, in literature, we generally prefer either that our useful truths be sublimated in three-dimensional characters and realistic plot development, or, heavier in the truth department than useful. Our general disregard of the fable in literature is not only misplaced but can cause us to lose out on the chance to experience thrilling and occasionally truly great novel just like this one that is even award-wining.
The theme of this novel is hope. Nonetheless, hope is not always a positive force. If we think Sijie is going to tell us how the books give the boys hope, which in turn empowers their salvation, we find that his “useful truth” is more complicated and, accordingly, more challenging. The narrator begins to learn that hope can be not only cruel but also corrupting. When Four-Eyes receives a letter from his mother telling him that she has secured a job for him with a revolutionary journal if he can give the editor the lyrics to authentic mountain songs, Luo and the narrator strike a deal to get the lyrics from a hermetic miller in exchange for more books. Nevertheless, when they return with less-than-satisfactory material, Four-Eyes lashes out at them, “The change he had undergone since receiving his mother's letter was truly remarkable. A few days before it would have been unthinkable for him to snap at us like this. I hadn't suspected that a tiny glimmer of hope for the future could transform someone so utterly.”
Moreover, this novel is post-colonial and thus, can be analyzed using post-colonialism. This is how it goes. The novel’s narrator is the son of hard-working doctors. “Their crime”, he states blandly, “was that they were ‘stinking scientific authorities’ who enjoyed a modest reputation on a provincial scale.” His friend Luo, who shares his adventures in the countryside, is the son of someone altogether more dangerous – Mao’s personal dentist who actually had the nerve to tell his friends about his exalted patient. For this, the narrator says, “Here was an eminent dentist stating publicly that the Great Helmsman of the Revolution had been fitted with new teeth, just like that. It was beyond belief, an unpardonable, insane crime, worse than revealing a secret of national security.” Luo and the nameless narrator are packed off to the damp, remote mountain known as the Phoenix of the Sky, whose vistas will be recognizable to anyone familiar with the stylized landscape painting of pre-Revolutionary China. Their re-education is entrusted to a group of illiterate former opium farmers, whose wisdom is guaranteed by their peasant status. No books, except for scientific works and those by Mao and his cronies, are allowed in their village, nor any ideas that do not come from the ruling Communists, nor any Western music. This is the major concept presented in the novel that the government is trying to get rid of, going away from, eradicate and terminate the other cultures that have been mixed into their very own. For this reason, the government decided to “re-educate” the intellectuals. The irony of it all is that the one who is educating them are the ignorant in the peasantry. Obviously, the government is against the Western ideologies and culture. However, according to Bhabha, no one can really “essentialize” a nation once it is being mixed. Moreover, cultural identities cannot be ascribed to pre-given, irreducible, scripted, ahistorical cultural traits that define the conventions of ethnicity. Nor can “colonizer” and “colonized” be viewed as separate entities that define themselves independently. Instead, he suggests that the negotiation of cultural identity involves the continual interface and exchange of cultural performances that in turn produce a mutual and mutable recognition (or representation) of cultural difference because it is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. Thus, their national identity and their education, ideologies and knowledge are and will always be hybrid. With this, it is predictable that later or at the end of this novel, the government’s plan and purpose might not be fulfilled for it seems to be impossible.
Later, the two young men are given backbreaking and exhausting work in a coalmine. Meanwhile, one of their fellow laborers is the son of a well-known poet, and in his hut, he has hidden a suitcase filled with Western classics (the covers of Balzac, Dumas and Romain Rolland, and with knowledge of the world beyond their mountain comes hope for the future) because all these are forbidden and are not allowed to be read. After much nagging, bullying and barter, they manage to get their hands on one of these books, Balzac’s “Ursule Mirouët.” The effect is revolutionary in the true sense of the word – even in their home city, the only Western literature in the bookshops had been the complete works of the Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha. “Picture,” the narrator says, “a boy of 19, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology and propaganda all his life, falling headlong into a story of awakening desire, passion, impulsive action, love, of all the subjects that had, until then, been hidden from me.” As a means of restricting people from being educated with the Western Ideologies, the government has forbidden people from reading Western books and things to erase completely the West cultures. Indeed, what I have predicted from the start (that the plan or purpose of the government might not be fulfilled) are true because obviously, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Lou, have found and even read these Western classics by Balzac, Dumas and Romain Rolland. After reading, they seem to be saying that “why are these forbidden when in the first place, this is good, educating, and enlightening us with love, rights and many other things?” I believe that as they see and read the books, ambivalence started to creep into their minds if they would accept the truths they learned or not. This also is a picture of the liminal space where the two major characters are caught in the middle – they are now in the middle of the competing and conflicting Chinese and Western cultures.
Then, the two young men share their new-found riches with a local beauty, the daughter of an itinerant tailor. Luo will carry the books in his stinking hood to the nearby village to enlighten the little seamstress and thereby woo her. Like the narrator, she remains nameless and is referred to only as the “Little Seamstress”. She and Luo fall in love, and although the narrator acts as their mediator, he too lusts after the girl. The three young people’s discovery of sensual and romantic love – a subject studiously ignored by Communist propaganda – is intensified and justified by Balzac and by the suitcase’s other forbidden authors. So is their understanding of real, as opposed to ideologically correct, personal choice. The narrator’s own favorite book, for example, is Romain Rolland’s “Jean-Christophe.” “Without him,” he explains, “I would never have understood the splendor of taking free and independent action as an individual.” This part of the story is where we can see the interstice in the context of Bhabha’s theories. He defines interstice as the overlap and displacement of domains of difference. I can say that they are in the interstice because they not only accumulate the western culture in them but also applied it in their lives with the former life they have. They do not, of course, fully leave behind their Chinese culture. They still live it up yet mixed with the new truths and knowledge they gained from their reading with the seamstress. This is a clear picture that the Chinese and Western cultures are overlapping, competing and conflicting within the characters and dispositions of the two boys and the little seamstress. According to Bhabha, the Third World countries tend to imitate the Western Cultures – the theory on mimicry. This is true to this novel. After the narrator, Lou and the little seamstress have learned something from their reading of the Western books, they imitate. They imitate love relationships and even lovemaking, which these things have been forbidden in their culture and yet present in the other culture. They still have with them their original culture yet with the new culture learned. Nevertheless what dominates or what is mostly manifested in them is the strong and dominant culture, the West. This is proven in the activities they do and the things they talk about.
In the end, Luo and the narrator discover the true potency of imaginative literature and why it is hated and feared by those who wish to control others, for the Little Seamstress, transformed by her contact with Balzac, comes to understand her own sexual power and leaves the Phoenix of the Sky for the city. “Had we ourselves,” the narrator asks, “failed to grasp the essence of the novels we had read to her?” Thus, the seamstress who started ignorant now becomes more intelligent than the two boys who supposed to be educated. Because the two boys are restricted and limited from the truth and in learning Western culture and literature, what happens to them is really bad (evil) because they are left by the woman they both love. It really is not good being ignorant and all that. For the side of the little seamstress, she has gained a lot more knowledge and ideology that makes her see her rights, freedom and self-consciousness, which is very much impossible if she did not embrace and be influenced by the Western culture and literature. For this, her life turns better compared to the two boys.
Therefore, the novel brilliantly reflects Chinese upbringing and the more recent understanding of Western culture and literature. As a product of China’s re-education program from 1971-1974, the author knows first-hand the evils of repression. However, if he had written only from that viewpoint, “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” would not have been the richly complex fable that it is. The boys have learned bitter lessons by the end of this very small gem, lessons that they could have only learned through the loss of something very precious. Does their new knowledge, which led directly to that loss, leave them better off? Nevertheless, the plot really turns on Western books, not music. Though all books are forbidden, the boys manage to unearth some Western classics translated into Chinese, and fall in love with a landscape of reading they had not known existed. They also fall in love with the tailor's exquisite daughter, whom Luo seduces by reading Balzac to her. Dai Sijie, in his novel, shows himself out of touch with his country, rendering it through an excessively precious literary optic. Hopelessly out of place in the mountain’s peasant culture, both young men find clever ways to bend the rules made against Western influences. In one particularly funny moment at the beginning of the book, the protagonist entertains the locals with a violin piece by the forbidden Mozart, because Luo convinces the audience the piece is entitled Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao. When not doing hard labor, the two also entertain the people of the village with storytelling. One of their most ardent listeners is the little seamstress in the town, a lovely young countrywoman. The two teenagers come to learn that another intellectual young man, Four-Eyes, has a suitcase filled with forbidden books. They manage to borrow Four-Eyes’ copy of Balzac’s Ursule Mirouet, and find an enchanting new tale to use to attempt to woo the little seamstress. When Four-Eyes will not lend them any more books, they resolve to steal the suitcase. It seems that the author wanted to show how much impact culture could have on an isolated mountain village, and especially for the seamstress. It was a revelation of freedom, of self-consciousness. The little seamstress had seen more in Balzac learned that men could flirt with women, that it is natural. This is what she had never learned during her days of being instructed that life could be filled with many nice things. Obviously, the author is against this repression and stopping people from learning others’ culture and literature, especially the Western. For him, this lack of freedom and individualism is the essence of his generation. As to how a young woman could suddenly be changed through foreign literature – the part of the story most criticized by Chinese authorities and the main reason the story was not released in China – he has an apolitical answer, “The influence of literature is universal. The story was not only an ode to the literature we had read, but also simply to show that in a difficult situation the youth had a yearning to learn, to see new things and nice things.”
In this paper I have presented first, that this novel is more like a fable and no matter how “fable” it is, it gives entertainment and pleasure to the readers and audience as manifested in the numerous awards and marvelous remarks received worldwide. Then, to give a complete picture and to scrutinize both sides, its theme is hope, not only on the positive side but also on the negative side. Finally and most importantly, using Homi K. Bhabha’s theories of post-colonialism, I have seen that to restrict and keep ourselves from the Western cultures and literature are but an evil for it will just make us more and more illiterate and ignorant. More especially, I have proven that we can define ourselves, know our freedom, rights and achieve self-consciousness not only by our culture and literature but also by learning, understanding, accumulating and being influenced by the Western culture and literature because we are but a hybrid. Therefore, we know our identity by knowing others’ culture and literature.