Virgin Widows

by Gu Hua, Hua Ku, Howard Goldblatt (Translation)

Things just keep getting better and better. ... Well, don't they? If you are a woman and you live in China, to answer this question you will need not only to look around you but to look back, to see not just how things are now but how they once were. China has traveled a long and torturous road since the collapse of the final imperial dynasty and the establishment of a modern republic early in this century; but have the nature of women's lives and their opportunities for just and equal treatment improved? Renowned writer Gu Hua confronts this issue in Virgin Widows, a poignant and disquieting novel that unfolds in alternating chapters the stories of two women whose lives, despite being separated by nearly a century, reveal a disturbing similarity. First published in China in 1985, it appears now in English for the first time.

Genres: China, Chinese Literature

173 pages, Cloth Binding

First published April 1, 1985

About the author

Gu Hua (June 20, 1942) (simplified Chinese: 古华; traditional Chinese: 古華; pinyin: Gǔ Huá), is a Chinese novelist born in the People's Republic of China. His birth name was Luo Hongyu (羅鴻玉). His writings concern rural life in the mountainous area of southern Hunan of which he was familiar. In 1988 he emigrated to Canada.

Hua is best known for his 1981 novel Furong zhen (A Small Town Called Hibiscus) which won the inaugural Mao Dun Literature Prize (1982), one of most prestigious literature prizes in China. It was the third top-selling novel to ever win that prize, selling over 850,000 copies. The novel was a rebuke of the Cultural Revolution. The novel was famously adapted to film in 1986 as Hibiscus Town, winning many awards including 'Best Film' of the 1987 Golden Rooster Awards, China's equivalent of the Academy Awards.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gu Hu's "Virgin Widows" is made up of two stories, told in alternating chapters. One concerns a "chaste woman" living at the end of the Imperial period, who was widowed when her child-husband died before he was old enough to consummate their relationship; the other concerns a woman living in the period just after the Cultural Revolution, who was likewise widowed, but in her case from a brutal and impotent husband. The first of these women faces physical isolation in the back court of a large mansion, where she is expected to live out her life in chastity and thereby win honor for the clan. The second faces social isolation as she confronts traditional prejudices that Communism has supposedly but not really eliminated. Both women are victims of a tradition that controls and suppresses women. Gu Hua's novel is a quick read, but the themes of the control and containment of female sexuality, male impotence, female love-sickness, etc. are so common in modern Chinese literature that they have grown stale. Even stale themes can be engaging if they are given a good dose of nuance or complexity. Unfortunately that was not the case here.

[Vikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book for my Eastern Lit class. Very good (I'm saving my words for the paper I'll have to write). :)

[Brian Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

This simple but effective book took just one day to read and I enjoyed every page. Hua Gu displays a warmth and understanding to his subject of the juxtaposed lives of two women who are seperated more by time than by circumstance. His style of alternating the chapters by character gave an almost theatrical flavor to his 2 stories making the tales unfold effortlessly and the shared similarities to shine through.