The Concubine 's Children By Denise Chang

A vampire is defined as “a prenatural being of a malignant nature, supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking the blood of sleeping persons;” (1). Whereas a parasite is defined as “a person who lives at the expense of another, or society in general;” (2). A sleeping persons can be interpreted as an innocent person, this is due to countless stories and lore depicting vampires stealing the blood of conscious innocent persons. Therefore, by doing harm to the innocent, a vampire is living at the expense of the humans whose blood it steals, making vampires a form of parasite. In The Good Lady Ducayne, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Ducayne is genetically a human, but her mind has become fixated on life. By exploiting technology, her moral and ethical standards change, allowing for her personal relationships to become meaningless in her search for an elongated life. She goes so far as to steal the blood of young girls; this act of stealing innocent girls blood at their own expense, makes her a special parasite, human vampire.

Slavery was common in the eighteenth century. Slaves were seen as property, as they were taken from their native land and forced into long hours of labor. The experience was traumatic for both black men and black women. They were physically and mentally abused by slave owners, dehumanized by the system, and ultimately denied their fundamental rights to a favorable American life. Although African men and women were both subjected to the same enslavement, men and women had different experiences in slavery based on their gender. A male perspective can be seen in, My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. A female perspective is shared in Harriet Jacobs’ narrative titled, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Upon reading both of the viewpoints provided, along with outside research, one can infer that women had it worse.

In contrast, during the era of The Story Yingying, the cultural norm for a woman was to be submissive, patient, and passive. Yingying upheld all of these cultural standards. After meeting Zhang for the first time Yingying showed no interest in him at all but overtime Yingying finally gave into Zhang and fell in love and they became engaged. Unfortunately, Zhang had to leave for a year to go take a civil service examination, but he promised her he would come back to her. She waited patiently and after a year, her fiancé returned but shortly after had to leave again to retake the examination. Again she waited patiently for his return, but he never came back. After waiting for years for her fiancé to return, she became eager to

There is significant evidence throughout both 'The Long Queen ' and The Map Women ' to indicate that suffering is a central element of female experience. Both of these poems are present in the 'Feminine Gospels ' written by Carol Ann Duffy. The collection of poetry is seen to be teachings of feminism aiming to provide the reader visions of female identity. One feature of this identity that is examined within these two poems is the theme of mental and physical suffering that women universally endure.

June wants to learn more about her mother and her culture with the added pressure of meeting Suyuan’s lost daughters in China. She starts to embrace the Chinese culture and is excited to eat a traditional Chinese meal, even though she does not get the chance (page 278). She also asks her father more about Suyuan’s time in China and the meaning of her name (page 280). When June finally meets her sisters, they murmur, “‘Mama, Mama’” (page 287). June finally feels a connection with her mother and with her Chinese background. Therefore, June’s character developed because of her mother’s passing.

In Six Records of a Floating Life, Shen Fu writes of his wife, “Yün came to this world a woman, but she had the feelings and abilities of a man.” (Fu: 89) Shen Fu and Yün considered each other to be intellectual equals. However, their relationship was still constrained within the gender roles set by their society. They lived during the Qing dynasty, which was a prosperous time for China (“The Manchus”: 266) but also a time when, as Professor Scarlett states in the lecture Daily Life in Imperial China, “the outside world was for men and the inside world was for women.” Shen Fu and Yün’s relationship was pushing the bounds of their culture, but they still kept (mostly) within the lines of social acceptability.

In the chapter “Waiting Between the Trees” Ying-ying’s past in China that she has kept from her daughter is revealed. When she was young she believed that she was too good for any man, however eventually she realized she had to settle and married an indecent man, despite her being extremely vain. She had given up herself for this man, only for him to

Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl allows Harriet Jacobs, speaking through the narrator, Linda Brent, to reveal her reasons for making public her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation. Although originally ignored by critics, who often dismissed Jacobs ' story as a fictional account of slavery, today it is reported as the first novel narrative by an ex-slave that reveals the unique brutalities inflicted on enslaved women. Gabby Reyes

Masculine-focused groups like fraternities or all-male schools are built off the idea of brotherly love. These groups exhibit certain qualities of personalities of their members that differ from the norm of social interactions and love. A possible way of explaining the differences between the love people are generally accustomed to and a love between males in the context of brotherhood groups is science. Barbara Fredrickson, author of Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become, describes love as a “positivity resonance”, using science to explain how it can be thought of as a connection between individuals through small, positive interactions. Susan Faludi, author of The Naked Citadel, illustrates a

In the novel A Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt, the readers are taken through a journey of one woman through her life’s highs and lows. Through the eyes of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, readers can truly understand the life of a working woman during this time period. Although life may not have been easy at times, Ning Lao shows the determination and passion she had for her family and for their lives to be better. The life of a working woman is never an easy life but adding in the social rules and opium addiction that effected each part of Ning Lao’s life made it much more difficult.

There is a massive difference between wanting to keep a tradition alive and being so avid about living in sameness that it becomes dangerous. Fluidity and being open to revision is necessary in order to survive in an ever changing environment. In The Naked Citadel, Susan Faludi recounts the events that occurred during the period that Shannon Faulkner fought for acceptance to the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. Throughout this time, the school community experienced utter chaos as a result of mixed emotions about letting a female gain the honor of becoming a cadet. In The Minds Eye, Oliver Sacks shows the necessity of change in order to survive by describing the changes that blind people made in their lives in order to become as successful as they are today. When an individual is forced to change, they are more likely to tackle the situation with an open mind as a method to make the best of that situation. In contrast, when change is not necessary, it can be much more difficult to adapt due to the presence of fear and insecurities.

Furthermore, instead of arranged marriages that only benefited the patriarchal head, intellectuals pushed for marriages based on love which would create happy and productive citizens . In addition, based on her mother’s experience, Bao Qin rejects arranged marriages and intends to only marry for love . After hearing of two concubines who drug Cousin Hu’s mother to feign adultery and gain the favour of her husband, Bao Qin is enraged by the historic “powerlessness of women, [the] barbarity of age-old customs, cloaked in tradition .” With the broad shift from tradition as well as her own personal experience, Bao Qin rejects traditional gender roles and seeks to create her own. Furthermore, as China became divided into separate spheres of influence and opened to international markets, British and American industrialization brought new ideas of opportunities for women, challenging established gender relations . With new economic opportunities and education, women could become self-reliant, broadening their choices and their role in society. Consequently, after disobeying her parents’ command to attend Mr. Liu’s funeral, Bao Qin was able to support herself by enrolling in a new teacher training department . Reducing patriarchal control, industrialization allowed children to head to schools and factories, no longer needing to rely on their parents for education and work . As a result, while foreign

In this time in China, the role that women and men had were very different from each other. Women were expected to be quite, obedient, and respectful. While men were the provider, the intellectual and the decision maker in the family. In Shen Fu and his wife, Yun marriage it started out like the typical relationship in eightieth century China, each one fulfilling the roles that society had in place for them. But as they became to know each other more, Shen Fu saw Yun real personality and wanted someone to experience life, so he started to encourage her to be herself and told her she didn’t have to live up to this gender stereotypes for women. They both were always

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

Mao’s Cultural Revolution was an attempt to create a new culture for China. Through education reforms and readjustments, Mao hoped to create a new generation of Chinese people - a generation of mindless Communists. By eliminating intellectuals via the Down to the Countryside movement, Mao hoped to eliminate elements of traditional Chinese culture and create a new form Chinese culture. He knew that dumbing down the masses would give him more power so his regime would be more stable. This dramatic reform affected youth especially as they were targeted by Mao’s propaganda and influence. Drawing from his experiences as an Educated Youth who was sent down to the countryside Down to the Countryside movement, Ah Cheng wrote The King of