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Tale Of The Ungrateful Lover

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Tale Of The Ungrateful Lover
In Chinese society, women were always treated secondary as they were deprived of the respect and social status they deserved. The role that women had been succumbed to was that of kinship and thus were expected to look after their male counterparts. These roles were varied -daughters, wives, mothers but in each scenario women had to fulfil the needs and desires of their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. This patriarchal society had left women with no power in society. With a confined social position and many restrictions on actions, women in China were supposed to behave in a certain way. In the story of Widow Wu, the emperor of heaven called Miss Wu ‘a lowly ignorant village woman’ as she refused to marry another man (Hong Mais Stories, …show more content…
“When a beautiful pearl is cast down on the road all the mighty and powerful contend for it” (The Tale of the Ungrateful Lover, in Chen, 15). Men in the Chinese society saw women as a symbol of beauty and nothing more. In ‘The Tale of the Ungrateful Lover’, a talented girl like Du Shiniang who was a brilliant dancer, musician and singer got no respect for her talents. Once Du Shiniang was outside the gay quarter, no one appreciated her art but her good looks. Besides, men were unfaithful to their women and abandoned them time and again. Scholar Li, for instance, had no respect for the bond and trust courtesan Du shared with him (The Tale of the Ungrateful Lover, in Chen, 18). The courtesan who arranged more than 2/3rds of the money required for her freedom and fought with her mother for Scholar Li, was ultimately betrayed by him. She even threw away invaluable articles that she had stored to help her man in the future as Scholar Li succumbed to money and safety (The Tale of the Ungrateful Lover, in Chen, 17). Even the merchant didn’t value the love of the courtesan for Scholar Li and destroyed it by buying her for his personal pleasure. Likewise, in the story ‘Wang Balang’s Wife’, Wang Balang treated his wife of 20 years very badly for his affair with a prostitute. He displayed no sense of responsibility
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