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摘要：Confucianism, which for long has influenced and governed the thoughts and behaviors of Chinese people, influenced Pearl S. Buck greatly and found its way into her major Chinese works. By analyzing her attitude towards Confucianism in her masterpiece, The Good Earth, we can see she criticize its dregs and inherits its gists as well. The dregs of Confucianism—patriarchy, which resulted in male-dominance and womens inferiority to men. Its embodiment in The Good Earth includes: female infanticide was a deprivation of right to life, foot-binding was a deprivation of the right to move about, arranged marriage was a deprivation of the right to the pursuit of happiness.However, Pearl Buck not only noticed the dregs of Confucianism, she sang high praise of its essence, such as “unity of man and nature”, “loving others”, “respecting teachers and education”. From her critical inheritance to Confucianism, we can see her attitude to different cultures—taking the essence and discarding the dregs. Pearl Buck set us a good example for nowadays cultural construction.
关键词：The Good Earth; Confucianism; criticism ; inheritance
中图分类号：H31文献标识码：A文章编号：1009-0118（2012）11-0329-06
In 1938, Pearl Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces” (Halistorm, 1938). However, Pearl and her works were neglected and misunderstood by most of reviewers from home and abroad for a very long time. Nowadays, the cultural intact has become an inevitable trend of the world cultural development. It is in the particular cultural context that we have rediscovered Pearl Buck who devoted her entire life to the Sino-American cultural communication and who held dear the ideal of “All under heaven are one”. When we come to give a new assessment of Pearl Buck and her works, we are sure to discover the unique and conspicuous significance Pearl Buck and her works demonstrated.
The paper decides to conduct a survey concerning Pearl Bucks viewpoints on Confucianism in The Good Earth, to discover how Pearl Buck interpreted Confucianism in a scientific way .
1.Pearl Bucks Criticism to Confucianism
1.1 Deprivation of Right to Life— Female Infanticide
In The Good Earth, when Wang Lungs third child was born to be a girl, he regarded it as an evil omen. During the famine, when Wang Lung and his family didnt have food to allay their hunger, another girl was born, O-lan strangled the girl baby to death brutally right after her birth to reduce the burden of the family. Wang Lung said nothing. He wrapped the dead baby with a broken mat, then put it down the hollow side of an old grave. In Chinese tradition, daughters were born and raised for other families because they would leave her fathers home and serve her husbands household when she grew up. The lives of girls were so insignificant to the family that they were sacrificed either by killing, deserting or selling when the family was in need. O-lan was sold to a great house at ten; Wang Lung also thought about selling his daughter so that he could afford to return to his land.
The old custom of favoring boys over girls deprived the equality between men and women from the very beginning of life. Women were destined to be subordinate on birth. From their childhood, women constantly suffered from negligence, mistreatment and humiliation. Women had no right of education, no right of finding an occupation, even they become adult, they still had no chance to be independent.So even if they are lucky enough to survive, their tragedy is predestined.
1.2 Deprivation of Right of freedom— Foot-Binding
Foot binding was a common phenomenon in old China. The binding process, which had to be begun at the age of one to three, was extremely painful and ended in permanent crippling. So behind the story of every pair of small feet, there was a jar full of tears. The procedure, usually carried out by the mother, lasted ten to fifteen years, until the foot reduced to three inches in length from heel to toe and the only purpose of such unbearable suffering was nothing but to cater for the mans taste of beauty and the reward of it was the appreciation of men and the pride and self-confidence she got from the praise of men. Women easily became mens plaything with bound feet.
Such a product of brutality, of womens tears and suffering, turned out to be greatly admired, played with, and even worshiped by the men. It became the most erotic organ of the female body and the highest sophistication of the Chinese sensual imagination. Having such a pair of small bound feet, with its little faltering dance-like steps, was an agreed beauty a woman could possess, and sometimes mens only standard in terms of beauty to choose a wife. Men could simply not marry a woman with natural unbound feet.
Foot-binding played an important role in The Good Earth. When Wang Long saw O-lan for the first time, he was seized with an instants disappointment because her feet were not bound. He married O-lan simply because he was a poor farmer, he needed a wife who could tend the house and bear children and work in the field. Later, when he became wealthier, he became increasingly disgusted with O-lans big feet and was infatuated with Lotus. When Lotus swayed upon her little feet, Wang Lung felt there was nothing so wonderful for beauty in the world. Wang Lungs attitude enforced O-lan to bind her daughters feet. When Wang Lung asked the reason for marks of tears on her cheeks, his young daughter says, “Because my mother binds a cloth about my feet more tightly every day and I cannot sleep at night”. “Now I have not heard you weep” he said, wondering “No”. She said simply, “and my mother said I was not to weep aloud because you are too kind and weak for pain and you might say to leave me as I am, and then my husband would not love me even as you do not love her.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:162) The practice of foot-binding symbolized many things to the Chinese men. The possession of Lotus by Wang Lung caused the villagers to respect him more. It was a sign that he was rich enough to afford his joys and he didnt need to worry where his next meal was from. It also symbolized the social position and power of a man and his house had in the local areas. To Wang Lung, it symbolized, among other things, the aristocracy from which he was excluded. Thus, as Wang Lung became wealthier, foot-binding took on more significance to him. Wang Lung represented the Chineses long tradition of considering small feet to be associated with beauty, elegance and royalty．
1.3 Deprivation of the Right to the Pursuit of happiness—Arranged Marriage
Arranged Marriage, presided over by the parents, was a traditional marital concept in China. In the late 19th China, romantic love was not part of what husband and a wife expected in a marriage. Marriage was a means of extending the patriarchal lineage.
This was clearly illustrated in The Good Earth. A year or so before Wang Lungs marriage, his father requested a slave from the House of Hwang for his son to marry．As an impoverished Chinese peasant, Wang Lungs father strictly followed the principle of utility when selecting O-lan. His request was for “not a slave too young, and above all, not a pretty one. We must have a woman who will tend the house and bear children as she works in the fields．”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:10) Wang Lung at first couldnt accept such a pre-arranged marriage. But his father said: “ there remain only slaves to be had for the poor.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:7) This was the common practice for nineteenth century China. The marriage process was taken care of by the parents, who had absolute power in choosing a spouse for their children. The children had no choice in this matter but to fulfill their wishes. In a word, marriage was a family matter, not something personal.
Wang Lung and O-lan lived through hard times of poverty and famine and became prosperous at last. O-lan appeared to be stronger and more competent than Wang Lung in front of the crises. When a drought resulted in a poor harvest and they suffered from their envious, starving neighbors looting of the little food, Wang Lung could do nothing but sighed in despair, it was O-lan who resolutely stopped the looting and killed the ox to feed the family. When people from the city came to buy their land at an extremely low price, although Wang Lung desperately wanted it, he could speak nothing except stood shaking and wept, it was O-lan who walked out of the house and spoke decisively with her calm but firm voice to the buyers that they would not sell the land. After the family fled from the natural disasters to Nanking,when the family was threatened to be starved to death, again it was O-lan who skillfully erected a tent as their home and taught the children and the old how to beg to make the living continue. In a word, her resourcefulness was what responsible for the familys survival and prosperity. To a certain extent, her contribution to the family was greater than Wang Lung. However, she could not escape the destiny of being deserted. She devoted everything she had to Wang Lung, who only considered her as a helper in the field, a servant in the family and an instrument of bearing children. Despite the miseries and difficulties they went through in their life together, they did not develop any tender feeling or romance between them. When O-lan was seriously ill since her belly was as big as if with a child, he saw her “only as he saw the tables or his chair, never even so keenly as he might see one of the oxen drooping its head or a pig that would not eat.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:182) It was such a pity that a wife was less important than a domestic animal.
The fate of O-lan was the epitome of thousands of women in ancient China who were the victims of arranged marriage based on Confucianism. Under the background of the deep-rooted masculine consciousness, no matter how hard they struggled or how much they sacrificed, they werent able to escape from the oppression or from the tragic fate as their predestination.
2 The Reason for Pearl Bucks Criticism to Confucianism
2.1 Pearl Bucks Life Experience in Two Worlds
When Pearl Buck was young, she worked as a volunteer for the Door of Hope, a shelter for Chinese slave girls and prostitutes who had suffered sexual enslavements, ill-treatment and the depreciation on their human dignity. All that she saw and heard from those women has increased her hatred of patriarchy culture. Later, Pearl Buck was again assigned to work in a shelter for destitute white women. For the first time in her life, Pearl Buck saw the women of her own race living in poverty and disease.She was told a lot of tragic stories about women in a male-determined society.
When it was the time for a higher education, Pearl Bucks mother chose Randolph-Macon Womans College for her, whose routines were intended to encourage womens intelligence, talent and independence, in a word, to encourage the development of women who could take on increasing responsibilities. In this college, women were repeatedly reminded that their intelligence was at least as equal as men. Moreover, this college kept itself connected with the larger world of national politics. She gradually learned that women could be independent and capable of remaking their fate through their own choices and design, rather than lead a miserable life like her mother as an appendage of men. Furthermore, it helped lighten the new understanding in her mind about the status and roles that women could strive for in both family and society, which encouraged her to free from, in a positive way, the oppression and restriction brought on women by the patriarchy culture. After he really got gold from the rich man, he hugged the gold to his bosom and to himself he said over and over, “We go back to the land…tomorrow we go back to the land.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:81) In fact, he could live a decent life in the city with the money he got as others expected. However, he could not live only with money but without land. Land was an integral part of human beings life. Possessing and losing of the land would indicate a familys flourish and declination. As it was said by Wang Lung when he knew Hwang began to sell their land, “Sell their land!” repeated Wang Lung, convinced. “Then indeed are they growing poor. Land is ones flesh and blood.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:32)
To Wang Lung, the land represents the reviving force and the spiritual rejuvenation to go ahead. He instinctively had the sense that earth was the place where human beings rose from and would finally return to by the end of his life. O-lan told Wang Lung on her deathbed, “The land will be there after me,”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:276) After her death,Wang Lung stood by the peach tree she had planted on the night of her marriage, saying, “O-lan, you are the earth.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:283) From which we can see O-lan represents the spiritual link to the land. When it came time for him to die, he went back to the “earth house” where he was born and had his coffin delivered to the earth house. He was content, thinking that his good coffin that was there and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.
Wang Lung and O-lan are so steadfast and perseverant in front of adversities that they support their old father and family to go through all the hard times on their land. The indomitable struggling spirit of Chinese peasants they display has become a force for living that people from different races and countries go after.
3.2 “Loving others” in The Good Earth
The basic requirement for a man to achieve Jen is Xiao or filial piety, which can be seen from the words, “Filial good for the first one hundred.” (百善孝为先) Xiao lies in putting the needs of parents and other family elders over self, spouse and children. The children are expected to fulfill their parents wishes whether they are reasonable or not. Influenced by Confucian ideas, Wang Lung strictly obeyed it and respected his father and the elderly relatives. He gave his father not only respect and obedience but also loving care. At home he was in the way of practicing the Confucian principles of dealing with family members and at abroad he carried out the other Confucian principles of dealing with people outside the family. Wang Lung was filial to his father at anytime anyplace. Before the marriage he was dutiful to his old father and took good care of him. Every morning he boiled water and served his father with breakfast in time. In terms of his marriage, though he wanted to have a beautiful wife very much, he obeyed his father and married ugly O-lan chosen by his father. He obeyed his father even in his absence. For example, before his marriage he went to the barber, who suggested that he take off the braid which was out of date for young men at that time, he said that he couldnt do it without asking his father first. When they were on their way to the south, he gave the child to O-lan and lifted his father to his back and carried him, though he ate nothing for a few days.
In their hardships of the famine, they were forced to beg. All day long the old man sat the roadside obediently enough, but he did not beg. Wang Lungs father was so sure that his son and grandsons would look after him that he endured the hardships of the famine with smile. His trust was well proved. Wang Lung gave him the first share of whatever food they got, even if he must deprive his own children.
Chinese not only has the traditional convention of “respecting the aged” but also “taking care of the young”, Pearl Buck sympathetically described the relationship between Wang Lung and his retarded daughter. The tender relationship with his “poor fool” helped to keep Wang Lung sane and also brought a soft side out of him.
Wang Lung loved and cared for her in a way that he did not care for anyone else in his entire family. When Wang Lungs sons forgot the poor fool at her stoop in the outer courts, Wang Lung blew his top. He got a bamboo stick to beat them with and did so till they were both bleeding. He then yelled at them for forgetting about their sister who was not as privileged as they. When Lotus abused the poor fool as a filthy child, he lost his temper to Lotus for the first time and stayed away from Lotus for two days.
Wang Lung not only showed love to his father and children but also people around him. He hesitated to give the poor slave girl, Pear Blossom, to his vicious soldier cousin who terrified her so he took her as his second concubine; he also felt brotherly affection for his honest neighbor, Ching, a poor farmer like him. In the worst days of the famine, Ching shared his last remaining food with Wang for the pregnant O-lan. When Wang returned from the south with his new wealth, Ching was barely alive. His affection for his selfless neighbor Ching was so deep that he was ready to bury the man when Ching died because he felt that he had lost his only true friend. 3.3 Respecting Education in The Good Earth
The Imperial Examinations System has played an important role in the Chinese history. It was intended to ensure that appointment as a government official was based on merit rather than on heredity. Theoretically, any male adult in China, regardless of his economic or social status, could become a high-ranking government official by passing The Imperial Examination. Though only a small part of those who took the examinations passed them and received titles, the hope of the eventual success and the chance of change one s fate motivated a lot of people to get involved with reading. Through thousands of years development, during the Ming and Qing dynasty，it evolved into an inflexible and rigid system, which severely bound up the thoughts of Chinese intellectuals and brought the negative effect to Chinas development and finally was abolished in 1905.The imperial examination system had a far-reaching influence on Chinese peoples education conception. As can be see from the words “to be a scholar is to be the top of society”(万般皆下品，唯有读书高) and “ the house of gold is found in my books.” (书中自有黄金屋)
In The Good Earth, we will find that the Chinese people value knowledge highly. No matter how wealthy a man is, he can be humiliated if he can not read and write, while other people, lowly as they are, will not hesitate to do the humiliating.
Wang Lung greatly increased his lands and yet often felt shame for his illiteracy in a grain shop. He must say humbly to the haughty dealers in the town, “Sir, and will you read it for me, for Im too stupid.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:168) And it was a shame to him that when he must set his name to the contract, even a clerk, lifted his eyebrows with contempt and then brushed hastily the character of Wang Lungs name; and greatest shame fell upon him when the man called out for a joke. “Is it the dragon character Lung or the deaf character Lung, or what?” Wang Lung must answer humbly, “Let it be what you will, for I am too ignorant to know my own name.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:167) Then all the people in the room burst into laughter. Because of his shame and wealth, he sent his sons to a worthy old teacher, his heart burst with pride when he said to a passing neighbor, “this day I am back from my sons school.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:176) There was also pride when he saw his eldest son reading aloud the letters upon a paper and putting the brush and ink to paper and writing that which may be read by others. Wang Lungs taking pride in his sons literacy is not ridiculous but natural and made him alive in the novel. At the same time, we can also find Wang Lungs strong desire for knowledge and his strong passion to live a rich and decent life.
4.The Reasons for Pearl Bucks Inheritance to Confucianism
4.1 Her Early Experience in China
Literature has inseparable relations with culture. That is to say, different cultural background would produce different literary work. This is particular true for Pearl Buck.
Like other Chinese child, Pearl Buck received private school education and her first language was Chinese. When she was a child, she was accompanied by Wang Amah, a traditional Chinese woman and her Chinese teacher Mr. Kung who was in favor of Confucianism. Under the care of Wang Amah, little Pearl Buck had a chance to spend hours wandering in streets, observing the life of ordinary people. Wang Amah also told her Buddhist and Daoist stories and took Pearl Buck to worship in a local temple. Mr. Kung imbued girl Pearl Confucian ethics in the process of teaching Chinese reading and writings. Young Pearl was captivated with Chinese traditional culture. In her eyes, this ancient civilized country, with its self-sufficient economy and patriarchal system, was stable and shining with wisdom. As she said in My Several Worlds: “Chinese people are clever, seasoned and innocent when they are born. Even talking with an old illiterate farmer, you will get philosophy. I miss China very much when I cant find the philosophy in my own country. The American people are full of ideas, beliefs and prejudices except philosophy. Perhaps these things only belong to the people with thousands of years of cultural history.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1954:163) This kind of judgment is exquisite, profound and thought-provoking. Pearl Buck loved the spirit of Chinese culture, and she adored Confucius and Confucianism. During the Literary Revolution, many Chinese writers wildly put their efforts to repudiate all Confucian tradition. She felt that “it will be a long time...before the balance is restored and Chinese will again realize how much they owe to Confucius—their greatest figure.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1954:200) From those words, we can feel her strong vindication for Confucius.
From the above analysis, we can see how greatly the Chinese experience influenced her and how deeply Confucianism branded in Pearl Buck.
4.2 Pearl Bucks Love for Her Daughter
As a woman, Pearl Buck preferred her identity as a common mother to her career success. The day before she left for Europe for the Nobel ceremonies, Pearl Buck called her sister Grace and said that she would rather be having a baby than going to Sweden. Unfortunately she had only one retarded girl—Carol. As a writer, she reached the peak of her career; however, as a mother, she suffered something others couldnt imagine. After many years of hiding Carols mental retardation, she revealed her story to the world in her book The Child Who Never Grew. She overcame her fear of telling Carols story, because she wanted her childs life to be of use to people with the same experience and make Carols life, through its limited existence, count.
To release the pain, the Bucks determined themselves to adopt a three-month-old girl, who was the first that Pearl would adopt over the next two decades. Among the children she adopted, several were of mixed race. In that case, Pearl Buck put great effort on the most effective and humane training of the mentally handicapped child and the special educational needs of mixed-race children. Over a period of many years, she has taken a very active role in the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey. This famous institution was originally founded in 1888 for the purpose of caring for and treating mental retardation and for training people to work with the retarded. Valuable research into the causes and treatment of this illness is also done at the Training School.
An old Chinese saying can most reflect charity drive, “Loving my own child, and love all the children in the world” Pearl Buck is not only a writer, but a humanist. Her literary works, her social activities, and her life experiences, all demonstrate her as a real humanitarian.
5.Conclusion
In The Good Earth, Pearl Buck employed O-lan, who tasted the bitterness resulted from the tedious doctrines of Confucianism, to fight against the suppressing and outdated norms and morality; she employed Wang Lung, a hard-working Chinese farmer, with the high qualities of diligence, persistence, simplicity and kindness, to demonstrate the merits of Confucianism. What should be emphasized is that she pointed out weakness and strength of a culture not to prove the inevitability of cultural conflicts and clashes, but to present the cultural diversities and beauty inherent in each culture, and to call on the East and the West to seek for communication, to deepen the mutual understanding, to tolerate the cultural diversities and to respect and learn from each other, and, in a word, to try ones best for cultural exchanges and confluence to make common improvement and progress.
As an active spokesperson for equal rights, she castigated and opposed the dregs of Confucianism for its deprivation of the equality between men and women; as an activist for peace and the founder of international agencies, she extolled and demonstrated the essence of Confucianism for its universal love. Her criticism and inheritance to Confucianism can best serve her lifelong pursuit—to bridge the gap between the East and the West. This is exactly what we should learn from her—taking the essence and discarding the dregs of another culture. Nowadays, the issue of how to promote and attain mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence has become more and more urgent and even demanding to the future of our world. From Pearl Bucks life story, from her criticism and inheritance towards Confucianism, people at least need to learn that in a world in which many political crisis, conflicts and wars resulting from cultural or religious differences, every one or every nation should try to learn to appreciate the virtues of others and self-examine the shortcomings of ones own instead of being judgmental about others. We should absorb essence from other cultures and at the same time keep our own. In a word, to try ones best for cultural exchanges and confluence and at last the attainment of the goal of “All under heaven are one.”
参考文献：
［1］Halistrom, Per. Presentation Speech of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1938.
［2］Peter Conn,Pearl S. Buck:A Cultural Biography.New York:Cambridge University Press,1966.
［3］Peter Conn,Pearl Buck and Education: An Anthology of Her writings.The Pearl S.Buck Foundation,Inc,1992.
［4］ Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth.London:Oxford University Press,1982.
［5］ Pearl S.Buck. My Several Worlds. New York:The John Day Company,1954.
［6］ Pearl S.Buck.The Child Who Never Grew.N.P:Woodbine House,1992.
［7］郭英剑.赛珍珠评论集［M］.桂林:漓江出版社,1999.
［8］姚君伟.近年中国赛珍珠研究回眸［J］.中国比较文学,2001,(4):30-39.
［9］姚君伟.赛珍珠《我的中国世界》的多重价值［J］.国外文学,1997,(2):68-72.
［10］姚君伟.文化相对主义:赛珍珠的中西文化观［M］.南京:东南大学出版社,2001.
［11］朱世达.当代美国文化［M］.北京:社会科学文献出版社，2001.
关键词：The Good Earth; Confucianism; criticism ; inheritance
中图分类号：H31文献标识码：A文章编号：1009-0118（2012）11-0329-06
In 1938, Pearl Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces” (Halistorm, 1938). However, Pearl and her works were neglected and misunderstood by most of reviewers from home and abroad for a very long time. Nowadays, the cultural intact has become an inevitable trend of the world cultural development. It is in the particular cultural context that we have rediscovered Pearl Buck who devoted her entire life to the Sino-American cultural communication and who held dear the ideal of “All under heaven are one”. When we come to give a new assessment of Pearl Buck and her works, we are sure to discover the unique and conspicuous significance Pearl Buck and her works demonstrated.
The paper decides to conduct a survey concerning Pearl Bucks viewpoints on Confucianism in The Good Earth, to discover how Pearl Buck interpreted Confucianism in a scientific way .
1.Pearl Bucks Criticism to Confucianism
1.1 Deprivation of Right to Life— Female Infanticide
In The Good Earth, when Wang Lungs third child was born to be a girl, he regarded it as an evil omen. During the famine, when Wang Lung and his family didnt have food to allay their hunger, another girl was born, O-lan strangled the girl baby to death brutally right after her birth to reduce the burden of the family. Wang Lung said nothing. He wrapped the dead baby with a broken mat, then put it down the hollow side of an old grave. In Chinese tradition, daughters were born and raised for other families because they would leave her fathers home and serve her husbands household when she grew up. The lives of girls were so insignificant to the family that they were sacrificed either by killing, deserting or selling when the family was in need. O-lan was sold to a great house at ten; Wang Lung also thought about selling his daughter so that he could afford to return to his land.
The old custom of favoring boys over girls deprived the equality between men and women from the very beginning of life. Women were destined to be subordinate on birth. From their childhood, women constantly suffered from negligence, mistreatment and humiliation. Women had no right of education, no right of finding an occupation, even they become adult, they still had no chance to be independent.So even if they are lucky enough to survive, their tragedy is predestined.
1.2 Deprivation of Right of freedom— Foot-Binding
Foot binding was a common phenomenon in old China. The binding process, which had to be begun at the age of one to three, was extremely painful and ended in permanent crippling. So behind the story of every pair of small feet, there was a jar full of tears. The procedure, usually carried out by the mother, lasted ten to fifteen years, until the foot reduced to three inches in length from heel to toe and the only purpose of such unbearable suffering was nothing but to cater for the mans taste of beauty and the reward of it was the appreciation of men and the pride and self-confidence she got from the praise of men. Women easily became mens plaything with bound feet.
Such a product of brutality, of womens tears and suffering, turned out to be greatly admired, played with, and even worshiped by the men. It became the most erotic organ of the female body and the highest sophistication of the Chinese sensual imagination. Having such a pair of small bound feet, with its little faltering dance-like steps, was an agreed beauty a woman could possess, and sometimes mens only standard in terms of beauty to choose a wife. Men could simply not marry a woman with natural unbound feet.
Foot-binding played an important role in The Good Earth. When Wang Long saw O-lan for the first time, he was seized with an instants disappointment because her feet were not bound. He married O-lan simply because he was a poor farmer, he needed a wife who could tend the house and bear children and work in the field. Later, when he became wealthier, he became increasingly disgusted with O-lans big feet and was infatuated with Lotus. When Lotus swayed upon her little feet, Wang Lung felt there was nothing so wonderful for beauty in the world. Wang Lungs attitude enforced O-lan to bind her daughters feet. When Wang Lung asked the reason for marks of tears on her cheeks, his young daughter says, “Because my mother binds a cloth about my feet more tightly every day and I cannot sleep at night”. “Now I have not heard you weep” he said, wondering “No”. She said simply, “and my mother said I was not to weep aloud because you are too kind and weak for pain and you might say to leave me as I am, and then my husband would not love me even as you do not love her.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:162) The practice of foot-binding symbolized many things to the Chinese men. The possession of Lotus by Wang Lung caused the villagers to respect him more. It was a sign that he was rich enough to afford his joys and he didnt need to worry where his next meal was from. It also symbolized the social position and power of a man and his house had in the local areas. To Wang Lung, it symbolized, among other things, the aristocracy from which he was excluded. Thus, as Wang Lung became wealthier, foot-binding took on more significance to him. Wang Lung represented the Chineses long tradition of considering small feet to be associated with beauty, elegance and royalty．
1.3 Deprivation of the Right to the Pursuit of happiness—Arranged Marriage
Arranged Marriage, presided over by the parents, was a traditional marital concept in China. In the late 19th China, romantic love was not part of what husband and a wife expected in a marriage. Marriage was a means of extending the patriarchal lineage.
This was clearly illustrated in The Good Earth. A year or so before Wang Lungs marriage, his father requested a slave from the House of Hwang for his son to marry．As an impoverished Chinese peasant, Wang Lungs father strictly followed the principle of utility when selecting O-lan. His request was for “not a slave too young, and above all, not a pretty one. We must have a woman who will tend the house and bear children as she works in the fields．”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:10) Wang Lung at first couldnt accept such a pre-arranged marriage. But his father said: “ there remain only slaves to be had for the poor.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:7) This was the common practice for nineteenth century China. The marriage process was taken care of by the parents, who had absolute power in choosing a spouse for their children. The children had no choice in this matter but to fulfill their wishes. In a word, marriage was a family matter, not something personal.
Wang Lung and O-lan lived through hard times of poverty and famine and became prosperous at last. O-lan appeared to be stronger and more competent than Wang Lung in front of the crises. When a drought resulted in a poor harvest and they suffered from their envious, starving neighbors looting of the little food, Wang Lung could do nothing but sighed in despair, it was O-lan who resolutely stopped the looting and killed the ox to feed the family. When people from the city came to buy their land at an extremely low price, although Wang Lung desperately wanted it, he could speak nothing except stood shaking and wept, it was O-lan who walked out of the house and spoke decisively with her calm but firm voice to the buyers that they would not sell the land. After the family fled from the natural disasters to Nanking,when the family was threatened to be starved to death, again it was O-lan who skillfully erected a tent as their home and taught the children and the old how to beg to make the living continue. In a word, her resourcefulness was what responsible for the familys survival and prosperity. To a certain extent, her contribution to the family was greater than Wang Lung. However, she could not escape the destiny of being deserted. She devoted everything she had to Wang Lung, who only considered her as a helper in the field, a servant in the family and an instrument of bearing children. Despite the miseries and difficulties they went through in their life together, they did not develop any tender feeling or romance between them. When O-lan was seriously ill since her belly was as big as if with a child, he saw her “only as he saw the tables or his chair, never even so keenly as he might see one of the oxen drooping its head or a pig that would not eat.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:182) It was such a pity that a wife was less important than a domestic animal.
The fate of O-lan was the epitome of thousands of women in ancient China who were the victims of arranged marriage based on Confucianism. Under the background of the deep-rooted masculine consciousness, no matter how hard they struggled or how much they sacrificed, they werent able to escape from the oppression or from the tragic fate as their predestination.
2 The Reason for Pearl Bucks Criticism to Confucianism
2.1 Pearl Bucks Life Experience in Two Worlds
When Pearl Buck was young, she worked as a volunteer for the Door of Hope, a shelter for Chinese slave girls and prostitutes who had suffered sexual enslavements, ill-treatment and the depreciation on their human dignity. All that she saw and heard from those women has increased her hatred of patriarchy culture. Later, Pearl Buck was again assigned to work in a shelter for destitute white women. For the first time in her life, Pearl Buck saw the women of her own race living in poverty and disease.She was told a lot of tragic stories about women in a male-determined society.
When it was the time for a higher education, Pearl Bucks mother chose Randolph-Macon Womans College for her, whose routines were intended to encourage womens intelligence, talent and independence, in a word, to encourage the development of women who could take on increasing responsibilities. In this college, women were repeatedly reminded that their intelligence was at least as equal as men. Moreover, this college kept itself connected with the larger world of national politics. She gradually learned that women could be independent and capable of remaking their fate through their own choices and design, rather than lead a miserable life like her mother as an appendage of men. Furthermore, it helped lighten the new understanding in her mind about the status and roles that women could strive for in both family and society, which encouraged her to free from, in a positive way, the oppression and restriction brought on women by the patriarchy culture. After he really got gold from the rich man, he hugged the gold to his bosom and to himself he said over and over, “We go back to the land…tomorrow we go back to the land.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:81) In fact, he could live a decent life in the city with the money he got as others expected. However, he could not live only with money but without land. Land was an integral part of human beings life. Possessing and losing of the land would indicate a familys flourish and declination. As it was said by Wang Lung when he knew Hwang began to sell their land, “Sell their land!” repeated Wang Lung, convinced. “Then indeed are they growing poor. Land is ones flesh and blood.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:32)
To Wang Lung, the land represents the reviving force and the spiritual rejuvenation to go ahead. He instinctively had the sense that earth was the place where human beings rose from and would finally return to by the end of his life. O-lan told Wang Lung on her deathbed, “The land will be there after me,”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:276) After her death,Wang Lung stood by the peach tree she had planted on the night of her marriage, saying, “O-lan, you are the earth.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:283) From which we can see O-lan represents the spiritual link to the land. When it came time for him to die, he went back to the “earth house” where he was born and had his coffin delivered to the earth house. He was content, thinking that his good coffin that was there and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.
Wang Lung and O-lan are so steadfast and perseverant in front of adversities that they support their old father and family to go through all the hard times on their land. The indomitable struggling spirit of Chinese peasants they display has become a force for living that people from different races and countries go after.
3.2 “Loving others” in The Good Earth
The basic requirement for a man to achieve Jen is Xiao or filial piety, which can be seen from the words, “Filial good for the first one hundred.” (百善孝为先) Xiao lies in putting the needs of parents and other family elders over self, spouse and children. The children are expected to fulfill their parents wishes whether they are reasonable or not. Influenced by Confucian ideas, Wang Lung strictly obeyed it and respected his father and the elderly relatives. He gave his father not only respect and obedience but also loving care. At home he was in the way of practicing the Confucian principles of dealing with family members and at abroad he carried out the other Confucian principles of dealing with people outside the family. Wang Lung was filial to his father at anytime anyplace. Before the marriage he was dutiful to his old father and took good care of him. Every morning he boiled water and served his father with breakfast in time. In terms of his marriage, though he wanted to have a beautiful wife very much, he obeyed his father and married ugly O-lan chosen by his father. He obeyed his father even in his absence. For example, before his marriage he went to the barber, who suggested that he take off the braid which was out of date for young men at that time, he said that he couldnt do it without asking his father first. When they were on their way to the south, he gave the child to O-lan and lifted his father to his back and carried him, though he ate nothing for a few days.
In their hardships of the famine, they were forced to beg. All day long the old man sat the roadside obediently enough, but he did not beg. Wang Lungs father was so sure that his son and grandsons would look after him that he endured the hardships of the famine with smile. His trust was well proved. Wang Lung gave him the first share of whatever food they got, even if he must deprive his own children.
Chinese not only has the traditional convention of “respecting the aged” but also “taking care of the young”, Pearl Buck sympathetically described the relationship between Wang Lung and his retarded daughter. The tender relationship with his “poor fool” helped to keep Wang Lung sane and also brought a soft side out of him.
Wang Lung loved and cared for her in a way that he did not care for anyone else in his entire family. When Wang Lungs sons forgot the poor fool at her stoop in the outer courts, Wang Lung blew his top. He got a bamboo stick to beat them with and did so till they were both bleeding. He then yelled at them for forgetting about their sister who was not as privileged as they. When Lotus abused the poor fool as a filthy child, he lost his temper to Lotus for the first time and stayed away from Lotus for two days.
Wang Lung not only showed love to his father and children but also people around him. He hesitated to give the poor slave girl, Pear Blossom, to his vicious soldier cousin who terrified her so he took her as his second concubine; he also felt brotherly affection for his honest neighbor, Ching, a poor farmer like him. In the worst days of the famine, Ching shared his last remaining food with Wang for the pregnant O-lan. When Wang returned from the south with his new wealth, Ching was barely alive. His affection for his selfless neighbor Ching was so deep that he was ready to bury the man when Ching died because he felt that he had lost his only true friend. 3.3 Respecting Education in The Good Earth
The Imperial Examinations System has played an important role in the Chinese history. It was intended to ensure that appointment as a government official was based on merit rather than on heredity. Theoretically, any male adult in China, regardless of his economic or social status, could become a high-ranking government official by passing The Imperial Examination. Though only a small part of those who took the examinations passed them and received titles, the hope of the eventual success and the chance of change one s fate motivated a lot of people to get involved with reading. Through thousands of years development, during the Ming and Qing dynasty，it evolved into an inflexible and rigid system, which severely bound up the thoughts of Chinese intellectuals and brought the negative effect to Chinas development and finally was abolished in 1905.The imperial examination system had a far-reaching influence on Chinese peoples education conception. As can be see from the words “to be a scholar is to be the top of society”(万般皆下品，唯有读书高) and “ the house of gold is found in my books.” (书中自有黄金屋)
In The Good Earth, we will find that the Chinese people value knowledge highly. No matter how wealthy a man is, he can be humiliated if he can not read and write, while other people, lowly as they are, will not hesitate to do the humiliating.
Wang Lung greatly increased his lands and yet often felt shame for his illiteracy in a grain shop. He must say humbly to the haughty dealers in the town, “Sir, and will you read it for me, for Im too stupid.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:168) And it was a shame to him that when he must set his name to the contract, even a clerk, lifted his eyebrows with contempt and then brushed hastily the character of Wang Lungs name; and greatest shame fell upon him when the man called out for a joke. “Is it the dragon character Lung or the deaf character Lung, or what?” Wang Lung must answer humbly, “Let it be what you will, for I am too ignorant to know my own name.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1982:167) Then all the people in the room burst into laughter. Because of his shame and wealth, he sent his sons to a worthy old teacher, his heart burst with pride when he said to a passing neighbor, “this day I am back from my sons school.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1982:176) There was also pride when he saw his eldest son reading aloud the letters upon a paper and putting the brush and ink to paper and writing that which may be read by others. Wang Lungs taking pride in his sons literacy is not ridiculous but natural and made him alive in the novel. At the same time, we can also find Wang Lungs strong desire for knowledge and his strong passion to live a rich and decent life.
4.The Reasons for Pearl Bucks Inheritance to Confucianism
4.1 Her Early Experience in China
Literature has inseparable relations with culture. That is to say, different cultural background would produce different literary work. This is particular true for Pearl Buck.
Like other Chinese child, Pearl Buck received private school education and her first language was Chinese. When she was a child, she was accompanied by Wang Amah, a traditional Chinese woman and her Chinese teacher Mr. Kung who was in favor of Confucianism. Under the care of Wang Amah, little Pearl Buck had a chance to spend hours wandering in streets, observing the life of ordinary people. Wang Amah also told her Buddhist and Daoist stories and took Pearl Buck to worship in a local temple. Mr. Kung imbued girl Pearl Confucian ethics in the process of teaching Chinese reading and writings. Young Pearl was captivated with Chinese traditional culture. In her eyes, this ancient civilized country, with its self-sufficient economy and patriarchal system, was stable and shining with wisdom. As she said in My Several Worlds: “Chinese people are clever, seasoned and innocent when they are born. Even talking with an old illiterate farmer, you will get philosophy. I miss China very much when I cant find the philosophy in my own country. The American people are full of ideas, beliefs and prejudices except philosophy. Perhaps these things only belong to the people with thousands of years of cultural history.” (Pearl S. Buck, 1954:163) This kind of judgment is exquisite, profound and thought-provoking. Pearl Buck loved the spirit of Chinese culture, and she adored Confucius and Confucianism. During the Literary Revolution, many Chinese writers wildly put their efforts to repudiate all Confucian tradition. She felt that “it will be a long time...before the balance is restored and Chinese will again realize how much they owe to Confucius—their greatest figure.”(Pearl S. Buck, 1954:200) From those words, we can feel her strong vindication for Confucius.
From the above analysis, we can see how greatly the Chinese experience influenced her and how deeply Confucianism branded in Pearl Buck.
4.2 Pearl Bucks Love for Her Daughter
As a woman, Pearl Buck preferred her identity as a common mother to her career success. The day before she left for Europe for the Nobel ceremonies, Pearl Buck called her sister Grace and said that she would rather be having a baby than going to Sweden. Unfortunately she had only one retarded girl—Carol. As a writer, she reached the peak of her career; however, as a mother, she suffered something others couldnt imagine. After many years of hiding Carols mental retardation, she revealed her story to the world in her book The Child Who Never Grew. She overcame her fear of telling Carols story, because she wanted her childs life to be of use to people with the same experience and make Carols life, through its limited existence, count.
To release the pain, the Bucks determined themselves to adopt a three-month-old girl, who was the first that Pearl would adopt over the next two decades. Among the children she adopted, several were of mixed race. In that case, Pearl Buck put great effort on the most effective and humane training of the mentally handicapped child and the special educational needs of mixed-race children. Over a period of many years, she has taken a very active role in the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey. This famous institution was originally founded in 1888 for the purpose of caring for and treating mental retardation and for training people to work with the retarded. Valuable research into the causes and treatment of this illness is also done at the Training School.
An old Chinese saying can most reflect charity drive, “Loving my own child, and love all the children in the world” Pearl Buck is not only a writer, but a humanist. Her literary works, her social activities, and her life experiences, all demonstrate her as a real humanitarian.
5.Conclusion
In The Good Earth, Pearl Buck employed O-lan, who tasted the bitterness resulted from the tedious doctrines of Confucianism, to fight against the suppressing and outdated norms and morality; she employed Wang Lung, a hard-working Chinese farmer, with the high qualities of diligence, persistence, simplicity and kindness, to demonstrate the merits of Confucianism. What should be emphasized is that she pointed out weakness and strength of a culture not to prove the inevitability of cultural conflicts and clashes, but to present the cultural diversities and beauty inherent in each culture, and to call on the East and the West to seek for communication, to deepen the mutual understanding, to tolerate the cultural diversities and to respect and learn from each other, and, in a word, to try ones best for cultural exchanges and confluence to make common improvement and progress.
As an active spokesperson for equal rights, she castigated and opposed the dregs of Confucianism for its deprivation of the equality between men and women; as an activist for peace and the founder of international agencies, she extolled and demonstrated the essence of Confucianism for its universal love. Her criticism and inheritance to Confucianism can best serve her lifelong pursuit—to bridge the gap between the East and the West. This is exactly what we should learn from her—taking the essence and discarding the dregs of another culture. Nowadays, the issue of how to promote and attain mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence has become more and more urgent and even demanding to the future of our world. From Pearl Bucks life story, from her criticism and inheritance towards Confucianism, people at least need to learn that in a world in which many political crisis, conflicts and wars resulting from cultural or religious differences, every one or every nation should try to learn to appreciate the virtues of others and self-examine the shortcomings of ones own instead of being judgmental about others. We should absorb essence from other cultures and at the same time keep our own. In a word, to try ones best for cultural exchanges and confluence and at last the attainment of the goal of “All under heaven are one.”
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［1］Halistrom, Per. Presentation Speech of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1938.
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