In the first three chapters of the novel Spring Grass, we see the relationship between Spring Grass’s mother, her sister-in-law who lives together with them, and Spring Grass. The mother is at arms with the aunt for her idleness and unwillingness to contribute to the household, yet the aunt’s money acts as a safeguard against any real conflict between the two. On the other hand, the mother resents Spring Grass because she is a girl. In her mind a daughter is nothing more than an extra mouth to feed who will ultimately leave the household with nothing to contribute. All of these conflicts can be traced to a common ground: money.
Given the setting the first part of the novel takes place in, the basis of the conflicts between these three characters being money should come as no surprise. In the 1950s rural China where the post-1949 economic reforms were just recently starting, the population was still very poor. Most of the households were trying to get by with the earnings of one person, the husband/father of the house, since women were yet to be included in the workforce. Even so the workload of the women was not low. The domestic tasks were endless. In such families budgeting of resources had to be extremely strict, for even a couple pennies could mean one more meal for them. In Spring Grass’s family this was her mother’s responsibility. As the person taking care of all the cooking and shopping coupled with her strong personality in opposition to her relatively quiet husband, she was in charge of the family economics. To the mother money was an essential resource for the survival and wellbeing of the family. In its scarcity, she became the instigator of the conflicts against her sister-in-law and her daughter, both whom she saw as the source of their economic hardships.
The mother’s conflict with the aunt is really based on two facets: one is bred from the traditional in-law relationship, the other comes from the fact that the aunt has money. In the absence of their parents, the aunt has taken on the in-law role of the family. She spends her days in idleness, without contributing to the domestic tasks of the household, but living and eating under the same roof. It is the daughter-in-law’s, the mother’s, job to serve and accommodate her in-laws and the aunt seems intent on taking advantage of this custom both as a way to get back to the mother and also to enjoy herself in the remaining of her days. The aunt’s idleness while she is working day and night infuriates the mother and conflict is ever present between the two. This is the point where money comes into play. The money that the aunt has acts to incapacitate against the mother. Knowing that when the budget gets tight, she will have to ask money from the aunt, the mother cannot be too forceful with the aunt. Having money is a form of protection for the aunt, a form of freedom albeit restricted to her household.
Even though there isn’t much mention of it within the novel, at that time in rural China, the state was coming forward with many policies to get the women involved in the production. The women could now work in the fields and get paid, which prior was exclusively for men. Women were no longer strictly restricted to the domestic sphere, by working in the fields they could partake and take space in the public sphere. As far as social gender equality was concerned, this move alone was a major first step for that goal. As for the economic effect, this implied a degree of financial independence for the women. Much like how money was a way for the aunt to buy freedom, it likewise meant having some degree of freedom for the working women as well. They were no longer as tightly bound to the earnings of their husband to live and get by. However, in practice that was not so true. Women were getting paid significantly less than men even though most of them outperformed men, and when even a man’s salary was not enough to feed a family there was little a women’s salary could do. The new income earned by women would just go into the household and used to put meals on the table or, under the still strong traditional values, it would go towards the sons of the family. Moreover, the women did not have any real freedom in choosing their jobs either. Technically anyone qualified for a position could apply for that posting and work. Nonetheless the strict traditional social codes did not look kindly towards a woman sharing the same space with a man, who was not her husband, for extended periods of time. This idea of indecency drove many qualified women away from high-paying jobs that would have them working side-by-side with men (Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village). So even though money was something that could mean freedom and independence for women in rural China, it was severely lacking in its power against the social traditions to realise that meaning. Likewise, to the aunt the freedom granted by her money was sorely limited to her household, yet in the worldview of young Spring Grass her aunt was almost invincible.
Spring Grass learns her meaning for money from her aunt’s apparent invincibility against her mother. She sees money as a protection: protection from her mother and her oppression. To some extent Spring Grass has the right idea. If her household had more money, her mother would most likely not have treated her the way she did. This is directly related to the societal views on boys and daughters in a family. Even though one can easily chalk the difference in treatment to Confucian traditionalism, in poor rural households it comes down to a simple inhumane calculation of return on investment. Since the daughter will be married away once she is about 20 years old and leave the economic unit of the household, the parents consider raising a daughter almost like raising a child for another family. Whereas the son will stay within the household contributing to the income of the family by working, and his wife will be helping with the domestic work, so a son is seen as much more valuable than a daughter. This notion leads families like Spring Grass’s mother to overwork their daughters to squeeze as much use out of them as possible before they leave the household. Any kind of resource spent on the daughter is seen as a waste for the future of the household. The inequality in treatment only intensifies the poorer a household gets. In Shouting Hill village where five sisters only have one item of clothing to share between themselves when the boys get full clothing is a prime example of this (Xinran 2002). On the other end of the spectrum, it would be impossible to say that the children of different sexes will have the same treatment. However, it can be safely argued that with an abundance of resources to share among the children, the “toll” of raising a daughter would be negligible in the household’s calculations. At that point the economic driving force behind the family’s resentment towards their daughter would leave its place to the oppression by traditional Confucian values of the society. As now can be seen, the conflict between Spring Grass and her mother is arisen from the exacting calculation of household economics. The root of the conflict is once again based on money.
From the relationships and conflicts presented by Spring Grass and her mother, and the mother and the aunt, an individual’s current and future value to the household holds precedence over their kinship with the household. In poor rural China the driving force between almost all the relations can be attributed to money. Even in its abundance, the millennia of economic calculation that included women as a resource glooms the present day in the form of tradition. Ultimately, it seems only after removing money as a divisive factor between the genders could we hope to cure the whispers of tradition that keep an instinct for a society that should no longer exist alive.
Works Cited
Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village, Documentary, 1984 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kcPvggrn4M
Xinran. “The Women of Shouting Hill,” in her The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, pp. 226-242. Translated by Esther Tyldesley. New York: Pantheon Book, 2002.