王风·君子于役
English Translation
Far away my husband went to war
Far away my husband went to war
I kept waiting
For the day that he’ll return
But when?
Chicks lay back to their nests
Cattle and sheep came back while
The sun rolls down the west hills
Far away he went
How can I not miss him?
Far away my husband went to war
I kept waiting
For the day that we’ll meet again
But when?
Chicks lay back to their nests
Cattle and sheep slowly return while
The sun disappeared in the west
Far away he went
Wish him well
Away from hunger and thirst
Original Chinese
王风·君子于役
君子于役，不知其期，曷至哉？鸡栖于埘，日之夕矣，羊牛下来。君子于役，如之何勿思！
君子于役，不日不月，曷其有佸？鸡栖于桀，日之夕矣，羊牛下括。君子于役，苟无饥渴！
The poem was written from the perspective of a woman in the Zhou dynasty. She waited at home while her husband served his country in a battle. In the Zhou dynasty, men under the age of 60, no matter their social status, were required to train and serve in the army during battles. The poem illustrates a typical scene of a family separated by war. Some soldiers later returned, but more often, women alone, waited for a reunion that would never happen.
Poems written with women’s perspectives present the status of women in the highly patriarchal Zhou society. Women’s inferior status can be interpreted from various poems expressing different emotions including the endless waiting of the woman in “Far away my husband went to war”, the metaphoric expression of women as peach blossoms indicating their lack of status in 周南· 桃夭 (Peach Blossoms Beam)[1], and the unilateral speechless appreciation of men in 郑风·子衿 (Blue Blue Your Collar).[2]
This poem is focused on the emotions of the woman. The question “But when?” shows her anticipation for the day of reunion, and the longing for her absent husband is demonstrated in her eager waiting. The poem begins with a short monologue of the woman, expressing her constantly distracted thoughts by her husband’s unknown return. As the subject of the second stanza shifts from “I” to “ chick”, “cattle and sheep”, and “the sun”, the poem’s focus changes from the direct emotion of the women to the description of the surrounding environment. Using simple diction, the description illustrates a peaceful image of the woman’s agrarian life. The personified sun “rolling down the hill” shows how the woman personified the surrounding environment during her lonely time of waiting. Even though her life is orderly and harmonious, her loneliness conveys how the woman missed her husband. The first half of the poem then ends with another monologue of the woman, directly expressing her emotions with a rhetorical question.
The poems collected in 诗经（the Book of Song, or Classic of Poetry) all have the characteristic of repetition of stanzas. By only changing a few words in each stanza, the author made the rhythm and melody of the poem flow more smoothly. The technique of repetition also helps convey the emotion of the poem, as words are repeated while emotion grows stronger. Similarly, the second half of this poem begins with the woman’s intensified anticipation for her husband’s return presented to the readers by the repetition of the rhetorical question “But when?” Unlike the second stanza of the first half, the word “disappeared” is used in describing the sun. This shows the woman’s emotions slowly turned from anticipation to despair as time flew by and her husband still didn’t return. The ending of the poem returns to the monologue of the woman. Her prayer “Wish him well”, shows her hope for the reunion is slowly diminishing.
Writing and literature is the key of the study of the past, because it reflects many aspects of an ancient society. By analyzing this poem, we can find an underlying pattern of ancient Chinese war literature. In the poem, the woman stayed at home while her husband went to serve in the army. This indicates that ancient Chinese women are far away from the political quarrels between states in the Zhou dynasty. Moreover, the fact that the poem is written from the woman’s perspective indicates the capability of women to express their own independent emotions through works of poetry. Lady Xu Mu, the first woman patriotic poet in human history, proved the capability of women’s direct expression of thoughts with her poems included in The Book of Song.[3] Not only this specific piece but many other poems of similar topic, conveying the longing for husbands at war, showed the independent thoughts of women. Examples of these poems include 卫风·伯兮[4], illustrating how a woman longs for her husband at war and how she is proud of her husband fighting for her state.
Looking at history laterally, it is remarkable how at around the same time 800-700 BCE, the Ancient Greek culture on the other side of the Earth was also ingrained into a patriarchal society. Despite similar social development, the status and treatment of the ancient Aegean women during wars largely differ from the ancient Chinese women because of different political structures and beliefs.
By analyzing excerpts from the classical ancient Aegean war piece, The Iliad, the symbolism of Aegean women during war will be revealed.
“ Lord Agamemnon
Answered and said to him, ‘Godlike Achilles,
However brave and skillful you may be,
Stop playing ticks! And do not try to rob me!
You will not make me do as you propose
And you will never get ahead of me.
You obviously want to keep your trophy
And leave me sitting here with none at all!
Are you commanding me to give her back?
Fine— if the Greeks provide another trophy
To satisfy my heart and make it fair.”[5]
Chryseis, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, being captured by King Agamemnon, is the “girl” mentioned above, and the “trophies” of each warrior are girls being enslaved and awarded to them during the countless wars that they fought. Heroic figures in epic poems like the Iliad risked their lives for glory and honor.[6] Glory and honor are then identified by a higher social status, which is acquired by material possessions and trophies, which are very often captured women.[7] To these fighters, love and appreciation for the women whom they captured is relatively trivial in comparison to their desire for a marker of status.[8] Women are never treated as independent figures with their own emotions and thoughts. “Women are raped and abused during the sack of cities. Even after the war is over, the female captives will remain enslaved.”[9] Social customs of men's domination justified these atrocities, and therefore, no mercy was shown by any men.
The uncontrolled desire for women in ancient Greek society led to the mistreatment of women. In The Odyssey, Penelope was left at home in Ithaca while her husband, Odysseus, was fighting against the Trojans in the Trojan War. Alone in the palace in Ithaca, Penelope was surrounded by 100 suitors who were constantly harassing her. Throughout her ten years of waiting, Penelope showed genuine love, longing for her husband, and fear to turn down her husband by falling in love with someone else, but not irritation for being disrespected. [10] Female characters like Penelope in Homeric poems do not possess any emotions for themselves.[11] “Far away my husband went to war” presents the same situation where the woman was left at home when her husband went to war. The poem, however, presented a different status of women, being more independent and actively expressing their emotions.
Diving deeper into the reason that causes the difference in treatment and status of women during war in the West and the East diverges under the same path of development because the two civilizations had different political structures which used different beliefs to govern. Despite having small states governed by individual leaders, the Zhou dynasty had a non-centralized “federal” government controlled by an emperor. The emperor kept a relative amount of power to regulate the whole dynasty even though the state leaders gradually grew powerful. During the spring and autumn period, a period of prosperity in knowledge, Confucius, an honorable philosopher, with his well-developed study of personal ethics and morality, traveled around the states and educated people who sought knowledge. He proposed Confucianism[12], and advocated people of the Zhou dynasty obey a set of rules and conventions that set boundaries for people’s behaviors. Confucius emphasized 仁义礼智信 (benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom, and trust), the five core virtues of Confucianism. Although the five values were not specifically addressing women's position, they educated men on manners and how to behave and indirectly affected how they treated women. Mistreating women were opposed to the prevailing ethnic values and people’s moral conscience “富贵不能淫”. Shijin, the Book of Song, or Classic of Poetry, is a collection of poems, including “Far away my husband went to war” organized by Confucius and thus, reflected Confucius’ beliefs on the ideal social moral standards.[13] After his death, his students organized his teachings into 论语 (The Analects). Confucianism, later on, was widely accepted by multiple dynasties and these two books became the core of education; men learned to behave in the proper way, with mistreating women identified to be immoral behavior. Thus, although ancient Chinese society was still very patriarchal, most women’s lives were relatively decent.
Furthermore, similar ideas of opposing the mistreatment of women are presented in Daoism, the second largest belief system that emerges during the spring and autumn periods. “无欲” meaning that men should eliminate their desire for women and glory. This not only protected women from being mistreated by men, it also taught people to control their ego. With these teachings slowly forming a consensus of moral rules, people are acting according to this moral code even in battlefields.
On the other hand, the ancient Aegean civilizations were never governed by a centralized government. Even though in the history of ancient Greece, revered philosophers like Socrates and Plato promoted the concept of equal rights, their ideas did not last as long due to the lack of a central government to support, to spread, and to implement in the society. On account of this lack of ethical rules to regulate men’s actions, men in Western cultures explicitly demonstrated the passive status of women in society.
Literature reveals details of society in the past. Details of gender meaning and social status are revealed in the words of women during war. Stepping outside the box, as civilization developed, we are presented with a larger variety of writing by different authors with different experiences and lives. The meaning behind being a woman also changes according to social developments. Being the villain or causing the fall of an empire, women were often interpreted to be on the opposite side of the main character, while struggling to become the main character in their own life. We look at the past to better understand the present and decide our path for the future. By looking back at women in the past, we can better understand the period of women’s enlightened self-consciousness and current social affairs, feminism. Looking at women in the earliest pieces of writing, written in the classical world full of warfare and disorder, we begin the exploration of the true meaning behind genders.
Notes
[1] Sun, Poetic Blossoms.
[2]魏家海，美国汉学家伯顿•沃森英译《诗经》的翻译伦理, 5
[3] 贾庆申, and 翟相君. "许穆夫人著作考." 许昌学院学报 1(1982):4.
[4] Xu, Shijing (Book of Poetry), ch18
[5] Homer, The Iliad, trans. Wilson, Emily, book 6
[6] Homer, The Iliad, trans. Wilson, Emily, xxxix
[7] Homer, The Iliad, trans. Wilson, Emily, xxx
[8] Homer, The Iliad, trans. Wilson, Emily, xli
[9] Homer, The Iliad, trans. Wilson, Emily, xlvii
[10] Roisman, Hanna M. “Penelope’s Indignation.”
[11] Pyy, Women and war in Roman Epic, 300
[12] The belief system that is widely adopted by multiple dynasties in Chinese history. It sets the social norms for Chinese society throughout history.
[13] Riegel, The Beginnings of Shijing Commentary, 1
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