| Chen Jiangshui is a pig-butcher in a small coastal Taiwanese town. Stocky, with a paunch and deep-set beady eyes, he resembles a pig himself. His brutality towards his new young wife, Lin Shi, knows no bounds. The more she screams, the more he likes it. She is further isolated by the vicious gossip of her neighbors who condemn her for screaming aloud. As they see it, women are supposed to be tolerant and put their husbands above everything else. According to an old Chinese belief, all butchers are destined for hell—an eternity of torment by the animals they have dispatched. Lin Shi, isolated, despairing, and finally driven to madness, fittingly kills him with his own instrument—a meat cleaver. A literary sensation in the Chinese language world with its suggestion that ritual and tradition are the functions of oppression, this novel also caused widespread outrage with its unsparing portrayal of sexual violence and emotional cruelty. This tale has made a profound impact on contemporary Chinese literature and today ranks as a landmark text in both women's studies and world literature. |
Warning: the rape scenes in this book are graphic and disturbing. They're meant to be, though not in a way that feels
like a cheap scare or exploitative. t's still incredibly hard to read. Li
focuses a lot of the injuries, both physical and emotional, that her main
character endures as a result.
"Among Taiwan’s third-generation writers, Li Ang is the most controversial woman writer”
– MIT biography of Li Ang
Feminist author Li Ang published the Butcher’s Wife during the White Terror, the period of martial law between May 1949 to 15 July 1987 that started with the 228 incident, notable for its harsh censorship laws. When the Communists gained complete control of Mainland China in 1949, two million refugees fled to Taiwan. The Kuomintang (KMT) party of Taiwan arrested anyone they thought to be Communist sympathizers, including members of the Chinese Nationalist Party, intellectuals, the social elite, and anyone who criticized the government. Once arrested, inmates would be subjected to horrific torture or execution. In this way the KMT was able to rid themselves of anyone who might be resistant to their propaganda. Books that were suspected of promoting communist ideas were banned, including books from the Japanese colonial era, anything that went against traditional sexual morality, depicted characters challenging authority, went against popular sentiments, or “endangered the physical and mental health of youth” (if you enjoy horror games check out Red Candle’s Detention to learn more about the White Terror). Needless to say, anything by Karl Marx was also banned, even books by authors with names that started with “M,” such as Max Weber and Mark Twain, were suppressed because their first names sounded too similar to Marx in Mandarin. Most famously writer Bo Yang was jailed for eight years for translating Popeye cartoons because the KMT felt the comic was critical of leader Chiang Kai-shek. So what Li Ang did was incredibly risky, considering her book criticized traditional gender roles, Chinese society, and included frank depictions of sex and sexual violence. Critics, government officials, and self-proclaimed "moral guardians" were outraged when the United Daily News awarded Li's novel first place in their annual literary contest.
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| The Popeye cartoon that led to Bo Yang's arrest. From the Taipei Times. |
The Butcher’s Wife starts with a news article reporting Lin Shi's murder of her abusive husband. She kills him not only to protect herself, but to avenge the countless animals he butchered (Lin Shi can't bear to see living things suffer, and her husband would torture her by forcing her to watch him kill animals). The newspaper seems convinced Lin Shi has a secret lover, claiming her confession "defies logic and reason" since the only possible reason a wife would have for murdering her husband is because she's unfaithful and not as an act of self-preservation against an abusive monster. Others believe Lin Shi did it because she was "mentally unbalanced" after watching him kill animals. Locals are convinced it was a case of her mother reaching for revenge beyond the grave. Lin Shi is then paraded around on the back of a truck as a warning to others, before her execution. Men complain she's not attractive enough, and that it would have been exciting if her non-existent secret lover were found. The article then goes on to complain about women who want equality and to attend Western schools, and the decline of "womanly virtues". "Such demands are actually little more than excuses for a woman to leave house and home and make a public spectacle of herself. They comprise a mockery of the code of womanly conduct and destroy our age-old concepts of womanhood". Lin Shi literally tells the police why she killed her husband, and they still don't believe her.
Lin Shi has had a rough life. Her father died when she was nine and a greedy uncle used this opportunity to throw Lin Shi and her widowed mother out of their home, the one thing they had left, so he could have it for himself. The two are then forced to wander the streets doing odd jobs. One winter, when food is scare, Lin Shi's starving mother prostitutes herself to a solider in exchange for food. When she's discovered, her family ties her up and beats her, then takes Lin Shi away to live with her uncle, and they never see each other again. Lin Shi is forced to work as a servant for the very same uncle who stole her home and would like nothing better than to sell her off. With no mother, Lin Shi's menarche comes as a shock, and the neighbors laugh at her as she screams "Save me, I'm bleeding to death!" Her uncle betroths the unfortunate girl to a pig-butcher who no one else is willing to marry. He brutally rapes her on their wedding night. Lin Shi's cries of pain are compared to a dying pig, which arouses the butcher. He gets off on humiliating and hurting women and refers to them as "sluts", "whores", and "cunts". Ironically, the only woman he seems to respect is Golden Flower, a prostitute. We only get glimpses of his past and humanity when he's with her.
In Taiwan butchers were believed to go to hell upon their death
where they're tortured by the animals they've killed. There's even a shrine
outside the slaughterhouse dedicated to the souls of the animals where monthly
ceremonies are held. In the netherworld, wives are considered equally guilty
and also punished for their husband's crimes. Chen Jiangshui kills Lin Shi's
ducklings in a fit of drunken rage and slaughters a pregnant sow when he first
starts out as a butcher. The aborted piglets give him nightmares and the other
slaughterhouses workers tell Chen Jiangshui that the piglets will demand the
right to live from him and cause him to die a horrible death if their spirits
aren't appeased. Despite his initial fear, he suffers no ill fate, and
eventually the butcher stops believing in spirits and retribution. He is filled
with anger he is unable to control, and everything seems to anger him. Fear,
discomfort, confusion, conflict, all transform him to a raging monster. Chen
Jiangshui conflates sex and slaughtering pigs. Plunging his knife into their
throats gives him great pleasure, as does forcing his wife to scream like a
dying pig when he rapes her and beating her if she doesn't cry enough. For him,
the spurting of blood has an orgasmic effect. Ironically, while he's aroused by
bloodshed in violence and death, he's disgusted by Lin Shit's menstrual blood
which he believes brings misfortune on a man. That's how deep his hatred of
women goes.
It's not only her husband who abuses her, Lin Shi is mocked by the other women, ones she considers friends, who look down on her for having sex so frequently (they too refuse to belief she's being raped) and claim she's a "slut" like her mother. They spread vicious gossip behind her back and belittle her to her face. Lin Shi is so used to mistreatment she doesn't even try to correct them. Eventually, with no one to trust, she becomes terrified of everyone, walking with her shoulders hunched and avoiding the other women as much as possible. The one thing she loves, the ducklings she tries to raise, are killed by her husband. Auntie Ah-Wang, argues that Chen Jiangshui is a "good man" and can't possibly be abusive since he saved her life. Lin Shi literally has no allies. The traditional patriarchal family system in Taiwan puts women in a subservient position to men. Even with updated laws to protect women, Taiwan still had a shockingly high rate of domestic abuse. "In 2016, 117,550 domestic violence cases were reported to officials in Taiwan. That is 322 each day, or one every five minutes" (source) and that's only what's been reported. The actual number could be much, much higher.
Li Ang’s book is a criticism of traditional patriarchal power structures and paints a stark picture of the everyday violence suffered by women not only in Taiwan, but the world over. Horrifying and beautifully written everyone owes it to themselves to read this unflinching tale of one woman’s domestic horror.
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