One Giant Leap Backward

I'm through reading Anchee Min's latest novel Empress Orchid. Yes, I like my history novelized. Sure, there are the traps of making people from other times too modern, and thus unbelievable, but novels can sure be a nifty way to convey the stories that make historical figures memorable, as well as dramatizing ways of life that are now extinct.

Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl for example posits a plausible dramatic arc which lead to Henry VIII's willingness to defy his religious upbringing and behead his friends in order to marry Anne Boleyn, only to have her beheaded three years later.

I cannot say the same for Min's work about the last Empress of China. In fact, compared to Arthur Golden's work Memoirs Of A Geisha (about which I said "It's not entirely a waste of time), Empress Orchid reads like the outline of a book.

I heard Anchee Min interviewed a couple of years ago when the book first came out. I remember being impressed with her take on her subject. The Empress Tzu Hsi has been long vilified as a manipulative and conniving sociopath with an unquenchable craving for power. Anchee Min's novel is an attempt to reclaim the woman and her humanity from the characture "Dragon Lady" she had become.

Which might have been a lovely book, had Min not gone so far in the other direction. This Tzu Hsi is practically inert, she is so passive. Far from being an iron-willed and ruthless tyrant, Min presents her Orchid as lifted by her beauty and pedigree from desperate poverty in Peking, where she is on the verge of being forced to marry her retarded cousin to keep a roof over the heads of her family, to her own palace on the grounds of the Forbidden City, draped with fine clothing and jewels, given servants and slaves, so well attended that it is considered an insult for her to do anything for herself that could be done by others. Her family is also showered with money and gifts as befitting a new member of the Imperial family.

This, however, is not enough for our Orchid, who is a lonely girl who wishes only to love and be loved. Which is a pretty desperate dream for one of 3000 concubines in the Forbidden City, a city populated by women, eunuchs, and the Emperor. She sits around in her palace, bored for two months, wishing only to be chosen by the Emperor for his attention. It is only through the machinations of one of her eunuchs that she is delivered to the Emperor's bed.

Okay, so maybe I'm too modern, but so far this story doesn't hold together for me. An impoverished girl, who has no future, a dead father, a frail and powerless mother, living in the household of a resentful uncle with rags for clothing and not enough food--suddenly, through her own initiative, signs herself up to be presented to the Emperor, makes it through the selection process (which had to have taken months), manages to find (with no missteps) the right people to teach her Imperial protocol, leaves her family forever...and then all she can do is sit around for two months and sigh that she has not yet been called to the Emperor?

It gets worse. We meet the young empress Tzu Hsi is suspected of poisoning (many years later) and are told (improbably) that they are good friends. Even though they never see each other after they enter the palace. When she is called to the Emperor's bed, the Emperor is unwilling to be seduced because he has had a bad day at work. Those foreign devils are insisting that China be open to European trade, and they are overrunning his country. Poor Emperor. So Orchid talks to him, sings him some songs, and he has the first night of good sleep in months. He won't let her go. He needs her.

But poor Emperor, he is so overworked. He is falling asleep onto his documents, even with the pen in his hand. So Orchid tries to help by reading the documents and summarizing them for him, and copying over his replies so when he falls asleep on them and spills the ink, he will not have to re-write them himself. Now, before this time, there is no indication that she can read and write--as I recall, in fact, such learning was discouraged in women. But here she picks it up easily, without training or teaching, because she is learning it only for love. Sigh.

Not because she is iron-willed. Not because she sees the Emperor as weak and needing a stronger hand to guide him. Not because she gains anything for herself by doing so. Just because she "loves" him and is willing to do anything to help him. Ah, love. True Love. Anything is possible--even the impossible--if it is done for True Love.

Frankly, I like the stronger version of the woman so much better. I mean, someone who has some sort of idea of what she is doing and why. This illiterate young girl who seeks only the good of her Emperor-love and the preservation of her country--what a sap!

This review of the life of Tzu Hsi by Pearl Buck makes it sound like the project of reclaiming her humanity was carried out much more successfully decades ago. I'm going to read this book and not waste any more time on Empress Orchid.