Female Agency in Wang Anyi's "Granny" and Eileen Chang's "Shame, Amah!"

Introduction: Two Authors, Two Traditions

This study compares and contrasts the work of Eileen Chang — with reference to her story "Shame, Amah!" — and the work of Wang Anyi, focusing on her story "Granny." The study analyzes differences and similarities in the two writers' styles and themes. Notably, Zhang was in her early twenties when she was recognized as a distinctive and gifted writer. She drew from both classical Western and Chinese literature, becoming one of the most renowned Chinese writers in the literary world.

Eileen Chang is one of the most talented Chinese writers. Born in 1921 in Shanghai, she published several collections of short stories as well as two English-language novels. Her talent came to wider attention when she won an essay contest in Shanghai sponsored by West Wind magazine. After returning to Shanghai, she supported herself by writing motion picture scripts and fiction. Between 1942 and 1952, Chang produced several significant bodies of literary work that placed her among the most important Chinese writers in Asia. After she migrated to the United States, Chang translated several of her short stories into English.

Similarly, Wang Anyi is a well-known Chinese writer who began her career at a young age. After more than three decades of diligent work, she established herself as one of the most influential and prolific fiction writers in China. Like Chang, Wang produced more than 36 volumes of fiction and essays, winning numerous literary awards in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. In 2000, she received the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the highest literary honor in Chinese letters. Her most celebrated novel is The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.

Wang Anyi and the Story of Granny

"Granny" is one of Wang Anyi's literary works, translated by Howard Goldblatt. The author reveals that Granny worked as a maid and was, in effect, the grandmother of Li Tianhua, her adopted grandson. Li attended a middle school in Shanghai while Granny served as a house nanny in the city. Wang reveals that Granny was a widow with no son; her daughter was about to marry and join another family, leaving her adopted son as her sole heir.

Wang traces Granny's history, noting that she entered domestic service at the age of 16 and that her uncle had played a significant role in arranging her marriage. According to Wang, Granny appeared younger than her years at first glance: "the way she tucked her bangs behind her ears. She wore a blue cotton jacket with long, looping buttons down the front and a stand-up collar" (Lau and Howard 463). While Granny did not have the fair complexion common among Shanghai residents, she also lacked the swarthy look typical of country people. Instead, she had a slightly yellowish skin tone. Over the years, her age became visible in her hands. Her accent still carried traces of native Shanghainese, and she maintained an erect, healthy posture even when moving near a dinner table.

As Granny aged, further details emerged: her pale eyes and sparse brows became noticeable — features less common on women from privileged backgrounds. She no longer looked like a country woman, yet when she spoke, her upper lip pulled back and her lower lip protruded slightly, exposing her teeth and making her resemble, in the author's description, one of those shrewd village women. There was also a characteristic dimple, and she had a habit of looking at things from the corner of her eyes. Wang depicts Granny as a woman who resisted social change: despite living in Shanghai for thirty years, she had never fully transformed herself into a city dweller.

Eileen Chang and the Theme of Shame, Amah!

As Meng and Noritah argue, "Shame, Amah!" exemplifies "Chang's own translation of the Chinese 'Steamed Osmanthus Flower Ah Xiao's Unhappy Autumn'" (569). Chang portrayed herself, in a sense, through the character of Ah Xiao, because of the challenges she faced when trying to establish herself literarily in the United States. Chang migrated to the United States in 1955 and "tried to establish herself in the literary scene by writing in English and translating her own short stories" (Meng and Omar 569). As a Chinese writer, she faced scrutiny from both target readers and the press. In this context, Chang faced a choice: whether to accept the "culture of ideology and poetics" that involved shaping literature to satisfy a given society's expectations. As Barker (2000) notes, "Insofar as power acts on the actions of the other, it incites, produces and engages the other in the possibility of both collusion and resistance" (p. 40).

Facing this dilemma, Chang translated the Chinese story "Steamed Osmanthus Flower Ah Xiao's Unhappy Autumn" into the English "Shame, Amah!" (1962). The translation reflects her experience navigating the collision between poetics and the ideology of the target culture and language. At the same time, she maintained a faint resistance in the text, suggesting that her manipulation of the material was also a response to the social pressures bearing down on her. Chang thus attempted to position herself favorably with readers by adapting her text in ways that accommodated — however reluctantly — the ideological expectations of her new environment. In doing so, her works became subject to the translator's own subjectivity. The change in her intentions was rooted in a readiness to accommodate an ideology she had not previously embraced.

Chang translated her own experience into "Shame, Amah!" by channeling it through the image of Ah Xiao. According to Chang, Ah Xiao is an industrious servant, a loving mother, and a good wife — but more than that, a person of rich feeling capable of forming deep emotional relationships with the world around her. The mocking title, "Shame, Amah!", is a phrase that the character Garter uses to mock Ah Xiao. According to Chen Jirong, the theme of "Shame, Amah!" portrays Ah Xiao as a colonized woman who lacks the education and knowledge needed to navigate modern society. Yet, as Chang argued, Ah Xiao is neither socially degenerated nor a figure of simple pity — she is a silenced woman.

Chang published "Shame of Amah" in 1944 in Chinese before it was translated into English. The story "belongs to Eileen Chang's brilliant series of portraits of China's largest port city, Shanghai" (Chang 4) and is distinguished by its freezing irony, caustic sarcasm, and unflinching vision of reality.

Conclusion

This study has compared and contrasted the work of Eileen Chang — with reference to the theme "Shame, Amah!" — and the work of Wang Anyi, focusing on the theme "Granny." Analysis of the two themes reveals that Granny and Ah Nee are two women working as domestic servants in markedly different environments. While Granny was able to adopt a form of urban class status by virtue of working in a welcoming household and maintaining communal ties, Ah Nee faced sustained hardship as a maid in an indifferent, even hostile, social world. Together, the two stories offer complementary portraits of female agency, resilience, and constraint in twentieth-century Shanghai.

Works Cited

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Meng, Qiao, and Noritah Omar. "Resistance Against and Collusion with Colonialism: Eileen Chang's Writing and Translation of 'Steamed Osmanthus Flower Ah Xiao's Unhappy Autumn.'" Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities 20.2 (2012): 563–576. Web.

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