从电影《喜福会》浅析中美婚姻观差异

论文总字数：34030字

摘 要

《喜福会》讲述了中国移民母亲和美国女儿之间的冲突。通过对四对华裔母女在美国的生活经历的讲述，它很好的反映出了中美婚姻观的碰撞。本文旨在浅析中美婚姻观的三个不同之处：择偶标准、结婚目的以及婚后夫妻地位的差异。通过对跨国婚姻利与弊的研究，我们可以更好地理解中国文化与美国文化之间的差异，从而减少跨文化交际中出现的误解。

关键词：婚姻观；跨国婚姻；中美文化；《喜福会》

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Brief Introduction of The Joy Luck Club 2

4. The Differences of Marriage Values between China and America 3

4.1 The standard of spouse selection 4

4.2 The purpose of getting married 6

4.3 Status of Husband and Wife after Marriage 8

5. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Transnational Marriage 11

6. Suggestions on the Transnational Marriage 12

7. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

Marriage for every person, whether Chinese or westerners, has the meaning of landmark. Marriage is the foundation of the family, and it is a life event. However, there is a huge difference in the attitude towards marriage between the Chinese people and the western people in terms of family, as a result, the communication process is filled with misunderstanding, contradictions and obstacles. Marriage has undergone great changes with the passage of time, the increasingly frequent exchanges and the cooperation between countries. Transnational marriages are also emerging under the circumstance where they have such a large amount of views on marriage, so the Chinese and western people have attached more importance to it and the analysis of Chinese and Western marriage customs has become the needs of the times. International marriage is one of the most typical embodiments of intercultural communication. China and America are two different countries, so their understanding to marriage should also be different. The reason why Chinese and westerners have different marriage values is that human beings from different cultures have different values, morals, thinking patterns, religious beliefs, social systems and so on. With China"s accession to the WTO and the development of the economic and cultural globalization, the whole word is becoming an integrated part and China"s traditional concept of marriage has also altered dramatically. Chinese people are gradually beginning to understand and even adopt the Western marriage values.

This thesis will integrate the previous studies to analyze the differences of Chinese and American marriage values and serve the film The Joy Luck Club as the research object to explore these specific differences. Through the study of the project, people will obtain a better understanding of the differences in the marital point of view between Chinese culture and American culture, and ultimately find a practical solution to these problems caused by those differences.

2. Literature Review

In recent years, China has broadcast a lot of TV plays about marriage issues, such as Marriage Battle, Remarriage Of A Police Woman, etc. The West also shows the Chinese view of marriage through magazines, movies, novels, and television drama in which the most representative one is The Joy Luck Club. Since its publication, The Joy Luck Club has attracted wide attention of experts both at home and abroad. In 1990, professor Wang Lili published the first review of Amy Tan"s The Joy Luck Club in the foreign literature. In 1991, Frank Chin pointed out an anthology of Chinese-American literature on the basis of The Joy Luck Club in The Big Aiiieeeee. With the help of Hall’s theory of high context culture and low context culture, Guan Jing also made an analysis of a large number of the cultural estrangement and conflicts embodied in The Joy Luck Club. High context culture relies on implicit nonverbal actions and environmental setting to convey meanings, unlike low context culture, which relies heavily on explicit verbal communication.

In The Joy Luck Club, the mothers come from a high context culture and the Americanized daughters come from a low context culture. The mothers believe that the daughters will intuitively understand their cryptic utterances, but the daughters don"t understand them at all. Apart from the study of these experts to The Joy Luck Club, there are also many other scholars who studied on the differences of marriage values between China and America. More and more international marriages contribute to a deeper understanding of each other"s views on marriage. This thesis will integrate the previous studies to make a further analysis to the outlook on the love and marriage between Chinese culture and American culture and try to make recommendations based on them.

3. Brief Introduction of The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan is one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the contemporary Chinese American literature. Her first novel The Joy Luck Club is an international best-selling novel which explores the different marriage values of Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters in the United States. The novel was adapted to a film in 1993.

The Joy Luck Club is about four Chinese mothers growing up in China, and their daughters growing up in America. Suyuan and June, An-mei and Rose, Lindo and Waverly, Ying Ying and Lena. The Joy Luck Club was a gathering of their families to celebrate life and heritage. Each of the mothers and daughters told their own stories, with the exception of Suyuan, whose story was told by her daughter. The four mother’s childhood and experience influenced their decisions on how to raise their daughters. However, both mothers and daughters have a hard time communicating in their daily life. It was not that they do not understand each other"s languages but that they have different cultural backgrounds. This movie shows how important it is to get a correct knowledge about a culture in order to understand the people who belong to another culture.

4. The Differences of Marriage Values between China and America

With the development of China"s economy to the outside, more and more people are pursuing the quality of love and marriage. However, why are people eager to be in love and then get married? In other words, what is the role of marriage? As the saying goes in China: the marriage is for the parents; to marry a wife is to give the husband laundry and cooking. To a certain extent, these terms reflects the Chinese people"s concept of marriage. So, what"s the difference between an American marriage and a Chinese marriage?

Chinese attitudes towards marriage is that the marriage is not only related to the husband and wife, but also involves the two sides of the family. Chinese ancient marriage is intended to follow the “parents matchmaker”, namely marriage is arranged by parents, and children must obey their parents’ decision. Bridegrooms and brides always didn’t know each other before their wedding, for they got married under their parents’ orders and by matchmakers’ help. In the Chinese culture, women should be loyal to their husbands and their families. However, in the American culture, women have the sufficient freedom to select the people who they want to get married to, and the parents of the United States will not interfere with their children"s marriage.

4.1 The standard of spouse selection

Marriage is the combination of men and women, which is recognized by a certain society, and mate choice is an important part of the whole process of marriage. Due to the different levels of development of Chinese and Western civilization, Confucianism and Christian thought, there is a significant difference in the degree of freedom of marriage between Chinese and western culture. In the past, Chinese paid close attention to the economic condition and responsibility, while Americans were more concerned about the congeniality in life and spirit.

For Chinese, the first factor to consider is the family’s background. Secondly, the two families should be on the equal social status. Then, the educational background should also be taken into consideration. The last factor to think over is the person’s appearance and figures. In the traditional Chinese society, there are lots of concerns and interference in marriage, especially in the choice of the degree of freedom and mate choice. China emphasizes on the standard of the state and society, so free love and marriage is not the feudal ethics. The conditions of ancient marriage accorded with feudal proprieties and were closely related with feudal ethic. Therefore, “To arrange a match by parents’ order” and “on the matchmaker’s word” is the traditional way of selecting a mate, which has been popular for thousands of years. If the men and women pledge to marry without the parental permission, the marriage will not be blessed. Of course, "the words of a matchmaker" should also be essential. In Chinese culture, no matchmaker marriage is not a complete marriage.

The marriage system and customs of ancient China have restricted people"s pursuit of love. Many couples even have no chance to meet with each other before the marriage, let alone love. Just because this system does not respect the wishes of the parties, it has led to a lot of love tragedies. Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai known as the beautiful love story is the best example, which has been a household love story in China for more than 1000 years. Love can surpass everything including death which is an eternal theme embodied in “Butterfly Love”. Apart from them, LinDo in The Joy Luck Club also reflects the concept of marriage in ancient China.

When Lindo was young, a matchmaker came to bring up a proposal of marriage and then she was forced to get married with a little boy who she had never met before. After some training for household duties through her in-laws, they got married when she turned sixteen. For Lindo, she completely lost the right to choose the man she would like to marry with. The only thing she can do is to comply with their parents" decision.

Since the enacting of the policy of reform and opening-up, along with economic development and cultural exchange between China and America, Chinese young generation are no longer affected by the traditional ideas. However, due to the influence of Chinese traditional culture and ethics, parents still meddle in their children’s growth, and expect their children to develop along the way they have designed for them. In a sense, on the issue of selecting a spouse, the parents still have an important influence on their child’s marriage.

Westerners pursued a free and sincere love, and the third party has no right to interfere. For westerners, the most important factor to choose a spouse is love. As long as they feel nice with each other, they may combine with each other. They may not take other conditions into account such as the family background or educational background. Tagore said that love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it. The America is a human-centered society. Their pursuit of individual freedom embodies the subjective independent thought of individualism. The Americans pay great attention to the development of personal independence and their children have more freedom and equality. Young men and women in love often advocated free love. They hold the opinion that marriage is a private matter, anyone else can not interfere. They think that they have the right to choose the people who they wanted to live together with in the establishment of the family. They always pay attention to the feeling and love. If they have feelings and love, then they can live together, otherwise they can be separated.

Waverly can be said to be a person who relatively advocated freedom in the movie. She was an independent and intelligent woman who cherished her independent spirit and characters, resented be interfered or controlled by others. She only obeyed her own mind rather than listen to her parents’ views, but her mother was deeply influenced by the traditional ideas that the marriage should be decided by the parents. Her first husband was her mother"s favorite Chinese boy, but she did not love him which directly led to the failure of marriage. Waverly is currently engaged to her boyfriend Rich. In the second marriage, she wanted to get rid of the mother"s control and secretly fell in love with a foreigner. However, many of his American’s habits have not been accepted by the Chinese mother Lindo. When Rich was having dinner with Waverly’s family, his behavior was unacceptable for Lindo. He helped himself drink and eat for many times, used the chopsticks in a very strange way and even criticized the mother’s cooking. But Waverly was not separated with Rich despite of her mother’s objections. In the end, Waverly rebelled against her mother and chose her own marriage at last.

Lindo and her daughter Waverly form a sharp contrast in the degree of freedom of mate choice. Lindo was given to another family as a child bride because of the ancient Chinese marriage values, while her daughter looked for her own lover under the influence of American individualism. Thus, there are obvious differences between China and the United States in the degree of freedom of selecting a spouse.

4.2 The purpose of getting married

The differences of Chinese and Western concept of marriage are also reflected in the purpose of getting married. The purpose of marriage is to mean that both men and women want to achieve their desired results through the establishment of a marriage relationship. Thanks to the influence of different cultures, the purpose of marriage in the West also has a great difference on Chinese marriage. To get married in America is the right of individual, while Chinese marriage is more like to fulfill their obligations.

The traditional Chinese marriage is designed for families rather than for love. And Chinese traditional purpose on marriage is to make both the families become stronger. The child is one of the most important reasons of marital maintenance. This point is underlined by its converse: the failure to bear children(or males)is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce. From ancient times to the present, on account of the restriction of Confucianism, people get married in order to continue the family rather than for true love. In their view, marriage is not only a joining together of two individuals, but also a union between two families. In ancient China, parents would choose a wife for their son. On the surface, they seemed to arrange this for their son; actually, they did this for the whole family. In traditional Chinese society, marriage is a family event. In Chinese society, this kind of traditional marriage has undergone great changes. Instead of getting married with propagating the family race as the main purpose, young people are beginning to choose “love first” marriage. But it is still not a simple matter for love to become the primary purpose of marriage in such a highly traditional society like China.

Lindo in The Joy Luck Club was betrothed with a never met boy. She soon realized that her husband was just a little boy and had no sexual interest in her, so Lindo began to treat her husband as a brother. But her cruel mother-in-law expected Lindo to produce a grandson for the whole family and restricted most of her daily activities, eventually ordering her to remain on bed rest until she could conceive and deliver a child. Determined to escape this unfortunate situation, Lindo carefully observed the other people in the household and eventually formed a clever plan to escape her marriage without dishonoring herself or her family. Lindo found a woman was pregnant. She made full use of her husband"s superstition to say the baby was Mrs. Huang"s grandson. Finally, Mrs. Huang successfully got a grandson, and she also got rid of her loveless marriage. Owing to the confinement of the traditional ideas, Mrs. Huang only needed a daughter-in-law to procreation, and didn’t care whether his son was happy or not. It can be seen that the purpose of Lindo’s marriage is only to continue the family.

However, the pursuit of true love is the main purpose of marriage for westerners. They long to find a lifelong companion in an attempt to meet both physical and psychological needs. Western people emphasize on people’s independence and they are always self-centered. From their point of view, a marriage without love is immoral and of low quality.

The difference between China and the West is that Westerners believe in Christianity. In western society, individualism is extremely popular and the personal interests is higher than all else. For westerners, the marriage is to find a soul-mate and long-term heterosexual life partner in order to meet the physical, psychological and social satisfaction. From their point of view, love is the basis of marriage. People think that marriage is just the combination of two individuals and love is the foundation of marriage. As long as two people really fall in love with each other, they can get married. Therefore, the pursuit of true love is the most important in the western marriage purposes.

Rose and Ted are a pair of lovers in The Joy Luck Club. In the beginning, they did not think of the future as long as there is love now. But Ted"s mother ran into strong opposition to their marriage because she thought that Rose is a Vietnamese. Rose couldn’t believe what Ted’s mother was telling her. Ted was also very angry when he heard this and said to his mother, "I am ashamed of you for the first time today." He felt that seeking true love is his own right which should not be at the mercy of his mother, so he immediately showed his own mind to the mother. Ultimately, they firmly think that parents do not have the power to stop oneself from getting along with his lover and they got married within one year regardless of Ted’s mother’s objection. This is the western concept of marriage: Everybody can throw caution to the wind for love as long as the lovers can be together.

4.3 Status of Husband and Wife after Marriage

Husband-wife relationship is the most important relationship in all the family relationships as all the others derive from it. It is the key link in the family chain, closely related to the family structure and family function. Thanks to the different cultural settings and values, the differences of Chinese and western marriage concepts are also shown in the status of husband and wife after marriage. In China, the two persons’ finance will be put together and managed by husband or wife after they get married. Few people will notarize their own property before marriage. While in the West, it is normal to notarize their own property before marriage. And divorce, with its accompanying money problem, is common in the United States.

In traditional Chinese society, the social status of women is relatively low. At that time, the husband often played the dominant role inside as well outside the house, and his wife were expected to be their subordinates. This kind of marriage structure is due to the traditional cultural division. The husband is the head of the whole family and undertakes the family life’s main economic responsibility, while the wife’s tasks are managing housework, taking care of their parents, helping the husband and educating their children. They pay much more attention to responsibility and baby is the most important factor to keep marriage.

Traditional China is a typical patriarchal society. In the family life, the father or the husband has the absolute authority. There are some things a man can do but a woman can"t, which is extremely unfair to the Chinese women, and makes more inequality for the couple in marriage status. As a special form of ceremony, the idea of chastity has a especial significance and makes a notable impact on Chinese traditional society.

An-mei"s mother is a typical example. She was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery and to eat her own bitterness. Her husband passed away and she tended to scrupulously abide by the feudal ethical code and live a widowhood for him. However, An-mei’s widowed mother was raped and then became a concubine. This became a source of conflict for the young An-mei, as her aunts and uncles deeply resented her mother for such a dishonorable act. They tried to convince An-mei that it was not fitting for her to live with her disgraced mother, who was now forbidden to enter the family. All of these contributed to the tragedy of her mother’s suicide.

Here is another example. From a young age, Ying Ying was told by her conservative family that Chinese girls should be meek and gentle. Ying Ying married a charismatic man because she believed it was her fate. She was abused by her playboy husband that he openly had extramarital relationships with other women. Because of the pain in the past, she lost her soul and had no choice but to kill her own child to revenge. From the two examples above, we can see that there are many disadvantages caused by the traditional Chinese marriage view.

However, for the past few years, the status gap between men and women in marriage does not seem so wide as before. Today, many women also begin to go outside to participate in the social work. Even so, most wives still need to or are willing to rely on their husbands. After the implementation of reform and opening-up policy, people’s economic condition has been improved greatly than before and some wives choose to come back home to be full-time housewives again. Many people envy those full-time housewives that they have the good fortune to have such a comfortable life. But for the full-time husbands, people always look down upon them because they think such a man is good for nothing, and he is a useless man.

The westerners’ marriage concept is deeply influenced by Christianity, holding the opinion that the status of couples in marriage should be equal. In their own words:“Husband and wife should be equal partners.” In Western countries, the husbands and wives can all find jobs outside to undertake the family life’s economic responsibility together. The husbands also help wives to do some housework and share the responsibility of taking care of the children, educating and looking after their children together.

Harold and Lena were both living in the United States and receiving education in the United States. They believed that men and women were equal, so all the expenses were paid equally when they were in love. Until after they got married, they still maintained the same situation. He insisted that all household expenses should be divided equally between them although Harold earned seven times more than Lena did. Harold believed that by making everything equal, they could make their love equal as well. Lena felt very frustrated and powerless. In order to be respected, she had the courage to end their unequal marriage. Lena"s marriage failed, but she knew what she wanted. We can see how the American people are pursuing the equality of marriage from Lena’s marriage. If they are not equal in their relationship, they would rather give it up and then find another marriage.

Compared to that in the modern Chinese families, the husband-wife relationship in the American families is more and more equal and they have more personal space as well as personal privacy. The change of the women’s economic status in society is bound to bring about the reform of the husband-wife relationship within the family.

5. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Transnational Marriage

Frequent migration across borders, driven by the country’s rapid economic growth, is a major reason behind the growing number of mixed marriage. About 42.5% of Chinese women were willing to marry a foreign man before the global financial crisis, a survey by a matchmaking website indicated.

In the feudal society, people were bound by religious and feudal ideas. It’s hard to accept the people of different races as a result of the different religious beliefs and moral ethics. But now, the mixed marriage is much more acceptable for most people with the development of the modern society. Compared with traditional marriage, mixed marriage has two advantages. One is that it can promote the harmonious relationship between two different cultures, weaken and reduce the possibility of the conflict. The other one is that it will provide a chance to learn a foreign language, immigrate into another country and have a mixed baby.

As everything has two sides, the disadvantages cant’t be ignored. Have you thought of the potential conflicts that could arise if you marry someone from a different country? Two different countries both have their own cultures, which always lead to misunderstanding during the normal live. It may be easier for the husband and the wife from different cultures to argue with each other because of the different lifestyle. What’s more, different languages will also become a big problem between the families. Last but not the least, it takes a person a long time to join the life in a foreign country. If they can’t deal with these problems well, they may break up in the end. Both parties should constantly adapt to each other"s culture and values. Hence we need to develop mutual tolerance and mutual adaptation to safeguard our respective customs and traditions.

6. Suggestions on the Transnational Marriage

Nowadays, with the development of economy and science, people could communicate more easily than before, and the world also becomes smaller. So the intercultural marriage turns a new question to us. Holding a traditional opinion, there must be some difficulties in a cross-culture marriage. Three suggestions for the solutions of the problems in the international marriage are put forward below.

Primarily, the wife and the husband in an international marriage must understand each other"s cultural characteristics when they fall in love. Cultural conflicts in transnational marriage is very common, including the two kinds of the concept of life, religious beliefs and many other aspects. It is suggested that the two sides could set up a family day on the weekend to make a reasonable discussion on the cultural conflicts between the two parties.

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