Chapter One The Ironic Portrayal of the Chinese
1.1 The “Crafty” Chinese in Plain Language from Truthful James
The narrator of “Plain Language from Truthful James” is the Irish miner James. He and his friend Bill Nye gamble with the Chinese Ah Sin, and intend to swindle money out of him in the beginning. Unexpectedly, Ah Sin, who seem to be naive and ignorant, is actually better at cheating than them. Enraged at being fooled with, James repeats in the first and last stanza:
“That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar...”(Harte, 131)
This poem was widely spread and contributed to the anti-Chinese wave in the United States in the 19th century. It was misunderstood by the white public as a sarcasm of the “cunning” Chinese. Ah Sin in the poem even became a symbol of the ugly image of Chinese and promoted the development of “the comic coolie”. But with a closer reading, it would be found that most readers (especially the white) only accepted the superficial information, ignoring the complexity and deep-seated irony that Harte tried to convey.
To begin with, the title of the poem indicates the irony here. This poem is narrated by “truthful” James. From his perspective, Ah Sin is “pensive”, “childlike”, “bland”, and soft like the skies. He claims to be ignorant of the rules of the card game yet he wins every time. Unable to beat a “heathen” in their own game, James and Bill Nye feel humiliated from embarrassment, and Nye even tries to strike Ah Sin. In the midst of chaos they find how Ah Sin cheat by hiding cards in his “long sleeves”, and they get even more furious, accusing Ah Sin of his “dark tricks” (131-133). Nevertheless, James himself is obviously not an upright person, that is to say, he is a “morally unreliable” narrator. The so-called “truthful” James is not truthful at all; he and his friend plans to cheat in the game as well, it’s just Ah Sin uses cleverer tricks than they expect.
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1.2 The “Barbaric” Chinese in The Latest Chinese Outrage
To recoup the irony lost on the readers of “Plain Language From Truthful James”, Harte wrote a more direct and poignant poem entitled “The Latest Chinese Outrage” a few years later. Ah Sin reappears as the leader of a group of Chinese laundrymen who confront several miners for refusing to pay their laundry bill. Although the miners are greatly outnumbered, one of them, Joe Johnson, charges headlong into the mob of Chinese while screaming, “A White Man is here!” The laundrymen gather around him and retreat back to their camp. The other miners, following after, arrive at a tree surrounded by several Chinese men. From the tree hangs a bamboo cage with a sign in Chinese that Harte translates for the reader--“A White Man is here!” Inside the cage is Joe Johnson dazed with opium, the pipe still dangling from his mouth. His eyebrows have been shaved, a queue is attached to his head, a “coppery hue” is painted on his face, and he wears “a heathenish suit” (Harte 144-147).
Superficially, there is still negative descriptions of the Chinese in this poem: they are still cunning, tricking Joe Johnson into their trap by pretending to retreat; they speaks strange and hilarious pidgin English; unlike Ah Sin in “The Heathen Chinee”, who is alone at the poker table, there are a great number of the Chinese. However, the ironic tone of this poem on anti-Chinese sentiment is clearer than that of “The Heathen Chinee”, and it is hard to be misread.
To begin with, “outrage” in the title is an obvious irony. “Outrage” could be understood as two different meanings: if it is interpreted as “anger”, it implies that the author is on the side of the Chinese laborers, which is not consistent with the style and tone of irony of this poem; if interpreted as “atrocity”, on the surface, the author is condemning the violent misbehavior of the Chinese from the perspective of a white narrator, but in fact, it is in accordance with the ironic style of the poem. Considering the daunting number of the Chinese, it may seem to be an appropriate word for describing their behavior at first thought. Indeed, the Chinese are violent, and even barbaric in the “battle” they win. And yet, it is definitely unjustified for the white miners to cast a reflection on the Chinese while the former is to be blamed first. As a matter of fact, Chinese suffered from huge economic pressure at that time, and the number of victims may have way exceeded the “four hundred” in this poem. There was no easy way for them to fight back, and as an American Harte was quite aware of this fact. Even in this poem, the Chinese take their revenge only by playing sort of a prank. Compared with what the white racists did to the Chinese, “outrage” is absolutely an exaggerated word to identify such actions.
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Chapter Two The Commiserative Portrayal of the Chinese
2.1 The Victim of Economic Pressure in See Yup
The story “See Yup” is told by an anonymous headmaster-- an intellectual quite like Harte himself, and See Yup is his laundryman as well as his friend in a sense. In this fiction, See Yup is portrayed as a representative image of all Chinese people. He “wore the ordinary blue cotton blouse and white drawers of the Sampan coolie” with the smiling patience of his race” and exhaled the “half opium, half ginger” smell that “I” think is unique to Chinese people (Harte 93-94). More importantly, as most of his compatriots, he suffers from the economic oppression exerted by the white people.
First of all, See Yup could not get his pay. During the first interview, See Yup tells “me” that the landlord in “my” lodgings refuses to pay for the laundry fee and kicks him out every time he goes to ask for the money, for which “I” satirically comment, “Mr. James Barry was an Irishman, whose finer religious feelings revolted against paying money to a heathen” (96). It goes without saying that not every white is endowed with such a sense of justice, and when oppressed economically, Chinese people like See Yup do not have the strength to fight back under general circumstances. After all, they have language barriers and they are outsides, and they could do nothing but put up with this mistreatment. It should be noted that laundry was a major occupation for the Chinese in the western United States in the 19th century. And the story of the white refusing to pay the Chinese laundrymen for washing clothes is a recurring plot in Harte’s works. He realized with sympathy that this was determined by the fact that the Chinese were humiliated and discriminated against.
In addition, See Yup and other Chinese are levied a heavy tax. There is a “Foreign Miners’ Tax” which is an “oppressive measure aimed principally at the Chinese” (101). And here Harte pictures the Chinese as unidentifiable by appearance because of their “monotonous facial expression”. See Yup, the protagonist, takes advantage of this fact, and tricks the collector by intensifying his facial expression to help his Chinese friends evade the tax. It’s not that their behavior works in just ways, but most of the white miners only see it as a joke, and they even commiserated with their suffering (101-102).
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2.2 The Victim of Racial Violence
2.2.1 Wan Lee, the Pagan
After “Plain Language from Truthful James” became an unexpected hit, Harte felt that the misunderstanding of “The Heathen Chinee” among the American public was ridiculous, and he could not ignore what damage this poem caused to Chinese. Thus he planned to make up for the mistake in his later composition; that was why he created “Wan Lee, the Pagan” (Jiang 105). And Wan Lee is a typical Chinese image that suffers from mob violence.
To begin with, Wan Lee is unwelcome in white school. Wan Lee is a child that leads a hard life, “he had known scarcely any childhood: he had no recollection of a father or mother. The conjurer Wang had brought him up. He had spent the first seven years of his life in appearing from baskets, in dropping out of hats, in climbing ladders, in putting his little limbs out of joint in posturing. He had lived in an atmosphere of trickery and deception” (Harte 96). With the help of the Chinese businessman Hop Sing and the several godfathers he introduces to Wan Lee, the boy finally gets an chance to receive education. Yet a few yeas later, the white storyteller, one of Wan Lee’s godfathers, is asked to look after the kid because his life “is at present in great peril from the hands of the younger members of your Christian and highly-civilized race who attend the enlightened schools in San Francisco” (89).
Besides, Wan Lee is undesirable at the newspaper office. Growing up, Wan Lee works as an apprentice for a newspaper where his godfather works. At first, he proves to be a mischievous little boy while delivering paper, but after being confined to the printing-office, “he developed a surprising quickness and adaptability” (92). Though getting along with each other most of the time, Wan Lee’s fellow printers and the foreman discriminate against him, who “looked upon his introduction into the secrets of their trade as fraught with the gravest political significance” and call him “the devil’s own imp” or “a Mongolian rascal” . Luckily, faced with such a level of racial discrimination, Wan Lee knows how to “retaliate on his mischievous persecutors” (92-93). Much of Wan Lee’s early education is as a conjuror so he plays many tricks on the newspapermen. Plus, under the protection of his godfather, Wan Lee manages to live a relatively pleasant life.
英语论文参考
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Chapter Three The Positive Portrayal of the Chinese .......................... 27
3.1 The Cultured Chinese in Wan Lee, the Pagan .......................... 28
3.2 The Powerful Chinese in The Queen of the Pirate Isle .................................. 29
Chapter Four The Characteristics and Causes of Harte’s Portrayal of Chinese Images...............31
4.1 The Characteristics of Harte’s Portrayal of Chinese Images .......................... 31
4.2 The Causes of Harte’s Portrayal of Chinese Images ....................................... 32
Conclusion ............................ 39
Chapter Four The Characteristics and Causes of Harte’s Portrayal of Chinese Images
4.1 The Characteristics of Harte’s Portrayal of Chinese Images
According to Harold R. Isaacs, the image of China in America undergoes roughly six stages, among which the age of contempt lasts from 1840 to 1905 (71). This contemptuous attitude is caused by several events: China’s failure in the Opium War, the signing of the the Treaty of Wangxia, the landing of American Protestant missionaries in southern China, poor Chinese laborers leaving for the United States, etc. It should be noted that the emergence of Chinese immigrants in California had a profound impact on the entire social structure of America. Although Chinese labor made huge contribution to the construction of American west, the influx of large numbers of Chinese and the establishment of Chinatown made a majority of Americans felt threatened. And the team of anti-Chinese racists gradually grew up; they enjoyed judging the way Chinese dressed, criticizing their addiction to opium smoking and gambling, and caviling at their superstition. Even though some whites defended the Chinese out of a sense of justice, more racists tried every possible means to find excuses from Chinese culture and traditions to exclude those “heathens”. And the repulsion, ridicule as well as sympathy aimed at Chinese left scattered marks in American literature.
Harte once confessed that his acquaintance with Chinese had been limited to “weekly interviews” with his laundrymen, so that Harte had been “unable to study his character from a social point of view”, but stated that he had observed enough to justify him in believing that John Chinaman was “generally honest, faithful, simple, and painstaking” (qtd. in Duckett 245). In point of fact, both the traces left by the influence of American social collective imagination and Harte’s own perception about China could be seen in Harte’s delineation of Chinese people.
英语论文参考
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Conclusion
In the 1850s, with the influx of Chinese immigrants to the western United States, two different cultures encounter with each other in communication and collision. The special historical and cultural context gave birth to a large number of works based on the theme of China and Chinese in American literature. And in the field of delineating the images of Chinese, Bret Harte is a key figure.
This thesis presents and analyzes the Chinese images in Bret Harte’s two poems and four short stories, and explores the reasons for Harte’s delineation of Chinese people. In the two poems “Plain Language from Truthful James” and “The Latest Chinese Outrage”, Harte depicts the Chinese as crafty and barbaric to condemn the white racists’ mistreatment of Chinese in an ironical way. While in the two short stories “See Yup” and “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad”, Harte’s portrayal of the persecuted Chinese indicates his pity for this minority ethnic group. Furthermore, in “Wan Lee, the Pagan” and “The Queen of the Pirate Isle”, Harte expresses his wish that the biased public could realize the limitation of their perceptions of Chinese people and racial equality could be rebuilt one day.
In Harte’s works, Chinese images are presented in different ways. For one thing, there are extensive descriptions in Harte’s works that cater to the anti-Chinese parlance of the day in the United States. For another, Harte expresses sincere appreciation for the fine qualities of the Chinese in his works. And this thesis presents three possible causes for Harte’s portrayal of Chinese images. First, Harte’s composes within the scope of the collective imagination of his era. He blends this imagination to his writing yet with his own perception. By utilizing the existent stereotypes in his writing, he seeks to reverse the prevalent rigid view of Chinese people. Second, as a humanitarian, Harte is a friendly observer of foreign culture; he can treat the cultural differences between China and the United States properly, and sympathize with the Chinese. Third, Harte is also reflective in his literary production. When he presents the image of Chinese people he is actually reflecting on the racial issues in the United States at the same time, except that his adopting of racial humor is sometimes ambiguous and thus partly misunderstood by the public.
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