Pearl Sydenstricker Buck born June 26, 1892 was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for her acclaimed novel The Good Earth which also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
Buck’s connection with China was from an early childhood, where her parents were missionaries in Zhenjiang, and then in Nanjing, with her first husband. Her summers were spent in Jiujiang. The impoverished community of Nanjing, its poor women and the traditions of China they still held on to was a great inspiration for The Good Earth. Her career started here and she wrote many novels like East Wind: West Wind ,A House Divided, China Sky ,This Proud among others and short story collections - The First Wife and Other Stories ,Far and Near: Stories of Japan, China, and America, Hearts Come Home etc.
She was also an activist and ardent supporter of the rights of women and racial equality. In 1942, she co-founded the East and West Association, dedicated to cultural exchange and understanding between Asia and the West.
First published in Sep 7th 1913.
The Rainy Day is about a Chinese immigrant story. The family of Li is gathered in a small room in a town in China. This is some time in the early 1900s. There is a grim discussion goin on and the topic is
Teh-tsen, the young man. He has studied in Chicago and undergone Western education and expected to work soon at a prestigious office. But they feel now he is at home, idle. There are several matters regarding him, which some of the elders of the family have come to discuss.
According the old man, Mr Li, young Chinese men are supposed to work hard at their profession. They should support their family and the extended family too. He goes by the philosophy of the Ancients that a son should sacrifice his own flesh that his parent may feed on. And that a young man should nourish his family.
Adding to this Teh-tsen’s father now gives his complaint of his son not marrying the maid who, according to their private law, was betrothed at a young age.
Generally the family mocks at Teh-tsen for imbibing western customs and leaving his own behind. They also expect him to have children by now, leave alone being too old for marriage. They, being very religious themselves, also are pained by his actions, which has deprived them of tablets to pray with.
Teh-tsen is a dapper young man with a delicate face and physical shape showing how innocent he seems in the room full of elders - 'people with talons ready to prey on him and his money'- according to him. They had invested in his childhood by educating him, thinking of reaping of him in his youth.
Soon as he steps out of his home to the cobblestone path, to get away from the oppressive atmosphere. he witnesses the durian by the road overflowing with dirt. As he starts to walk, he recalls how he has raised the issue of sanitation with the local town magistrate. With further such ruminations, we come to know how generous minded, socially conscious and welfare liking young man he was. This is in stark contrast to the irresponsible and wasteful boy that his family portrays him as. He has received an award for and essay on Eastern and Western philosophy, feted by his university.
Though he was modern and western educated, he had a deep sense of his country and its matters. From being civic sensed, he also had prepared to teach in a school as this was his way of giving back to his native. But his father wanted him to earn something better to support the family. Clearly, the priorities differed here and perception of selflessness too.
As he walks along in the incessant rain, Teh-tsen has reached the house of his grammar professor Mr.Hemingway. The aged professor lives alone, with his books, college papers and textbooks and a fire to keep him warm. Entering into this abode, Teh-tsen immediately sees the difference between his noisy, crowded home where his brother shares his room not giving him his privacy and tearing of pages from his favorite philosophy books much to Teh-tsen’s anger.
The professor was just about to check a mounting pile of answer papers and was already in a hurry. As he gathers that Teh-tsen is about to ask him something, he wonders if it a job or a favor. Hemingway has a much sloppy perception about western educated Chinese youth that they demand a lot of salary for simple jobs and that the market is full of such laggard men. His lack of time, pent up irritation and stereotypical view of Chinese people all make him give a small piece of his mind to poor, dripping and nervous Teh-tsen.
Sadly his favourite professor’s admonishing lecture, his family’s pressure and the lack of a bright path ahead in his career makes Teh-tsen return home, lonely and dejected and take a tragic decision.
In the review of this collection in
Scribner’s Magazine, 1934, Eli Siegel reviews The First Wife collection as -
The First Wife is made up of stories showing how hearts are revolutionized when a country is; how China, with all its millions of tremendously anonymous people, has emotions to provide for each; and how, in a fashion, every one of these emotions is understandable and right—just as they are in Iowa or Brooklyn. Fathers are put into a great mournfulness by their sons who have been in the West and do not care for the solemn accumulations of family custom in China; serenely suffering Chinese wives kill themselves because of the strangeness and unwilling cruelty of their husbands who have seen trolley-cars and, perhaps, adding-machines; old mothers suffer; and sons suffer at the hands of their slow-proceeding parents. The China that changes is a China that suffers: from love, from floods, from hunger.
Mrs. Buck has no ups and downs, aesthetically. She has been deeply taken by existence; and one part of existence, little understood by the Atlantic, she has made her own; and she knows her territory. She doesn’t fumble; she doesn’t get vaporish; she goes off into no flamboyant thinnesses, no gorgeous vacancies or intense failures.
Her Chinese have been seen; she has captured her landscapes. But all this is because somewhere she worshipped reality and the word that can have reality in it. And a multitudinous Oriental people got in a writer’s way later.
The Rainy Day -ThemesFamily honorThe story shows the tight rope which the elders secure around the younger generation with rules and traditions all pointing at preserving family honor. Whether it be the tablets to worship or marrying a woman unknown, Teh-tsen is made to feel guilty about keeping up with a culture where the rules were written since ancient times.
Perception of family vs societyAt the time when the story starts off with admonishing a young man for his irresponsibility towards them, we see as the story proceeds that all the façade is not only wrong but also unfair. Teh-tsen is mindful about his town, its welfare right from sanitation towards his motive, uninspired by no one but himself to teach children instead of aiming for corporate and trading jobs.
Patriotism and sense of nationWhile the family and professor Mr. Hemingway derides youth like Teh-tsen and assumes all the young, Western educated men are after selfish motives, the real ambition of the youth seems to be a mix of love for nation and a life of service. The elders in Teh-tsen's family spoke from a line of tradition and their outwardly attitude showed them as bein loyal to the country and its ancients, but when each character develops in the story, who is patriotic and who is rooted to the country comes to light.
Suicide and disillusionment with futureI personally think the story is more about the pressures facing youth than about patriotism. Poor
Teh-tsen went out of his home when his family, the very thread we hold on to, proved a hard knot rather than an uplifting support. He stepped into his professor's home, an educated person whom he thought will prove and provide a different environment to his deluded uncles, only to see his frustrated attitude which again, just put more pressure on him. The story shows how fickle and faint the hearts of young people are. Though the story was written around early 1930s, the human mind and heart and attitudes do not change a lot and is affected by the same problems.
Perception of womenTeh-tsen's mother has no role on the discussion of the elders. She felt his hurt and wanted to support him but she couldn't utter a word. This goes to show how meek and subdued women were.
Further in their argument, we see how his father sees his daughter in law as a servant and says ‘ there is no use of hiring an extra servant when there is a daughter-in-law.
Image - Bamboo under Spring Rain, circa 1460Symbolism of ChinaRice paper on lattice windows
Scroll hung on the wall which had adages from the classics
Bamboo pipe regularly used by the elder men
Frequent quoting of the Ancients - learned men and scholars
Symbolism of Rain'Teh -tsen looked ahead bleakly through the long , straight lines of the failing rain.'
Shows as bleak when the protagonist of the story is thinking and recalling certain events and opinions of the people about him. Decrying his mother yearning for him, he says how 'he stepped out into the somber atmosphere left by the slow falling rain.'
'The rain felt upon his smart, felt hat and dripped form the brim.'
The rain can be seen here as symbolic of the harsh words and century old archaic teachings and opinions passed down from generations to generation on younger people, irrespective of what they like or indifferent to their opinion.
'The penetrating, ceaseless downpour had wet him through.'
By the time the rain increase in its intensity, Teh-tsen is also taken out his frustration in his thoughts. The heaviness outside depicts the heaviness of his heart.
