CONG HUYEN TON NU NHA TRANG

---

Women Writers of South Vietnam --1954-1975 ^©

(This is a revised version of the article of same title published in Yale University's Vietnam Forum 9, 1987. It was drawn from a 1984-85 research project supported by a grant from the Joint Committee on Southeast Asia of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, with funds provided by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation.)

The Geneva Agreements of 1954 which spelled the division of the country into two opposing political spheres, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, simultaneously marked separate departures of each camp's respective writers from a shared literary tradition. In the South, the rich and variegated corpus of creative literature, produced during the period from 1954 to 1975, boasted thousands of published works of various genres by well over 200 authors.⁽¹⁾ These works bear witness to a notion of freedom the writers enjoyed in conforming to, rejecting, modifying, or departing from long-held tradition -- each according to her or his own personal aesthetic inclinations. In fact, during these 21 years of tremendous political and social upheaval, freedom with the pen was at times checked and curbed, but never altogether obliterated. Many voices were heard that had not often been heard before; among these was that of women, spoken by women. The following is an attempt to outline the pre-54 literary tradition established by women from which women writers in the South derived inspiration, followed by a description of their works that contributed to the evolution of South Vietnam literature.⁽²⁾

Women's Literary Tradition before 1954

Women's participation in the production of written literature is by no means a modern phenomenon in Vietnam. It is indeed a tradition that goes back to the fifteenth century -- as far as available records show at this point in time -- with poetess Ngô Chi Lan and her four poems on the seasons. In traditional Vietnam, where women were not allowed access to formal education and barred from civil service examinations and hence from participating in public life, known women authors were isolated cases of surpassing talent not readily ignored. Đoàn Thị Điểm (1705-1748) and Hồ Xuân Hương (1772-1822) were outstanding examples. It was Đoàn Thị Điểm's translation into the vernacular of Chinh Phụ Ngâm (The Song of a Soldier's Wife), a work originally written in classical Chinese by her contemporary male writer Đặng Trần Côn, that turned it into a lasting masterpiece of Vietnamese poetry. In a different light, Hồ Xuân Hương was a unique literary figure whose poems -- of satire and of double entendre attacking male dominance and sexual repression -- were scandalous to some and a source of delight to others. Of notes were other poetesses: Princess Ngọc Hân (1770-1799) was known for her poem "Ai Tư Vãn" which, with noble sentiments and refined language, mourns the death of her husband, Emperor Quang Trung, in 1792; Bà Huyện Thanh Quan (1805-1848) excelled in her poems embodying warm patriotic feelings and reminiscences of the past; Nguyễn Nhược Thị (full name Nguyễn Nhược Thị Bích, 1830-1909) wrote "Hạnh Thục Ca" alluding to Emperor Hàm Nghi's flight from Huế when the capital fell to the French in 1885.⁽³⁾

One would suspect that, in these early times, there might very well have been other women whose humble station in life offered no channel for circulation of their writing and therefore their contribution could not have been duly recorded. Happily, with the introduction of printing and the press and subsequent development of the publishing business -- notably from the turn of the twentieth century -- and particularly with demands for modernization which included women's liberation, more and more women writers were accepted into literary circles, their works publicly displayed and acknowledged. The first to draw considerable attention was Tương Phố (1896-1973), who made her appearance in the then influential review Nam Phong (No. 131, July 1928) with her work titled "Giọt Lệ Thu", a piece of prose interspersed with stanzas of verse. In general, however, Tương Phố was known mostly for her verses, which eventually made her the only woman among the four prominent poetry writers of the time. The others were Tản Đà, Á Nam Trần Tuấn Khải, and Đông Hồ. Subsequently, she was joined by other poetesses: Nhàn Khanh, Đạm Phương, Cao Ngọc Anh, Song Thu, and Vân Khanh. Steeped in a literary tradition heavily influenced by Chinese literature, these women writers, for the most part, expressed the same type of patriotic sentiments and nostalgia for the past, in the same or similar form and style seen in the works of their predecessors like Bà Huyện Thanh Quan. This classical trend was checked, finally, in 1932 by a teenage poetess, Nguyễn Thị Manh Manh -- pen name of Nguyễn Thị Kiêm (1914-2005) who was active in the women's rights movement at the time. Her poetry, in experimental forms of her own making, were published in Phụ Nữ Tân Văn , a magazine focused on women issues. She was among the very first advocates of the nationwide New Poetry Movement of the 1930s, which strongly criticized the restrictive traditional verse forms.⁽⁴⁾

Subsequently, when New Poetry had won a stable position in modern Vietnamese literature -- no longer in conflict but simply co-existing with old poetry -- one witnessed the flowering of several noted female poets who seem to have drawn their inspiration from both old and new schools: Ngân Giang, Mộng Tuyết, Hằng Phương, Vân Đài, Anh Thơ, Mộng Sơn, Ái Lan, Thu Hồng, Trinh Tiên. A number of their poems echo, to a certain extent, the romantic melancholy of love, passion, dreams, and despair seen in the works of their contemporary celebrated male counterparts like Xuân Diệu, Huy Cận, Lưu Trọng Lư, Thế Lữ, Chế Lan Viên, Vũ Đình Liên, Nguyễn Bính,T.T.Kh., and correspondingly, the works exhibit more flexible verse forms and new stylistic devices. Other poems betray the lingering influence of the past: their lines are replete with classical allusions and sentiments, and arranged in the restrictive old forms. As such, the poetry created by these women was in the gray area between the old and the new, a unique example of which was the anthology titled Hương Xuân published in 1943 featuring Vân Đài, Mộng Tuyết, Hằng Phương and Anh Thơ. Among them, the figure who stood apart from the above-mentioned two tendencies was Anh Thơ (1921-2005). Her poetry derived inspiration from the beauty of the countryside, from rural life and customs. One of her two collections of poems, Bức Tranh Quê, earned her a literary award in 1939 from the influential Tự Lực Văn Đoàn (Self-Reliance Literary Group)-- even though it was not a hot item to the younger romantic audience of the time.⁽⁵⁾ Together with their more controversial male counterparts, these known women poets created the corpus generally referred to as Thi Ca Tiền Chiến (Pre-War Poetry), i.e. poetry produced before 1945, setting up the poetic tradition for post-54 generations.

In the meantime, the evolution of prose writing by women was more clearly discernible, if only because of the smaller number of authors and published works. The very early known prose work interspersed with verses was Truyền Kỳ Tân Phả (A New Book of Marvelous Tales) by Đoàn Thị Điểm of the eighteenth century. Written in Chinese, its three stories are centered on legendary female characters drawn from history and folklore. The work was noted mainly in the elite circle, not well known to the general public. The next piece of prose which publicly marked women's entry into this area of creative writing was Tương Phố's "Giọt Lệ Thu" (1928), mentioned earlier. The work contains heart-rending sorrow and laments of a young widow when autumn brings back memories of her married life -- the subject matter reminiscent of Princess Lê Ngọc Hân's poem "Ai Tư Vãn". In form, Tương Phố's work borders on a poem in prose. It was created at a time when the prose style of the Nam Phong review was a popular model, and as such it shows heavy influence of that lyrical mold. Aside from stanzas of verse ranging from four to eight lines, which often intrude to sum up or to remark on the essence of what is described in preceding paragraphs, her prose exhibits a poetic rhythm effected by an intensive use of parallel sentence structures. Her four other pieces of prose, loosely classified as short stories, are primarily didactic in purpose. The life circumstances roughly sketched serve mainly as a point of departure for the author's ruminations on life and on the issues of the day. The lyrical style in these works remains very much the same as that found in "Giọt Lệ Thu".⁽⁶⁾

From 1930 to 1945, when the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn took center stage amidst a great number of accomplished male writers attempting various genres of fiction, women authors seem to have largely devoted themselves to addressing the woman question. Creative writing was perceived by some of them not only in its usual function of entertainment, but also as an available vehicle through which to expose women's condition and to promote women's rights. Works of fiction in this vein, however, received little attention.⁽⁷⁾. One can cite for example Tình Lụy (1940) by Phạm Lệ Oanh, Bóng Mơ (1942) by Tú Hoa, Tố Mai by Đoàn Tâm Đan, and Răng Đen (1942) by Anh Thơ. In the main, these writers added nothing that can be called innovative; they generally repeated shopworn subject matters and struggled with stylistic devices many of their male counterparts had more successfully dealt with in the 1930s. The only woman author of this period who achieved a high level of recognition was the pioneer novelist Thụy An with her work Một Linh Hồn (1942). Born in 1916 in Hà Nội, Thụy An (pen name of Lưu Thị Yến) at the age of 13 had her poem published in the review Nam Phong, and her poetry writing continued intermittently until the end of her life in the late 1980s. It should also be noted that her engagement in journalism predated her novel: she founded and ran the weekly Đàn Bà Mới in Sài Gòn from 1934 and Đàn Bà in Hà Nội from 1937.⁽⁸⁾ The novel earned her a respectable place in pre-1945 fiction writing, as evidenced by her presence in Nhà Văn Hiện Đại by Vũ Ngọc Phan, (1951), itself a classic.⁽⁹⁾ Just as the general trend of fiction writing was moving away from Hoàng Ngọc Phách's tearful rendering of the romantic melodrama Tố Tâm (1925) toward a more realistic depiction of life, Một Linh Hồn marked a complete break from the prose of Tương Phố, both in content and form. Characters and their life circumstances are of central focus, not merely serving as points of departure for the author's exposition of her own thoughts and feelings as is the case of most of Tương Phố's prose works. Thụy An's writing is prose proper, devoid of lyrical rhythmic flow and approaching ordinary speech. Her prose exhibits her firm, comfortable command of modern literary language. Thus, the success of Một Linh Hồn may be seen as a landmark in the evolution of women's prose fiction, signaling a point of no return to the earlier tendencies exhibited in "Giọt Lệ Thu".

Subsequent to Thụy An's initiative, from 1945 onward until the 1954 division of the country, women prose writers kept pace with the literary development of the time and in their separate ways projected women's viewpoint on commonly treated topics. Their publications, though small in number, served to secure a place for women authors in the growth of fiction writing. It should be noted that just as women's poetry showed the lingering impact of the pre-45 poetic tradition, women's prose fiction before 1954, more often than not, displayed a steadfast continuation of Thụy An's style of sympathetic description of familial sentiments. One can cite Chị Dung (short stories, 1949) by Hợp Phố, mention Đặng Thị Thanh Phương whose various works appeared in the early 1950s, and count the following: Bốn Mớ Tóc (short stories, 1950) by Thụy An; Vượt Cạn and Làm Nũng (short stories, 1952) by Mộng Sơn; Tà Áo Văn Nhân (novel, 1952) by Quỳ Hương; Trời Đã Xế Chiều (novel, 1953) by Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng; Đứa Con Hoang (novel serialized in the daily Sài Gòn Mới, 1953) by Tùng Long; and more notably Hai Chị Em (short stories, 1953) by Nguyễn Thị Vinh; Gió Bấc (novel, 1953) by Linh Bảo. In general, their works depict women's joys and sorrows connected with various emotional ties within family surroundings. The tradition of projecting a moral lesson is seen in some, while Mộng Sơn's Vượt Cạn and Làm Nũng reveal the author's wish to advocate social consciousness. There was a tendency, represented by Tùng Long, to focus more on telling interesting stories--viết truyện-- in order to hold the audience rather than on creating literature as art --viết văn. A clear inclination toward the latter endeavor was Thụy An's Bốn Mớ Tóc in which one can see her consistent focus carried over from her 1942 novel, where complicated events in the lives of characters are but secondary, their emotional relationships being the subject of her keen observation and sharp delineation. A similar approach was taken by Linh Bảo whose sharp and often biting sarcasm added another dimension to her portrayal of characters and circumstances. Nguyễn Thị Vinh meanwhile utilized a smooth flow of prose coupled with gentle compassion in depicting stories of love and affection.

It may be said that even as Thụy An made her mark in the North, Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo helped promote women's fiction writing in South Vietnam. The strong influence of the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn group on the last two authors was through the person of Nhất Linh, leader of the group, who resided in Sài Gòn from 1951. In 1953, it was his publishing house Phượng Giang that introduced Nguyễn Thị Vinh with Hai Chị Em and Linh Bảo with Gió Bấc.

Nguyễn Thị Vinh, born in 1924 in North Vietnam, had a relatively easy entry into the world of literature. While living with her husband in Hong Kong (1947-1952), she met Nhất Linh and showed him some of the short stories she had written. His positive response and encouragement set her on the path of creative writing, resulting in the publication of Hai Chị Em ⁽¹⁰⁾ Many stories in this collection were written in Hong Kong. The first edition (1953), due to censorship, leaves out the title story, whereas the 1967 edition includes it. "Hai Chị Em" is centered on the portrayal of the difficult lives of two sisters who have to fend for themselves and their children because their husbands have been snatched away by the war -- one dead and the other exiled. Most stories in the collection are set in the North during the First Indochina War, peopled with simple human beings who deal with basic problems of survival.

Linh Bảo is the pen name of Võ Thị Diệu Viên who was born in 1926 in Thừa Thiên province. She studied in mainland China from 1947 then moved to Hong Kong in 1950 after the Communist takeover. There she met Nguyễn Thị Vinh and showed her the diary she had kept as a student during those turbulent years in China. Nguyễn Thị Vinh, in turn, had Nhất Linh read it. This leading male author suggested that Linh Bảo rewrite it using the third-person narrator, as Vietnamese readers were not yet familiar and comfortable with the "I-novel". This she did, and her first book Gió Bấc, a semi-autobiographical novel, was published by Nhất Linh toward the end of 1953.⁽¹¹⁾ This work tells the story of a young woman growing up in Huế who dreams of studying abroad, and the subsequent fulfillment of her dream when she is presented with a chance to go to Hong Kong for studies. She struggles to support herself during hard times in mainland China, until she meets a man who wants to share his life with her.

Also operating in the sphere of Nhất Linh's influence was Quỳ Hương. This author, who first appeared with a lengthy poem of over eighty lines entitled "Nỗi Lòng Chinh Phụ Việt Nam" (1950), also began writing fiction in 1952. Her first novel, Tà Áo Văn Nhân (1952) repeats one of the by then outworn themes addressed by the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, namely an attack on the custom of child marriage.

From this overview, it can be summed up that post-54 women authors inherited the literary tradition established by female poets with works up to and including the anthology Hương Xuân (1943) by Vân Đài, Mộng Tuyết, Hằng Phương, and Anh Thơ, and by women fiction writers culminating in the works of Thụy An, Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo. What they made of this tradition was conditioned by how much literary operating space available for them to realize their potentialities. Ironically, as will be noted shortly, the Second Indochina War, for all its devastating effects on the lives of Vietnamese people, served to encourage and facilitate women's participation in the literary realm -- with various degrees of success and recognition. We will now explore three periods in the development of women's creative literature (corresponding to three general stages of the war): (1) period of transition, 1954-1963; (2) period of explosion, 1964-1970; and (3) period of re-orientation, 1971-1975.

Period of Transition, 1954-1963

The end of the First Indochina War and subsequent termination of French rule in Vietnam was achieved at a high price. The division of the country saw the uprooting of over a million people from the North and all the social tensions that entailed their move to the South, followed by the dictatorship of the Ngô family which provoked social unrest in various quarters of the South Vietnamese population. From 1954 until the fall of Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963, South Vietnam was virtually a police state with stringent censorship of the press and imprisonment of many citizens arbitrarily classified as Communist sympathizers. The American presence during this period was marked by MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory Group) and by the Michigan State University Advisory Group that together helped Ngô Đình Diệm stabilize his rule. In general, American economic support was primarily for the purpose of stemming inflation; only from 1962 was the emphasis shifted to military aid. Diệm, who depended on a regular inflow of American dollars, was not anxious to effect changes befitting the whole populace. It follows that American aid, which was deemed necessary for the overall economic development of South Vietnam after the First Indochina War, in fact benefitted only part of the urban middle classes. ⁽¹²⁾ One can hardly expect such a stagnant economy to facilitate an expansion of the literary market beyond privileged groups and avid student readers. Of the available popular reading materials, mention should be made of those brought back by a group of scholar-writers returning from their studies in Europe like Nguyên Sa and Cung Trầm Tưởng, introducing the works of Camus, Sartre, Sagan, to name a few.

Given oppressive censorship that restricted publication and in light of limited purchasing power on the part of the reading public during this period, the traditional male-dominated world of literature remained very much unchanged. There was simply no extra room to readily admit a professional woman writer, one who earns her living by creative writing. There was a number of women's magazines, most of them short-lived (lasting from a few months to a year or so).⁽¹³⁾ These periodicals whose primary purpose was to entertain and to impart general knowledge did not offer adequate channels for women's creative works of substance. Their literary products had to find their way into reviews founded or controlled by established male authors and publishers. Some women authors were published in this fashion, but their appearances were largely occasional, constituting no more than a decorative novelty, a spice added to their male counterparts' laborious search for something different for the literature of the day. In the main, the closed literary milieu served to prolong the amateur status of women authors. Indeed, writing to most of them during these ten years was still generally a hobby, and publication an incidental occurrence prompted by families' and friends' encouragement and support. Financial gain from published works was minimal.

After the partition, the South retained Mộng Tuyết, one of the poetesses well-noted before 1945. Mộng Tuyết, born Thái Thị Úc in Hà Tiên in 1914 (and married to poet Đông Hồ), continued with the Pre-War poetic tradition and joined an all-women poetry group called Quỳnh Dao. This group was formed in 1961 and headed by the elderly poetess Cao Ngọc Anh (born 1878). The rest of the group included authors who had begun to compose poetry in the 1930s which was influenced by the style of Bà Huyện Thanh Quan: Đào Vân Khanh, Quỳ Hương, Trùng Quang, Mai Oanh, Uyển Hương, Vân Nương, Tuệ Mai, Thu Nga, Tôn Nữ Hỷ Khương, Phương Viên, Như Hiên, among others. The Quỳnh Dao group's inclination was to perpetuate the old poetry, especially the T'ang verse forms. In fact, to be accepted into the group in the first place, members had to demonstrate their ability to compose a T'ang style poem of eight lines, adhering strictly to its rules. They were free to write new poetry for publication or for any other purposes if they chose; but at their monthly gathering, which was hosted by each member in turn, only poems of old verse forms were read and commented upon. Some members extended their literary activities beyond these exclusive gatherings. Quỳ Hương, for example, gave three public lectures organized by the Vietnam PEN Club. Trùng Quang from the late 1960s until 1975 ran a bi-weekly program on Vietnam Television called "Đài Thơ Phương Chính", a poetry forum through which selected poems by women were introduced and presented by professional female poetry recitalists.⁽¹⁴⁾ In 1963 the Quỳnh Dao group published a collection titled Tiếng Thơ Thời Sự. Among the members whose poems appeared rather frequently in notable reviews such as Tân Phong, Bách Khoa, Văn, and Phổ Thông were Mộng Tuyết, Quỳ Hương, Tuệ Mai, and Tôn Nữ Hỷ Khương. Independently Tuệ Mai (1928-1983) published Thơ Tuệ Mai (1962), and Quỳ Hương Hoa Tâm Tư (1963).

Beside the Quỳnh Dao group, one should also mention the five women poets in Tao Đàn Bạch Nga founded by Nguyễn Vỹ (1912-1971) in 1962: Thu Nhi, Tôn Nữ Hỷ Khương, Phương Đài, Minh Đức Hoài Trinh, and Thanh Nhung.⁽¹⁵⁾ Among them, Minh Đức Hoài Trinh, author Linh Bảo's younger sister, was most noted for her frequent appearance in various literary reviews, with her works both in prose and in verse. She was one of the first women writers who produced what may be called "overseas Vietnamese literature". Born Võ Thị Hoài Trinh in 1930 in Huế, she went to France in 1953 to pursue studies in journalism, political science and chữ Hán (Chinese script), and returned to Vietnam to live and work in 1963. It was during her student days abroad that her first book of poems, entitled Lang Thang (1961) was published. It was followed by a collection of two plays Thư Sinh -- Trương Chi (1963).⁽¹⁶⁾ These works do not relate the experiences of a Vietnamese woman abroad; rather, they embody her nostalgia for her native culture.

Included in this transitional period was Kiều Mộng Thu with her volume Cánh Mimosa Ngày Cũ (1962) which relates passion and desires of a woman whose love is thwarted by the war. Mention should also be made of student authors, most of whom were initially published in literary journals. Cao Thị Vạn Giả, Cao Mỵ Nhân, Hà Phương, and Thanh Nhung were among this group. Cao Thị Vạn Giả who made her first appearance with the poem "Khúc Ly Đình" in the review Ngàn Khơi (1963) also wrote for Dân Chủ and Mai. Cao Mỵ Nhân was noted for her collection Thơ Mỵ (1961), Hà Phương for Giòng Thơ Sang Mùa, Buồn Hoang Thế Kỷ, and Đêm Nước Mắt (1959 and 1960).⁽¹⁷⁾ Thanh Nhung, whose many poems were published in Phổ Thông, together with two female friends Như Lan and Tuyết Linh, contributed to a collection of poetry titled Hoa Mười Phương (1959) which feature themselves and eleven male poets. In the same year, she also appeared in Tiếng Thơ Miền Trung alongside four male student poets: Cao Hoàng Nhân, Từ Thế Mộng, Thương Nguyệt and Võ Thùy Lam.⁽¹⁸⁾ In the main these young women, having real potentialities, at this early stage of their writing were still experimenting with various forms of expression so as to depart from the pre-45 romantic trend and to address new realities and concerns. ⁽¹⁹⁾

Such new inclination was more clearly exhibited in the poetry of Nguyễn Thị Hoàng and Nhã Ca, both from Huế. Having composed poetry while in high school, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng published two collections: Sầu Riêng (1960) and Sau Phút Đam Mê (1961), in which the most memorable and popular poem "Chi Lạ Rứa" of 40 lines embraces the unique Huế dialect. Her poetry appeared regularly in Bách Khoa (from 1960), then later in Văn (from 1963).⁽²⁰⁾ Nguyễn Thị Hoàng's verses echo the passion, illusion of reality, and despair prevalent in the poetry of Vũ Hoàng Chương and Đinh Hùng, two celebrated male poets who came to fame in the 1940s and at this time had a following among student readers in the South. Meanwhile, perhaps the budding potentiality that promised a break away from the current trends was glimpsed in Nhã Ca. Having published in a student magazine since 1957 under her real name Thu Vân, she did not attract attention as Trần Thy Nhã Ca until 1960 when her talent in both poetry and prose, enriched with social consciousness, was recognized and introduced by the prominent writer poet Nguyên Sa in the review Hiện Đại. ⁽²¹⁾ It is worth remarking that Nguyễn Thị Hoàng's and Nhã Ca's well-received poetry seem to have effectively served the function of building a bridge to the world of creative literature where women eventually found their vocation in fiction writing -- which was, at the time, increasingly gaining momentum.

Indeed, it was only during this transitional period, 1954-1963, did the writing of prose fiction by women begin to assert its presence, even though a foundation had been laid earlier in 1939 by Thụy An's Một Linh Hồn, and in 1953 by Nguyễn Thị Vinh's Hai Chị Em and Linh Bảo's Gió Bấc. In the main, efforts were put into strengthening or consolidating whatever women had accomplished so far. Just as women's poetry showed the lingering impact of the pre-45 poetic tradition, women's prose fiction, more often than not, displayed either a steadfast continuation of the Thụy An style of gentle description of familial sentiments or an adherence to the literary conventions of the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn group (especially with regard to the stereotipic image of women), or both of these tendencies. As mentioned earlier, Nhất Linh, leader of the group, introduced Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo. Subsequently, his review Văn Hóa Ngày Nay (1956-1959) was the main literary base for these two women novelists. Given these connections, certainly Nhất Linh's influence over their writing was only to be expected. Nonetheless, the two women authors, in their separate ways, moved away in the end from that influence to evolve and bring to modern Vietnamese literature a distinctive feminine quality.

After coming back to Saigon from Hong Kong, Nguyễn Thị Vinh had various works published in a number of magazines and reviews like Tân Sanh, Việt Thanh, Mới, and Văn Hóa Ngày Nay. In 1959, together with her husband Trương Bảo Sơn, she founded and directed the review Tân Phong whose contributors were mostly women. By herself in 1965 she started the bi-weekly women's magazine Đông Phương. Her publications after 1954 include: Thương Yêu (novel, 1955); Xóm Nghèo (short stories, 1958); and Men Chiều (short stories, 1960). Nguyễn Thị Vinh's major works, those which have been mentioned most frequently and considered the best representatives of her art, are Hai Chị Em (described before) and Thương Yêu. ⁽²²⁾ Thương Yêu is a novel centering on four orphans, a brother and three younger sisters. Cheated out of their inheritance by a relative on account of their being underage, the four lead a hard life for want of many basic necessities. Their affection and care for one another help them overcome difficulties until the oldest comes of age and has access to the properties due them. With newly acquired money they open a store and make a living by it. Circumstances conspire to prevent the first two sisters from marrying the men they love, but they eventually content themselves with making a home for other men who really care for them. The youngest sister reaches adulthood when she finds the promise of a much more fulfilling future besides her brother's close friend, a man with whom she shares concerns for social issues. Once he has fulfilled familial obligations as of the eldest child, the brother now feels free to devote himself to causes outside the family circle.

The world that Nguyễn Thị Vinh portrays is largely reminiscent of the one found in fiction created by the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn group whose members from the outside viewed the underprivileged with compassion at times almost condescending, seeing ignorance and perpetuation of backward customs and practices as the root causes of all problems suffered by their characters. Repetition of Tự Lực Văn Đoàn's stereotypes can be seen most clearly in this author's sympathetic delineation of women as images of patience and understanding, of unquestionable devotion and loyalty, of self-sacrifice and tolerance. In a different light, however, she also depicts the conflict of values experienced by female characters which render their actions and reactions more real and comprehensible. In an attempt to give them personalities of their own, instead of presenting them as mere stereotyped characters necessary to keep the plot moving, her probing of their inner feelings helps draw attention to a reality that received little notice by her male counterparts: often agonizing is the process by which women come to terms with prescribed behavioral patterns and fixed rules, for they too are normal human beings with potentials to develop, with wants and needs to meet, with dreams to pursue. In the end, nevertheless, what stands out in her work is a sense of resignation on the part of the woman, a quiet acceptance sustained by love and affection.

Linh Bảo returned to Viet Nam from Hong Kong in 1957 and stayed until 1959, during which time, and subsequently from abroad, she regularly contributed to Nhất Linh's Văn Hóa Ngày Nay and also to Mới, Người Việt Tự Do, Tân Phong, Vui Sống, and Bách Khoa. Her publications after 1954 included: Tàu Ngựa Cũ (short stories, 1961) and Những Đêm Mưa (novel, 1961). ⁽²³⁾

Tàu Ngựa Cũ consists of nine short stories previously published in Văn Hóa Ngày Nay and Tân Phong from 1958 to early 1960s. This collection earned Linh Bảo a National Literary Award in 1961. Two of the stories, "Áo Mới" and "Người Quân Tử" were translated and submitted to the Short Story Contest sponsored in 1962 by the International P.E.N Club in London. The two works were among the twenty-six short-listed for final evaluation. "Áo Mới" recounts the history of several robes which, for one unexpected reason or another, a little girl has no chance to wear, and describes her desolation when her mother is no longer alive to enjoy all the new robes that the girl, now a working adult, can afford to buy for them both. "Người Quân Tử" exposes the pathetic circumstances of a naïve young woman who is misled into playing the multiple roles of underpaid secretary, mistress, housewife and maid by a man who parades himself as a noble protector providing her with a shelter. Meanwhile "Tàu Ngựa Cũ", the title story, describes a touching chance meeting on a train of two ex-lovers who have lost touch for a long time, the meeting being interrupted by the wife's appearance which brings the man back to reality where he sees himself as a horse heading straight back to his stable.

The novel Những Đêm Mưa can be seen as completing the story which Gió Bấc related eight years earlier in 1953: a young woman growing up in Huế lives through some hard times in mainland China, until she meets a man who wants to share his life with her. Những Đêm Mưa picks up where Gió Bấc leaves off, seeing the young couple getting married. Married life soon proves to be far less blissful and secure than the woman has hoped. Conflicts abound, the woman packs up and takes their daughter back to Huế for an indefinite visit with her parents. Coming back thoroughly disenchanted with her own marriage, she witnesses her mother's mute suffering from her father's exclusive preoccupation with a new concubine. After her father's death, her mother hands over the house to the concubine and seeks refuge in a pagoda. Having decided to rely on herself, the young woman finds a job and has no plans to go back to her husband in Hong Kong.

Most of Linh Bảo's works were written abroad, the stories often set outside Vietnam even as most of her characters are Vietnamese. They come from a variety of backgrounds, and the emotions and feelings that stir them are not always happy or noble. In fact, we encounter an assortment of personalities, lonely people for the most part, whose dark sides Linh Bảo does not hesitate to expose with almost brutal frankness. Unlike Nguyễn Thị Vinh and other women fiction writers before or contemporaneous with her who have taken care to keep a distance between themselves and their creative products, Linh Bảo can be said to have been the first subjective woman author. This can be inferred by the fact that her first novel originates from her own diary, an autobiographical account masked behind the use of third person narrative; and, likewise, the second novel embodies her actual experience of a flood in Huế upon returning from abroad. One can also detect that the protagonist in many of her works share aspects of her own personality. In this respect, it is in the art of writing that her subjectivity is uniquely expressed. Consistently throughout her work, Linh Bảo asserts her individuality by commenting with a rather bitter sense of humor and sarcasm on the various states of affairs she describes -- most often as they affect women. This cynical approach stands alone among the sympathetic tones employed by other women writers of her generation. In this light, if Nguyễn Thị Vinh's fiction reinforces the faith that unquestioning tolerance and self-sacrifice on the part of women help restore the normalcy of life, Linh Bảo's works hint at a need to re-assess the long-held validity of such resignation which serves to perpetuate women's failure to achiever happiness. One comes away from her stories troubled, while sadly amused by the author's juxtaposition of contradictory elements. The ironic content is matched by her mischievous mode of expression, particularly prevalent in dialogues, through the witty language spoken by a perceptive and wise woman. Her prose flows effortlessly like natural ordinary discourse, unlike the studiously polished style of the Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, and yet it exhibits an elegance of grammatical precision.

Of other fiction writers, mention should be made of Quỳ Hương. During this time span, aside from her involvement with the Quỳnh Dao poetry group, Quỳ Hương produced another novel, Hai Mối Tình (1958), and a collection of short stories, Tiếng Không Gian (1962).⁽²⁴⁾ Most of her characters are in search of love and affection which they have either failed to maintain or been deprived of. They live their emotions in too dramatically romantic a fashion for today's readers to identify with.

In the same vein, one notes the works of Tú Hoa, Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng, and Tùng Long. They published the type of sentimental stories that had been popular a couple of decades earlier, reflecting their steadfast adherence to traditional literary conventions, featuring a just and happy ending. Tú Hoa's first novel Bóng Mơ (dated 1942) was followed fifteen years later by her second novel Đường Đời (1957). The latter relates a young woman's ordeal in discovering that the man she loves is already married, followed by her happiness with a young doctor who saves her from her attempted suicide. Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng's novel Nắng Đẹp Hoàng Hôn (1962) is a revised edition of an earlier work published in 1953 under a different title, Trời Đã Xế Chiều. The young woman in the original novel lives a lonely unhappy life because she fails to forgive and forget the past mistakes of her ex-husband who comes back to her with the hope of mending their broken relationship. In the second version, the same woman is made to see, in an additional chapter, the need to treasure their old emotional ties so that she and her repentant ex-husband can give each other support for the remaining years of their lives.⁽²⁵⁾ Meanwhile Tùng Long, the most prolific and most popular of the three, had several works published in book form during the span of time under discussion: Giang San Nhà Chồng (1956), Chúa Tiền, Chúa Bạc (1957), Vợ Lớn, Vợ Bé (1957), Tình và Nghĩa (1958), Ai Nỡ Ép Duyên (1963), Con Đường Hạnh Phúc (1963), and Trên Đồi Thông (1963). This list does not include her novels serialized in daily newspapers and magazines: six per year on the average. ⁽²⁶⁾ This author admitted that the happy ending of many of her sentimental stories were not entirely the product of her own imagination; rather, it resulted from suggestions by many readers who were moved by pity for the characters.

New faces were also noted in fiction writing. Mộng Tuyết, who had been known for her poetry since the 1930s and was still actively writing poems, in 1961 published, under the new pen name Mộng Tuyết Thất Tiểu Muội, a charming historical novel entitled Nàng Ái Cơ Trong Chậu Úp. ⁽²⁷⁾ Set in Hà Tiên in the eighteenth century, the work tells of the dramatic love story of the governor of the province and his beautiful, talented second wife. Apparently a product of careful research, the novel succeeds in conveying a sense of the literary atmosphere surrounding the traditional elite. While Mộng Tuyết looks back on the golden past of the Confucian scholar gentry, author Vân Trang reveals much of the folk life in rural areas of Southern Vietnam in a collection of short stories titled Một Lá Thư Tình (1963). ⁽²⁸⁾ Mention should also be made of Thu Vân, Tuyết Hương, Đỗ Phương Khanh and Trúc Liên whose works appeared in a number of serious literary journals. Thu Vân had two published books to her credit: Đất Mẹ (novel, 1960) and Màu Mưa Đêm (short stories, 1961). Tuyết Hương was noted for her semi-autobiographical novel Phấn Đấu which was serialized in the review Bách Khoa.

Women authors also had a fair share in the production of children books. These are of pocket-size and generally of about thirty pages. Linh Bảo's Chiếc Áo Nhung Lam first published by Phượng Giang in 1953, was re-printed in 1961 in the Vườn Hồng series of books for children. The publisher-editor of the series was Phạm Lệ Oanh, author of Tình Lụy (novel, 1940), who was assisted by her daughter Trương Anh Thụy. This mother-and-daughter team also produced a number of works in this series: Phạm Lệ Oanh with Con Đường Mới, Đứa Trẻ Khốn Nạn, Hoàng Tử Chột và Công Chúa Xứ Anh Đào, Lá Số Tử Vi, Phật Của Bé Hương; Trương Anh Thụy (using pen name Khánh Vân) with Công Chúa Hồng Hoa and Má Ơi Con Chừa.⁽²⁹⁾

Thus, in both poetry and prose, women writers of this transitional stage worked to re-affirm their presence in creative literature and to pave the way for further exploration and development by their younger female colleagues in later periods. They did this by writing and publishing steadfastly within the confines of an atmosphere of political oppression and a poor literary market, most often treading the familiar grounds inherited from the pre-1945 literary tradition. With no best-selling work to speak of, their regular appearances nonetheless gave more self-confidence to women and encouraged them to participate in this cultural sphere. Furthermore, the thrust of their writing was germane to the distinctive trends of women's creative literature that would become more fully developed afterwards. Most illustrative of the development was Nguyễn Thị Vinh's gentle hint at the unexplored potentialities, grievances and aspirations of women; and, more directly, Linh Bảo's disquietude over what women for centuries have submitted themselves to, in the name of sacred tradition.

Period of Explosion, 1964-1970

This period began in the aftermath of the fall of the Ngô Đình Diệm regime in November 1963. In relation to our present interest, the removal of strict censorship of the press and the Americanization of the war can be considered key events. Pent-up emotions and thoughts, now released, gushed forth into a profusion of newspapers, journals and books of every type and shape, providing room enough for new talents and broadening the literary horizon. The controversial events surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 initiated American active involvement in the war, leading to the massive rapid buildup of American troops (from 16,000 men in 1964 to 541,000 in early 1969) and the accompanying logistic support. ⁽³⁰⁾ US dollars and US goods poured in; new job opportunities were created for various classes of the urban population. The ensuing higher standards of living facilitated, among other things, expansion of the reading public to include the urban lower classes who, for the first time, could afford leisure and money to take up reading. The new audience included maids, seamstresses, hair dressers, sale girls, factory workers and others. ⁽³¹⁾

The wide range of changes in social economic environments associated with the new phase of the war created favorable circumstances for the emergence, in force, of women authors and their works. One can remember that women writers of the previous stage had made women's participation in the realm of creative literature an unquestionable fact and reality. With the backing of that legacy, all that a potential woman author needed now was to show a publishable manuscript in order to be admitted to the literary world. The large number of periodicals and daily newspapers responding to demands of an expanding readership offered a lot of such possible entries. Another factor further acted in favor of women writers' advance: because of the war and its political implications, there was an unstated moral pressure on male authors to exhibit in their works a greater degree of social political consciousness and responsibility; women, on the other hand, tended to write with a relatively high degree of personal and familial concerns and therefore posed no threat of competition, no contest of territory. Hence, they were more easily admitted into this largely male-dominated sphere of cultural activities and given more room to operate than had been experienced by the generation of Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo.

Indeed, there was a number of popular women's magazines which served as a forum for women's writing about women. On the other hand, the most substantial contribution to the growth of women's creative literature can be attributed to Võ Phiến and Mai Thảo through their two influential reviews, Bách Khoa and Văn. These well-established male authors/editors actively encouraged and promoted those female talents they recognized among the multitude of manuscripts submitted to them. Furthermore, the current literary taste as well as the composition of the reading public as mentioned above played no small part in launching literary careers for quite a few women writers. Much as the whole population of South Vietnam grew weary of the escalation of the war and of the resulting political instability, readers sought to escape into the world of fantasies where they could find a sense of order, some semblance of sanity.⁽³²⁾ One would suspect that serious literature, which had been food for thought to many in the previous period, hardly appeal to the masses who ravenously devoured translations of Chinese novels depicting adventures of martial arts heroes. ⁽³³⁾ Thinking readers were still there, but they were vastly outnumbered by those who just wished to be entertained by the unusual. In this light, women's works, which reveal the hidden psyche and intimate world of womenfolks, proved to be quite compatible with the changed literary taste. In fact, the public's enthusiastic reception was translated into considerable income for some authors like Nguyễn Thị Hoàng and Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ who started their own publishing houses early in their writing career. Their success on the literary market undoubtedly encouraged other publishers to bring out works created by women. Moreover, it is hard to overestimate the importance of the support provided by women readers who made up the bulk of the reading audience, who could best relate to the various experiences depicted in those works. High school and college male students, in order to avoid the draft, had to successfully pass all final examinations and move up to the next grade each year. As a result, they focused exclusively on textbooks and could not afford the luxury of reading literature for entertainment. ⁽³⁴⁾ Young women students, on the other hand, having no such pressure, could engage, in their spare time, in the enjoyment of literature. The war also made more women join the work force by necessity, thus giving them the means to purchase the type of literary materials they preferred. It is not difficult to see that what women writers of this period had to say, and how they said it, was to a large extent conditioned by this particular audience whom they addressed.

Against that background, it should be observed, however, that the ultimate goal of some of the female authors would seem to go beyond the palpable index of commercial success. They indeed wanted recognition and not mere popularity; they also worked hard for it and, to various degrees, achieved what they aimed for. In the area of poetry, a few writers known in the previous period continued in the classical and sentimental vein; some other showed an awakening to the reality of their war-torn country; and a very small number attempted to ponder the question of women's existence and destiny.

Works embodying the first tendency, the focus of which being the portrayal of romantic sentiments of love and affection, include the following: Thu Nhi's Trắng Đêm (1964);Tôn Nữ Hỷ Khương's Đợi Mùa Trăng (1964); Lê Thị Phương Châu's Niềm Đau Tuổi Mộng (1964) and Lời Tình Phương Châu (1967); Hoàng Hương Trang's Khép Đôi Mi Nhỏ (1964) and Linh Hồn Cỏ Biếc (1967); Kiều Mộng Thu's Hai Khung Trời (1965) and Lá Đổ Trên Mười Đầu Ngón Tay (1968); Phương Mai's Pha Lê (1965); Lê Thị Ý's Cuộc Tình Và Chân Dung Tôi (circa 1970); Ngô Kim Thu's Tình Yêu Con Gái; Tuệ Mai's Như Nước Trong Nguồn (1968) and Trên Nhánh Sông Mưa (1970).⁽³⁵⁾

In a few other collections of poems, the romantic tendency is seen side by side with deep feelings for the country and concerns for the nation's future, the latter subject largely expressed in a desire for stability and peace: Mơ (1964) by Minh Đức Hoài Trinh; Không Bờ Bến (1964) by Tuệ Mai; Đất Mẹ (1967) by Phương Đài; Mộng Thanh Bình (1970) by Tôn Nữ Hỷ Khương. Không Bờ Bến by Tuệ Mai received favorable reviews focusing on the author's rendering of her ambivalent responses to current events -- ambiguity which would seem to reflect the common state of mind of her contemporaries.⁽³⁶⁾ This work earned her a National Literature Award in 1966. Tuệ Mai, born Trần Thị Gia Minh in 1928 in Hà Nội to the well-known poet Á Nam Trần Tuấn Khải, was one of the most prolific women poets, devoting herself completely to creative writing until the last days of her life when she died of cancer in 1982. Her work encompasses the two tendencies discussed above.

Of note was two collections of poetry: Em Là Gái Trời Bắt Xấu (1965) by Lệ Khánh and Nhã Ca Mới (1965) by Trần Thy Nhã Ca, a.k.a. Nhã Ca -- both clearly departing from stereotypic references to women (by both men and women) as creatures of beauty and passivity. The first work contains thirty-two poems describing the painful, humiliating feelings associated with a young woman's unrequited love and loneliness which she attributes to her plain looks in a world where physical beauty is so much emphasized.⁽³⁷⁾ Meanwhile, in her collection, Nhã Ca peels off layers of ideality which have condemned women to a life of self-denial, and reveals her own awareness and acceptance of her human limitations as well as her emotional and sexual needs. She also proudly sings of the passages of life (adolescence and adulthood) she has experienced as a woman molded by both joy and sorrow. ⁽³⁸⁾ Her poetic language is free of clichés. The use of symbolic imagery and language betrays the influence of "the Canticles" or "the Song of Solomon". Nhã Ca herself admitted that she often derived her inspiration from King Solomon's verses. Her pen name, in fact, is a translation of the word "Canticles", while the title of her volume reads "New Canticles".⁽³⁹⁾ Nhã Ca's poetics is a successful combination of the new poetry which had evolved from the 1930s and the free verse forms promoted in the late 1950s. For this collection she received a National Literature Award for poetry in 1966.

Concurrently, more women authors entered the field of fiction writing. One can imagine that poetry, which demands contemplation and crystallization of thoughts and feelings, could not as easily keep up with the fast and chaotic unfolding of events as could the more spontaneous flow of prose. And, on a practical level, poetry did not sell while a popular novel could bring royalties from several editions. Sentimental domestic novels and short stories continued to prevail in the works by those authors who had published during the previous period. Nguyễn Thị Vinh produced no book-length works during this period, her name primarily connected with the women's magazine Đông Phương which she herself founded in 1965 as well as with a few short stories. Her contemporary Linh Bảo published a children book in 1967 entitled Con Chồn Tinh Quái. In the same year, in a collection named Hương Thu, Đỗ Phương Khanh gathered her short stories that had appeared since 1958 in the reviews Văn Hóa Ngày Nay and Tân Phong. Author Tú Hoa continued with three more melodramatic novels of tragic love affairs: Lưu Luyến (1964), Danh Giá (1965), and Tao Ngộ (1969). ⁽⁴⁰⁾ Mộng Tuyết re-asserted her presence with Dưới Mái Trăng Non (1969), a collection of essays which she had written since the 1950s.

In the picture are also a few independent women writers -- those who had no periodicals for a base -- like Trịnh Thị Diệu Tân with the novel Mảnh Vụn (1967); Kiều Mỹ Duyên with the novel Thiên Thần Mũ Nâu (1969); Châu Mỹ Quế with Tuổi Ngọc Mây Mù (1969), a collection of short stories; Thiều Giang with several romantic novels: Thu (1967), Bạch Lan (1968), and Tường Vy (two volumes, 1968); Dung Saigon with a series of novels for teenagers like Dễ Thương and Dễ Ghét (1969, co-authored with Võ Hà Anh). ⁽⁴¹⁾

Of interest is the volume Mười Hoa Trổ Sắc published by Ngọc Minh in 1967, featuring ten short stories by ten women authors. ⁽⁴²⁾ The anthology may serve as a useful point of departure for an account of new faces in the field. Seven among the ten have been discussed or mentioned before: Nguyễn Thị Vinh, Linh Bảo, [Đỗ] Phương Khanh, Trúc Liên, Vân Trang, Hoàng Hương Trang and Minh Đức Hoài Trinh. The last two had been known mainly for their poetry, and if her work in this volume is any indication, it seems that Hoàng Hương Trang's talent does not lie exclusively in the area of prose fiction. Like Hoàng Hương Trang, Minh Đức Hoài Trinh started with poetry writing. But while the former decided that poetry would remain her chief interest ⁽⁴³⁾, the latter concentrated more on fiction writing during this period. In fact, from the end of 1963 (when she returned to Vietnam to work as a journalist) until 1968 (when she again left for France, on this occasion to cover the Paris Peace Talk) Minh Đức Hoài Trinh published only one volume of poetry cited earlier, Mơ (1964). Her other works which appeared during this span of time were prose fiction, including Bơ Vơ (novel, 1964), Hắn (short stories, 1964), Hai Gốc Cây (novel, 1966), Sám Hối (novel, 1967), and Bức Thành Biên Giới (novel, 1967).⁽⁴⁴⁾ In general, her prose works do not offer a deeper insight into the world of Vietnamese women, insight which one might have expected from an author who had the advantage of observing, from a distance and from a different perspective, the impact of her own culture on women. Minh Đức Hoài Trinh is more a story teller than a writer of fiction: little effort is taken to re-work experiences and to make sense of them in some coherent fashion. As a result, one often catches a disconnectedness of details, ideas or concepts which weakens her portrayal of characters and situations. Her writing style is closer to the spontaneous language of everyday discourse than to the more carefully chosen language of literature. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ If, as the author maintains, that her aim has been to project in her work human compassion and the love of the country, her poetry seems to have served this purpose better than her prose.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Of the remaining authors present in this anthology, Minh Quân was then a new talent whose name had first been noticed in 1965 when the Vietnam P.E.N Club awarded her a prize for Những Ngày Cạn Sữa (1965), a collection of short stories. Her other creative works include Đất Và Người (novel, 1967) and Lửa Dậy Trời Xuân (children book, 1969). Two other contributing authors, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ and Trùng Dương, are of special interest as representatives of a generation of young women writers who emerged with exceptional creative energy.

Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to say that one of the most dramatic events in the development of South Vietnamese literature was the phenomenal appearance in the 1960s of a group of five young women fiction writers then in their twenties: Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Nhã Ca (earlier known for her poetry), Trùng Dương and Túy Hồng. They were in high school at the time when it was considered fashionable to read Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Franҫoise Sagan. Their emergence was marked not only by the numerous novels and short stories they spun out to flood the market, but also by the impact of their best or most-talked-about works -- all appearing about the same time. The serialized novel, which was a major attraction by which newspapers and periodicals lured and retained readership, soon turned these women into professional writers. The fact that they made their living mainly from creative writing could not have given them the same type of leisure or breathing space enjoyed by their predecessors Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo, leisure needed to focus on the aesthetic standards each had reached. Nevertheless, together -- each with one or two works of real substance -- the five succeeded in drawing attention to the complexity of women's existence and in challenging the validity of traditional values and norms. Immediately they became controversial figures, not the least because they touched upon many sensitive spots in a culture obstinately clinging to the myth of male supremacy. Perhaps with the exception of Túy Hồng, the actual life histories of these young women are expression of their rebellion against the age-old tradition deeply derived from Confucianism. Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ and Trùng Dương were unwedded single parents for some time, while Nhã Ca left home in Huế at the age of nineteen to be with her lover poet in Sài Gòn whom she eventually married without the approval of both families. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Contrary to her quiet and tame life style, Túy Hồng's fictional world explodes with boisterous critical comments on various conventions imposed on women.

It is no wonder these writers were dubbed "Ngũ Quái" (Five She-Devils). The five plunged headlong into both feminine and feminist tendencies in creative writing, areas of literary engagement which Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo had only tentatively explored. Feminine writing, in its most narrow sense as literature produced by women, should be more precisely taken to allude to the attitudes of the author, as a woman, who approaches an issue with a view to portraying its impact on women. Feminist writing, on the other hand, displays a conscious attempt to expose and attack the unreasonableness of a socio-cultural value system which hinders women's search for personal happiness and fulfillment. While the first type subtly informs of the reality of women's life, the second suggests or demands changes that could render that reality less oppressive and more equitable. Each of the five authors chose to place more emphasis on one approach or the other, thus endowing their creative products with a meaning over and above the usual function of entertaining the audience. Nhã Ca and Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, seemingly following in Nguyễn Thị Vinh's footsteps, showed more inclination toward feminine writing, but traveled a distance and a depth further in their self-assertion than their predecessor had cared to venture. Meanwhile, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Trùng Dương and Túy Hồng clearly embarked on feminist writing, elaborating on the disturbing questions previously raised by Linh Bảo and critically rejecting the burden of self-denying duty and responsibility imposed by tradition on the female population.

Nhã Ca, born Trần Thị Thu Vân in 1939 in Huế, began to publish her poetry under her maiden name in the magazine Văn Nghệ Học Sinh from around 1957. In 1959, before graduating from high school, she left Huế for Sài Gòn where, together with a group of young writers (including her future husband), she made a living by writing articles for a number of newspapers and journals. Married in 1961 to Trần Dạ Từ, a known poet, Nhã Ca continued to make writing her career. From around 1964 she also worked for National Radio Broadcasting and a radio station called The Voice of Freedom. This author wrote for periodicals like Hiện Đại, Sáng Tạo, Văn Nghệ, Ngàn Khơi, Đông Phương, Văn, Tiếng Nói, and dailies like Ngôn Luận, Tin Sáng, Tranh Đấu, Sống, Hòa Bình, Độc Lập . She produced numerous serialized novels for different newspapers and magazines, a number of which were subsequently published in book form. Up to April 1975, Nhã Ca could count over 30 published works to her credit -- novels, short stories, poems, memoirs. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ It should be noted that while her first published work, the collection of poems Nhã Ca Mới (1965), rendered her a recognized author, her fame as a unique woman poet seemed overshadowed by her popularity as creator of the war-related novels Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác (1966) and Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế (1969). ⁽⁴⁹⁾

Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác originated from a news feature Nhã Ca had written for The Voice of Freedom radio station around 1964 which describes devastating effects of the war on people in areas that come under constant shelling. Upon the suggestion of her colleagues, Nhã Ca picked up elements from this report and wove them into the fabric of a novel. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ The work tells of a painful episode in the life of an urban lower middle-class family as narrated by the female member who is the third of four children. Her oldest brother is in the army, having been sent to combat in faraway places; her elder sister is engaged to the brother's best friend and comrade-in-arms. The young woman herself is worried about her future with her own fiancé who is about to be drafted. Action is centered upon the fact that the mother has just won a small sum of money from lottery. The family agrees to spend the money on a special dinner as a treat for the two young soldiers on the Sunday when they are supposed to be home on leave. On the appointed day, they all wait with growing concern until late in the evening, but there is no sight of them. Instead, a member of their unit comes to inform that the son was killed in battle and the fiancé is missing in action. The family opens their arms to embrace the dead son's secret lover, pregnant with his child, who comes to share their grief. ⁽⁵¹⁾

Meanwhile, Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế was based on Nhã Ca's own experience of the Tết Offensive 1968 in Huế, her home town. The novel describes the intense fighting and the plight of innocent people caught in it. It is, essentially, a condemnation of the atrocities of the war in which the Communist side had a larger share in the author's view. It is said that this fictionalized account of the event was the reason why she was sent to a re-education camp after April 1975. ⁽⁵²⁾

In fact, as a fiction writer, Nhã Ca has been noted mostly for her works whose titles bear obvious reference to the war: Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác (novel, 1966), Người Tình Ngoài Mặt Trận (short stories, 1967), Một Mai Khi Hòa Bình (novel, 1969), Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế (novel, 1969), Tình Ca Cho Huế Đổ Nát (short stories, 1969), Tình Ca Trong Lửa Đỏ (novel, 1970). But this author did not write war fiction proper. Like Nguyễn Thị Vinh, against the background of the ongoing war, Nhã Ca sets out to relate sentimental stories of human interest. The first person "I" in her fiction, excluding the semiautobiographical novel Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế , is used as an effective device to render more authentic the female protagonist's most intimate thoughts and feelings. But while Nguyễn Thị Vinh seems to focus more on the psychology of various characters, Nhã Ca sets her characters in motion in a social setting where looms large the war that affects all. The consistently recurring motif (or stock situation) found in her war-related works is the separation of a young loving couple by the death of the male partner in battle. The thread of development of the plot does not solely wind around their relationship, however. It stretches out from there to touch the chaotic social surroundings in which these two individuals' predicament is but a typical example. The female protagonist is usually a middle-class woman of average intelligence, nurturing simple dreams and truthful feelings, who shares with many other women the agony of waiting for their men without knowing if and when bad news arrive. Women in Nhã Ca's fictive world do not have the confidence enjoyed by Nguyễn Thị Vinh's female characters -- that genuine love, in the end, conquer all adversities -- though they are no less affectionate and caring. Indeed, their love and care and selfless concerns make their pain more poignant.

In other works where the destructive effects of the war do not form the central theme, Nhã Ca deals with the ever-present predicament of the woman -- war or no war. One sees a recast of the themes in her book of poetry Nhã Ca Mới: young women are shown with keen awareness of women's lonely journey into motherhood, of their vulnerability in man-woman relationship, and of their emotional and sexual needs frustrated by personal circumstances and especially by oppressive social conventions. Bóng Tối Thời Con Gái (1967) and Mưa Trên Cây Sầu Đông (1969) are the best examples. The gentle and sympathetic tone adopted for the portrayal of women who are victimized by the war is, in this genre, accompanied by a resentful undertone. Nhã Ca's writing style is clear and simple in the sense of being free of beautiful but empty clichés. The flow of her prose is pleasingly smooth. Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế can be said to be the pinnacle of her literary creativity. Subsequent works are either a rehash of old themes or short of thematic unity, the style not on a par with her early mode of expression: Tòa Bin-Đinh Bỏ Không (novel, 1970) is a case in point.

Joining force with Nhã Ca to highlight women's predicament in the war-torn environments was Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ. Born Nguyễn Băng Lĩnh in 1937 in Long Đức Đông village, Vĩnh Long province, Thụy Vũ had a few years of high school education before becoming an elementary school teacher in a suburb of Vĩnh Long in 1957. ⁽⁵³⁾ In 1961 she left her teaching job and went to Sài Gòn where she studied and subsequently taught English to bar girls. Guided and encouraged by Võ Phiến, editor of the review Bách Khoa in which her first short story "Một Buổi Chiều" was published, she embarked on fiction writing career from 1963. Her first collection of short stories Mèo Đêm (1966) instantly made her a writer to reckon with. From 1967, Thụy Vũ was co-owner of the Kim Anh publishing house, and later of two others named Hồng Đức and Kẻ Sĩ. As of 1969 she established herself as a professional writer of serialized novels appearing in several daily newspapers like Tiếng Nói Dân Tộc, Sống Còn and Tin Sáng . During this period, in addition to serialized novels, Thụy Vũ published works of fiction in book form: Mèo Đêm (short stories, 1966), Lao Vào Lửa (short stories, 1967), Ngọn Pháo Bông (novel, 1967), Thú Hoang (novel, 1968), Khung Rêu (novel, 1969). Her major works are Mèo Đêm and Khung Rêu, the latter making her the winner of a National Award for Literature in 1971. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Mèo Đêm consists of five short stories in the first edition of 1966 and seven in the 1967 edition. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ "Mảnh", title of the first story, is the name of a shy young man whose presence is more or less a foil to set off the lonely existence of a circle of women living around him in a small town: a frustrated widow finding solace only in the fantasy of being adored by young men; a young woman having to leave town because of unexpected pregnancy then returning when protected by a sum of money provided by her man; the narrator herself, a teenage girl trying to escape from the stagnant life in her small hometown. "Đợi Chuyến Đi Xa" and "Một Buổi Chiều" describe a young woman agonizing over becoming an old maid, delineating her deep desire for love and sex. "Mèo Đêm", the title story, tells of a young widow forced into becoming a bar girl in order to support her sick child, and of her affair with an American GI who will soon go home without her. The female character in the next story "Nắng Chiều" is another bar girl who persists in using her physical assets to trick and exploit her American GI customers even as she is beaten up by one of them. "Bóng Mát Trên Đường" features a young woman who does not want to dwell on memories of the past related to a man, wishing instead to plunge into the real life out there. Finally, "Miền Ngoại Ô Tỉnh Nhỏ" introduces a cantankerous old man living near a group of three high school girls and describes the unpleasant but humorous crashes between the two generations. Eventually, the girls get married simply to escape from the boredom of daily existence; then one of them, the first-person narrator, after her divorce and her infatuation with a Buddhist monk, realizes that she has no hope to render her life less depressing.

The novel Khung Rêu is a sensitive portrayal of the decline of a prosperous landowner's family in the South during the first Indochina War. On the brink of bankruptcy, the master of the house clings to bygone status and prestige while his practical wife is well aware of the real situation even as she tries her best to cover it up in order to maintain a façade of respectability. Behind this false security evolves the moral deterioration of various family relationships which ends with the death of the family head in a state of total despair. ⁽⁵⁶⁾

As we have seen, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ places her female characters in two different social milieus: the narrow confines of a small town and the world of bar girls cum prostitutes in Sài Gòn. Women in her fiction are lonely people not blessed with luck and opportunities. In the first milieu heavy with rigid social norms and prejudices, women have to suppress their natural inclination toward fully enjoying life when the chance of doing so is very slim in the first place. Her portrayal of frustrating circumstances experienced by young widows, young women who have passed marriageable age, and young girls of mediocre social economic background is reminiscent of Túy Hồng's description of similar types of people a few years earlier in Thở Dài (1964) which will be discussed shortly. However while Túy Hồng's characters carry a spirit of rebellion, women in Thụy Vũ's small town resignedly accept their life of joyless days as inevitable and unalterable. This deterministic view of women's lot is more strongly suggested in her works that feature bar girls and prostitutes where, including everything and barring nothing seen and heard in the sordid world of these social outcasts, she presents them as helpless victims of brutal social conditions. Furthermore, the sexual part of women's life that is suppressed in the framework of a small town finds expression in the turbulent life experience of bar girls who are quite oblivious to normal social norms and values. In the context of the entirety of this author's work, this juxtaposition can be viewed as a cycle of repression and liberation of women's sexuality, the liberation being no more than a brave unraveling of women's sexual drives. In connection with this, women of the two worlds depicted by Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ share the anxiety of growing old. Indeed a recurrent motif is obsession with the decay of the body with the passage of time. It is particularly acute in the mind of bar girls and prostitutes who depend for survival on their physical attributes. The two types of women also hold a deep longing for emotional and sexual experiences with a man of their dreams who never seems to be within reach.

In most of her works, this writer makes use of the device of first-person narrator/witness, which allows her to describe the most intimate details with such immediacy. She brings to light one of the darkest side of Vietnamese women's life in a writing style suitable to her naturalistic inclination, her sentences short and her language simple. The influence of Túy Hồng's style can be detected in Thụy Vũ's early works as she has candidly admitted, especially in regard to humorous description of characters and actions.⁽⁵⁷⁾ It would appear possible that Túy Hồng's unique success in projecting local color into her fiction inspired Thụy Vũ to record faithfully life in the Southern region with its charming dialects and customs. Similar success is clear in her rendering of dialogues among bar girls, prostitutes, pimps, and their customers, the authenticity of which matched by her perceptive re-creation of the milieu in which those characters move.

While Nhã Ca and Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ focus on describing the dilemma faced by women in cruel circumstances, Túy Hồng's main interest seems to lie in critical re-examination of the situation of women in male-female relationship. Túy Hồng was born Nguyễn Thị Túy Hồng in Chí Long village, Thừa Thiên province, in 1937. She grew up in Huế where she attended Đồng Khánh and Quốc Học high schools, then spent two years at the University of Huế until 1961 when she turned to teaching. She made her first attempt at creative writing while waiting to be appointed to a teaching post, and her first short story "Bát Nước Đầy" was published in the review Văn Hữu in 1961. Subsequently, more of her short stories that appeared in the journals Văn Hữu, Bách Khoa, and Văn immediately drew readers' attention and established her as a noteworthy author. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ Some of these were selected for inclusion in her first published volume Thở Dài (1964). This was followed by another collection of short stories entitled Vết Thương Dậy Thì (1965). Both works were published in Huế. In 1966, Túy Hồng moved with her family to Sài Gòn where she was married to Thanh Nam, a writer, and where she continued with teaching and writing. After the birth of her first child in 1968, she gave up teaching and devoted herself to writing full time. Her most productive years were from 1969 to 1972,⁽⁵⁹⁾ during that period she was a regular contributor to more than twenty newspapers and magazines. She also signed by the pen name Hân Tố Tố for the social satires she wrote in 1969-1970. Up to April 1975, this author had about twenty published books to her credit, most important among them are Thở Dài (short stories, 1964), Tôi Nhìn Tôi Trên Vách (novel, 1970), and Những Sợi Sắc Không (novel, 1971).

Thở Dài consists of five short stories. The title story recounts the circumstances of a young female teacher who was raped as a child by a French soldier and who now feels isolated from her peers, burdened with the fear of becoming an old maid because the only man who understands and accepts her is not within reach. "Vòng Tay Anh" relates the experience of another female teacher who has been in love with a man for three years without knowing that he is married and the father of five children. She gives herself to him in desperation only to realize that he is not worth her humiliation and pain. "Ngày Xuân Đêm Xuân" has as the protagonist a Nguyễn princess who rebels against the stifling, depressing life within the Imperial Palace. Her rebellion is an outright rejection of expected moral conduct, involving her maltreatment of the husband chosen for her and her affair with another man soon after her husband is killed. "Nhìn Xuống" portrays the disconcerting state of mind of a young bride who lives with her husband's extended family where her mother-in-law's jealousy completely dampens her happiness, which happiness being partially restored when she knows she is with child. "Lòng Thành" presents a young woman singer who longs for the more private life of a regular wife and mother, but is pressured by her husband to continue selling her voice to augment family income. With the deterioration of her voice and consequently her earnings resulting in her husband's loss of affection for her, and with the death of her child due to lack of care from a working mother, she turns for solace to the company of a girl friend who eventually steals her husband's heart.

Tôi Nhìn Tôi Trên Vách is Túy Hồng's first novel, published in 1970. It is an account of the marriage of a not-too-young woman from Huế and a not-too-young writer originally from North Vietnam, both living in Sài Gòn when they met. The novel traces various sorts of conflict in their daily life, which are made more complex when the couple moves in with her parents and siblings. The woman's dissatisfaction and predicament with regard to the less than equal marital relationship, in which she has the larger share of compromises and tolerance, is portrayed with utmost realism and wry humor.

Những Sợi Sắc Không, the work the author was most satisfied with, won her first prize in the National Literary Award competition of 1971. This novel had been serialized in the review Vấn Đề from October 1967 to December 1970, and had not been published in book form when she submitted it to the competition.⁽⁶⁰⁾ It relates a heroic and tragic time for the people of Huế when young intellectuals join force with Buddhists to overthrow the First Republic under Ngô Đình Diệm. In the aftermath of the fall of the Ngô family, there comes a division among these previously allied groups. The students cling to their idealistic view of revolution and expect the rest of the population to follow them in their anti-government struggle; but the Buddhists decline to continue in organized opposition. Against this background are introduced two young women: one has joined the students' movement for idealistic reasons; the other, an aspiring writer, has participated in it for the sake of understanding the situation. The experiences of these characters reflect the confusion, unrest, and drastic changes in the social reality of Huế -- which encompasses an unprecedented, outright rejection of moral and social conventions by the young writer.

Túy Hồng also writes about women in love. These women of average looks and mediocre family background either marry late or are still unmarried when their more lucky peers are already settled with husbands and children. The fact that they have passed the marriageable age is ridiculed and condemned by society, which fact making them think of love not as a romantic personal indulgence but primarily as a means to liberate them from spinsterhood. The pressure to conform to social expectations lands them in undesirable emotional and sexual relationships, leaving them desolate, their wants and needs unappreciated and unfulfilled. These young women resent and criticize outmoded conventions and prejudices that give them little choice in life, but in the end they must succumb to institutionalized norms. Unlike Linh Bảo's male characters who seem inherently selfish, men in works by Túy Hồng are presented as victims of the system as well. Having been deeply indoctrinated to take women's submission and disadvantages for granted, these men see no other options -- no less for themselves than for their women. Túy Hồng portrays the hell these frustrated young unmarried women go through on the inmost level of their psyche, obsessed always with their physical appearance and sexual desire, embroiled in a web of love, hate, envy, jealousy, joy, despair, self-pity -- plenty of morally coerced giving and very little spontaneous taking. Her focus on this segment of the female population that has been largely ignored enriches the content of modern Vietnamese literature, to say the least. Indeed, it is in the description of these young women's sexual frustrations and final release that lies one of this author's most notable contributions and accomplishments. The sexual part of male-female relationship, as experienced by women, has never been more keenly depicted. On the other hand, the sensation and pleasure of the flesh are artfully rendered, mostly by suggestive imagery and language, so that the delineation never becomes vulgar.

Even as in Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ's work one often hears accounts by a first-person witness, Túy Hồng's female characters are presented as first-person narrators of their own stories, this device endowing a sharper immediacy and authenticity of experience and feeling. But more than this inside view which may tickle the curiosity of many readers, it is this author's attitude toward her subject matter that sets her apart in a class of her own. She can be seen as a genuine humorist who handles her material in a sardonic tone with the apparent aim of making the audience laugh but at the same time compelling them to think. While the humor in Linh Bảo's writing is subtle and bitter resulting from her contemplating of ludicrous contradictions in human life, we find in Túy Hồng's art the hilarious and boisterous sarcasm of a woman who constantly grumbles and points out the comic absurdity of rules and conventions even while living them. With time, this playful humor matured, becoming less boisterous and more subtly critical. There is no breathing space between the female character's actions and her own sardonic comments on them -- all captured artistically through dialogue. By her own contention, the psychology of characters and dialogue are the two aspects this author is most mindful of in her writing. ⁽⁶¹⁾ We may observe further that the psychology is revealed more through dialogues than in concrete behavioral gestures. Tension, punctuated by unexpected turns of conversation, makes it interesting to follow what is being said, and in such a pleasant process we effortlessly absorb the characterization. Finally, it may be suggested that Túy Hồng's style represents one of the few palpable successes in the search for newness in modern Vietnamese literature, the very concern of many of her contemporary colleagues. For indeed she does not walk the conventional path crowded with outworn clichés, elite refined language and borrowed vocabulary incompatible with authentic local Vietnamese experience. By staying close to the spontaneity and fluidity of her native Huế dialect, she produces a style that conjures up the pulse of life of the world she re-creates. Reading her is hearing the voice of Huế describing people and things in unadulterated local words and idioms; it is listening to the esoteric and mischievously rebellious expressions of Huế women behind the austere and conservative façade of a proud city. Reading her is seeing the singularity of Huế dialect blend with the shared mother tongue which is rich in simile and metaphor, musical by tones and rhythm. Her comparisons are so unexpected and so apt that they are never boring; instead, they give something like pleasure of surprised recognition. The same can be said of her skillful projection into common words and old clichés intriguing new meaning or new implication that, within specific contexts, cannot escape understanding and appreciation.

While Nhã Ca and Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ give insight into the typical condition of women who search for happiness under constraints of various conventional and social norms, and as Túy Hồng shows how women conform under protest, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng presents her female characters in a different context. Also known by her pen name Hoàng Đông Phương, this writer was born in Huế in 1939. She spent her high school years in Huế and Nha Trang then attended the Faculty of Letters and the Faculty of Law of the University of Sài Gòn in 1960. Nguyễn Thị Hoàng quit her college studies in 1962 and went to Đà Lạt where she taught Vietnamese literature in high school. She left her teaching job in 1963 and moved to Sài Gòn where she devoted herself to creative writing, being a regular contributor to a large number of periodicals and newspapers including Bách Khoa, Văn, Màn Ảnh, Đồng Nai, Hòa Bình, Tin Sớm, Công Luận and Nghiên Cứu Văn Học. A prolific writer, up to 1975 Nguyễn Thị Hoàng published twenty-three novels and more than forty short stories ⁽⁶²⁾

Of note is the fact that personal experience during her stay in Đà Lạt provided materials for her first and best known novel Vòng Tay Học Trò which was serialized in the journal Bách Khoa in 1964-1965. The work drew considerable attention only when published in book form in 1966 -- 4 re-prints within a few months. ⁽⁶³⁾ It relates the love story of a young woman high school teacher with a male student who is the sole lodger in her mansion in Đà Lạt. The living arrangements draw criticism and condemnation by the school and its students' parents. When realizing that she is in love with the student, the young woman stubbornly defies social judgment and turns her mansion into an isolated paradise within which to live out her romantic dreams. The illusion is shattered when the young man lies to her to cover up an escapade. She ends the relationship, quits her teaching job, and heads for Sài Gòn.

Nguyễn Thị Hoàng is reported to have revealed her intention to change course after Vòng Tay Học Trò in an attempt to write fiction of more substance.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Either she then again changed her mind or failed to grasp the essence of what she alluded to, for her later products offer nothing radically different from the flow of her first novel. The female characters in her subsequent works are versions of Trâm, the young woman teacher in Vòng Tay Học Trò, moving in similar social circles, struggling with the same inner conflicts and ideas about love, at no time transcending self-absorption toward consciousness of larger issues. On the other hand, what might have appealed to the audience of the time is the author's rather unusual attitude toward her subject matters. With the view that each individual is, to quote the fashionable cliché she uses, "an isolated island in the sea of bustling life", ⁽⁶⁵⁾ she seems to have been content with depicting the female protagonist in a private world of her own, wrestling with the making of her own reality. Social obligations are by no means disregarded, but they are not allowed to interfere with personal life. This implied principle is expressed most boldly in Trâm's outright defiance of social norms and related sanctions, or more simply by her ignoring them, engrossed as she is in dealing with innermost feelings and conflicts. This type of self-preoccupied woman is placed by this author in settings alien to the average Vietnamese woman whose life is forever defined by a network of interpersonal and social responsibilities, and who was at the time bogged down in the turmoil of her country at war. Nguyễn Thị Hoàng's fictional environments belong in a world purportedly of sophisticated living, marked by expensive cars, parties and nights spent in chic restaurants and tea rooms for music and dancing, a world filled with the aroma of imported wines and cigarettes. A young woman like Trâm, endowed with beauty and talent, is also the embodiment of vestiges of a colonial past: she boasts of refined taste in wines and cigarettes, prefers Western cuisine to authentic Vietnamese cooking, adopts the continental habit of having four meals a day, and feels at home with Western classical as well as popular music. What is more, she is spoiled rotten by an easy life, sought after by rich or influential men, only to be bored and dissatisfied with life in the way that Franҫoise Sagan's characters have made fashionable.

It has been observed that this writer's passion lay more in projecting a modish image of herself than in presenting an objective reality. ⁽⁶⁶⁾ The observation may have been based on the known parallels between the life experiences and personality of the female protagonist in Vòng Tay Học Trò and those of the author herself. The fusion of fact and fiction was revealed in a rather unsavory manner when, in response to criticism of the "immoral" relationship described in her novel, the real model for the student character himself wrote a novel giving his own version of the story. In this inferior work, attempting to absolve himself from all moral responsibilities related to their affair, he debases the romance that is portrayed with tender affection in Nguyễn Thị Hoàng's work. ⁽⁶⁷⁾ Be this as it may, it is unfair to say that all this author brought to literature was a mere projection of self, too narrow to carry any meaningful contribution. Art attempts to make sense of life, and there is no reason why she should not have tried to make sense of her own life experience. How much she is representative of the social milieu she projects in her work is not the issue; rather, how successfully she manages to give insight into the reality of its people is a measure of her art and her contribution. While focusing on the predicaments of an individual female character, the author reveals a class of women where the character belongs. This small segment cannot be excluded from the totality of social life in South Vietnam any more than one can ignore the downtrodden life of prostitutes as described by Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ. Moreover, and inadvertently perhaps, this writer points her finger at a new reality then becoming more prevalent but rarely articulated, which features self-supporting women who assert their right to freedom and self-determination. She may not have set out to openly propagate an idea of women liberation; rather, she reflects an instance of what it is like to be independent and able to make one's own decisions. One may suspect that her depiction of this new inclination was the real cause of objection to her first novel, which was masked by irrelevant moral judgment on the part of reviewer critics. A careful reading of Vòng Tay Học Trò would show that it is no more than a romantic and innocent love story where physical intimacy is negligible, and the student is neither Trâm's own student nor the only lodger in her house. There is a role reversal that upsets the conventional order, with Trâm as the superior partner in their emotional relationship.

Over all, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng does not try hard enough to probe the female character's psychology even though her central objective would seem to explore this aspect. Seemingly influenced by the late 1950s' movement to bring newness to literature, this author chooses to avoid the conventional approach of juxtaposing the character's thoughts with what she says and does. The alternative she adopts is the most prominent technique used in the stream-of-consciousness novel, namely the interior monologue successfully developed by William Faulkner for example. But in Nguyễn Thị Hoàng's work, perhaps less so in her first novel, the interior monologue more often than not is little more than strings of polished words convolutedly dressing borrowed fashionable ideas, all of which hardly adding anything to the portrait of the protagonist's down-to-earth reality. In books like Trên Thiên Đường Ký Ức, Một Ngày Rồi Thôi, Cho Những Mùa Xuân Phai, Tiếng Chuông Gọi Người Tình Trở Về, this author experiments with different uses of punctuation. Her sentences range from one word to a page or more, supposedly simulating the uninterrupted flow of the stream of consciousness. Perhaps her contribution lies in her suggestion as such of a possible way of creating a new style for a new content.

The last and the youngest of the Five She-Devils was Trùng Dương who also used the pen names Chân Phương and Tiêu Dao for publications other than creative writing before 1975. Born Nguyễn Thi Thái in 1944 in Sơn Tây (North Vietnam), Trùng Dương lived in Hải Phòng after 1947, then moved to Sài Gòn with her family in 1954. After graduation from high school in 1962, she enrolled in the Faculty of Letters, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sài Gòn for about four years. From 1966 to 1971, she worked as a staff writer for Saigon Radio Station and was also in charge of a program on Vietnam Television. Trùng Dương contributed regularly to the newspapers and periodicals Bách Khoa, Văn, Vấn Đề,Đời, Diễn Đàn, Tinh Hoa, Thần Phong, Sóng Thần and Dân Chủ. From 1971, she was publisher-editor of Sóng Thần, a controversial newspaper whose main goal was to fight against corruption prevalent in the South Vietnamese Government. She first gained entry into the world of creative literature with her short story entitled "Sao Rụng" published in Bách Khoa in 1965. This piece was later included in her first collection of short stories called Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn (1966). Unlike her four writer colleagues discussed before, Trùng Dương was not a professional creative writer. She wrote fiction on impulse, much as did Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo. Mainly a short-story author, before 1975 she had six volumes of stories published: Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn (1966), Mưa Không Ướt Đất (1967), Cơn Hồng Thủy Và Bông Hoa Quỳ (1968), Chung Cư (1971), Một Cuộc Tình (1972), and Lập Đông (1973). Of the three serialized novels she attempted to produce, only Thành Trì Cuối Cùng was completed (1970). ⁽⁶⁸⁾ Trùng Dương has been remembered mostly for her first collection Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn.

Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn consists of three short stories written between 1963 and 1965. "Sao Rụng" describes the state of mind of a high school student secretly in love with a young woman next door who is a bit older than him. As he has been involved in the students' movement against Ngô Đình Diệm's regime, he is jailed and later released owing to the intervention of the young woman's husband. "Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn", the title story, traces the confusion of values and priorities in a late teenage girl who adopts a nonchalant attitude toward issues of importance to her life while having much passion for things of little significance: she is in love with a young man but loses her virginity to a married man who is much older and richer. "Miền Chân Trời" depicts a no-string-attached love affair of a young couple who are much alike in their view of life and who come together when in need of companionship. In their last tryst at a seaside resort, when realizing that they can no longer bear seeing themselves reflected in each other, they calmly say goodbye.

In Trùng Dương's later collections, Mưa Không Ướt Đất and Cơn Hồng Thủy Và Bông Hoa Quỳ, both published before 1970, the same types of young characters are found again with similar confused state of mind. They easily fall in love for the simple aim of escaping from loneliness and a feeling of lost. Love is not the central focus -- rather it serves as a point of departure for the author's discussion of issues connected with it in some manner. Both male and female characters, having lost their innocence at an early age, face life full of doubt and short of faith in traditional values and attitudes. The mental anguish is two-fold for young women who must search for the meaning of existence both as human beings and as women. The author's suggested solution is to redress the imbalance of values and norms traditionally accorded the sexes, to see men and women as equal social beings with biological differences. Accordingly, young women in her stories, while physically attractive, are mentally equipped to share intellectual and spiritual concerns with men on an equal footing. More specifically, it is in the male-female sexual relationship that this author expresses defiance against the sex bias which has deprived women of the right to be fully human. The defiance takes the form of an exaggerated casualness with which the female protagonist engages in love play and sexual intercourse of her own free will, with no guilt feelings and no regret; time and again she is the active partner who frankly admits her sexual desires as straightforwardly as she would discuss other biological functions like eating, drinking, sleeping. Trùng Dương's nonchalant description of woman sexuality, no doubt a major contribution to the content of modern Vietnamese literature and to the understanding of women, is a slap in the face of an ethical system that has attached a strong stigma to such sexuality, which system relying on a narrow concept of chastity to evaluate women and to hinder their total development. In this respect, she is an ally of Túy Hồng.

More often than do most other women writers before and contemporary with her, Trùng Dương has male protagonists in some of her stories, if only to use them as a foil for her own view. She frequently adopts the first-person narrative where the narrator is either a man or a woman. Whether she sets her characters looking inward or outward to an environment larger than themselves, whether the voice of narrator is male or female, there runs through her work a sympathetic portrayal of the individual's struggle for independence from all dogmatic rules and regulations while in search of personal identity--the very value that has served to shape the author's personality. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ Such orientation finds expression in the characters' monologue, in their inner contemplation and debate--always colored with irony--all of which making up a large part of each work, leaving little room for action. This is more true of her stories published before 1970, which does not offer much that a reader who is not introspectively focused can identify with. She was not as popular as the other four "She-Devils", probably because her stories demand more thinking and offer less entertaining. Even when it comes to the ingredient that drew attention to her early works, namely female sexuality, this writer does not change her technique of delineation. She describes the sexual act concretely and straightforwardly, not employing Túy Hồng's sexual innuendo, for example, that triggers the reader's imagination and fantasy. Instead, with carefully chosen descriptive elements short of minute elaboration, she records the physical encounter in the cool fashion that a scientist would follow in stating observable facts. Correspondently, her style has more the precision of a scientist and less the imaginary embellishment of an artist--the expressions being compact, to the point, and at times blunt. Perhaps this also explains why her works did not greatly appeal to the average reader. One should also note that her training in law and in architecture together with her principal occupation as a journalist and reporter could have exerted a great influence on her creative writing style.

In summary, it would clearly appear that this second period (1964-70) witnessed an explosion of creative energy on the part of women writers of both poetry and prose. With the relatively greater freedom of the press coupled with the support of a steadily growing readership and a flourishing publishing business, women writers took another stride in making their presence conspicuously felt. In a concerted effort they strove--and a few successfully--to acquire recognition for their creativity, not solely by virtue of the number of copies sold and circulated, but most significantly in terms of the new contents and new styles they introduced. If in poetry Nhã Ca Mới by Nhã Ca can be counted as a unique contribution, in fiction writing her significant input was matched by the equally creditable works of her contemporary colleagues Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Túy Hồng and Trùng Dương. As late comers in an area of culture which men had exclusively controlled for centuries, they had to try twice as hard to offer something uniquely their own, raising their writing from the level of a curiosity to the status of art. It was a tremendous task to accomplish, given the fact that they no longer considered writing a hobby but viewed it a profession with all its related pressures added to the multiple stresses they already endured as wives and mothers. They reached their goal in various degrees of success, bringing fresh air to a literature that was struggling to depart from the pre-45 tradition. Their undeniable achievements probably did not remove all cultural prejudices against women's writing, but undoubtedly opened up many more possibilities for aspiring women authors to explore.

Period of Re-orientation, 1971- 1975

This period was characterized by a substantial and sustained reduction of U.S. forces in South Vietnam: from 541,000 men in March 1969 to virtually none by April 1975. This development inevitably entailed a drastic cut in the supply of goods from the United States and curtailed the sumptuous consumption by foreign troops--all of which affecting the economy of South Vietnam so heavily dependent on the service sector, at least since 1966. The situation was critical by 1972 when U.S. forces counted less than 60,000 advisors, technicians, and helicopter crews. Development on the military and political fronts did nothing to boost the low morale resulting from a shaky economy. First, Quảng Trị fell to the North Vietnamese forces in May 1972 and was not recaptured by South Vietnamese troops until September of that year. Then came the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 and the subsequent withdrawal of the last U.S. troops, leaving the South to fend for itself until the fall of Saigon in April 1975. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ In the profusion of dark economic, military and political circumstances, it would seem obvious that not many people had the time, energy and money for the enjoyment of literature. This is most true of middle-class readers who had always contributed substantially to both production and consumption of literary products. More importantly, the implementation of the new press law number 007 in 1972 that gave the Thiệu regime tight control over the media forced many newspapers and periodicals to go out of business. One witnessed a dramatic decrease in the number of printed copies of periodicals and publications. Literary reviews which had previously boasted five to six thousand copies of each issue dropped to three to four thousand by 1974. Books suffers a worse fate: the number of copies for the first edition was reduced from the normal two to three thousand to roughly half of that quantity. To save their business, publishers were forced to pay more attention to other classes of audience who could still afford their reading pleasure, i.e. the less educated and less demanding readers, and teenagers whose curiosity about everything in life was satisfied through the press. These people either went to a large number of stores where books were rented out for affordable fees, or had some extra pocket money to buy popular magazines and pocket books. A glance at the preponderant types of available reading materials would have proved the accuracy of Taine's observation that "literature always adapts itself to the taste of those who can appreciate and pay for it". ⁽⁷¹⁾ There were translated books that appealed to and pleased curious minds: Western spy stories, biographies of Nazi war criminals, of Hitler, of foreign queens. Since the late 1960s, a favorite foreign author who was most widely read in translation was Quỳnh Dao (Chiung Yao), a young Taiwanese woman novelist who wrote non-problematic romances of complicated plot and positive gentle sentiments. In the same vein, popular Vietnamese novels à la Quỳnh Dao, which entertain and demand virtually no mental effort on the part of the reader, flooded the market. In fact, many publishers even requested that their authors write nothing but love stories. For young audience, aside from the flourishing Tuổi Ngọc, a magazine devoted to teenagers, one also saw the growth of a trend of literature for adolescence that counted among contributors the popular male author Duyên Anh.⁽⁷²⁾ Commercialization of literature may not be appropriate a term by which to characterize this rather large-scale scenario of supply and demand of literary products, most of all because it suggests a blatant sacrifice of art which was not entirely the case here where a number of works exhibited aesthetic value. Popularization of literature may be a better description of this major literary trend which involved a conscious attempt to bring this form of art closer to the level of understanding and to the taste of the less-educated readers who patronized it.

Given those changes in the literary environment, one might suspect that women writers, like their male counterparts, had to re-orient themselves. The alternatives were to join the crowd; or to find something different that would interest the reading public without jeopardizing the writer's integrity as artist; or to continue to walk the path that had earlier been chosen without worrying about negative financial consequences. No matter what choice was made, aspiring women authors of this period had access to publication more readily available thanks to exemplary successes achieved by their predecessors.

Poetry, which is always essentially subjective and never sells well, seems not to have been affected by the then popularization of literature. Women poets, on their part, continued very much along the same lines as seen in the preceding period. What changed, perhaps, was the less frequent appearance of published works. Poetry of sentimental nature predominated and was found in these collections: Tuệ Mai's Bay Nghiêng Vòng Đời (1971), Về Phía Trời Xanh (1973), and Suối Mây Hồng (1974); Hoàng Hương Trang's Túy Ca (1971) and Hợp Tuyển (1974)⁽⁷³⁾; and Minh Đức Hoài Trinh's Bài Thơ Cho Ai (1974). Poetry reflecting contemplation of personal experience and at the same time exhibiting concern for the country and for life in general was also noted: Vi Khuê's Giọt Lệ (1971); Phương Đài's Hiến Lễ Mùa Thơ (1971); and Tuệ Nga's Suối (1974), which won its author a National Literary Award for the year. Mộng Tuyết's Gầy Hoa Cúc (1974) consistently devotes to classical sentiments. Nhã Ca continued with her contemplation of women's existence in Thơ Nhã Ca (1972), which collection including poems already published in Nhã Ca Mới (1965), describing in a proud undertone physical and spiritual development of a woman's life.

Fiction writing meanwhile showed a clear sign of re-orientation. Among those who stayed close to their chosen tendencies were Nguyễn Thị Vinh, Linh Bảo, Minh Đức Hoài Trinh, Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng, and Nguyễn Thị Hoàng. After an interval of more than ten years since her publication of Men Chiều, Nguyễn Thị Vinh produced Cô Mai in 1971, a novel set in North Vietnam before 1954, depicting the love life of a young woman who eventually sacrifices personal feelings and emotions for the sake of familial duty. The same recognizable technique and style is used in description of nature and human psychology. This work was followed by another novel, Vết Chàm (1973). Linh Bảo sent back from the U.S.A., where she was residing, short stories previously published in Sài Gòn to make up the volume titled Những Cánh Diều (1971). These short stories reflect the experiences of Vietnamese living in America. Meanwhile Minh Đức Hoài Trinh had two novels published, one of which, Tử Địa (1973), was based on her own experiences as a war correspondent. Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng wrote her memoir Ngược Gió (1972) recounting her life through the country's turmoil. Finally, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, in her many novels, did not go further than portraying fashionable women trapped in their search for the meaning of love. Some of her works like Đinh Mệnh Còn Gõ Cửa (1972) were written with the view of having movie adaptation of them. Accordingly, story lines and details are presented in such a way as to accommodate that goal.⁽⁷⁴⁾

Subtle re-orientation can be detected in Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Túy Hồng and Trùng Dương. It may be suggested that as their writing matured, these three authors shifted to issues to which a larger audience could relate.

Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ now wrote more novels than short stories, encompassing fragments of life in which sexuality is less a dominant feature. Cho Trận Gió Kinh Thiên (1973) for instance reveals life in a poor working-class neighborhood. As for Túy Hồng, the death of her child in 1971 put an end to her rather venomous satire . Her language became tamer with greater feminine compassion, and she refrained from ridiculing people and things. ⁽⁷⁵⁾The novel Bướm Khuya (1973) which depicts the pathetic life of a young woman victim of the war between the French and the Việt Minh reflects this change in the direction of her writing.

Meanwhile from 1971 Trùng Dương no longer used literature primarily as a channel of self-discovery and self-expression; rather, a growing degree of concern with social issues began to shift the direction of her work. There were two reasons for this: her involvement with the anti-corruption campaign through the newspaper Sóng Thần, and the influence of the Japanese author Kobo Abe's work The Woman in the Dunes, which she herself translated into Vietnamese from an English version. ⁽⁷⁶⁾ Social and political factors are no longer incidental to her story line; they are shown to affect the lives of her characters in various ways. Accordingly, the focus is shifted from the intricacies of human psyche to exposition of social problems. Two of her later collections of short stories, Chung Cư (1971) and Lập Đông (1973) are indicative of this changed direction. The title story in Chung Cư was noted for its sensitive portrayal of life in the apartment-building-housing phenomenon. In these later works, female characters are not intellectual young women all wrapped up in intense and rather futile search for the meaning of life; instead, they are average women of little or no education who are prevented by people or circumstances from fulfilling their modest dream of a normal family life wherein they can play the roles of wife and mother.

The only member among the Five She-Devils who joined the flourishing trend of literature for adolescents was Nhã Ca. She was by no means the first woman author engaged in the production of this literary genre. Minh Quân, whose works are largely didactic, and Dung Sài Gòn, whose book titles bear obvious reference to the giggling age, already had young readers in mind in the late 1960s. The case of Nhã Ca, however, is particularly interesting if only because it exemplifies the growing popularization of literature during this period. Or, from another angle, her clear-cut re-orientation is proof of Võ Phiến's observation that "readers have rejuvenated may writers". ⁽⁷⁷⁾ Almost a decade earlier, Nhã Ca had written Đêm Dậy Thì (1967) and Bóng Tối Thời Con Gái (1967) for young adult readers who could appreciate her indignant exposure of social cultural ills that hamper dreams and aspirations of young women. Now, in her thirties, this author wrote for boys and girls, telling them stories full of innocent dreams and sentiments in a tone ever gentle and soothing. According to Nhã Ca herself, the changed focus was due to her realization that as she was not getting any younger, it was time for her to repay young readers' attention with works devoted to youth and love. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ In this vein, she published in 1972 the first of ten novels in a series called "Trăng Mười Sáu" the focus of which is the depiction of passionate but innocent love of teenage girls. The titles evoke images of high school atmosphere: Trưa Áo Trắng (1972), Trăng Mười Sáu (1973), Hiền Như Mực Tím (1974).

Two new faces were noted: Lệ Hằng and Trần Thị NgH, who represented different departures from the patterns of women's writing in the previous period.

If we take popularity as the index of success, we can see Lệ Hằng as a phenomenon, for she was widely received by the reading public who seemed inclined toward the simplicity and emotionality propagated by the Taiwanese novelist Quỳnh Dao. At a time when literary reviews and books suffered a cutback in number of printed copies, down to a thousand or so for each edition, each of Lệ Hằng novels had a run of some 6,000 prints. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ She was born Bùi Thị Lệ Hằng in 1948 in Hải Dương, North Vietnam. With her family she moved in 1954 to Đà Nẵng where she finished high school before going on to study at the University of Đà Lạt. This author began writing around 1968 and had her first work published in the magazine Màn Ảnh after she and her husband had moved to Sài Gòn in 1969. In Sài Gòn, she worked as a secretary for the magazine Tuổi Hoa. She wrote short stories for this periodical, and concurrently published the serialized novels Thung Lũng Tình Yêu and Tóc Mây in the magazines Màn Ảnh and Gia Đình Trẻ respectively. Upon the completion of these two novels, Lệ Hằng was asked to provide other serialized works of fiction for other periodicals named Hòa Bình, Sóng Thần, Quật Cường, Tiền Tuyến and Đông Phương. ⁽⁸⁰⁾. All of these products eventually appeared in book form. Up to April 1975, this author had twelve publications to her credit. Her own favorite work, which was much talked about, is Tóc Mây. It recounts the passionate love of a teenage girl for a young Catholic priest who mesmerizes her with his playing of classical music on the piano. The two spend a week of romantic moments together in the beautiful scenery of Đà Lạt. The priest is then sent by his superiors to join the army where he can repent these transgressions through giving blessings to dying soldiers on the battlefield. The girl is able to locate him again and rekindle their doomed love affair. The story is resolved with the death of the priest while parachuting into a combat area. The girl student continues to live her life colored with her own memories and the diary the priest left behind. ⁽⁸¹⁾

As a whole, one sees nothing original in the subject matter that dominates Lệ Hằng's short stories and novels, namely women in love. Her frequent reference to the circumstances in which women suffer the loss of their loved ones due to external factors like the war is a rather superficial version of the theme that runs through many of Nhã Ca's literary products. The spell which Lệ Hằng exerted over her audience was, perhaps, a combination of her daring exposure of socially unacceptable relationships across conventional barriers and her uninhibited depiction of love and sex. The female characters are generally young -- teenage high school or university students -- courted by many men, who choose to stay faithful to the love of their choice. Their love has the freshness, passion and naivety of youth which emboldens them to challenge social mores. It is not the kind of innocent love characterized by abstract longing and romantic dreams. Rather, young women in Lệ Hằng's stories share a down-to-earth concept of love which places equal importance on physical pleasure as much as on mental and emotional rapport. Thus, this author chose to bring to light the stark realities of young girls' sexual drive and fantasies, hinting at the mentality of a young generation of women anxious to live the present fully while they could. Though in no way profound, these insights may be Lệ Hằng primary contribution to literature and to an understanding of the youth culture at the time. Her language approximates daily speech, and could please with its own simplicity if she did not insert empty clichés that sound like a parody of the lyrics of popular songs. There is an attempt to record specific local dialects like Huế speech, which recalls Túy Hồng's technique. Unfortunately Lệ Hằng fails to grasp authentic nuances of that dialect and as a consequence the characters' utterances very often sound irritatingly off key.

Trần Thị NgH, born Trần Thị Nguyệt Hồng in 1949 in Cà Mau, did not share Lệ Hằng's focus on the prevalent literary taste of the young generation at the time. At the age of eighteen she had her first short story "Chủ Nhật" published in journal Vấn Đề . From then on she was noticed through regular contribution to various literary reviews including Văn, Vấn Đề, Thời Tập, Thời Văn. Female characters in her stories are independent women who are not bogged down by the question of conformity to established norms, who enter and leave relationships with men of their choice coolly, unconcernedly. "Nhà Có Cửa Khóa Trái", her short story published in Văn in September 1972, which brought her recognition, is a case in point. ⁽⁸²⁾ The female protagonist agrees to engage in an affair with a married man while his wife is away and, upon the wife's expected return, agrees to end the liaison without fuss. It is a love story exhibiting neither romanticism nor bitter sarcasm found in works of fiction by a great number of contemporary women authors. The un-dramatic content is matched by a succinct description of the setting wrapped in a dry atmosphere, and most uniquely by deadpan utterances in dialogues which carry no emotional tone.

Among promising women writers who joined Trần Thị NgH in the pursuit of literature as art were Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Minh whose short stories appeared in Văn and Thời Tập, and Vô Ưu (born Ngô Thị Kim Cúc) who was introduced to the public through Bách Khoa. Also noted was Thục Viên, writer and journalist, who made her debut with the novel Vết Chân Chim Lạc Loài (1972) followed by Thạch Nữ, a novel serialized in Sóng Thần (1972).⁽⁸³⁾

In summary, during this third period when various political and social factors depressed the publishing business and gave more weight to a simpler and less demanding literary taste, some women authors chose to bend with the wind while others were more concerned with integral development of their art. In poetry, pre-existing tendencies persisted: Tuệ Mai was as prolific as ever; Nhã Ca contributed more poems describing women's condition; Tuệ Nga was noted as a good poet. However, no new talent of Nhã Ca's caliber surfaced to add new dimensions to women's poetry writing. It was in prose fiction that some substantial changes could be observed, the most noticeable of which was a decrease in the intensity of attack on oppressive traditional norms imposed on women. After having gone to extremes to release pent-up emotions, women writers now settled down to explore other subject matters with a higher degree of social awareness and a lesser extent of subjectivity. At the same time, the changed literary taste was conducive to production of literature for the young which launched Lệ Hằng's career and rejuvenated Nhã Ca's thematic focus and style. Finally, the most encouraging sign was seen in the emergence of promising new talents like Trần Thị NgH and Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Minh, both displaying a mature and confident approach to creative writing as artists and not overtly and exclusively as women. Indeed, had the event of 1975 not taken place, the women writers might eventually have had exhausted their focus on the woman question, and become first and foremost good writers.

We have thus seen that over the span of twenty-one years, women writers of South Vietnam undertook the tremendous task of revealing the personal intimate world of women that had lain hidden behind a façade of arbitrarily prescriptive, ideal conforming behavior. Together they enlightened their readers to how women actually live their lives and how they feel about it in a way that male writers, regardless of how sympathetic they might be, could only imagine but never really know. Women's poetry as a whole represented only some remarkable departures from the pre-1945 tradition. Tuệ Mai kept pace with new social concerns while dressing them in traditional sentimentality. Nhã Ca can be seen as an isolated case of originality. She breathed into her poems the fiery pride of being a woman, in a style that finds no prior and subsequent parallels in poetry writing. Meanwhile, it is in prose fiction that dramatic development can be observed. The women fiction writers treaded new territories in full force; and in their writing they revealed all the heartache, tension, pain, risk and hope pertaining to different stages in Vietnamese women's attempt for self-liberation. Sympathetic portrayal of women's inner conflicts by Nguyễn Thị Vinh, and cynical questioning of old values by Linh Bảo were followed by merciless attack on repressive conventions by the "Five She-Devils", culminating in the matter-of-fact and carefree depiction by Lệ Hằng, Trần Thị NgH and Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Minh of a younger generation of women who choose personal values over inequitable and impersonal rules. Like their male counterparts, the women authors experimented with different styles of writing to convey new content, thus dressing familiar themes in provocative new garbs. Success and failure in innovation are equally valuable, for in the end each constitutes a precious lesson for later aspiring writers. Similar to Nhã Ca in poetry, Linh Bảo, Túy Hồng and Trần Thị NgH seemed successful in creating recognizable prose styles of their own.

The fall of Sài Gòn in April 1975 and with it the loss of relative freedom of self-expression put an end to further development of the potentialities discussed above. Those women authors who remained in Vietnam after 1975 might still be creating and/or storing literary impulses in their memory, but they were certainly not allowed to publicize works judged undermining the new ideology. Those who chose to leave in search for freedom of speech wrote for a scattered diaspora readership whose pulse they could hardly catch up with.

In the last analysis, the disruption of the literary tradition inherited, modified and developed by women writers in South Vietnam in the period of 1954-1975 by no means diminishes its important place in the evolution of modern Vietnamese literature as a whole. A re-assessment of those authors' contributions is necessary if we want to learn anything from their experience as artists and social witnesses during one of the most chaotic periods in Vietnamese history. One way this can be done is by exploring male writers' and literary critics' comments on the products of their female counterparts.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Their evaluation was not encouraging. In the main, their criticism was centered on two aspects of women's work: subject matter and content. With regard to the first, the recurrent observation was that women writers did not venture beyond the world of women. As for content (which we use here to mean not only what is said but also how it is said in accordance with the author's assumptions, perspectives and attitudes), the consensus of their opinion seems to have rested on the fact that women authors did not make the audience forget that they were women and, furthermore, that they were much too preoccupied with sex and overtly bold in their depiction of it.

There is no denying the fact that women writers for the most part portrayed only the daily life and dilemmas of women folks. This, as explained by the women themselves and acquiesced to by some male authors like Võ Phiến, was not entirely of the women's deliberate choice. ⁽⁸⁵⁾ First of all, being professional writers who earned the bulk of family income did not alleviate the burden of traditional tasks demanded of them as wives and mothers. Some, like the Five She-Devils, held regular jobs on top of all domestic obligations. This obviously left them with no flexible time and energy to go out and see the world, or even to read up in order to broaden their horizon. Even if by some stroke of luck they found time, they were not permitted by social conventions to freely immerse themselves in the stream of life outside the domestic realm. All this barred them from gathering experiential materials from which to re-create a reality larger than the world to which they were confined. Women who dared to lead an active social life, enjoying frequent interactions with men were looked upon with suspicion and treated accordingly. When referring to the criticism that male characters in her work look like doug figurines, figments of her poor imagination, Túy Hồng gave a statement that seems to sum up the woman writer dilemma:"It is so difficult to overcome that shortcoming of mine when the only man I know is my husband." ⁽⁸⁶⁾

Further comment on subject matter declared that at a time when male authors had stopped talking about themselves and turned to address questions of greater social significance, women writers were still engrossed in the delineation of the perplexities of their petty world. This kind of dismissal is obviously offhanded, betraying an utter lack of a balanced perspective. Men have had many centuries to indulge themselves in the depiction of the world beyond family surroundings, and up to the time under discussion they have not finished talking yet about fame, power, honor, and the yearning for immortality. On the other hand, only recently have women been allowed to publicly explain themselves and to voice their view of the world. Twenty-one years of this relative freedom was far from sufficient to expose and interpret a whole sets of needs and desires, thoughts, feelings, aspirations and hopes that were suppressed since time immemorial. Furthermore, it is not as though the women writers of this period were regurgitating what men had had to say about women. Women's existence as presented by male authors has been largely projection of men's idealized conception of reality where women are fitted neatly into a set social order, forever expected to be virtuous and obedient. The women writers, on the other hand, did not create their admittedly restricted world of fiction based on prescriptive values; rather, they drew their subject matter from keen observation of their own immediate experiences, which render the world they described more vivid, more real; and more human.

This brings us to the second and most often heard observation: the predominance of sexual reference in women's writing. More than a century earlier, poetess Hồ Xuân Hương shocked the world of Vietnamese Confucian scholar-moralists with her daring exposure of the tragic fate endured by women and with her attack against male superiority. The weapon she used in her work was reference to sex. Though it is true that the shock value of Hồ Xuân Hương's subject matter and attitude aroused attention and curiosity, it is her unique style of double entendre coached in rich imagery that has impressed her messages on generations of readers in spite of official sanction and suppression, rendering her poetry one of the greatest contributions to Vietnamese literature. Nguyễn Thị Vinh and Linh Bảo brought to modern literature a gentle and partial version of Hồ Xuân Hương's themes, quietly reminding people that the question of women's right to seeking personal happiness has yet to be addressed. It was the "Five She-Devill" who picked up where Hồ Xuân Hương left off with a wave of shock treatment more forceful than what their lone predecessor had initiated, jolting society into awareness of women as full human beings. The counter-attack by a suppressed group seems to often takes, as a method of redress, the very prime element of suppression, be it sex as in the case of women or physical violence as in the case of colonial rule. The shock of recognition, however, did not come simply from the subject matter about which these women chose as their focus: namely love and sex, which have long been written by men without fuss. Rather, it is the women's frank depiction of this part of life as intimately experienced by women that was new. The women authors were being bold in their treatment of this theme only in the sense that they dared to discuss what, by convention, women should refrain from even mentioning. For example, Trùng Dương's presentation of a love-making scene is in no way more blunt and more graphic than the same found in works by male auhors like Lê Xuyên. This woman writer was controversial mostly because she once mentions the unmentionable: she describes an instance of role reversal in the act of copulation, a reversal which upsets the normally expected rule of female submission and subordination. Hence, the utterance of the female character to her lover in her short story "Miền Chân Trời" (in Vừa Đi Vừa Ngước Nhìn): "Shall I mount you?" was bemusedly assigned as her trademark by a few people in the literary circle.

Given the constraints of time and social mores, it is quite remarkable that women writers of South Vietnam were able to contribute so significantly to literature. It may not be far-fetched to think that had women been allowed freer access to public life without suffering suspicion and prejudice, their instinct and common sense might have allowed them to perceive some deep-lying truths and to reveal to men a few things about themselves and the way they conducted the business of the nation. Such a potential may be detected in the writing of women within the Vietnamese diaspora literature.

In general, the overseas women writers have continued in the literary tradition which evolved in South Vietnam before 1975. In the field of poetry, we find Quỳ Hương in charge of the literature and arts section of the magazine Ngày Nay published in Houston, Texas. She also completed a few manuscripts including a play titled Tần Ngọc. Trùng Quang appeared with a small collection of poems called Duyên Thơ (1985). The mother-daughter team, who before 1975 wrote children books, separately published in 1984 two books of poetry: Tiếng Quyên by Kim Y (pen name of Phạm Lệ Oanh) and Của Mưa Gửi Nắng by Trương Anh Thụy. Tuệ Nga was noted for the publication in 1983 of two poetry collections: Suối Trầm Tư and Mây Hương. And lastly, Vi Khuê attracted attention with her much-publicized Cát Vàng (1985), a collection of poems written before and after 1975. In prose fiction, Linh Bảo published Mây Tần (1981), a volume of short stories comprising those previously found in her books Tàu Ngựa Cũ (1961) and Những Cánh Diều (1971) and also in various periodicals. Minh Đức Hoài Trinh produced more plays, a collection of poems, and a novel titled Bên Ni Bên Tê (1985). We also find Túy Hồng with three serialized novels Trong Cuối Cùng, Tay Che Thời Tiết and Sạn Đạo. Trùng Dương wrote short pieces of various genres and applied herself to the study of current American and European techniques of fiction writing. New names joining the ranks of fiction writers can also be noted, like Lê Thị Huệ, Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Nhung, Phạm Thị Ngọc, Phan Thị Trọng Tuyến, and Trần Diệu Hằng.

While most male authors of the diaspora literature seemed to be under pressure to look backward and to re-evaluate the past, women writers appeared immune from it. The subject matter they selected and the content they covered reflect a greater degree of freedom they enjoyed in their adopted countries. As a result, they could more freely focus on the life here and now, their art pulsating with inmost thoughts and feelings for women's reality while subtly recording valuable insights into social and cultural conflicts experienced by Vietnamese immigrants.

NOTES:

1. Cao Huy Khánh, "Vấn Đề Khuynh Hướng trong Tiểu Thuyết Miền Nam từ 1954 đến 1973," Thời Tập, No.4, April 1974, 44.

2. For other titles by women writers, please see my preliminary bibliography (with approximately 800 entries) which I submitted as archival materials to the Indochina Studies Program, Social Science Research Council, New York. I am grateful for the generous supply of information on life histories and explanation of works given to me through my interviews with Song Khê, Quỳ Hương, Trùng Quang, Kim Y, Trương Anh Thụy, Tuệ Nga, Vi Khuê, Nguyễn Thị Vinh, Linh Bảo, Minh Đức Hoài Trinh, Thiếu Mai Vũ Bá Hùng, Trùng Dương, Túy Hồng, Công Tằng Tôn Nữ Tri Túc, Nguyễn Khắc Kham, Đào Văn Khánh, Hồ Trường An, Mr. and Mrs Nguyễn Hữu Đông.

3. Phạm Xuân Độ, Nữ Thi Hào Việt Nam (Saigon: Trung Tâm Học Liệu, Bộ Giáo Dục, 1970), 11-93; and Phương Lan, Anh Thư Nước Việt (Saigon: Khai Trí, 1968), 37-38, 41-43, 46-60, 61-62, 73-74.

4. Phương Lan, 224-237, 243-248, 252-253, 263-269; Phạm Thế Ngũ, Việt Nam Văn Học Sử Giản Ước Tân Biên, volume 3 (Saigon: Quốc Học Tùng Thư, 1965), 395-396, 403-405; Nguyễn Tấn Long & Nguyễn Hữu Trọng, Việt Nam Thi Nhân Tiền Chiến, volume 1, 2nd edition (Saigon: Sống Mới, 1968), 73-114, 201-221.

5. Phương Lan, 252-261; Nguyễn Tấn Long & Nguyễn Hữu Trọng, volume 1,763-792; volume 2 (1968), 125-186, 451-458, volume 3 (1969), 67-90, 349-375, 513-626; Nguyễn Viết Quang, "Văn Chương Nữ Giới Việt Nam," Viên Giác, No. 21, June 1984, 47.

6. Phạm Thế Ngũ, 336-341.

7. David Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 (University of California Press, 1984), 232. Marr notes some novels purportedly written by women in a series called "Women's Library": Sóng Lòng by Mai Hương and Ngã Ba Đường by Linh Chi, published in Hanoi in the late 1930s.

8. Information is provided by author Trinh Tiên, a close friend of Thụy An's from 1937 until Thụy An's death in 1989. Though not a member of the Nhân Văn Giai Phẩm group (1956), Thụy An was imprisoned for 15 years, from 1958 to 1973, for her alleged involvement in the group's activities.

9. Uyên Thao, Các Nhà Văn Nữ Việt Nam,1900-1970 (Saigon: Nhân Chủ, 1973), 23-35.

10. Lê Phương Chi, "Trao Đổi Kinh Nghiệm trên Lĩnh Vực Văn Chương -- Tin Sách phỏng vấn Nhà Văn Nguyễn Thị Vinh," Tin Sách ,Volume 1, No. 35, May 1965, 21-27.

11. From my interview with Linh Bảo in Westminster, California, July 1984.

12. George McTurnan Kahin & John W. Lewis, The United States in Vietnam, revised edition (New York: A Delta Book, 1969), 77-79.

13. Lê Ngọc Trụ, Mục Lục Báo Chí Việt Ngữ, 1865-1965 (Saigon: Nha Văn Khố và Thư Viện Quốc Gia, 1966).

14. From my interview with Trùng Quang in San Jose, California, June 1984; and with Quỳ Hương, in Silver Spring, Maryland, September 1984.

15. Nguyễn Viết Quang, 47.

16. From my interview with Minh Đức Hoài Trinh in Garden Grove, California, July 1984.

17. Nguyễn Viết Quang, 47. See also: Cao Thế Dung, Văn Học Hiện Đại (Saigon: Quần Chúng, 1969), 324; Uyên Thao, Thơ Việt Hiện Đại, 1900-1960 (Saigon: Nhận Định, 1969), 457-458.

18. Thanh Nhung's contributions to these collections pre-dated her association with Tao Đàn Bạch Nga.

19. Cao Thế Dung, 324; Uyên Thao, 457-458.

20. "Đi Xa Với Nguyễn Thị Hoàng," Giai phẩm Văn, July 1973, 4.

21. Nguyễn Thụy Long, "Nhã Ca và Kỷ Niệm," Khởi Hành , No.21, September 1969, 3.

22. For more detailed summaries of these works and some others by Nguyễn Thị Vinh, please see Uyên Thao (1973), 299-308.

23. Linh Bảo, Tàu Ngựa Cũ (Saigon: Đời Nay, 1961); Những Đêm Mưa (Saigon: Đời Nay, 1961.

24. Thư Trung, "Tiếng Không Gian" (của) Quỳ Hương," Tin Sách IV, No.8, February 1963. 19-21.

25. Phương Mai, "Nắng Đẹp Hoàng Hôn (của) bà Vũ Bá Hùng tự Thiếu Mai," Tin Sách IV, No. 8, February 1963, 17-18.

26. Tùng Long, "Nghề Văn, Truyện Dài, Truyện Ngắn," (interview), Khởi Hành, No.26, October 1969, 7.

27. Bàng Bá Lân, Văn Thi Sĩ Hiện Đại (Saigon: Xây Dựng, 1963), section on Mộng Tuyết 207-232.

28. Phương Mai, "Một Lá Thư Tình (của) Vân Trang," Tin Sách IV, No. 10, April 1963, 22-23.

29. From my interview with Phạm Lệ Oanh in Virginia, 1984.

30. Kahin & Lewis, 184-239.

31. Võ Phiến, "Có Gì Mới Trong Sinh Hoạt Văn Nghệ?" Bách Khoa, Nos. 421-422, January 1975, 21.

32. I wish to thank the following scholars, writers and journalists for having provided me with information on the social and literary backgrounds: Professor Nguyễn Khắc Kham, Võ Phiến, Mai Thảo, Nguyên Sa, Du Tử Lê, Nguyễn Mộng Giác, Đỗ Ngọc Yến, Lê Tất Điều, Nguyễn Hữu Đông, Đặng Thị Tường Vi, Vũ Thanh Thủy, Nguyễn Khắc Giảng, Hà Túc Đạo, Đào Văn Khánh, Vũ Văn Lộc, Ngô Vương Toại, Hồ Trường An, Nhất Tuấn, Vũ Ngự Chiêu, Đỗ Quý Toàn, Nguyễn Quỳnh, and Viên Linh. The interpretation, however, is my own, checked against other sources of reference.

33. Phạm Lệ Oanh, author of Tình Lụy and several children books published in the previous period, admitted in my interview with her in 1984 that she had earned a very substantial income from translating Chinese novels for various daily newspapers in the late 1960s.

34. Võ Phiến, "Chúng Ta Đọc Có Ít Chăng?" Văn Học Nghệ Thuật, No.6, October 1985, 661. He made similar observations in my interview with him in July 1984.

35. Quốc Thái, "Nhìn Qua Làng Thơ Năm 1964," Tin Sách, No. 32, February 1965, 3-5; Nguyễn Đình Tuyến, Nhà Văn Hôm Nay (1954-1969), vol.1 (Saigon: Nhà Văn Việt Nam, 1969), 135-143, 145-151, 163-169, 207-213; Nguyên Hà, "Pha Lê [của] Phương Mai," Tin Sách , No. 42, December 1965, 15-16.

36. Nguyên Hà, "Không Bờ Bến -- Thơ của Tuệ Mai," Tin Sách , No. 29, November 1964, 16-19.

37. Quốc Thái, "Em Là Gái Trời Bắt Xấu -- Thơ của Lệ Khánh," Tin Sách, No. 31, January 1965, 12-13.

38. Vũ Bằng, "Nhã Ca Mới -- Thơ của Trần Thy Nhã Ca," Tin Sách, No. 41, November 1965, 7-938.

39. Đặng Tiến, "Nữ Tính trong Ngôn Ngữ Nhã Ca," Văn, No.35, June 1965, 78-86; Lê Huy Oanh, "Nhã Ca và Người Nữ Mới," Văn, No.253, December 1974, 70-81.

40. Nguiễn- Ngu-Í "Lưu Luyến [của] bà Tú Hoa," Tin Sách, No. 41, No. 32, February 1965, 18-21.

41. Nguyễn Viết Quang, p.49.

42. Ngọc Minh, ed. Mười Hoa Trỗ Sắc (Saigon: Ngọc Minh, 1967).

43. Lê Phương Chi, "Trao Đổi Kinh Nghiệm Trên Lĩnh Vực Văn Chương -- Tin Sách phỏng vấn nhà thơ Hoàng Hương Trang," Tin Sách, No. 38, August 1965, 26.

44. The Tết Offensive of 1968 moved her to begin writing the novel Bên Ni Bên Tê (This Side, The Other Side) which was completed and published in California years later (Nguyễn Quang, 1981).

45. Y Phương, "Bơ Vơ [của] Minh Đức Hoài Trinh," Tin Sách, No. 22, April 1964, 9-13; Vũ Hạnh, "Hắn" -- Truyện ngắn của Minh Đức Hoài Trinh," Tin Sách, No. 27, September 1964, 11-14.

46. From my interview with Minh Đức Hoài Trinh in Garden Grove, California, July 1984.

47. From my interviews with Nguyễn Hữu Đông and his wife, and with Nguyễn Khắc Giảng in San Diego, California, July 1984.

48. From my interviews with Nguyễn Hữu Đông and Nguyễn Khắc Giảng, 1984. See also Nguyễn Mai, "Nhã Ca, Phút Nói Thật," Văn, July 1973, 45-52; Uyên Thao (1973), 318-319.

49. In Nguyễn Mai's interview with her (see note 48), Nhã Ca asserted that her first novel was Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác (1966). However, Uyên Thao (1973) states that in 1965 Đông Phương introduced the first novel by Nhã Ca titled Bóng Tối Thời Con Gái (the work being serialized in the magazine then and later published as a volume in 1967). Perhaps a work did not count as far as the author was concerned until it was published in book form. Also according to Uyên Thao, part of Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác had been serialized in the daily Tin Sáng in December 1963 before this paper underwent a change that entailed the discontinuation of the novel. On the other hand, Nguyễn Hữu Đông's first-hand account of the source of the novel and Nhã Ca's dedication dated December 1965 would seem to contradict Uyên Thao's recollection.

50. From my interview with Nguyễn Hữu Đông, 1984.

51. Nhã Ca, Đêm Nghe Tiếng Đại Bác (Saigon: Nam Cường, 1967).

52. Nhã Ca, Giải Khăn Sô Cho Huế (Saigon: Thương Yêu, 1969).

53. Du Tử Lê, "Nói Chuyện Với Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ," Giai phẩm Văn, July 1973, 21-28. Information was also provided by Hồ Trường An, Thụy Vũ's brother, through correspondence with me in 1984.

54. Information provided by Hồ Trường An, 1984.

55. Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Mèo Đêm (Saigon: Thời Mới, 1966). Two additional stories are found in the second edition published by Kim Chi, 1967. See: Thư Trung, "Đọc Sách Mới -- Mèo Đêm của Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ," Văn, No.63, August 1966, 115-117.

56. Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Khung Rêu (Saigon: Kẻ Sĩ, 1969).

57. Du Tử Lê, 27.

58. Uyên Thao (1973), 159. See also Lê Văn Chính, "Túy Hồng," Khởi Hành, No.21, September 1969, 8.

59. From my interviews with Túy Hồng in Seattle, in August 1984.

60. From my interviews with Túy Hồng, in 1984.

61. From my interviews with Túy Hồng, in 1984.

62. "Đi xa với Nguyễn Thị Hoàng," Giai Phẩm Văn, July 1973, 2-4.

63. Author name Hoàng Đông Phương was used for the novel when it was serialized in Bách Khoa.

64. Uyên Thao (1973), 237.

65. Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Vòng Tay Học Trò, 3rd edition (Saigon: Hoàng Đông Phương, 1967), 403.

66. Uyên Thao (1973), 225.

67. This information was provided by some knowledgeable people I talked with during my research trip in 1984. The book in question entitled Tiếng Hát Học Trò is reportedly written by Mai Tiến Thành and published by the Kim Anh publishing house of author Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ. I have not been able to locate the item to verify this information.

68. From my interview with Trùng Dương in Placerville, California, in August 1984.

69. From my interview with Trùng Dương, 1984. See also Nguyễn Nam Anh, "Phỏng Vấn Trùng Dương," Văn, March 1973, 1-7.

70. Archimedes L.A. Patti, Why Vietnam (University of California Press, 1980), 471-473.

71. Cited in René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, vol.4 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966), 34.

72. Võ Phiến, 19-24; Nguyễn Mộng Giác, "Nghĩ về Thơ, Truyện 1974," Bách Khoa, Nos. 421-422, January 1975, 25-33.

73. Hoàng Hương Trang co-authored this work with her husband Triều Linh.

74. "Đi xa với Nguyễn Thị Hoàng," Giai Phẩm Văn, July 1973, 2-4.

75. From my interview with Túy Hồng, 1984.

76. From my interview with Trùng Dương, 1984.

77. Võ Phiến, 22.

78. Nguyễn Mai, "Nhã Ca, Phút Nói Thật," Giai Phẩm Văn, July 1973, 49.

79. Lê Phương Chi, "Tâm Sự Một Số Nhà Văn, Nhà Báo, Nghệ Sĩ Vào Những Ngày Cuối Năm Dần," Bách Khoa, Nos. 421 & 422, January 1975, 105.

80. From my interview with Đào Văn Khánh, Lệ Hằng's husband, in San Jose, California, in June 1984.

81. Lệ Hằng, Tóc Mây (Sài Gòn: Tổ Hợp Gió, 1973).

82. Trần Thị NgH, "Nhà Có Cửa Khóa Trái," Văn, No. 209, Sept. 1972, 24-32.

83. Nguyễn Viết Quang, 48.

84. Hùynh Phan Anh, et.al., "Nói Chuyện Về Các Nhà Văn Nữ," Văn, No.206, July 1972, 1-6. Scattered book reviews before 1975 and my interviews with a number of male writers and journalists in North America in 1984 provided additional insights into the issue being discussed.

85. From my interviews with various male authors and journalists in 1984. See also: Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, "Khả Năng và Phương Hướng Sáng Tạo Văn Nghệ của Người Đàn Bà," Văn, No.84, June 1967, 3-9; Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, "Khi Người Phụ Nữ Làm Nghệ Thuật," Văn, No.84, June 1967, 10-14; Trùng Dương, "Đàn Bà Viết Văn," Bách Khoa, No.416, October 1974, 49-53; "Phỏng Vấn Võ Phiến," Tin Sách, VI, No.34, April 1965, 26.

86. Túy Hồng, "Nhà Văn,Tác Phẩm Đầu Tay," Khởi Hành, No. 70, September 1970.

    ---

    Return to:

    •Top
    

    •List Articles
    

    • Home Page
    

Copyright © 1987 by Nha Trang Pensinger