I am a literary critic, and this article is not meant to be a historical study; rather, it embodies an analytic observation of the manner in which male-dominated literature has depicted the early Vietnamese women warriors, generally in agreement with
history recorded also by men. I wish to thank the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell and the Rockefeller Foundation for their generous support provided in 1988-1989 toward my research for an unfinished manuscript on the psychosocial evolution of the Vietnamese woman, of which this article is a chapter. An earlier version of this piece was published in Yale University's Vietnam Review 1, Autumn-Winter 1996. I would like to share my thoughts with a larger audience.)
Tôi muốn cưỡi cơn gió mạnh, đạp luồng sóng dữ, chém cá kình ở biển khơi,
đánh đuổi quân Ngô, giành lại giang sơn, cởi ách nô lệ, chứ tôi không chịu khom
lưng làm tỳ thiếp cho người. (1)
(I want to ride
strong winds, trample upon fierce waves, kill sharks in the ocean, drive out
the Wu Chinese invaders, regain our country and throw off the yoke of slavery;
I will not bend and serve someone as his slave-concubine.)
[Statement attributed by oral tradition
to Lady Triệu
of the third century A.D.]
Like one fragment of the numerous fragments from a mirror which uniformly reflect an entity, I bear the collective joy and burden of experience shared by Vietnamese women of all ages. Both joy and burden because, while the myriad unfoldings of our own unique circumstances have so enriched our lives and made them more significant, there stubbornly remain warped perceptions which distort and cloud our vision of our own identity and destiny.
A concrete example is the image persistently impressed upon our mind of the warrior-heroines in the early history of Vietnam, whose deeds unquestionably set a long-lasting tradition for the whole people, not just for womenfolk. I am placing myself at the end of the fifteen century which witnessed a burst of activities in scholarship and creative literature. It was a time when one could readily discover how historians told the stories of those women warriors–whether their construction of history was true or false is an issue of concern at another time, in another context–from which source poets and writers have spun their favorite versions. There is available for my perusal the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (Complete Work of Historical Records of Great Viet) compiled by Ngô Sĩ Liên in 1479 by order of King Lê Thánh Tông. Among the sources utilized for this major work of history, one can refer to an earlier work entitled Đại Việt sử ký (Historical Records of Great Viet) whose author was Lê Văn Hưu of the thirteenth century, and also, of course, the folklore tradition–what the masses have remembered, modified, and passed on through word of mouth from one generation to the next. Some of the latter can be found recorded in the Việt điện u linh tập (Collection of Stories of Departed Spirits in the Kingdom of Viet) by Lý Tế Xuyên of the fourteenth century. Above all, it would be a grave mistake not to mention Chinese sources which had existed
centuries before our Vietnamese ancestors learned from the Chinese to record historical events in writing.
These Chinese records thus disagree with each other as to who played the leading roles, specifically whether Trưng Trắc's husband Thi Sách, or her sister Trưng Nhị, joined her in initiating the revolt. What is of interest to me is that the Chinese accounts make no mention of Thi Sách's execution by Su Ting. Since elsewhere Chinese historians had no qualms about portraying this prefect as a worthless character, I see no reason why they should have refrained from pointing out such a political blunder on his part if he had in fact committed it. (7)
And political blunder it would have been! A wise prefect would not have gone so far, would not have risked antagonizing and alienating the local aristocracy, those who traditionally commanded popular allegiance and support. To me, it might appear plausible to infer that this detail of Thi Sách's death must have been added by Vietnamese historians as the major impetus for Trưng Trắc's revolt, essentially translated into action her simmering outrage at the wrongs which Tô Định and his subordinates inflicted on her people. The question for me is, What exactly did Vietnamese court historians try to imply by introducing this particular element –the husband's being killed. In other words, what purpose did this alteration or embellishment of event serve?
The question of Thi Sách's death has intrigued me more than once, and each time when pondering it, I have come away with a fuller answer. Consider this. Having gone through a process of socialization–the aim of which is to ensure that a female should know her assigned inferior place in the system, regardless of occasionally tolerated aberrances from the norm–would any Vietnamese woman have much difficulty seeing through the design of the historians? What comes at once to mind is that those male scholars, serving a system in which everyone was expected to observe a strict hierarchy of relationship between king and subject, father and child, and husband and wife, could not possibly have allowed Trưng Trắc to earn recognition as the one who led the revolt, not while her husband was alive and well. That would have meant a transgression on her part, and most of all a disgrace to the males judged superior to womenfolk according to the sage Confucius. I strongly suspect that the issue did not matter an iota to people who lived in Trưng Trắc's time, Thi Sách included, as borne out by the fact that more than half of her subordinate military commanders, not just a few exceptions, were male, so tradition tells us. (8) In this regard, it is amusing to note Ngô Sĩ Liên's interpretation of the final days of Trưng Trắc's uprising. I have no quarrel with the observation that the heroine herself was fully aware of the odds against her: Mã Viện's powerful regular troops as opposed to her undisciplined followers. This practical realization should be expected of a leader like herself who had known when to move to defeat the prefect Tô Định. But to say that her followers deserted her because they saw that "she was [only] a woman" flies in the face of facts as they stood. Why were they not doubtful about her as a supreme commander, when she–only a woman–sent out her call for an armed uprising? If the sex of the leader had been the crucial uniting factor as seemingly intimated by Ngô Sĩ Liên, wouldn't the rebels have instead rallied around one of the capable male commanding officers from the beginning? Why should all the local commanders and their separate armies, both males and females, have submitted themselves to Trưng Trắc's control and accepted her leadership, if not because what they were looking for was simply the best of talents? They joined her because as a person she possessed the dedication and ability to lead, and they stayed by her side afterward when the Chinese prefect Tô Định proved too inept a chief to counterattack their united forces. On the other hand, the confrontation with the famed general Mã Viện and his trained troops must have presented her followers with a totally different picture. This was particularly poignant after Trưng Trắc had lost to him a major battle, and thousands of lives as well. (9) Who would not lose heart in the wake of such a defeat? Would they have stayed with her if she were a man, and fought to reverse the deteriorating situation?
It is true that in 938 A.D. the Vietnamese were at long last set free from their predatory neighbors to the north, who for over ten centuries had ruled and controlled their lives. In no way, however, was the liberation complete. We learned patriarchal values and ethical standards elevating men over women from those same northern neighbors–from the time of Nhâm Diên [Chinese: Jen Yen] and Tích Quang [Chinese: Hsi Kuang], the two Han governors who administered the prefectures of Cửu Chân and Giao Chỉ in the first century. Those borrowed precepts have stubbornly persisted, and persisted more than many of us would be willing to admit. In this light, one can easily detect a concern for men's loss of prestige, or honor if you will, in the comments given by Lê Văn Hưu, a thirteen-century historian: "What a pity that between the time of Triệu and that of Ngô, over a thousand years, the men of our land only bowed their heads and folded their arms as humble slaves to serve the northern invaders. How could they not feel ashamed in contrast to the Trưng sisters who were [only] women?" (10) The historian exaggerates when he says that no Việt male rose up to fight for the country during so long a period; rather, it
may be more precise to say that none of them succeeded as the Trưng sisters did. (11) Hmmm, on second thought, perhaps the second interpretation is exactly what the historian has in mind, as suggested by his unconcealed annoyance with a situation in which Việt men allowed two women to outshine them. And it is equally exasperating to me that his statement has generally been taken only at face value as earnest praise for the first national heroines, the hint of male ingrained arrogance being completely ignored. Under the circumstances, wouldn't it have
been most natural and straightforward for him simply to say that the whole population–not just the men–should have felt shame over their failure to follow in the sisters' footstep? Why the need to harp on the sex of the valiant warriors?
Indeed, the wish to minimize male humiliation may explain our historians' eager concurrence with the account of Thi
Sách's execution before the sisters' revolt. But it would be naïve to stop at that ostensible reason. More significant–and oh how much more–is that Trưng Trắc's revenge of Thi Sách's death was undoubtedly intended to illustrate and solidify a fundamental precept of patriarchy: a wife's absolute devotion and loyalty to her husband. How exquisite! Do I not, on this very day in the fifteenth century, see this principle, one among many feudal tenets, being upheld and
rigorously enforced by a flourishing Confucian ethic which perceives women as men's underlings? Our own brilliant King
Lê Thánh Tông, himself a Confucian scholar and poet, is the supreme patron of Confucian studies. With the ruling class
steeped in Confucian orthodoxy, it is no wonder that Ngô Sĩ Liên, beloved courtier that he is, should choose to differ from Chinese sources with regard to the motive for Trưng Trắc's rebellion, so as to distract attention from the
real power and prestige that women once held. Once held!"Once held" is what again and again comes to mind as I walk around in depressive contemplation. Ironically, in contrast to our menfolk, Chinese historians in their own country could not care one whit when they reported the seemingly unnatural prevalence of the female principle in the south, an anomaly only to be expected among barbarians of another land.
It should be noted that, in the main, our historical records do not contradict Chinese accounts of Lady Triệu, in contrast to the discrepancies surrounding the story of Trưng Trắc."Triệu Ẩu", a Triệu woman; "a woman from the Triệu clan"; and "the sister of a man from the Triệu clan": thus, anonymously, was she identified. This is the extent to which I am allowed to know about my unique predecessor! No mention whatsoever of her own name. Some nonentity might have deserved such a casual reference, one would think, but not a significant historical figure.(15) Or have I missed the point? Maybe she did not count for much, after all, to either side of the conflict. Why? Because she did not win. A popular saying once again proves its wisdom: Được là vua, thua là giặc (Winners are kings, losers bandits). I wonder if this explains why Lady Triệu does not appear among those deified spirits celebrated in both the Việt điện u linh tập (Collection of Stories of Departed Spirits in the Kingdom of Việt), a fourteenth-century work by Lý Tế Xuyên, and the Lĩnh nam chích quái (Wonders Reconstructed from Fragments of the Oral Tradition of Linh-nam), an ancient manuscript later edited and made known by Vũ Quỳnh, a scholar official. (16)
Chinese sources seem to add weight to the truth of that proverb. While they acknowledge the righteous causes of
Trưng Trắc's rebellion and, however grudgingly, offer praises to her person, they merely report that the Triệu woman set out "to raid and ransack the districts", without mentioning any worthy cause motivating her, and with
allusion to the all negative appearance of a bandit leader and violator of the peace. Oh, the vagueness and ambiguity
of verbal expression! Did she lead the rebels to attack and rob her own people, or did she mean to fight against the
Wu ruler-invaders and their native collaborators? The image of her is here conjured up by two selected and highly suggestive details.
First, one may note two independent clauses used to describe the course of life she adopted: "she did not get married", and "she rallied rebels and led them to raid and ransack". We often tend to juxtapose, for emphasis, what a person chooses to do and not to do when these choices are connected in some fashion, connected in the case of Lady Triệu through nonconformity to accepted norms and values. In this light, it is not hard to grasp the judgmental attitude held by Chinese historians, which is embedded in their ostensibly neutral statements of facts related to her life style. In the eye of the northern aristocrats, the Triệu woman certainly did not conform to the norm of becoming a wife when she came of age, whereby she would have been tied to a man and confined within his home, constantly submitting to his wishes and whims. If the clause were "She was a single woman" or "She was not married", it would simply indicate a given state of being where she might not have any choice in the matter, for reasons beyond her control. But here, by tone and context, "she did not get married" clearly means an act of her own volition, a willful deviation from the norm. The result was, it is implied, that without proper discipline and guidance by men she became wild and engaged in mischief-making activities.
Secondly, her unusual aberration from the norm of behavior is shown to have found its match, or its parallel, in her bizarre appearance. Indeed, the second element selected for inclusion to round out her image is the abnormal dimension of her breasts, that part of a woman's anatomy which, in the borrowed elite tradition, is not supposed to draw the slightest notice, let alone attention. Lady Triệu's apparent immodesty in failing to hide her female shame, as an act of flouting
the norm, was undoubtedly noted with disapproval. But more significantly, the deformed physical feature of hers is emphasized to characterize her as a grotesque creature. The emblem of her physique and power became a caricature that evoked the freak. Indeed, from the perspective of the Confucian Chinese, the Triệu woman was outside the natural, well beyond what could be considered a normal state of being expected of the conventional female. Hence, in their portrayal she took on the look of a monster and adopted the behavior of a savage marauder.
I have repeated myself often enough on various occasions, but it is absolutely true that little more than bare facts about the early warrior-heroines is entered into our official history–a history drawing its materials from Chinese records and from the collective memory of the Vietnamese, a history sanctioned by the court which might share with the populace general knowledge, but not necessarily interpretation and understanding of past events. Nonetheless, the sorts of facts chosen for inclusion and the manner in which they are presented in historical records inspire the imagination. To see the truth of that, one need only look at how creative literature–a most imaginative and multi-layered form of art uniformly cherished by Vietnamese–plays up to and makes over the bare facts provided by court history in re-creating the lives of Queen Trưng and Lady Triệu. (It should be noted that, although the two Trưng sisters were so much together throughout the historic uprising that they have always been thought of as one entity, it is around Trưng Trắc that literature, in agreement with history and legend, has built the story.)
To begin with, one may observe that in its sketchy account of the early national heroines, official history betrays a primary concern about either the presence or absence of a man in the life of each. This concern is nowhere more obvious than in the highlighting of Thi Sách's execution as the force motivating Trưng Trắc's patriotic rebellion, and in the
awkward avoidance to discuss the marital status of Lady Triệu. It seems to suggest that, through the prism of Confucian patriarchal values, Trưng Trắc's emotional attachment to her man before and after his death added ethical legitimacy to her resistance movement so that no reservation is felt when celebrating her victory. On the other hand, Lady Triệu's standing quite independent of a capable man in her struggle against the invaders denies her that legitimacy, and the official assessment of her heroism is consequently equivocal. Our literature, enjoying greater freedom to weave fantasy with fact, is not above being attracted to such a combination of public concern and private grievance in the national
heroine as exemplified by Trưng Trắc. Even though the ideal of fulfilling the two connected duties of
nợ nước (paying one's debt to the country) and thù nhà (avenging the wrong done to one's family) is not applied to women exclusively, literature finds it more dramatic to have it carried out by a woman warrior, with the
second duty most commonly and romantically linked with the violent loss of her man. It is such an apt literary theme
against the backdrop of our national history whose leitmotif is WAR. As can be expected, literature happily adopts
our historians' version of Thi Sách's death, in contrast to the claim by some Chinese accounts that he was still alive when his wife's insurrection was well under way. (17)
What is said here with regard to the reason for Lady Triệu's single status differs from what can be inferred from Chinese sources and the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư. The verses declare that Lady Triệu stayed single because fate did not place the right man in her path, a hero who could have helped her triumph over the invaders. [Incidentally, these were sent by the Wu court, not by the Eastern Han/Later Han dynasty as the poem
claims.] This places Lady Triệu in a different light, as one who did not actually choose to deviate from the norm, but simply was not blessed with the right partner. Thus a stigmatic aberrant behavior is removed from the formulation of
this heroine, and she is seen within the range of normalcy where Trưng Trắc has been placed all along. And that would
seem precisely the way the national heroine should be made to appear when Confucian values prevail, according to which a female must first and foremost be a woman, taking her place in a family where she occupies a subordinate position vis-à-vis a man. This factor, on which the Việt điện u linh tập and the Hồng Đức poem focus, will be highlighted in works of later centuries that feature these early national heroines.
Indeed, flash forth centuries and one finds an excellent example of such a focus in the Thiên Nam ngữ lục (Records of the Southern land in the Southern language). (20) It is a text in chữ nôm, the script used to transcribe our vernacular language, whose unnamed author is said to have composed it at the behest of a Trịnh lord toward the end of the seventeenth century. As far as I can ascertain, it is a common pattern to portray a hero by highlighting his altruistic ideals and his glorious achievements. Trần Hưng Đạo is known by his extraordinary victory over the Mongols, Lê Lợi remembered for rising from his humble village to regain national independence from the Ming. The treatment of Queen Trưng and Lady Triệu in this lengthy work departs from this pattern, for it portrays their heroism in the context of womanhood whose ultimate destination is marriage.
The picture is perfectly clear. That Trưng Trắc remains unattached when coming of age does not indicate a rejection of the marriage institution; rather it reflects the higher purposes she attaches to it. The ideal man she is yet to find must be able to perform two great tasks: to re-establish the estate of the Hùng Kings that was taken away by the Chinese, and to free the country from Chinese rule. The first is her private concern, for tradition tells us that Trưng Trắc's mother was a descendant of the Hùng Kings; the second directly points to her patriotism, an essential attribute of any national hero. Thus, marriage is not at all far from her thoughts, only qualified with noble sentiments projected in
it. And on this very point, since it is said earlier in the text that not only is she well-versed in literature but she
has also mastered military strategies and martial arts, one would expect–as in the case of a male hero–that she herself would set out to initiate actions leading to the fulfillment of the said goals, instead of waiting for the right
man to come along and do the job for her. (23) The answer to the puzzle is found in her alleged submission to a fact of life beyond her control:
Against what eventually turned out in her favor as told by history, Trưng Trắc is here seen inconceivably devoid of self-confidence. The author apparently forgets, or ignores, the long-remembered fact that half of Trưng Trắc's military commanders were women; many of them, before joining her, had raised an army of their own composed of both male and female fighters. It is reasonable to argue that the question of their sex could not have entered people's minds as a hindrance, as Trưng Trắc is shown to fear. Projected here, then, is the view from another time, the time of the
Thiên Nam ngữ lục. It reflects, and serves to perpetuate, the presumed notion having been encoded in our own value system long after the time of this heroine, that women are inferior social beings. The author, after all, was a member of the political elite most imbued with such imported notions, and therefore could not be free of this sexual bias. If only he
knew how faithfully his words would be repeated for ages to come! As a matter of fact, more than a century later, in the play entitled Tuồng Trưng Nữ Vương (Queen Trưng Play), produced by Vương Thúc Lương in the early 1920s, these words are put in Trưng Trắc's mouth:
Thiếp nay sinh dòng cửa tướng, đội quốc ân vốn đã nặng nề.
Hổ sinh ra phận gái nữ nhi, gánh dân quốc thẹn thua phường nam tử. (25)
(Coming from a military family, my indebtedness to the nation weighs heavy upon me.
In humiliation born to a woman's lot, I am ashamed of being no match for men
in shouldering responsibility toward the country and the people.)
This is Trưng Trắc speaking from a twentieth-century Vietnam that has known by then quite a few male heroes of historical caliber, and not from the frame of her own lifetime when she was the first citizen ever to lead the Việt people against foreign aggressors, when no man could have put her to shame in the matter of serving the motherland. One may point out that there stands the long stretch of nineteen centuries between the heroine and the protagonist of the play bearing her name. Such a distance in time inevitably causes a loss of proper perspective, one could argue. True. But this noncommittal explanation, which is supposed to make everyone happy, certainly will not dispel my irritation at the distortion which can be avoided with just a little care. Or do I miss the point here, that care has actually been taken to bring the past closer to home, closer to how people have been conditioned for centuries to think about women following the
teachings of Confucius? Confucianism, growing from a position second to Buddhism early on to the status of the supreme state religion under the Lê dynasty, suffered a setback from the sixteenth century onward due to the failure of the ruling class to live up to standards that they themselves preached. But it re-asserted itself with a vengeance in 1802 when the Nguyễn dynasty established its repressive reign by enforcing conformity to Confucian values, from which is derived the adage often quoted in conversation: "Nhất nam viết hữu, thập nữ viết vô." (A single son counts; ten daughters together don't.) Apparently, such a borrowed prejudice must have been firmly implanted in Vương Thúc Linh's mind for him to have imagined Trưng Trắc's utterance of self-abasement as such. But he is by no means unique in his stand. Since a play is designed for public performance and therefore exposed to more immediate response and sanction than
a printed poem, such a statement could not have been inserted and remained in the text had it gone against current collective values and met with disapproval. (26)
Vốn ta rắp ý đã lâu,
được người hào kiệt cùng nhau vẫy vùng.
Ra đời nên kẻ anh hùng,
Trách sao học thói vợ chồng kẻ quê . (27)
(I have nursed, for a long time,
the wish to find a gallant man and, together with him,
to strive for freedom and independence.
We shall engage in heroic deeds in life,
forswearing to follow the habits of vulgar couples.)
Thus, Trưng Trắc is here presented as a spirited woman who, instead of readily conforming to a mundane pattern of life, will seek lofty goals in the company of a kindred soul. Little does she suspect–as the story unfolds–that her man Thi Sách by no means looks in the same direction:
Rắp mong gây dựng nghiệp nhà,
hiềm trong chủ quỹ chưa hòa có ai.
Tình cờ trong có một người,
phúc đội ơn trời sức mới được dân.(28)
(Earnestly I always hope to build the family fortune;
alas, the right woman has not been found to oversee the cult of ancestors in my place.
If by luck she materializes and takes control of my household affairs,
Heavenly blessing it will be, for only then can I devote myself to serving the people.)
Thi Sách's notion of his life companion's role, as imagined by the author, clearly does not agree with what Trưng Trắc has in mind. As he sees it, her part in his personal advancement and public duty will be confined to running his household and, most importantly, to tending the altar of his ancestors. Thus relieved of major family obligations, he will be free to pursue his own ambitions. In other words, the thought of her sharing in his activities beyond the family surroundings never once enters his mind. This is a seventeenth-century Thi Sách, created in the image of the patriarch so honored by the elite culture. At once the question must be asked: How is the apparent tension between Trưng Trắc's expectations and Thi Sách's perception of her limited role to be resolved? Conveniently, quite in line with the Confucian ethos of his times, the author does not seem bothered by it:
One is thus told of what appears to the public eye, which matters in so far as the man's honor is concerned: the
couple finds happiness in harmony and cooperation. How they plan to go after their shared interests–either on his terms or on hers, either with Trưng Trắc staying in the background or with the both of them working side by side in a joint effort–seems irrelevant to the author. It is irrelevant because, after all, a woman's submission to her husband's will is the order of the day. For all the ambiguity in the portrayal of Trưng Trắc's relationship with her husband Thi Sách, their marriage nevertheless is described in this work of fiction as the essential ingredient that leads to the heroine's single-minded act of avenging thù nhà.
Against that background of her predecessor, the historically recorded celibacy of Lady Triệu thus requires manipulation of facts in order to situate her within the same value framework. After all, as a role model to be admired and imitated, a national heroine must embody all current social norms to perfection. In addressing this issue of conformity, it seems that the most common device is to blame her single status on fate, and not on her deliberate avoidance of marriage, a sacrosanct institution to which a woman is expected to submit herself. Elaborating on the idea expressed in the Hồng
Đức poem, that Lady Triệu was not destined to find a worthy man with whom she could consider matrimony, the Thiên Nam ngữ lục begins by introducing her as a woman over twenty, having passed the prime of youth without a husband. (30) It goes on to suggest the reason for her plight, by revealing what she looks for in a potential life partner which, as in the case of Trưng Trắc, is above the range of values held by the
average woman:
Nàng rao:"Bản quốc anh hùng
Ai ra tay quét dẹp xong giặc này,
cho dân được cậy mai ngày,
ắt tơ Nguyệt Lão xe dây xích thằng. (31)
("Hail to heroes in our land," she announced,
"whoever succeeds in sweeping away these invaders
thus giving our people hope for a better future
will be tied to me with the nuptial thread of red silk by the Old Man of the Moon.")
It is so telling that centuries apart, literary works could not get away from a preconceived stereotypic woman's mind, where was lodged a deep sense of inadequacy when it came to leading a national struggle for independence. Otherwise, why should both Trưng Trắc and Triệu Ẩu have looked to a man to undertake the mission in their stead?
It all sounds arbitrary and false in the particular case of Triệu Ẩu because of other details which this work itself supplies. As the plot develops, her announcement–in essence an appeal to a male hero for help–is supposed to occur when China dispatches General Lục Dận to put down her rebellion. Prior to this, she is said to have raised an army of a hundred thousand fighters in her native province, set up headquarters surrounded by rivers and mountains, and sent out calls for a revolt. (32) She has accomplished all that preparatory work alone as the supreme commander, which should have given her enough confidence when the time for action comes. Yet, here she is shown in a panic confronted with the prospect of a battle against the enemy and ready to offer herself up as a reward to any man who would save the nation in her stead. Why? The answer, echoing the case of Trưng Trắc earlier on, again lies in the learned habit of self-denigration, which is more believable in a woman several centuries later in our cultural history:
Although full of confidence in her ability to rule the nation, Triệu Ẩu yields to society's preference for male supremacy. The curious thing is, right before her gloomy reflection on the limitations placed upon her as a woman, the author has her look back to Trưng Trắc, a female ruler of the Việt realm, for a role model:
Even as one can imagine that the real-life Triệu Ẩu might very well have recalled the triumph of Trưng Trắc for inspiration, I have the suspicion that the idea that her sex would prevent her from emulating the earlier heroine could not have crossed her mind. It was still early then in our history for the indigenous culture to have been thoroughly contaminated with sexual discrimination imported from China. What happens here is that the author–perhaps without any awareness of the way his mind has been conditioned to operate–puts in Triệu Ẩu's mouth, as he has done earlier with Trưng Trắc, words that carry the values deeply ingrained in him and most certainly in his female contemporaries. This distorted presentation is ironic when one recalls what extraordinary talent and prowess she is supposed to possess, in the very words of the author:
Sức quẩy nổi vạc nghìn cân,
chẳng sờn Mã Viện, hơn phân Lý Thù.
Hung hăng mạnh bạo chỉn ghê,
trẻ thời thi phú, lớn thì can qua. (35)
(Strong enough to carry a thousand-catty caldron,
She feared not Ma Vien, and outmatched Ly Thu.
Powerful and aggressive, she inspired awe;
trained in literature when young, when grownup to the arts of war she turned.)
By stating that Mã Viện (the general who defeated Trưng Trắc) would pose no threat to Lady Triệu, the author cannot have honored her more and thereby makes any lack of self-confidence in her quite unconvincing. Furthermore, elsewhere the text says that she has long given up on marriage, realizing that no worthy hero is around: she only see men who become Buddhist monks to evade larger responsibilities. (36) Her
disheartening view of men is borne out by the subsequent scenario in which many men, taking up her challenge, vie with one another for her hand and fail. To top all that, Lady Triệu herself succeeds in killing Lục Dận after a single battle and thus brings to naught the enemy's attempt to crush a rebellion that she has been elected to lead. (37) Poetic license allows the author, much as fantasy is permitted in the folk tradition from which he draws his inspiration, to contradict or ignore recorded history according to which Lady Triệu lost both the battle and her life in her encounter with Lục Dận. Given the fictionalized context, with Lady Triệu's easy victory and valor, her need for a dependable hero husband is quite unconvincing. That the author fails to see the incoherence in the portrait he presents is rather hard to imagine. Most likely, her announcement is concocted for a specific purpose that overrides literary consistency. Three reasons for its inclusion suggest themselves. First, the author perhaps adopts a favorite motif in folk literature, what may be called "the fair maiden as the reward for a noble task". Most often, it features a king who promises his beautiful daughter in marriage to the hero who can save the realm from some calamity like a monster or foreign invasion. In this case, since the story does not mention the presence of relatives around her, it is only reasonable that Lady Triệu publicizes the pledge of marriage herself. The usefulness of this folkloric convention notwithstanding, what seems more relevant, secondly, is the feeling one gets that the virtue of humility as appropriate to womanhood is called into play here. In patriarchal society, it will not do for a woman to intrude in national affairs, which lie within men's exclusive territory. It is unimaginable to have Lady Triệu break the rule and show no due reference to men. Most likely though, the superfluity of her announcement points to a third explanation, namely the author's eagerness to demonstrate that Lady Triệu, a heroine though she is, still needs a man's help and protection. The last explanation is suggested by a fictive episode grafted onto the life of this heroine.(38)
It begins with Lục Dận's fantasized death at her hands–a reversal of recorded history. This outright distortion of historical fact may well be seen as an instance of the penchant for exaggerating the accomplishments of national heroes by way of re-asserting national integrity. However, I am inclined to think something else is involved, going beyond that tendency. While prolonging Lady Triệu's life experience thus making the plot thicken and more exciting, the altered fact paves the way for placing her in the familiar framework of womanhood lest she should appear outright a nonconformist, not favorably viewed by the reader subject thoroughly to Confucian norms and values. The tale thus continues to unfold after Lục Dận's defeat. China then sends another general named Đặng Tuân. He comes with a huge army, wreaking destruction along his southward path. But after more than a year, he is still nowhere near bringing Lady Triệu's forces to heel, even though she and her fellow fighters have suffered much as they persist in defending their strongholds. The military impasse deals quite a blow to Đặng Tuân's pride:
Đặng Tuân thế đã ban nghèo
trai sinh làm tướng thua keo đàn bà,
ở giống vận váy vào ra,
mặt nào lại thấy người ta đi đường. (39)
(In such a dire pass Đặng Tuân found himself:
as a male military commander he was losing the fight to a woman,
to a creature who went about wearing a skirt;
he could not face other people without shame.)
Đặng Tuân is here troubled not only by his failure to accomplish his mission but also by the fact that his unconquerable opponent is a woman. I don't wonder for a second how spontaneous it must have been for the author to imagine such a chauvinistic response in this fictional character. All in all, realizing that he cannot defeat her through conventional combat, the Chinese general resorts to a stratagem which causes her to let down her guard. What is his ruse? The best bait used to entice a woman, so it seems immediately obvious to Đặng Tuân and his advisor, is marriage where commitment and loyalty are expected. The general thus dispatches an emissary who carries his marriage proposal to Lady Triệu, carefully stressing the advantage of uniting their separate forces and fighting the Wu rule. (40) It makes sense that, in dealing with this woman who devotes herself to fighting for national independence, negotiations should start from her patriotic stand. However, she greets the offer with much doubt and little enthusiasm, probably because she fails to see any logic in allying herself with a man who has not proved her equal on the battlefield. The shrewd envoy, reading her mind, reworks his argument:
"Nàng đà kể đấng thuyền quyên,
anh hùng ai sánh, binh quyền ai đương?
Có âm mà chẳng có dương,
xuân về thảo mộc không đường nở hoa
liền thành lão địa bỏ già
bỏ dư ai kẻ cày mà làm chi?
Chẳng bằng toan lo kịp thì
trước an gia thất, sau thì bãi binh
Bắc Nam đừng sự chiến tranh,
Dân được an lành, nhà được nghỉ ngơi. (41)
(You are reckoned for youth and beauty,
No one can equate you in heroism and in military might
Yet when the female principle is not joined by the male principle,
plants and trees will not blossom when spring arrives;
barren soil will lie fallow beside a citadel wall
–why should anyone care to plough a discarded plot of land?
It is far better for you to act in good time:
Settle yourself in marriage, then discontinue the armed struggle
When North and South cease hostilities,
The people will enjoy peace, and you will be blessed with quiet and rest.)
Tactfully, he first acknowledges her talents and power. This diplomatic approach is meant to soften her reluctance to lend an ear. Once he has gained her attention, the man proceeds to work on that part of her life known to be unfulfilled, making it the main point of argument for her alliance with Đặng Tuân. He hits where it hurts most– or so it would seem to the reader who hears no protest from Lady Triệu and cannot help inferring that she, like any average woman, is sensitive to the stigma of being a non-procreative old maid. Most interesting is the envoy's focus on the
familiar double responsibility when he suggests that marital alliance between her and Đặng Tuân will serve both
her public and private concerns, restoring peace to the country and providing her with a family as socially expected of her.
As the story goes, Lady Triệu is shown tempted: So she buys the argument, when the internalized notion of an unmarried woman's helplessness threatens her with failure, in spite of all the capabilities and success she has demonstrated so far. Following this unpersuasive description of her state of mind is like watching her being dragged against her will into an alien framework of thoughts and deeds. But the inconsistency does not deter the author from weaving and setting a snare around such a subterfuge, and Lady Triệu is next seen walking straight into the trap with all the gullibility of an ordinary woman who knows nothing about military strategies and tactics. She promises to give her answer the next morning. Believing in her enemy's sincerity and taking his proposal as a lucky turn of fate, she goes to meet him at the appointed time without the protection of her guards. From a hidden position, Đặng Tuân's archers shoot her down. (43)
Cao một trượng, cả mười vầng,
bỏ tóc ngang lưng, vú chấm sừng.(44)
(Standing thirteen feet tall, she boasted a girth measuring ten circles of arms;
down to her waist her hair flowed, and her breasts reached the tusk of the elephant she rode.)
Portrayals of Lady Triệu in later times offer variants of the same features. The Thiên Nam ngữ lục presents her in slightly reduced but nonetheless impressive dimensions:
Cao trong tám thước, rộng ngoài mười gang.
Uy nghi diện mạo đoan trang,
đi đường chớp thét, đồng dường sấm vang.
… … …
Vú dài ba thước lôi thôi
ngồi chấm đến đùi, cúi rủ đến chân. (45)
(Over ten feet tall, and of a girth measuring more than ten spans
she was stately and awesome in appearance.
As fast as lightning she moved, and her voice resounded like thunder.
… … …
Her cumbersome breasts, four feet in length,
Touched her thighs when she sat down, and reached her feet when she bent over.)
While the works discussed so far do not neglect to mention her other physical attributes as well, poems of later periods became more economical in their description, which singles out the grotesque physical feature as the hallmark of her personality. The Đại Nam quốc sử diễn ca (Song of National History of Đại Nam), composed by Lê Ngô Cát in 1858 at the behest of Emperor Tự Đức, sings of Lady Triệu thus:
Then in the age of empirical scientific reasoning, one will soon discover these lines from a twentieth-century poem:
Vùng vẫy non sông ba thước vú,
xông pha tên đạn một đầu voi. (48)
(With four-foot-long breasts, she fiercely moved across the country,
atop an elephant's head, she braved bows and arrows.)
The author was Dương Bá Trạc, a liberal, who took part in the 1908 movement called Đông Kinh nghĩa thục (Tonkin free school) which set out to provide both men and women with modern education, and who should have been
more aware of the preposterousness of such an anatomic image. Like all his predecessors, however, he chose to highlight that physical abnormality as an integral part of Lady Triệu's identity.
Given all that repetition and emphasis, only the most unsuspicious soul will not scrutinize Lady Triệu's fleshly
endowment for clues to some deeper significance. Some may argue that this sensational feature depends for its existence and persistent popularity on a less official tradition: folklore, which never fails to project a mythological dimension onto
legendary figures. One readily recalls the mythical story of Thánh Gióng: overnight, he grew up from a three-year-old boy, who could neither sit nor speak, into a forty-foot-tall hero to expel northern invaders from our land. More interestingly, it is said that Lady Triệu came from a village near a mountain range along which lived many ethnic groups with their separate bodies of folklore. A Bahnar myth tells of a goddess whose breast were so long that they reached her knees; she had to throw them over her shoulders and tie them together by the nipples. (49). Who knows if people in Lady Triệu's native village did not actually borrow this Bahnar motif and add it to the legend they built around her, which a Chinese chronicle later picked up and incorporated into official history? The reverse can also be imagined: the northern aristocrat might have deliberately hyperbolized a detail he considered proof of immodesty among savage southern women who did not cover themselves properly; then the Việt folk afterwards turned that contempt around and made the feature an awesome attribute of the legendary heroine.
Yet to my mind, her grotesque physique is intentionally made to stand out with a view to indicating that she
does not epitomize humanity, having a superhuman stature and strength. What this in turn implies is not hard to
figure out. As a superhuman, Lady Triệu performs deeds that mere mortals cannot emulate. In that sense, she hardly represents the typical woman against whom men should measure themselves in order to prove their own worth and mettle. Since no comparison is called for, no stigma of shame is in the picture. (Of course there is absolutely no necessity to turn Trưng Trắc into some kind of goddess for the same purpose of freeing men from humiliation. After all, there was her husband Thi Sách looking over her shoulder.) The cited work of the eighteenth-century author Chư Cát Thị even goes further in making Triệu into an atypical woman. To be sure, it presents her in flowery clichés of rhetoric routinely employed in description of female beauty. All in all, though, such stereotypical details are overshadowed by the enumeration of a longer list of extraordinary attributes that bear greater nam tính, masculinity: "a dragon's brows", "a panther's head", "the power to raise winds and uproot trees", and "a quasi-divine mastery of martial arts". She is virtually being desexed. To put it more bluntly, she is made to look like a man, and that explains why she can fight and lead. There, male honor is redeemed through Lady Triệu as a male hero surrogate.
Thus, for the most part, literature obliquely hints that the lady's failure to find a husband ultimately lies in
her extraordinary physique, a cause too far beyond her control to signify her willful breakaway from the conventional mold. Interestingly enough, this general line of implication, carrying as it does the weight of millennial tradition, somehow cannot eclipse a singular instance which has become the most cherished and often cited element in her story: an utterance attributed to her, one of its versions recorded in the same Chư Cát Thị's work mentioned before:
Em chỉ muốn cưỡi gió đạp sóng, chém cá kình lớn ở biển Đông, quét sạch bờ cõi,
cứu
dân ra khỏi cảnh chìm đắm, há lại bắt chước người đời cúi đầu khom lưng
làm tì
thiếp kẻ khác, cam tâm phục dịch ở trong nhà ư?" (50)
(I only want to ride the winds, tread the waves, slay sharks in the Eastern Sea,
free the land of invaders, and save the people from drowning in woes.
How could I follow the example of other women in bowing my head and bending my back
to wait on some man as his concubine, resigning myself to the role of a domestic worker?)
Lady Triệu is heard pronouncing those words to her elder brother when he expresses concern for her future, seeing that she does not live the life of a proper woman with self-effacing manners and, instead, asserts herself in public. What she is seen rejecting here is not the institution of marriage per se, but the debasement of its values as it now serves to reduce women to the position of slaves, tì thiếp, or second-rank wives and concubines–and hence to deprive them of the dignity of equal life partners enjoyed by their predecessors like Trưng Trắc. It is hard to imagine that such a state of affairs could have existed in the third century when the imported patriarchial system
had not yet had sufficient time to develop its conditioning and controlling mechanism for the suppression and exploitation of women. But one can visualize it if one recognizes that this is the voice of Lady Triệu speaking from the environment of the eighteenth century and revealing how women fared in that particular age. In fact, in the collective memory are etched images of a turbulent time when the feudal regime underwent grave crises. The internecine wars of the previous two
centuries were now followed by rampant peasant revolts. The conflict between the ruling class and the masses had never been more intense, for the simple reason that the leaders, from the puppet King Lê to the Trịnh lords who held real power, utterly failed to lead. Immoral and corrupt, they lived decadent lives among harems of women whom they possessed and disposed off at will like chattels. Most mandarins were nothing more than opportunists who forsook all moral principles. Undisciplined soldiers inflicted harm on the common people in more ways than one, among which prominently featured the
rape of women.(51)
In view of that background, Lady Triệu's wish to "save the people from drowning in woes" can be interpreted as criticism of current social conditions witnessed by the author. The relevance of this information lies in the fact that, at such a time of low moral standards when one cannot look to national leaders for role models, a man as a family head will have no qualms in abusing his authority and taking advantage of women, relegating them to the degrading status alluded to
in her statement. That being the case, the reader certainly can sympathize with, if not wholeheartedly approve of, Lady Triệu's decision to stay away from such marital bondage and attend to the larger issue of nợ nước, the debt one owes to the nation. However, that she has to make a choice at all is disconcerting. Why should she not freely enjoy the position of Trưng Trắc and fight for her country without having to forego her needs and wants as a woman?
From what I have explored, the age-old preoccupation in literature with the question of marriage in the lives of the
early national heroines may be seen simply as a device that serves to establish the normality of these extraordinary women, a precondition for the theme of thù nhà, avenging for the family. But that would be only one side of the coin. There lies hidden an ulterior motive behind all that romantic stuff which makes for an entertaining read. It involves no other than a conspiracy to redress the embarrassingly unbalanced picture in which the heroine has the audacity to take the matter of national survival into her own hands, a fact which flagrantly contradicts the presumed inferiority of women. To rectify the error of historic reality, what could be a surer way than to have a special man stand by the side of Trưng Trắc and Lady Triệu, thereby suggesting a significant participatory presence of men in those first momentous events of Viet Nam's history?
It may be argued that the case of Lady Triệu, a single woman, rules out this interpretation. That is no problem, though. Creative literature has ways of re-working experiences to suit a specific purpose. In the Thiên Nam ngữ lục for instance, one may note on the one hand the admission that no male hero is available to start an uprising along side Lady Triệu and on the other hand, a vague allusion to the presence of courageous men among her followers. Admittedly, that is just a crumb of consolation. More boldly, Chư Cát Thị's version of her legend, in the Tân đính hiệu bình Việt điện u linh tập, turns the picture around and actually makes it stick. The change consists of transforming her elder brother from a non-entity into the very first leader of this particular resistance movement. While Chinese sources only mention "a man from Chao[Triệu] clan ", making him serve as a
point of reference for Lady Triệu's identity, Chư Cát Thị has his name given in full, Triệu Quốc Đạt, and describes him as a rich and generous person, well respected and anxious to help his people. When the country suffers from upheavals (probably as consequences of Chinese exploitation), four talented and valiant men among his associates urge him to initiate an uprising. His sister's support and wholehearted commitment help him make the historic decision to risk his life in the service of his country. It is only after his death resulting from sickness that his followers elect Lady Triệu to take his place. That she has deferred to her elder brother, who apparently has not proved her equal either in talent or in courage and military skills, helps to assuage the current readers' concern that she may have drifted too far from the Confucian norm of obedience which an unmarried woman owes to her father. In accordance with the principle of quyền huynh thế phụ–an elder brother's authority substitutes for that of the absent or defunct father–she is shown aware of her inferior status, and therefore chosen not to assert herself at her brother's expense despite her better qualifications for leadership. So, we have here a deliberate distortion made persuasive by moral principles, by way of casting a man, not a woman, as the main actor in this historical event of the third century. When fiction is more to one's liking, who will want to stay close to an uncomfortable fact. This is not meant to be wickedly facetious, for a couple of centuries later, I find myself go through the experience of a school girl reading formal history books written by men who happily adopted this enhanced role for Lady Triệu's brother.(52)
When literature enjoys enough license to make a hero out of a historical non-entity like Triệu Quốc Đạt, imagine how much more it can capitalize on the certified existence of Thi Sách in Trưng Trắc's life, with the blessing of official history. In fact, as the course of time allowed the male-centered values imported from China to infiltrate the indigenous social fabric deeper, it is not difficult to identify a literary convention that has evolved to invest in Trưng Trắc's husband with the honor and prestige men crave for. This may take the modest form of praise bestowed on Thi Sách as the first exemplar of patriotic virtue. A poem of such an intent was written in 1926 by Á Nam Trần Tuấn Khải entitled "Bà Trưng tế chồng" (Lady Trung worships her dead husband), which is an elegy dedicated by Trưng Trắc to the spirit of Thi Sách. (53) Despite the poet's motive, which was to arouse patriotic fervor against the French, his rather lengthy work draws instant attention to a re-appraisal of the heroine's role in history. Through her own words, the poet first makes sure that Thi Sách is remembered for his sterling virtues and for his strong love and care for the people. The poem goes on to tell how the man has long hoped to use his political wisdom and military prowess for the ultimate aim of expelling the invaders and improving the lot of his people, and
how the enemy has slain him and rendered all his high-minded projects to naught. This results in Trưng Trắc's takeover of the anti-Chinese struggle with the sole intent of carrying out her husband's aspirations. The implication of all this is obvious. From being the initiator and prime mover of the first fight for independence in our history, she is reduced to the role of a secondary substitute leader. This notion is echoed in an official historical poem of the nineteenth century, Đại Nam quốc sử diễn ca (Song of National History of Great [Viet]Nam):
In no historical records can one find any mention of Thi Sách's marriage to the younger sister Trưng Nhị; but this variant does not depart from the current literary tradition. In other verse narratives contemporaneous with the Thiên Nam ngữ lục the hero always ends up marrying not only the woman of his dreams but also her sister or her companions and loyal maids to boot. The more the merrier: they are trophies which celebrate the hero's success. The
husband is a feudal lord, his wives are his properties, and he will fight tooth and nail to defend what he possesses. Thi Sách says it in so many words and will do what he says as a man of honor. After the first engagement has proved that his troops are no match against the enemy, he tells his wives to retreat and re-group in their stronghold where he will rejoin them should he lose another battle. He stays behind in his official residence, and like some amateur soldier he fails to defend it properly. A surprise attack by Su Ting in the middle of the night ends Thi Sách's carreer and his life. An inglorious conclusion, but what else to expect when the matter is already decided by fate?
Readers steeped in a value system that stresses the family's honor are supposed to respect Thi Sách for his manly protection of his women and for his daring resistance against a powerful foe. Regardless of what has incited him to take uparms, in this literary account Thi Sách is shown to be the first to fight the Chinese invaders. Seen in this light, Trưng Trắc's later uprising appears no more than a follow-up on her husband's heroic initiative. It is worth noting that, even as the author has the decency to not rob Trưng Trắc of her place in history, he uses this fantasized confrontation between Thi Sách and Su Ting to reaffirm male dominance. We are told that for all her bravery and fighting skills, Trưng Trắc bows to her husband's fateful decision and meekly withdraws to a safer place, leaving him alone to face Su Ting. There is no escaping the imperative that the lord of the household be seen in charge. The wife must never qua mặt her husband–literally, she must never "bypass" (qua) his authority and cause him loss of "face" (mặt). In particular, she is not to work on some important social task that should be his to undertake. Thus, only after Thi Sách's death is Trưng Trắc allowed to be seen assuming a leader's role and taking action in her own name without offense to proprieties.
The same literary construction to prove men's crucial participation in Vietnam's first resistance movement persists into the twentieth century. All I need to reassure myself of such conviction is look at the role reserved for Thi Sách in Vương Thúc Lương's play: Tuồng Trưng Nữ Vương (Queen Trưng Play; see note #25). Here, Thi Sách has grown larger than life, virtually pushing his wife into the background. The play consists of twenty-five scenes. While the Trưng sisters appear in seven scenes altogether, Thi Sách and his nephew Thi Bằng, as central characters, monopolize fifteen scenes. The significant impact made by the frequency with which a character appears on stage cannot be minimized. But that is not all. Trưng Trắc's marginal importance is established in the very first scene when she addresses her husband not as his equal but in fulsome terms expected of all his subordinates. When Thi Sách expresses shame over the fact that the people suffer while he lives a good life, and wonders whether he should quit his official post and engage in fighting the Chinese, she deferentially leaves it all to her lord and master, simply adding that she is willing to sacrifice herself for the cause. With no plan for action, she suggests that they wait for some opportunity to present itself. Subsequently, for the most part, Trưng Trắc is made to sound like a moaner who counts on men to get her out of trouble. After her husband's death, she asks her loyal man-servant to go around the country and recruit volunteer fighters; and only when he balks at that dangerous assignment does she shoulder the task herself. When Thi Bằng is killed in battle, she takes
fright and worries that, with no man to command the troops, defeat is near. Her sister Trưng Nhị has to urge her to remain strong-minded and not to panic like an ordinary emotional woman. By contrast, Thi Sách and his orphan nephew Thi Bằng (whom he has raised as a son) are portrayed as the very lifeblood and backbone of the uprising. Indeed, Thi Sách is shown to sow the seeds of rebellion among village chiefs, which act leads to his death and is regarded by minor characters in the play as a shining example of patriotism they all should follow. His nephew, as his extension, then becomes the supreme commander of Trưng Trắc's army. It is he who, by order of the Trưng queens, actually fights Su Ting and
wins back forty strongholds (out of a supposed total of sixty-five) before his death. Trưng Nhị replaces him, and only
then are the two sisters seen directly engaging the Chinese forces. (58)
Even as the purpose of the play was to arouse nationalist sentiments among both men and women, it can hardly serve to
justify the focus of attention and extolment on shadowy male characters at the expense of the historical figures of the Trưng sisters and their female commanders. One can see the dynamics of feudal culture at work here. For over a century before this work, with old lessons rehashed in various ways by order of the Nguyễn emperors, the whole population was brainwashed into placing once again their trust in the absolute validity of a Confucian moral order that had lost its credibility during the internecine wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Included in the outcome was a resurgence of a condescending view of women in general, and inadequate tribute to the early national heroines in particular. The bias raises more problems in modern times than the changing society is equipped to deal with. Despite a modest attempt at modernization and a more liberal attitude towards women, the playwright Vương Thúc Lương is shown constrained by the inertia and immovability of traditional ethics.
For dramatic effect and romantic appeal to the sentimental Vietnamese, the use of the heroine's interrelated duties of nợ nước and thù nhà serves better than patriotism alone. Of course, the authors are careful to mention her duty to the country first or lend it more weight, but this minor convention does nothing to reduce the intended
impact. Fancy how impressive it looks, the picture of a widow wiping away her tears and mustering all her strength to
fight those murderers of her husband and suckers of her people's blood. Certainly, by the same token, it is not hard
to visualize a man whose simmering rage against foreign invaders is provoked into rebellious action by his grief over the harm done to his father or brother, to his close kinsmen, by the same enemies. However, interestingly enough, our literary
tradition has not turned the latter case into a recurrent motif. In the main, the combination of private grief and public duty has become a popular theme usually attached to women. Why such a difference? The question is never asked because everyone already knows the answer. Men, supposed to be strong and rational, should not allow their emotions and feelings to
govern their words and deeds. It would be quite a letdown to think for a moment that a male hero is propelled into
action for his country's sake by a personal grudge. On the contrary, women are weak and emotional, as Confucius said; so they only respond to what touches their hearts. In consequence, patriotism–a spiritual sentiment which men are supposed to have internalized and which will spontaneously emerge into the open when danger threatens the nation–may be experienced by women only via some emotional dilemma to which they can relate. And what could inflict on any woman's psyche a more powerful trauma than the loss of her man? It follows that Trưng Trắc proved to be a genuine heroine since she fulfilled both duties to her man and to the country. Lady Triệu, on the other hand, did not quite fit the pattern. National pride, however, does not allow us to ignore her, and so our literature has safely moved her onto another level of reality and perception.
In the end, what should I feel as I face all these one-sided literary reconstructions of the early heroines' great deeds? Truly, I cannot get rid of the impression of a conspiracy among male historians and writers, conscious or subconscious, which seeks to deny and/or deprecate the crucial role played by the early female warriors in establishing the
tradition of struggle for national independence. You may ask why I have failed to examine writings by women themselves about their proud heritage, which may prove to lie outside such a conservative framework. In point of fact, except for some mediocre poems scattered here and there in periodicals and in the main regurgitating what men have said, there is no significant literary work by women dealing with our earliest heroines.(59) Even Hồ Xuân Hương, one of our very few celebrated female poets, who treated womanhood in such a rebellious spirit, did not leave us any work on this particular topic. It seems reasonable to think that the tradition of women warriors is so deeply rooted in our collective mental landscape, so secure in its significance, that we womenfolk feel no need to harp upon it. On the contrary, men seem to feel the urge to minimize the importance of the early heroines by way of safeguarding male honor and re-asserting male superiority and dominance.
Perhaps the perpetual misrepresentation, through prescriptive conception, of the originality of the early national heroines is nowhere more succinctly canonized than in the work of Ngô Thời Sỹ, Việt sử tiêu án (A Re-evaluation of the Old History of Viet). This distinguished eighteenth-century Confucian scholar, after having briefly observed what a wonder it was that a woman could lead the first revolt in Vietnamese history, firmly pronounces:
"However, that fact was not extraordinary enough. A wife avenging the death of her husband, a woman helping her elder sister, the one a loyal wife and the other a righteous girl, both coming from the same family–there lay the true marvel. When the elder sister lost her battle, the younger sister committed suicide together with her: both neither surrendered
themselves to the enemy nor allowed themselves to be captured so that the husband in his grave could close his eyes in peace and traitors had to bow their heads in shame…They died, but their good name survived. That was the even greater miracle. Alas! Many beauties have lived and died. But since the goddess Nu Wa performed the fantastic feat of mending the sky, we can only cite [the deeds of] the Trưng sisters. As for Lady Triệu, she does not really deserve any mention." (60)