Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (vii)

from historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and the Nam phong giải tràu

In “Dutiful Wives, Nurturing Mothers, and Filial Children: Marriage as Affairs of State, Village, and Family,” historian Nhung Tuyet Tran continues to mine story and verse from documents of the 17C. Her first vein of ore in this second chapter is the Chi Nam Dictionary, a thesaurus of ideal conduct translated from ancient Chinese to early modern Vietnamese in 1641.

The historian leads you through it again now that we all are post-modern. The whole chapter is one thing after another, locating for instance the persistent modern story, early and late, of Vũ Thị Thiết, the Lady of Nam Xương, who killed herself because her husband was jealous of her shadow.

You already know that one if you have learned to read Vietnamese, as a child or an adult. But I had not ever heard before of many, for instance the tale of the Community of Sisters Who Venerate the Cross, an order founded in 1670 from households that already sheltered women in flight from marriage.

You could pull an anthology of Vietnamese literature from this chapter alone. But that would be wrong, what archaeologists call goodie-grabbing. Leave the gems in the matrix Nhung builds as she translates from one era to another just as her Chi Nam Dictionary did 5 centuries ago.

Here are 2 potsherds from Nhung’s dig. In the strata I like, notes from women who work for a living:

You were gullible, coveted wealth, and married a dunce. So night after night a dry branch enters you.

The fire is burning, the rice has boiled,

My child demands to suckle

- my husband seeks to use the dirty silkworm.

The fire is roaring,

The baby is full,

“Use it then, if you must.”

This was the seventh Viet Nam letter of 7 so far addressed to Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 by Nhung Tuyet Tran. The letter presents 2 more poems to make the point that the work of history is also an anthology.

The first letter judges the book by its cover, on March 30, 2022.

The second letter reads the title page, on April 30, 2022.

The third letter discusses Vietnamese women and Southeast Asia in light of the book’s introduction, on June 1, 2022.

The fourth letter is the first with the poem, “Like a female stork drudging by the banks of the river,” on July 18, 2022.

The fifth is the second letter to discuss epigraphy from steles women raised in the markets they built, on December 12, 2022.

The sixth letter is the third to show and the second to discuss “Like a female stork drudging by the banks of the river,” on December 15, 2022.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.