“In her essay, the woman searches for her identity and her soul. Crossing the bridge of words, she dispels anxieties and cultivates her intellect to reach the spiritual realm of her heart.”

The “Grand” Realm Versus the “True” realm by Zhang Kangkang

After reading Women & Power by Mary Beard, I wanted to read something similar but from a Chinese point of view, since I am Chinese. Happily, I remembered that I had Once Iron Girls on my OverDrive Wishlist, so I borrowed it and proceeded to spam one of my whatsapp groups with photos of its pages.

Written in the post-Mao era, Once Iron Girls is a collection of essays by Chinese writers, who often struggle to express themselves in a society where they are supposed to have been already liberated (and where criticism of the government is forbidden territory). Adding to that difficulty is that the essay is a literary form that has traditionally excluded them. The introduction states that: “To a woman, however, the essay is perhaps the most prohibitive genre – not because it requires high language skills, but because it is closely intertwined with gender politics […] For centuries, the political stage was exclusively men’s, so women had no role to play in essay writing.” Is this not what Mary Beard wrote about when she talked about the public voice of women?

Reading these essays is a rewarding but frustrating exercise, as it’s hammered home how women face the same challenges everywhere in the world. Given that it’s a collection of essays by various writers, certain essays resonated with me more, and my review will focus on them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the first quotes that I noted down is about books. The title of Shu Ting’s essay is a play on “A Room of One’s Own” and she quite rightly points out the double standard that can exist in fiction:

“Interestingly, no one uses men’s literature as a special term. // Meanwhile, women’s literature is often considered as being obsessed with career women, family matters, and women’s issues. It is not even regarded as relevant as the literature on insects because the latter, at least, makes contributions to environmental protection.”

“A Mirror of One’s Own” by Shu Ting

One of the first essays that had me snapping quotes to share was “When Can Women Start Enjoying Life?” by Bi Shumin. Like most of the essays here, this short, poignant essay points out that so many women spend their lives postponing the things they enjoy in order to fulfil their duties and asks them to start enjoying their lives now.

The reason why women write essays is a recurring theme. One writer, Fang Fang, takes the history of women, where they are forced to stay at home and kept out of public circles to argue that the current literary output of women is to be expected. In the stirring ending to her essay, she writes:

“In my point of view, today’s women writers demonstrate an invaluable spirit of rebellion, which grows out of the deep oppression they have endured. The longer the oppression, the more forceful rebellions are. […] As a matter of fact, their literary rebellion that has elicited public worries or uneasiness is nothing more than a message that women writers want to send: They are no longer obedient females but such women as they present in their writings. Nothing but such women is all they want to be.”

“Obedience versus Disobedience” by Fang Fang

Honestly, as I’m going through my annotations to write this review, I realised that I’ve bookmarked far too many essays to be able to talk about all of them in detail. I think the last one I want to talk about is “I Don’t Want to Be a Woman” by Han Xiaohui. The essay starts with her chastising her daughter for being so wild and her daughter responds “What about a girl?” The essay meanders through her recollections, occasionally confusing (for example, the line about how “The Moon does not intend to outshine the Sun”) but overall a clear example of how gender expectations imposed on the female sex leads one to want to reject gender restrictions, but ultimately does not comment on whether we can do so. It’s an honest and heartbreaking essay.

Since I was sidetracked by all the marvellous essays here, this review is not as clear as I would like it to be. But I hope I’ve managed to tempt you to pick up this collection of essays, which so eloquently explore the state of women’s position in China. If you picked up Women & Power, then I would highly recommend you to read this collection as well, so that you can see how women being excluded from the public sphere is an issue that exists in many different cultures and contexts.