The woman's position as wife and mother is a highly honourable one: filial piety—the cardinal Chinese virtue—is owed to the mother as much as to the father, and the usual sacrificial rites are conducted in honour of the maternal as well as the paternal ancestors of the family. From prehistoric times the dignity of the mother has been regarded in China as hardly inferior to that of the father,[158] subject of course to the father's headship of the family. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Chinese women are brutally or tyrannically treated by their husbands. That cases of ill-treatment of women are sometimes met with is undoubted, but as a rule the tyrant is not the husband but some female member of the husband's family. Mothers-in-law are the domestic tyrants of rural China. Besides treating the wife with severity they often place the husband in a most unhappy dilemma.
If he wishes, as he often does, to protect his wife from the elder lady's violence or bad temper he runs the risk of being denounced to the neighbours—and perhaps to the local magistrate—as an unfilial son; if he weakly and reluctantly takes his mother's side in a domestic disagreement, or if—as is much more frequently the case—he pretends to shut his eyes altogether to the quarrels of his women-folk, the wife of his bosom may in a moment of anger or despair run away from him or commit suicide. The only source of comfort to a young wife who is unfortunate enough to displease her husband's mother is that some day, in the course of nature, she herself will be in the proud position of a mother-in-law. If she is of a cantankerous or tyrannical disposition, or if her temper has been soured by her own domestic troubles, she will then doubtless treat her son's wife with just as little kindness as she received in her own early days of wifehood, and her daughter-in-law will fear and dislike her just as she herself feared and disliked her own husband's mother. Fortunately there are good and benevolent mothers-in-law in Weihaiwei as well as bad ones: and it is only fair to add that it is not always the wife who is meek and submissive and the mother-in-law who wields the iron rod. Sometimes a high-spirited and obstinate young woman will become absolute ruler of the household—including her husband and his parents—before she has lived a month in her new home, though her tenure of authority will always be somewhat precarious until she has given birth to her first son. "Why do you run away from a woman?" I once asked an unhappy husband whose domestic troubles had driven him to the courts. "Is she not your wife, and can you not make her obey you?" The young man's features broadened into a somewhat mirthless smile as he replied, "I am afraid of her. Eight men out of ten are afraid of their wives."
Women, indeed, are at the root of a large proportion of the cases heard in the courts. No insignificant part of the duty of a magistrate in Weihaiwei consists in the taming of village shrews. The number of such women in China is much larger than might be supposed by many Europeans, who regard the average Chinese wife as the patient slave of a tyrannical master. The fact is that Chinese women, in spite of their compressed feet and mincing gait, rule their households quite as effectually as women do in countries further west, and in the lower classes they frequently extend the sphere of their masterful activity to their neighbours' houses as well. The result is not always conducive to harmony. "For ther-as the womman hath the maistrie," wrote one of the keenest students of human nature many centuries ago, "she maketh to muche desray; ther neden none ensamples of this. The experience of day by day oghte suffyse." This is a statement that multitudes of woebegone husbands in Weihaiwei, were they readers of Chaucer, would readily endorse.
The abject terror with which an uncompromising village shrew is regarded by her male relatives and neighbours frequently creates situations which would be somewhat ludicrous if they did not contain an element of pathos. It is only when his women-folk make life insupportable that an afflicted villager takes the step of appealing for magisterial intervention: but the fact that such cases frequently occur seems to indicate that domestic infelicities of a minor order must be very common. "Two months ago," wrote a petitioner, "I bought a piece of land in a neighbouring village, with the intention of building a house on it. Unfortunately, after the purchase was completed I made the discovery that my immediate neighbour was the most riotous female in the whole village. This was a very annoying circumstance to me. However I proceeded to build my house in a lawful and unostentatious manner and hoped I should have no trouble. All went well until one day when the female issued from her house and proceeded to pull my new walls to pieces on the plea that they interfered with the good luck (fêng-shui) of her own habitation. I stood by and requested her in the kindest manner to leave me and my house alone. She repaid me with the most violent abuse. How could I venture to hurl myself against the spears of the enemy? She is the terror of the whole village and her husband dares not interfere with her. I am sorry I ever bought the land, and I had no idea she was to be my neighbour or I should not have done so. I bought a charm to protect me against violent females, and stuck it up on the doorway of my new house, but it does not seem to have worked very well, and it has not frightened her at all. Meanwhile my house is standing in ruins, and I have no remedy unless the Magistrate, who loves the people as if they were his children, will come to the rescue."
This case was settled easily enough. Another bristled with difficulties owing to the fact that the plaintiff, in his petition, avoided any mention whatsoever of his real ground of complaint. "I have fifty mu of land [about eight acres]. I have two sons, the elder Ta-chü, the younger Erh-chü. In the second moon of this year they set up separate establishments[159] and entered upon possession of the ancestral lands. I was at that time in mourning for my wife, and beyond my yang-lao-ti[160] had no means of support for my old age. After they had left me, what with the expenses of my wife's funeral and my own personal requirements I found myself in debt to the extent of sixty tiao [approximately equivalent to six pounds sterling]. My two sons would not pay my debts: on the contrary they drove me out of my own house and refused to give me food. I am hungry and in hardship. My elder son, Ta-chü, at last relented and wanted to do something for me, but he was knocked down by Erh-chü and is confined to bed. I have reasoned with Erh-chü about his evil courses, but every time I do so he only beats me. The whole village is disgusted with his treatment of me but dares not interfere. Now I get wet through when it rains and I have to beg for a living. There is no rest for me. My lot has fallen in hard places. This son of mine is no better than a hsiao ching.[161] Is this the way to preserve the sacred human relationships?"
In this circumstantial petition no word of complaint is made against the real offender—the petitioner's second son's wife, who, as I soon ascertained, was a shrew of the worst order. To bring the action nominally against his second son was a clever device on the part of the petitioner, for no Chinese magistrate dare—except in almost unheard-of circumstances—take the word of a son against his own father, and an unfilial son is one of the worst of criminals. The old man presumed, therefore, that the case would be at once decided in his favour, and that his son would be imprisoned. His son's wife, the shrew, would then have been compelled to make reparation for her former misconduct and undertake to become a reformed character. When she had done this the old man would return to the magistrate and obtain her husband's release. As it happened, the process was not so circuitous as this, for the woman's misdeeds were discovered by the independent action of the court, and it was she, not her husband, who was sent to gaol. She was released as soon as her own father's family had come forward and entered—very reluctantly—into a bond to guarantee her future good conduct.
It must be remembered that as soon as a woman has left her father's roof and passes under the care of her husband—or rather of her husband's parents, if they are still alive—her father's family have no longer any legal control over her. Her husband's father and brothers become to all intents and purposes her own father and brothers: and to her father-in-law she owes the complete obedience that before marriage she owed to her father. She has in fact changed her family. Yet if she prove "unfilial"—that is, disobedient to her husband's family—a magistrate may call upon her father's family to go security for her future good conduct, on the ground that her unfilial behaviour must be due to her bad bringing-up, for which her father's family is responsible.