Sui Sin Far’s “The Inferior Woman” from Mrs. Spring Fragrance & Judy Jung’s “Unbound Feet: From China to San Francisco’s Chinatown”
As historian Judy Jung discussed in her piece, “Unbound Feet: From China to San Francisco’s Chinatown,” she discussed three different possible outcomes for women who left China and came to United States. They either were tricked into prostitution in Chinatown, entered a marriage arranged by family and became a stay-at-home housewife, or had help from relatives in United States and had access to an education, yet still encountered discrimination for gender and race. This is what happened to Wong Ah So, Law Shee Low, and Jane Kwong Lee, respectively.
However, things turned around for those who are forced into prostitution like Wong Ah So, as the Presbyterian Mission Home helped those women got out of prostitution, educated them, trained in the domestic arts and industrial skills, and indoctrinated them with Victorian moral values. For those stay-at-home housewives, in our case, Law Shee Low, after their children were older, they were able to begin to work in sewing factories and went to Chinese movies on Saturdays.
For the last case of the Chinese working women like Jane Kwong Lee, their race and gender have pretty much determined what kind of work they have accessed to, and thus limited their choice of work. As she was studying in college, she tutored Chinese adults and taught in a Chinese school. After she earned her bachelor’s degree, she married, had two children, and returned for her master’s degree, and dedicated herself to community service, worked as a coordinator of the Chinese YWCA, and as a journalist and translator for numerous Chinese newspapers.
In author Sui Sin Far’s “The Inferior Woman” from Mrs. Spring Fragrance, her story discussed the difference between an “inferior” woman and a “superior” woman, and such positions can chang due to a third party involvement. In her story, she described the inferior woman, Alice Winthrop “from childhood up, has been the sordid and demoralizing one of extreme poverty and ignorance. (Far 34-35)” On the other hand, the superior woman, Ethel Evebrook was a woman suffragist, and had an opposite background with the inferior woman hinted in the book. However, she praised Winthrop and women like her as “the pride and glory of America. (Far 35)” Close to the end of this chapter, the protagonist Mrs. Spring Fragrance changed Mrs. Carman’s position simply asked her “you are so good as to admire my husband because he is what the Americans call ‘a man who has made himself.’ Why then do you not admire the Inferior Woman who is a woman who has made herself? (Far 43)”
With the connection between Judy Jung’s “Unbound Feet: From China to San Francisco’s Chinatown” and Sui Sin Far’s “The Inferior Woman” draws clear, as Ethel Evebrook states the inferior woman were the “woman who have been of service to others all their years… (Far 35-36)” and “in spite of every drawback, have raised themselves to the level of those who have had every advantage… (Far 35)” Woman such as Wong Ah So, before as a prostitute, or after she was rescued by the Presbyterian Mission House and married to a merchant in Idaho, though a bleak view, she has been of service to others, both to her clients and to her family, in which she offered her body in exchange of money needed for her family. After her rescue, she also raised to the level of those who had every advantage, namely married a merchant in Idaho. Though her life may not been a walk in the park, it reflect the somber reality of the lives of female immigrants from China.
-Kennie Lam