Fortress Besieged & Cold Nights: Tales of Unions At War With Itself

A single and unique family unit often represents that of the characteristics and experiences of a nation on a smaller level. While a smaller size in nature, a marriage portrays the attitudes and foundation of a country that it is within, and reflects upon the society like a mirror image of itself. In the literature works of Fortress Besieged and Cold Nights, by Zhongshu Qian and Ba Jin, it is evident that the warring and on the brink marriage unions are merely broken up images of the nation itself, where livelihood and family powers dominate the core of marriage unions, lessening the individuals on a personal level and sacrificing the liberties of the husband and wife characters.

During the time that the two works were written, China itself was going through very big changes and the very spirit of marriage and unions were on the borderline of falling into failure. Like the nation, “marriage is like a fortress besieged in the way that those who are outside want to get in and those who are inside want to get out” (Qian, 1). Even though the husbands of the two books wanted to be in a marriage and be content, they were not able to do so since there are many distractions and outside influences. A few of the dominant influences that played out in both of the books are the main authority of parent figures (which represents the old government and social structures that used to dominate the progress of societal influences) control over the children, weakness on part of the men and husband figures that are trying to identify their values and marriage unions through their parents and friends, and the nation’s turmoil in the economy and social disparities of the unions.

Letdown and displeasure dominate the themes of the marriages, making individuals like the main characters in the two works, Fang Hung-chien in Fortress Besieged and Cold Nights constant war with themselves over mind and body. Like many marriages during their time, the marriage was neither out of loving feelings and appreciation, nor strong family support, but created out of a sense of survival and need for support in order for continual livelihood. The wife could not leave behind the thought of “her husband’s anemic face, her mother-in-law’s sulky, jealous looks, and dreary lifeless rooms, the enemies’ atrocities, and of the horrors of the Hunan-Kwangsi Road” (Ba, 208). In the Cold Night, “he and his wife lived in a small but quiet city” and while the cared for each other, they were not happy and often quarreled over trifles and lacked mutual understanding (Ba, 22). Like the story of Cold Nights went, the couple had many differences where “she had a bad temper, and he was often testy” due to the general environment that they had been cultured to survive through (Ba, 22). Like a vicious cycle, letdown and disappointment will only engender more of such sentiments, strengthening the thought that unions are at war with themselves.

Within the compounds of the marriage, it is unquestionable that the harm and extinction of individualism toward thought and sentiments hindered marriages and “stifled individual growth and fostered hypocrisy and deception” (Ba, 53). As portrayed in the Fortress Besieged, parental figures’ disapproval of a man’s “a real man who gazes at himself in the mirror will only be scorned by society” (Qian, 10). In a society where manhood and marriage are not defined by individuals but by their families and the social environment, individuality can only be expressed in little events and small passing. Even if individuality is expressed in passing, it is apparent that social status, along with the need for survival, can only be obtained through the approval of the family. Families, as with other social environments, exert strong influences in which manhood and marriages are perceived. As can be seen in Fortress Besieged, the threat of the father to “cut off funds” of Fang Hung-chien after he wanted to call off the marriage proved that there was no place for individuality and expression of individual beliefs.

Yet, an individual’s lack of integrity and strength to withstand and stand by their own opinions also contribute to the continual cycle of negativity. In Fortress Besieged, instead of holding on to his own beliefs in pursuing his romantic interests, the threat of the father to disenfranchise and discontinue support himself was just the right method for him to become shaken to the core, and comply to his father’s wishes when he “wasted no time in getting off a reply, begging forgiveness” to his family (Qian, 10). Right after Fang Hung-chien apologized to his father, his father sent him money, support, and good compliments of the action and the know-how of the son. Even when the arranged marriage promised by the father of Hung-chien did not go through, the father did not point the failure to his decisions along the way, but the fact that the setbacks of the son were “due to [his] lack of fortune” (Qian, 11). As such, it is apparent that parents and the family senior authority structure are a battle between the authorities over the development of the younger generations and their choices in building unions. Any type of union would require the blessings of the family seniorities.

At the same time, in Cold Nights, parent power and control over the development of a young and budding family further breaks the fabric of marriage. When a family’s progression is no longer directed by love and familial appreciation, there can be no good results. As the protagonist of the Cold Nights rendered the warring elements of the women in the husband’s life, where the mother-in-law keeps pestering the wife and tries to exile the wife away from the family. In the Cold Night, the husband had been in a strong relationship to his mother as “his father died when he was a child,” so “even though he likes his wife, he cannot belong to her completely while his mother still lives” (Ba, 548). Here, the mother figure stands on very strong grounds as an authoritative source that leads the progress and direction of the marriage. However, In Cold Nights, the mother figure is an opponent that tries to harm and break the family unit of the protagonist because she did not like the wife. The mother, who is overprotective of her son, says that the wife “doesn’t deserve” her son, and tries to reduce the legitimacy of the woman by point out the fact that she does not work in the bank as “she dresses up like a socialite every day” (106). This shows the fact of the overarching theme of this paper, which is the fact that while the union of marriage is a very important point for survival, participants and those who can make influence on the union are at war with themselves as they are discontent with the particular way in which individuals, like the husbands and wives, express their individualistic point of views.

On the other hand, the women that participate in the marriage unions were not able to withstand the societal and parental pressures, and in the end, give up in the marriage and participated in the continuing negativity within the marriage. This can be attributed to the fact that the lack of passion within the parties who involved themselves together in the union was not able to give them the strength to hold the marriage as one. In Cold Night, Even though the wife “slept beside [the husband], but because of his illness, they shared no intimacies” and though they were together, “they were far apart in spirit,” which was justified by the fact that “she went to work every morning and came home late” (Ba, 328). The very bad financial circumstances surrounding their union, which ultimately turned the wife to become a cheater and sleeping with the boss, furthered the conflict of the unions. Being extremely wary, the wife ultimately is sucked into the fact that “she lacks the capacity and the tenacity to take on her mother-in-law’s challenges or to help carry the burden of her husband’s anguished soul” (Ba, 548). Furthermore, she thought that the family that awaited for her brought nothing more to her in value. Testifying to the level of weakness of the men, the wife has always said to her husband, “you are an honest and kind man, and you only know how to cry” (Ba, 378). The husband’s powerlessness to defend himself, his wife, and his family shows how weak the marriage union is to society. However, the wife ultimately stood by him because there was no choice and because it was the only method of survival in a society that does not tolerate a woman to freely express her wills and individuality. In opposite to a strong wife in Cold Nights, Fang Hung-chien, in Fortress Besieged, opines that “a truly intelligent woman would never try to become a genius” as “talents and scholarship are sediments” to a woman (Qian, 77). The disgruntled marriage that Hung-chien maintains with his wife, Jou-chia, is also made very bad by the influence of the “cultured” society and makes no way for individualism or a true and strong union, if not the emphasis of the unions are based on the end of survival and seeking a borderline livelihood.

In order to have a strong nation, there must be a strong family and marriage union in the very fabric and essence of the society, on each single-family level. Like Ba has expressed, “the political logic of family stresses that the Chinese nation cannot win freedom and independence until individual Chinese shake free of oppressive patriarchal structures associated with the family unit” (xii). True marriages have based on bonds that are made in sincere feelings of love and appreciation, unhindered by the influences of parental guidelines and twisted oppressive mechanisms of control. Only after individuals can truly discover the strength to take a stand and represent a uniformed union will there be a strong family, a strong base for society, and an even stronger front for the nation.

Works Cited

Pa, Chin, Nathan K. Mao, & Ts'un-jên Liu. Cold Nights: A Novel. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1978. Print.

Qian, Zhongshu. Fortress Besieged. London: Penguin, 2006. Print.