In Polygamy and Sublime Passion, Keith McMahon provides a thought-provoking literary history of the normative ideal of polygamy, its critics, and accommodations from the late Ming to the late Qing. Reading through numerous late imperial novels about family romance and courtesan courtship, McMahon argues that these fantasies of polygamy had intimate ties to the imagination of political power, with the dissolution of the polygamous ideal reflecting the decline of the imperial order. In doing so, McMahon sheds new light on texts that increasingly have been employed to redefine China's literary transition to modernity, providing a powerful analytical framework for historians of premodern and modern literature.
McMahon's argument revolves around the polygamous ideal and how, long before Western notions of monogamy displaced traditional forms of polygamy, Chinese criticized and negotiated the inequality of the system. Prominent men, whether to enjoy multiple partners or to flaunt their status, were supposed to sexually monopolize various women. This ideal was linked to conceptions of political power, the master polygamist being the emperor, who, by harmoniously ordering his household of women, provided a domestic model for the broader civilizational order of the state.
Starting from the late Ming, however, literary texts began to critique the polygamous master narrative. This led to what McMahon calls “sublime passion,” a transcendental form of romance that erases the inequality between partners as a remarkable woman couples monogamously with a deserving, if less remarkable, male. In turn, the polygamous ideal and sublime passion found middle ground in what McMahon terms “passive polygamy,” the idea of a single man subjecting himself to multiple women, nominally relinquishing control to his female partners and thereby gaining the right to sleep with all of them. These various fantasies of polygamy, sublime passion, and passive polygamy became particularly salient during the late Qing as Western notions of monogamy became dominant, and as older narratives of polygamy were increasingly associated with the native Chinese order. Though modern iconoclasts fiercely opposed polygamy, nostalgic reveries about the old polygamous ideal order continued to thrive.
To produce this narrative of polygamy and its discontents, McMahon reads extensively in chronological order from the late Ming to the late Qing. Chapter 1 introduces sublime passion and the remarkable woman through Pu Songling's late seventeenth-century Liaozhai zhiyi (Chronicles of the Strange from the Liaozhai). Chapter 2 further explores sublime passion and monogamy through the mid-eighteenth-century Hong lou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), while introducing the theme of passive polygamy through the novel's many nineteenth-century sequels. The third chapter expands the definition of sublime passion by moving from the domestic to the brothel scene, exploring mid-nineteenth-century courtesan tales and poems, most notably Chen Sen's Pin hua bao jian (Precious Mirror of Boy Actresses).
Chapter 4 introduces the political dimension of romance through the 1858 novel Hua yue hen (Traces of the Flowery Moon), a tale of loyalist love set against the historical background of the Taiping Rebellion. The fifth chapter explores two novelistic responses to dynastic decline, Qing lou meng (Courtesan Chambers) and Ernü yingxiong zhuan (Tale of Filial Heroes), both of which idealize passive polygamy as a way of restoring order to the empire.
The next three chapters shift focus to the Shanghai courtesan novel, rereading the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Haishang hua (Flowers of Shanghai), Shanghai Dust (Haishang chentian ying), and Jiuwei gui (Ninetime Cuckold) to explore the new economic worldview of the prostitute, a modern defense of old-fashioned sublime passion, and the reactionary celebration of the master polygamist, respectively. Together, these chapters provide a strong history of the rise and decline of polygamous narratives, an arch that McMahon tantalizingly forecloses in the conclusion by suggesting that the monogamous present remains haunted by its polygamous past.
In unraveling the literary politics of China on the verge of modernity, McMahon joins a group of scholars—David Wang, Catherine Yeh, Alexander Des Forges, and Chloë Starr—who have employed these same vernacular texts to rewrite the literary history of the final decades of the Qing dynasty and question the paradigms set by the May Fourth generation. Yet ironically, like these other scholars, McMahon questions the May Fourth discourse on the late Qing by employing a genre of writing that rose to prominence only because of the May Fourth movement, namely, the vernacular novel. Why does the novel remain the primary vehicle for our research of the literature of the late imperial period? What does the novel add to the discourse on qing, and might not other forms of writing—poetry, opera, or popular song—be better suited to unravel the polygamous fantasy?
That said, McMahon's book represents a remarkably erudite and strikingly inventive contribution. Scholars who are interested in China's transition to the modern age, the literary fantasy of polygamy, or the aesthetics and politics of qing will find McMahon's book a fascinating read.
