In the Dutch Indies from the late 1910s till the 1930s, women's independence, agency, and bodies became a subject of heated debates and contestations among the local-born, acculturated Peranakan Chinese communityFootnote 1 (henceforth Peranakan), particularly within the urbanising and modernising context of Java where they were mostly concentrated, with much of the attention focused on the Tionghoa (Chinese) female body and how it should be protected from the corrupting influences of the West. The contestations surrounding Tionghoa women's bodies can be traced through the recurring theme of female purity in the Sino-Malay literature of the period,Footnote 2 mainly novels that carried sensationalised and didactic tales of rebellious young Western-educated women who oppose traditional Confucian values and, as a consequence, meet a tragic end.Footnote 3 Such novels usually adhered to a formulaic pattern, in which the young woman in question — usually represented as a ‘modern girl’Footnote 4 (gadis modern) — is ‘disowned by her parents, forsaken by her lover, shunned by her community, and withers away with remorse’.Footnote 5 Cautionary accounts of women who stray from the cultural archetypes of virtuous wife and mother carried explicit moral messages of sexual danger and the pitfalls of modern freedoms. While these new freedoms were celebrated within the context of social progress (kemadjoean) in the modernising twentieth-century Indies society, they were frowned upon when it came to women whose bodies, reputation, and, most importantly, purity, were imperilled by these new ‘foreign’ ways.Footnote 6 This theme, heavily influenced by paternalistic-patriarchal fears and anxieties about women's transgressive behaviour, was commonplace not only in the male-dominated Sino-Malay literature of the Peranakan, but also in the media, including newspapers,Footnote 7 women's journals,Footnote 8 and agony aunt columns.Footnote 9
The contested body of the modern Indies woman is not a new subject. Previous studiesFootnote 10 have linked these gendered transitions to momentous global changes and the attendant sociopolitical transformations sweeping across Java as it entered an ‘age in motion’Footnote 11 — notably seen in the sudden boom in schools and educational opportunities, the rapid processes of industrialisation and modernisation, improved connections to and communications with the outside world, as well as nascent nationalist movements among the Chinese and the Indonesians. However, as illuminating as these studies are on the intersections between gender, class, culture, and society, they have not sufficiently related women's identities and bodies to Tionghoa nationalist aspirations of the early 1900s. The intricate links between gender and nationalism have similarly escaped the notice of scholars who examined the political dimensions of Sino-Malay literature.Footnote 12 Additionally, these studies have not fully considered the effects of colonial systems, processes and practices of race, class, gender, and sexuality and how they are exerted on the imagining and shaping of Tionghoa identity and nationhood, and correspondingly, the Tionghoa woman.
Addressing these gaps, I examine how female purity as a gendered ideology contributes to the imagining and expression of Tionghoa nationalism in selected male-authored Sino-Malay novels of early 1900s colonial Java. The notion of female purity and its related meanings of morality, virtue, chastity, innocence, and fidelity were explored earlier in my co-authored article with Tom Hoogervorst, which analyses the discursive shift from female purity (soetji) to the whore figure (soendel) in opinion pieces and readers’ letters published in the 1920s–1930s in Sin Po, a popular China-oriented Peranakan newspaper.Footnote 13 While we attributed the shift mainly to cultural and social transformations and, to a lesser extent, anti-colonial sentiments, we did not consider the significance of female purity as a recurring trope in literature, or relate it to Tionghoa nationalism.
Developing these threads here, I contend that the inordinate amount of male attention given to female purity in literature merits further scrutiny. Female purity was very much a patriarchal concern and its influence coloured the works of Peranakan male authors, who formed the overwhelming majority at 95 per cent.Footnote 14 From the late 1910s onwards, the male preoccupation with female purity coincided with the rise of modernity and Tionghoa nationalism. This can be seen in the literary prescriptions of virtuous Tionghoa women as the bastions and bearers of race and culture — an ethnocentric and patriotic view that is also underscored by calls for bangsa Tionghoa, a term that can be interpreted as either Chinese race, or nation. I'm interested in analysing how this gendered ideology is explored especially in the novel genre, which, unlike media text, provides spatial possibilities for the development of nationalist ideas, themes, perspectives, and representations. The early twentieth century Peranakan novel thus carries critical insights into how Tionghoa identity and nationalism are imagined and negotiated through the female body, which also constitutes the symbolic site for the articulation of anti-colonialism.
For this purpose, I have selected two novels that represent instructive examples of the trope: Liem Hian Bing's Valentine Chan atawa rahasia Semarang (‘Valentine Chan or the secret of Semarang’, 1926), and Tan Chieng Lian's Oh…..Papa! (1929). Although both novels have been referenced by scholars studying the changes in gender identity in literature,Footnote 15 very little has actually been written about the male writers who, in fact, represent the typical authorship that thrived at the time: brief, fragmented, amateurish, even anonymous, and therefore invisible. Still, they belonged to a group of writers that is of interest here, specifically one oriented towards the idea of a Chinese nation as well as Confucian values and traditions that, among others, upheld patriarchal views on female virtue, morality, and purity. The writers’ invisibility should therefore not detract from the importance of their novels, which represent a prevailing current of thought, perspective, and sentiment that captures Peranakan society at a vital juncture of ‘historical becoming’;Footnote 16 in these writers’ case, this meant becoming Tionghoa — a patriotic sentiment that found expression through the trope of female purity.
The intricate links between women's bodies and nationalism have been significantly developed by feminist and postcolonial studies on gender and nation.Footnote 17 Women often function in nations and nationalisms as icons, bearers, and transmitters of national ideology and cultural values. They are ‘subsumed … symbolically into the national body politic’Footnote 18 as gendered signifiers whose purpose revolves around preconceived notions of biological imperatives such as reproduction and motherhood. Notably, it is the female body and its reproductive role that dominate women's representations in nationalist ideologies and movements,Footnote 19 with much of the focus on corporeal boundaries. Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias in Woman-Nation-State, for instance, argue that women's bodies are not only intimately tied to the boundaries of the patriarchal nation/nationalism and the ethnic and cultural group(s) that represent the nation, but they have also been charged with the duty to reproduce these boundaries by becoming the bearers of the national/ethnic group and transmitters of its culture.Footnote 20 These striking gendered features can be found in Sino-Malay novels that emphasise the Tionghoa female body as the territorial possession of a male-inscribed nationalism, and whose symbolic boundaries are also representative of bangsa Tionghoa, an idea that invokes the imagining of ‘finite’ territorial boundaries of the nation, which — in Benedict Anderson's words — is ‘both inherently limited and sovereign’.Footnote 21
To understand the symbolic ties between the female body and the collective body politic of patriarchal Tionghoa nationalism, and how these ties are informed by cultural concepts of purity and pollution, I turn to Mary Douglas’ anthropological insights about the individual body and how it is viewed as an extension of the social organisation in many traditional societies. According to Douglas, the body's identity is not only inseparable from the collective but, like the society it belongs to, the body also possesses internal structure and external boundaries, represented by orifices that operate as ‘points of entry or exit’.Footnote 22 Notions of cleanliness, purity, and the sacred are thus associated with intact bodily margins, which symbolically express the integrity of the collective group's boundaries through which social order and unity are maintained. As the site of potential pollution, however, the body and its symbolic margins help ‘express danger to community borders’Footnote 23 and are subjected to communal scrutiny. This is because danger ‘lies in transitional states’,Footnote 24 during which one contaminated body can infect another. As the polluted body can endanger the collective, it must be carefully controlled with ritual or, in other words, specific bodily conduct. Douglas’ argument — that the individual body and the collective body politic of the group or, in this case, the nation, are mutually engaged in the dialogic construction of symbolic meanings, margins, and territorialityFootnote 25 — thus underscores the intricate ways in which the female body is involved in the literary imagining and expression of Tionghoa nationhood: both ‘are mutually dependent upon and entangled in each other’.Footnote 26
Given the historical particularities of the Peranakan as colonised and racialised Other in the Dutch Indies, it is not surprising then that the imagining of female purity reveals deep-seated patriarchal fears and anxieties that revolve around the body's symbolic margins — seen in literary representations of the virtuous Tionghoa woman as an enclosed female body (defined here as ‘closed’ bodily orifices) whose margins must be kept intact; like the boundary-lines of the collective group/nation, bodily margins are most vulnerable to the threat of external dangers.
Women's bodies, conceived as weak, soft, and compliant, would have been viewed with suspicion given their predisposed susceptibility to the corrupting influences of the West. In this regard, the changing body of the modernising woman — given its transitional state — would have given the Peranakan patriarchy great cause for concern, related as it is to the unpredictability and danger that it represents as a potential site of pollution and disorder. With Tionghoa identity and survival at stake, the margins of a putative nationhood became a crucial concern to Peranakan men — a sentiment reflected in the fierce reactions and defensive articulations surrounding Tionghoa womanhood in Sino-Malay literature. As we will see, the literary preoccupation with female purity not only speaks of emotional and psychological attachments to the Tionghoa dream, but also reveals the historical burdens of the Peranakan that problematise conventional readings of patriarchal power and female subjection as well as of European imperialism and its effects on colonised subjects.
Engendering Tionghoa nationalism
As one of the subjugated ethnic groups in the colony, the Indies Chinese were historically known as ‘Cina’ (‘Tjina’, in Sino-Malay), an identity-label that homogenised both the assimilated Peranakan and the more recent Totok immigrants.Footnote 27 A pejorative term, ‘Cina’ was associated with a history of discrimination and violenceFootnote 28 that had resulted not only in the feminising of Indies Chinese masculinities,Footnote 29 but also in deepening the racial cleavages between the different ethnic groups in the colony. For while they were subjected to colonial structures of race and gender, the Indies Chinese nonetheless held an ambivalent position among the ranks of the colonised subjects as an economically superior group.Footnote 30 Their position was further unsettled by inconsistencies in colonial demarcations of race and indigeneity. Though the Indies Chinese were loosely ‘equated to “Natives”’Footnote 31 under the 1854 law that divided the European self from the native Other, they were in reality differentiated as ‘Foreign Orientals’.Footnote 32 It was only in 1906 when this category was legalised and elevated above the ‘Natives’ that the Indies Chinese position was considerably strengthened. However, this also meant that the Peranakan became both racially and economically superior to the indigenous people with whom they socialised and whose women they married and had children with. So while the Chinese presence was never fully accepted by either the Dutch or the indigenous masses, the Peranakan position was much more difficult since they occupied an ambivalent in-between status that generated confusing meanings in terms of place and belonging. They were neither indigenous enough, nor Chinese enough, and were living in ‘a kind of existential angst’.Footnote 33 Shaped by the colonial conditions of alienation, marginality, and non-belonging, the Peranakan became a self-contained and culturally insular community.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, the bounded world of the Peranakan began to open up due to the convergence of significant developments that held all the right ingredients for the making of an imagined community: a growing Sino-Malay press, the emergence of Sino-Malay literature, and the spreading influence of pan-Chinese nationalism among the diasporic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.Footnote 34 Together, these developments had a far-reaching impact on the Peranakan in the way they viewed and identified themselves. First, they re-invented themselves as Tionghoa and began looking towards China as a possible homeland; and second, by positioning themselves as overseas Chinese citizens, the Tionghoa boldly claimed a political space from which they could speak and represent themselves while ‘revers[ing] centuries of rejection, ostracism, and even criminalisation’Footnote 35 that went hand in hand with ‘Cina’. The claiming of Tionghoa was thus a powerful anti-colonial act that symbolically erased their colonial legacy of racial inferiority and communal alienation in the Dutch colony. In short, a ‘new’ Chinese identity was born, and with it a new beginning for the Peranakan whose nationalist aspirations were further fuelled by the establishment of Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan (The Chinese Association, THHK) in 1900 and other pan-Chinese organisations.Footnote 36
Under THHK, Chinese language schools were opened for boys in 1901 and for girls in 1903, which aimed at promoting Confucianism and the Chinese language. These activities contributed not only to the swelling of patriotic sentiments but also to the re-sinicisation of the Peranakan, the majority of whom had little or no knowledge of Chinese culture, history, and language. Interest in their ancestral roots and Confucian traditionsFootnote 37 was further fuelled by translations and original literary works on the subject matter. As these literary activities took place in the local vernacular of ‘low’ Malay,Footnote 38 it was also in this language then that an imagined community was engendered. The vibrant print culture of the time undoubtedly played a major role in spurring the early imaginings of China, seen in the popularity of translated Chinese literary, historical, philosophical, and revolutionary writings as well as Confucian classics. Between 1887 and 1910, translations like Lie Kim Hok's Hikajat Khonghoetjoe (The life story of Confucius) and Njio Tjoen Ean's The Analects led to the formation of early nationalist consciousness by introducing Confucius as a prophet and Confucianism as a Chinese religion.Footnote 39 Demand for such works continued into the 1920s: 20,000 copies of ‘The sayings of Prophet Khong Hoe Tjoe (Confucius)’ (1915) were purportedly printed, while ‘The 24 cases of filial piety’ (1917, 1923) was republished several times.Footnote 40 Translations aside, original works also promoted Confucian teachings by emphasising piety, morality, and virtue as shining examples of correct Tionghoa conduct, and in so doing, affirmed the moral and cultural superiority of Tionghoa citizenship as an alternative political identity.
Alarmed by the encroaching pan-Chinese activities and developments, the Dutch reacted by opening the Hollandsche-Chineesche School (HCS) in 1908, which accepted Chinese students of both genders from the start. In 1909, the Manchu government decreed that all persons of Chinese descent were citizens of China, a move that was countered by the Dutch who proclaimed the Indies-born Chinese Dutch subjects in 1910, while making it clear they were not on the same level as Dutch citizens.Footnote 41 At the same time, the Indonesian nationalist movement also gathered momentum and attracted the Peranakan with localised sentiments and attachments. Consequently, the Peranakan suddenly found themselves at the intersection of Dutch, Indonesian, and Chinese interests and politics, with three possible nationalist frameworks through which they could locate their identity and place: the Dutch-oriented group, the Indonesian-oriented group, and the China-oriented group.Footnote 42 Among the three, the Dutch-oriented Peranakan — dominated by those educated in HCS schools or overseas (usually the Netherlands) — were the most progressive; they were usually from wealthy Peranakan families and desired to be assimilated into colonial society by adopting Dutch language and culture. However, their lack of Chinese cultural knowledge was criticised and challenged by the powerful China-oriented group (mainly from THHK schools) who also embraced modernity and progress, albeit from a Chinese standpoint. The Indonesian-oriented group was apparently ‘the most conservative and resistant to change’.Footnote 43 Their divisive politics was well documented in the press, and similarly reflected in the Sino-Malay literature of the time.
Against the backdrop of an increasingly fluid and turbulent sociopolitical climate, one that marked the juncture of historical becoming, a ‘new generation’Footnote 44 of Peranakan male authors whose works revolved around Tionghoa identity and nationalism emerged. Espousing gendered viewpoints, themes, imagery, and language that also exposed their inherent sexism, some of these works expressly linked women's bodies to a Tionghoa nation in promoting Confucian morality and virtue. As a result, female purity became a prominent trope of the age. Featuring polarised femininities — the archetypal chaste and virtuous Confucian-compliant girl and her counterpart, the Westernised and freedom-loving modern girl whose betrayal of Confucian customs leads to punishment, the trope noticeably plays on the polemical differences and ideological boundaries between Tionghoa/Eastern and European/Western cultures, with the latter representing the dangers of moral corruption (specifically for Tionghoa women) and thus the antithesis to Confucian order. Tapping into the racialised and gendered discourse of anti-colonialism, this polemical stance is also reflected in the counter-discourse of ‘gila barat’ (obsessed with the West), a popular term used to denounce Western immorality and indirectly, the Dutch-oriented Peranakan.Footnote 45 Read in this light, the literary depictions of idealised Tionghoa femininity are thus vital to the imagining of a better racial and cultural self; they are, in fact, key to the writers’ performative politics of identity and belonging.
Furthermore, the literary representations of female purity underscore specific ideological views and motivations at work. As the symbolic site through which a ‘new’ Chineseness is made manifest, the female body is pivotal to the writers’ sense of nationalism and Tionghoa identity, not to mention their assertion of moral and cultural superiority over the European/Dutch colonisers. Epitomised as the symbolic bulwark against the invasive forces of Westernisation, the female body is also imagined as a stable cultural refuge against the vicissitudes of colonial, local, and global forces playing out during this uncertain period of historical becoming. Ultimately, this gendered figure is central to the politics of memory — in particular, the forgetting of the Peranakan's humiliating history as racialised and feminised ‘Cina’. The result of colonial formations and processes of race, gender, and class, this history is tied to the fraught psychological state of a marginalised, alienated, and culturally insular Peranakan, whose self-fashioning as Tionghoa was rooted in their ‘deep-seated fear of ethnic annihilation’Footnote 46 in historical memory. Reflecting male insecurities, fears, and anxieties inasmuch as it reveals their desires and fantasies, this narrative thread — which runs corollary to the patriarchal insistence on controlling women's bodies and guarding their virtue — is projected onto the symbolic margins of the female body and of the collective national/ethnic body politic, both of which are interconnected and mutually engaged in engendering and circulating specific knowledges, meanings, and ideas among the literary and reading public, the most important of which is the rising influence of Tionghoa nationalism.
Male authorship and Tionghoa masculinity
The gendered discourse of Tionghoa nationalism reveals how the trope of female purity and Peranakan masculinity are deeply entwined. Based on patriarchal perspectives and expectations, the virtuous Tionghoa woman in literary imagination is very much a reflection of Peranakan masculinity, refigured as Tionghoa masculinity and intricately linked to the emergent pan-Chinese nationalist movement and twentieth-century Indies modernity.Footnote 47 In many ways, Tionghoa nationalism constituted Tionghoa masculinity; it was a male-dominated province that systematically excluded women from participating in any meaningful way in the formation and articulation of nationhood.Footnote 48 Charged with the forging of a new identity and destiny for their community, Tionghoa men were empowered with new meaning and purpose as the defenders and soldiers who had the moral duty to protect their women, race, and culture from the perceived dangers of Western contamination, and it is this perspective that informed the trope of female purity in Sino-Malay literature.
Who then were the authors who penned such works? While little is known about them, some light can nonetheless be shed on the male-dominated new generation of Peranakan writers who straddled the crossroads of historical becoming. Belonging to the enlightened ‘young generation’ (kaoem moeda) who grew up in the early twentieth century,Footnote 49 these writers had access to the educational opportunities provided by the THHK and HCS schools. Significantly, numerous literary names — including well-known ones like Lie Kim Hok and Kwee Tek HoayFootnote 50 — were related to THHK in terms of schooling or management, and attested to its popularity at the time.Footnote 51 The ideological influence of THHK can be seen in literary works that showcase Chinese education as foundational to ‘Chinese values’ and the ‘Chinese nation’,Footnote 52 not to mention the Confucian morality and virtues associated with female purity. Given, however, that Peranakan authorship took place primarily in Malay, it seems likely — and ironically so — that the Chinese education provided by THHK was low in both quantity and possibly quality.Footnote 53 Apart from Mandarin and some knowledge of Dutch, writers who attended THHK schools were also taught English, seen in their ‘preference for English dictions and literary references’.Footnote 54
Educated, multilingual, and articulate, the new generation writers were well aware of the ongoing changes and contestations in their modernising society, the result of which the 1920s to early 1940s saw an exponential increase in original works that espoused localised viewpoints and experiences. However, the majority of these writers did not stay long in their writing careers. From 1924 till 1942, approximately 900 novels and short stories as well as 20 anonymous works were published. The corpus was produced by 250 writers, of which only 15 were fairly well-known; the rest were amateurs who had ‘acquired a liking for writing and tried their hands at novels and the brie[f]est of short stories’.Footnote 55 These writers were not exactly prolific either, with 300 works produced by 210 writers; on average, each published one to three works. Typifying the kind of literary authorship that thrived at the time — short-lived, amateurish, sporadic, fragmented, and even anonymous,Footnote 56 the authors who penned the novels featuring the theme of female purity have remained obscure, including our two novelists. Liem Hian Bing died in 1927, a year after publishing his one and only novel, Valentine Chan atawa rahasia Semarang (henceforth Valentine).Footnote 57 Tan Chieng Lian, who hailed from Madura, was more productive, but only between 1927 and 1930 when he published seven works, including translations;Footnote 58 after that, he too disappeared from the scene.
One possible factor for the sporadic authorship could be due to the fact that many writers were making a living as journalists and only turned to literature as a means to supplement their income. To capitalise on a ready market of readers, they would base their literary works on stories already published in the newspapers. Charles Coppel calls such stories ‘colloquial Malay histories’Footnote 59 that operate on the ‘discursive effects of “authenticity”’Footnote 60 through the thinly-veiled disguise of fiction; in short, there was a close correlation between the social reality of the writers-cum-journalists and the fiction they produced. It was not uncommon, for instance, for the characterisation of the rebellious Tionghoa woman to be based on real-life figures whose tainted lives or deeds were referred to as a ‘scandal’ or ‘secret’.Footnote 61 Interestingly, such works would have appealed greatly to their readers, comprised mainly of the ‘lower middle class of Java's cities’ who were ‘obsessed with … new ideas, cosmopolitan lifestyles, technological change, consumerism, global capitalism, and the acceleration of public life’.Footnote 62 Pandering mainly to this readership, the ‘low’ literature that emerged was also one that revolved around prurient ‘stories of secrecy, scandal, sex and crime’Footnote 63 — reflecting the popular tastes and trends of the time.
Another major theme in Sino-Malay literature and newspapers that would have fascinated this readership involved ideas of modernity and progress, which were important to young, urbanised Indies men who ‘sought to establish themselves as modern citizens and defy racist notions commonly attached to their perceived non-European backwardness’.Footnote 64 Often conflated with Westernisation, modernity was however a double-edged sword that exposed prevailing gender hypocrisies among the Peranakan, including the writers. As my analysis will show, modern masculinity, even if associated with Dutch/HSC education, is more readily accepted by the Tionghoa-oriented writers as it signifies male progress; in contrast, modern femininity is both feared and denigrated, with Dutch/Western education identified as the main cause of women's transgressive or immoral behaviour. It is through the female body then that ethnocentric lines are drawn while an anti-colonial and nationalist stand is overtly made.
It should be noted too that the ‘authors (almost always male) generally assumed the voice of the cultural patriarch’Footnote 65 in moralising about Tionghoa femininity. Such a paternalistic role in fact draws on embedded epistemologies of race and gender that informed cultural practice: Peranakan men in general followed Confucian traditions while the women were more indigenised.Footnote 66 As cultural guardians, Peranakan men observed paternalistic-patriarchal authority and patrilineal privilege by upholding the most essential of Chinese customs: ancestor worship, filial piety and, most crucially, female chastity.Footnote 67 Vital to the family institution, female chastity helped ensure the purity and continuity of the patrilineal bloodline and name, and was reinforced by the Javanese practice of pingitan Footnote 68 (seclusion). With the revival of Confucianism and the advent of modernity in early-twentieth-century Java, Peranakan men naturally took charge in deciding which Chinese or Javanese tradition should be kept, adopted, or discarded.Footnote 69 It follows then that the most vociferous defenders of female purity in literature were also men, given their long-standing cultural, moral, and later, nationalist, authority in the community.
Female purity in Sino-Malay novels
By the 1910s, the cherished concept of female chastity was under siege as progressive-minded women began to break out of traditional gender spaces and roles. At the same time, the rhetoric surrounding Tionghoa nationalism took shape,Footnote 70 and the intersections of these simultaneous developments found expression in Sino-Malay literature and the press (especially Sin Po),Footnote 71 whereby the corporeal boundaries of the female body became entwined with those of an imagined Tionghoa community. Examples of literary works from this period include Chabanneau's Rasia Bandoeng, atawa satoe pertjintaan jang melanggar peradatan bangsa Tiong Hoa (‘Secrets of Bandoeng, or a love that violates the customs of the Tiong Hoa nation’, 1918); H. Brightson's Syair nasehat ‘boeat prampoean Tiong Hoa’ die abad ka XX (‘Poem that offers advice to “Tiong Hoa women” of the twentieth century’, 1921); Quo Vadis?, Kemerdikahan jang membawa binasa atawa rasianja gadis dari familie Ong (‘Freedom that brings destruction, or secrets of the Ong family's daughter’, 1923); and Phoa Gin Hian's Pembalesan dendam hati: Roman dari seorang prempoan Timoer jang telah djadi korban dari kamerdika'an Barat (‘Revenge of the heart: Novel of an Eastern woman who was sacrificed to Western freedom’, 1936).Footnote 72
Armed with a didactic mission, the (mostly) male-authored novels typically dwell on the virtues and morality of Tionghoa nation/race/culture and Confucian customs, while reserving the harshest criticism for the modern girl. In Kemerdikahan jang membawa binasa by Quo Vadis? (Latin for ‘Where are you going?’), the deliberate inclusion of the question mark in the pseudonym seems to question or critique the (wrong) direction taken by women who breach cultural traditions in pursuit of Western freedom. This implied message is expounded in the seven-page preface, which explicitly warns about the ‘dangers of Western education and socialisation’ as they ‘lead to too much freedom’ for ‘Tionghoa daughters’, following which Quo Vadis? urges them to ‘maintain their honour and family lineage’.Footnote 73 The admonishing voice continues by criticising the pollution (tjemar) of Tionghoa girls whose loss of purity (kesoetjian) can lead to death.Footnote 74 The preface ends with a stark warning: ‘[Western] freedom for Tionghoa girls is extremely dangerous!’Footnote 75 Similar messages are also found in Chabanneau's Rasia Bandoeng, which cautions — via its title — about the ‘love that violates the customs of the Tiong Hoa nation’. Unlike Quo Vadis?, Chabanneau employs a cautionary verse to remind Tionghoa society of the risks of Westernisation: the young bachelor is warned not to ‘change the rules of Tiong Hoa nation/race’ while the ‘Tiong Hoa girl with European education’ is told not to forget ‘the customs of her own people’. Even the parents are forewarned: ‘Don't be careless, remember the future’.Footnote 76 Commonly found in the opening pages, such verses are usually reified by recurring warnings throughout the narrative — a strategy that is used to great effect, as we shall see, in Liem's Valentine. The fierce reaction and defensive attitude underlining such warnings may reflect, to an extent, the fears and anxieties of Peranakan men who, after all, must have felt they were losing control of their women as well as their masculine authority in the new century. Their act of reinscribing the boundaries of their Tionghoa world onto women's bodies can thus be seen as a powerful means of regaining and reasserting this control.
Engaging the imaginary ties between female purity and masculinist aspirations for Tionghoa nationhood, these novels draw discursively on the ideological boundaries between Chinese/Eastern and European/Western cultures to reinforce the binaries of race and gender in their grand narrative, and through which an anti-colonial stance is established. In doing so, the writers also deploy a nationalist lexicon that visualised their changing and divided world: ketimoeran (Eastern)/kebaratan (Western); peradatan (custom)/kemadjoean (progress); kolot (old-fashioned)/modern (modern); kaoem toea (old generation)/kaoem moeda (young generation); soetji (purity)/tjemar (pollution). Repeatedly deployed alongside other signifiers — including gila barat, bangsa Tionghoa, gadis Tionghoa (Tionghoa girl), anak prampoean Tionghoa (Tionghoa daughters), and kesopanan Tionghoa (Tionghoa civilisation), these recurring signifying words and symbolic meanings invariably delineate and reinforce the imagined territoriality of Tionghoa nationalism and body politic in the reader's mind. Furthermore, the close links between literature and journalism would have meant an ongoing conversation between the two mediums, and so there would have been a reinforced awareness — an ‘echoing’, so to speak — of the cultural concept of female purity through the above oft-used and circulated adjectives in the public space.Footnote 77 As a recurring and duplicating motif, Tionghoa women and their inscribed purity would have reverberated through society and popular imagination, reflecting the sentiments of a conservative patriarchal culture and contributing to the shaping of female purity as a powerful nationalist ideology.
The two novels selected for my readings demonstrate just how this ideology of female purity is developed, albeit in different ways: Oh…..Papa! focuses on preserving the Confucian traditions that are foundational to the family institution and Tionghoa nationalism, while Valentine shows the high cost of betraying these very same traditions and institutions. Although the plot varies, the thematic motivation remains the same, as are the typecast female characters whose polarised identities and roles play on the binaries of race and gender described above, and the attendant reproductive discourses and epistemologies.
Female purity and the Tionghoa family/nation in Oh…..Papa!
Oh…..Papa! revolves around a young Tionghoa couple, Ong Sian-giok and his wife, In-nio, who live a peaceful life with their one-year-old daughter in a coastal village, Branta, until the arrival of Kwie-nio, a Western-educated modern girl from the city of Soerabaya (Surabaya), whose presence disrupts their marriage with almost tragic consequences. Sian-giok falls for Kwie-nio's beauty and seductive charms; he becomes so besotted with her that she is able to persuade him to murder his wife. This plan is put into action when Sian-giok takes In-nio out to sea in a small boat, where he plans to throw her overboard. A huge wave rocks the boat and knocks her unconscious. He ties her hands and is about to do the deed when, suddenly, the skies darken and the spirit of his father appears to reproach him for betraying his wife. As Sian-giok comes to his senses and realises with horror what he is doing, a huge wave overturns the boat and throws both Sian-giok and In-nio into the turbulent sea. Sian-giok searches for his wife, shouting her name over and over again but to no avail. He finally swims to shore where he beseeches the villagers to help him search for In-nio. When he sees Kwie-nio laughing in the distance, he runs after her and, upon catching her, proceeds to strangle her. Just then, the villagers call out to him, saying his wife has been saved by a passing fisherman. He leaves Kwie-nio, finds his wife, and sheds tears of remorse. In-nio forgives him and takes him back. At the end of the novel, we find that Kwie-nio has been kicked out of her aunt's home. She ends up living a ‘low and shameful existence’ as a ‘big whore’Footnote 78 and, after contracting syphilis, dies at the hospital. Sian-giok, on the other hand, prospers in his business and family, and has two more children with In-nio.
Narrated in a highly sentimental tone, Oh…..Papa! is a melodrama that operates on the trope of female purity and its ideological role by drawing on the Confucian family and its symbolic ties to Tionghoa identity and nationalism. Cross-culturally, the nation is ‘frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic space’,Footnote 79 a concept that is underlined by the oft-used metaphors of ‘motherland’ and ‘fatherland’ and family-related analogies of ‘soldier sons’ and ‘(re)productive daughters’. Informed by the localised contexts of its time, Tionghoa nationalism in Oh…..Papa! is thus expressed through Confucian iconography, notably the all-important paternalistic-patriarchal family through which the primacy of the collective ‘group’ — and by extension, the nation — is established. Traditional Confucian values of loyalty and filial piety are emphasised in the novel as necessary to the subject's sense of identity and belonging to the group; they are also proof of his/her moral fibre. Conversely too, the novel shows how the disloyal (and usually morally compromised) individual who betrays the group is duly disciplined and punished through exclusion. The symbolic margins of the collective group are thus key to the imagining of the Tionghoa nation and its patriotic citizens. As this imagining is legitimised by the authority historically vested within the Confucian family order, the production of woman's purity and her subordinated place within the domestic space is not only ‘natural’ but also integral to the nation's narrative.
Within this understanding then, the characters of Sian-giok and In-nio play important roles in preserving the ideological boundaries of their symbolic world-system. Sian-giok is described as a hard-working and devoted husband and father, while In-nio is a ‘pure and beloved woman and mother’Footnote 80; both are loving parents to their young daughter, Giok-nio. Although the successful Tionghoa family nucleus reflects the intact and unified margins of Tionghoa territory, it is also representative of the cultural stronghold whose prized Confucian traditions of filial piety and female purity are upheld. These values are respectively depicted through Sian-giok and In-nio: the former listens to and obeys his father's spirit when he is morally lost, while the latter performs her role as the steadfast, loyal wife. The novel moreover shows that the Tionghoa family is protected by the spiritual, paternalistic presence of Sian-giok's father, who presides over the family as the grand patriarch. Despite his minor role (he only appears once in the narrative), Sian-giok's father is nonetheless the titular character, and a powerful one at that. Representing Confucian moral authority, the elderly patriarch leads his wayward son back to the path of righteousness and in so doing, averts the near tragedy of In-nio's death as well as the disintegration of the family. His brief albeit potent appearance leaves no doubt that he is the cultural guardian of Tionghoa family, values, and traditions.
At the heart of the novel's moral concerns, then, is Sian-giok, who embodies the ideal Tionghoa masculinity, the kind of moral fibre that is needed for the building of the nation. The symbolic centre of the paternalistic-patriarchal Chinese family, Sian-giok is an upstanding and filial young man who — prior to meeting Kwie-nio — is described as ‘pure, sincere and good-hearted’,Footnote 81 as he adheres to his responsibilities as family head, breadwinner, husband, and father. Certainly, he possesses the desirable traits that enter the making of a virtuous and moral Tionghoa man, soldier, and citizen. However, the novel also makes it clear that he is a relatively inexperienced young man who hails from the countryside and is unwary of the temptations posed by modern city girls like Kwie-nio. While the novel operates on the gendered assumptions and sexual hypocrisies of its time,Footnote 82 in that a man can have liaisons or flings so long as it does not endanger his family, it also warns Tionghoa men of dire consequences if they go too far; in Sian-giok's case, this means murdering his wife in order to marry Kwie-nio. Sian-giok symbolically walks the fine line between virtuous and immoral masculine conduct, wherein one step in the wrong direction will result in tragic consequences not just for the Tionghoa family but also for Tionghoa culture and nationhood, since Sian-giok's disregard for his family also means forsaking the cherished tradition of filial piety and its related values of loyalty, morality, and virtue. In this ideological battleground, Sian-giok's father plays a crucial role as the moral and spiritual defender of the Tionghoa way of life, as does In-nio, his earthly counterpart. In contrast, Kwie-nio represents the corrosive influence of Western modernity, the proverbial rotten apple that can lead Sian-giok to his moral downfall.
Portrayed as a virtuous, dutiful Tionghoa woman from the countryside, In-nio plays an equally important role in preserving the paternalistic-patriarchal family and Tionghoa body politic. Although In-nio is not as well-educated or sophisticated as Kwie-nio, she clearly represents a ‘superior’ femininity as she conforms to the prescribed roles of wife and mother, and possesses the right womanly traits: she is ‘quiet, gentle and pious’.Footnote 83 What makes her stand out as a paragon of feminine virtue is her ability to stay loyal to her errant husband, endure his infidelity in silence, and above all, forgive and accept him back regardless of his betrayal. Even after his attempt to murder her, In-nio pledges to help him be a better man.Footnote 84 Repeatedly characterised as ‘pure’Footnote 85 (soetji) and ‘good’Footnote 86 (baek), In-nio embodies the archetypal virtuous Tionghoa woman who holds on to the traditional values that define her state of moral purity: she is innocent of the ways of the world and is ‘modest’Footnote 87 (berboedi) in her behaviour; she suffers in silence, and has a loving, selfless, and honourable heart.Footnote 88 In-nio thus symbolises the moral guiding light that a Tionghoa man should follow in order to preserve his family, home, and ultimately, his race, culture, and nation.
Portrayed as In-nio's opposite, Kwie-nio is a modern girl from the city of Surabaya who enjoys going on dates with men and attending social functions like the theatre. Although Kwie-nio is an orphan living under the care of her aunt, the novel suggests that she is well-to-do,Footnote 89 for she is always well-dressed and able to travel for holidays. Famed for her beauty, Kwie-nio ‘alias Roos van Java’Footnote 90 (Rose of Java) is as lovely on the outside as she is ‘rotten’Footnote 91 (boesoek) on the inside. She openly flouts the social conventions related to mixed-gender socialisation, ignores the gossip surrounding her independent movements and behaviour, and does not care who she hurts to get what/who she wants; in this last instance, Kwie-nio reveals her true self as ‘wicked, cruel and traitorous’Footnote 92 when she persuades Sian-giok to murder his wife. However, the biggest threat posed by Kwie-nio is her dangerous ability to sway fine Tionghoa men like Sian-giok to the point where he is willing to kill his wife and destroy his family. Indeed, the novel describes the unnatural effect of her beauty and sexual allure on Sian-giok at their first meeting, when he is overcome by an ‘invisible influence’Footnote 93 that renders him speechless and which clouds his mind with murky, confusing thoughts. In this way, Sian-giok's role in the murder plot is also softened, since he can be excused for not being himself; in fact, In-nio sees him as Kwie-nio's ‘victim’Footnote 94 (korbannja). As the omniscient narratorFootnote 95 repeatedly reminds the reader throughout the novel, it is Kwie-nio who is the polluting source and thus the one truly at fault: she is ‘noisy’Footnote 96 (riboet), ‘rotten’ (boesoek), ‘wicked’ (djahat), ‘cruel’ (kedjem), ‘traitorous’ (dorhaka), and ‘poisonous’Footnote 97 (mengandoeng ratjoen). Above all, she is a ‘whore’Footnote 98 (soendel). Her character thus serves as a stern warning of the destructive effects of Western education and freedom on young women whose uncontrollable desires and tainted morals can endanger not just Tionghoa masculinity but their very ideological foundations and boundaries, represented here by the paternalistic-patriarchal Confucian family institution.
Both the one-dimensional characters of In-nio and Kwie-nio therefore play distinct roles and functions in dramatising the sociopolitical changes and modernising forces buffeting the late-Indies society, their undesirable effects on young Tionghoa women, and the potentially disastrous consequences for the family, culture, and nascent nationhood. Juxtaposed as opposing ‘types’ of Tionghoa femininities, both characters draw on the anti-colonial discourse of the morally superior East versus the depraved West and their associated ideological differences: tradition/modernity, collectivism/individualism, purity/pollution, virtue/vice, virgin/whore. At the same time, both femininities are also deployed as a lesson in female morality, conduct, and behaviour. In-nio, the ‘good’ woman, is rewarded when her husband returns to his senses and to her; she bears two more children, and lives a fulfilling life as a respectable and beloved wife and mother. Kwie-nio on the other hand is severely punished for her disloyalty, immorality, individualistic impulses, and, ultimately, un-Chinese behaviour, all of which lead to the loss of virtue and reputation, expulsion from her aunt's home, suffering, disease, and a painful death. By deviating from the discursive parameters that govern female sexuality and normative behaviour, and by fouling the symbolic margins of the ‘good’ Tionghoa society of moral men and women, Kwie-nio is not only excluded from its ideological boundaries, she is completely expunged. This, as the novel makes clear, is the only acceptable outcome for a ‘rotten’ Tionghoa woman.
Valentine and the loss of female purity: A nation in danger
Valentine portrays the titular character as a Dutch-educated modern girl whose enjoyment of Western freedoms, represented by her obsession with dancing, leads her astray from Tionghoa culture. Valentine, an only child who has been indulged too much by her widowed father, meets William Ong at a dance hall and is attracted to him. Both have much in common as Western-educated children from wealthy families in the city of Semarang; they converse in Dutch and adopt Western ways, including names, fashion, and modern manners. They become informally engaged before William leaves for further studies in Holland. While he is away, Valentine meets other men, goes to the movies and dances with them. She meets an Indo (Eurasian), De Geert, who seduces her in a hotel room after they danced together one night. The next day, her father receives an anonymous letter that reveals Valentine's loss of virginity as a result of too much freedom, with the warning that she should be kept under supervision. A few days later, a newspaper article is published about Valentine and De Geert, whose anonymity is barely disguised by the use of their initials. Valentine then learns she's pregnant, and induces a miscarriage by eating unripe pineapples. Another anonymous letter arrives to inform her father about her latest misdeed. He shouts at her, threatens to disown her, and beats her with a cane until the servants intervene. A few months later, a suitor, Tan Hok-bie, takes her swimming at Hotel Paradise, seduces her, and, when he finds out she's not a virgin, abandons her. When William returns to Semarang and finds out what has happened, he angrily breaks off the engagement and leaves for Surabaya where he commits suicide out of despair and grief. Valentine, upon reading the terrible news, hangs herself.
Although Valentine is similar to Oh…..Papa! in its condemnation of the freedom-loving modern girl, the omniscient voice is harsher here as Valentine's transgressive actions, choices, or mistakes are lamented, criticised, and judged throughout the novel. Correspondingly too, the novel's defence of Tionghoa race, culture, and nation is much more emphasised. From the very start, the reader is forewarned by a short verse whose last two lines sum up the novel's thematic message: ‘Don't be arrogant, people obsessed about the West/In the end will be in despair’.Footnote 99 Repeated twice, on the title page and the first page, the cautionary verse is reified by warnings that recur throughout the narrative, culminating with the closing paragraph that reads thus: ‘The story in this book is like a mirror for our Tionghoa girls and a source of knowledge for parents who are obsessed with the West.’ Both the warnings that frame the narrative contain the phrase, ‘gila barat’, which highlights who/what is at fault here: people crazy about the West, and Westernisation itself. The polluted West is thus juxtaposed with the virtues of the ‘Tionghoa world’ whose ‘thousand years of civilisation’Footnote 100 are the source of ethnic and cultural pride and identity. Although Tionghoa society is modernising and developing rapidly, the omniscient voice nonetheless cautions the reader against the kind of progress ‘that does not bring good or benefit’Footnote 101 to Tionghoa society — an allusion to the ills of excessive freedoms for their youth, later specified as ‘young women who have been sacrificed to those kinds of ways’.Footnote 102 Hence, while Western education — embodied by William — is desirable, Western (im)morality — represented by De Geert — is not; the metaphorical line drawn between positive and negative forms of Western modernity delineates the discursive boundaries of the Tionghoa world through the tropes of inclusion and exclusion. The binary, which reflects the ongoing tensions within the changing Tionghoa society, also stresses their superior cultural and moral standing through similar polarised depictions of East/West, virtue/vice, purity/pollution, morality/immorality, and virgin/whore.
The symbolic Tionghoa world is represented by the ideological boundaries of its imagined community, which the novel repeatedly emphasises throughout in association with specific signifiers: ‘world’ (doenia Tionghoa), ‘women’ (gadis Tionghoa), ‘youth’ (anak moeda Tionghoa), ‘civilisation’ (kesopanan Tionghoa), ‘race/nation’ (bangsa Tionghoa), and ‘customs’ (adat-istiadat Tionghoa). As the moral, masculine guardians of their culture and race, Tionghoa men have a duty to protect the purity of ‘virtuous girls’Footnote 103 (gadis-gadis soetji) and their ‘safety [as] the weaker party (women)’Footnote 104 from the perils of Western freedoms. In this ideological war, parents again play a crucial role in the line of ethnic and cultural defence. Unlike Sian-giok's father, Valentine's father, Mr Chan, is a failed Tionghoa parent and man whose support of the Western system and consequent inability to control his daughter are at the root of Valentine's eventual downfall. At the same time, the novel implicitly attacks the Dutch-oriented Peranakan by criticising Mr Chan. As the conclusion stresses, Mr Chan ‘has given [Valentine] liberties that go beyond the bounds of rationality because of his love [for her] and the cost is high indeed….!’Footnote 105 The cost referred to is not only Valentine's life but also William's, which is ‘sacrificed for the cause of pure love’.Footnote 106 A man whose heart is ‘full of Tionghoa-ness’Footnote 107 despite his Western-educated background, William is identified as the true victim of the tragedy.
As a word that carries connotations of martyrdom, victimhood, casualty, and loss, ‘korban’ (sacrifice) is not only repeatedly linked to virtuous, chaste women and upstanding men like William, but it also reminds the reader what is truly at risk here — the Tionghoa race/nation (bangsa Tionghoa). This patriotic sentiment is reaffirmed in the newspaper article on Valentine and De Geert, incidentally titled ‘Gila barat……….?’Footnote 108 Functioning as a text within a text, the article reiterates the novel's moralising message through established signifiers and imagery: ‘Tionghoa race/nation’, ‘Tionghoa customs’, ‘Tionghoa civilisation’, ‘young women who are still virtuous and honourable’, ‘dance, that cursed art’, ‘Western liberty’, and ‘sacrifice’.Footnote 109 The rhetorical trajectory, shifting from Tionghoa virtue to Western immorality, also ends with the warning: the reader should ‘remember, lest our nation has too many casualties’.Footnote 110 In reproducing the racialised and gendered ideology of female purity through the discursive operations of ‘authenticity’, the article mirrors actual opinion pieces published in Sino-Malay newspapersFootnote 111 as well as the authoritative, social networks of surveillance and discipline surrounding the Tionghoa female body, seen in the pseudonym used, ‘I-KNOW-YOU-KNOW’ (TAOE-SAMA-TAOE).Footnote 112 Acting as moral and cultural gatekeepers, these networks — represented by the anonymous letters sent to Mr Chan and the opinion piece — also keep the female body and its beleaguered purity enclosed and guarded.
The ideological drawing of battle lines against Western immorality is however undermined by transgressive women like Valentine, whose unruly body — like Kwie-nio's — refuses to be contained by Tionghoa society, expressed here as patriarchal surveillance and control. Characterised as a woman who has been spoilt by excessive freedom, Valentine is ‘uncaring about her chastity and honour’ and is ‘too immature to understand the temptations in life and in love’.Footnote 113 Her ignorance (and implicit rejection) of the time-honoured customs of filial duty and feminine virtue also foreshadows her eventual sexual fall when she socialises with the likes of De Geert, a ‘well-known defiler of virgins’Footnote 114 who exemplifies Western/European culture and its depravities. An Indo with a Dutch name, De Geert's racial mixture is also indicative of cultural pollution, projected here as a rapacious sexual appetite and a threat to virtuous Tionghoa women.Footnote 115 Even worse, Valentine has wholeheartedly embraced Western dancing, ‘an activity that can arouse lust’,Footnote 116 leading to the loss of chastity and purity.Footnote 117 Lamenting that Valentine's ‘honour has been sacrificed to Western mores’,Footnote 118 the omniscient voice repeatedly draws on essentialist views of purity and pollution. The tainted female body whose ‘honour has been polluted’Footnote 119 is also one which ‘violates the customs of our race/nation’.Footnote 120
By giving in to her selfish desires and allowing herself to be defiled, Valentine is also held responsible for her many failures as a Tionghoa woman: she has failed to perform her filial duty to her father and family (whose name and lineage she has disgraced), or to be loyal and faithful to William; above all, she has betrayed the Tionghoa nation by losing her virtue. The symbolic crossing of the imaginary line that demarcates the Tionghoa world is also one that has grave repercussions, seen when Valentine is labelled ‘whore’Footnote 121; she is further punished when the man she loves dies. Only when she is filled with remorse and guilt can Valentine join her beloved in death. Their deaths thus serve as a final warning to Tionghoa women, parents, and the larger community of the need to preserve female virtue and purity — conflated with ethno-cultural pride and integrity — so that the bounded territoriality of their imagined community is maintained.
It is also significant that while the omniscient voice berates the contaminating influences of Western civilisation, it is silent on the sexual hypocrisies of Tionghoa society, represented by Tan Hok-bie, the second man to seduce Valentine. Unlike De Geert, Hok-bie wants to marry her but his honourable intentions are weakened when his lust is aroused upon seeing Valentine in her swimsuit, another sign of the decadent West. Predictably, the burden of blame falls on Valentine who ‘does not feel shame’Footnote 122 in allowing Hok-bie to gaze at her body; moreover, even a ‘pious and well-behaved’Footnote 123 man like Hok-bie can give in to temptation. The double standards practised by Tionghoa patriarchy are made obvious when Hok-bie's transgression does not bear any consequences for him and are overlooked, while Valentine's clearly cannot.
Conclusion
Merging sexist attitudes and ethnocentric nationalism, female purity as an ideological trope is pivotal to the discursive construction and expression of the Tionghoa as an imagined community at a particular fluid juncture of historical becoming. As my readings show, this trope not only contributes to the perception, representation, and positioning of the Tionghoa as a morally and culturally superior force, but it also validates Tionghoa masculinity as the defender and guardian of female purity. At the same time, the trope enabled the male authors to challenge and subvert Western authority and, by extension, Dutch colonialism. Recurring signifiers, symbols as well as binaries — amplified by the replicating rhetorical discourses in the press and literature — are used to reinscribe the polemical differences between Tionghoa and Western cultures, and simultaneously fortify the symbolic boundaries of the Tionghoa nation. Mapped onto the female body, these territorial boundaries tell a story of how gender and nation are interconnected and mutually engaged in a dialogic relationship.
Virtuous In-nio, whose bodily margins are unsullied and kept intact, not only represents the archetypal Confucian femininity but also articulates the much-desired preservation of upstanding Tionghoa masculinity and unified paternalistic-patriarchal family, which are foundational to the racial and cultural integrity of the Tionghoa body politic. Following this narrative thread then, the Westernised modern girl, respectively embodied by Kwie-nio and Valentine, is cast as the abject Other and whose polluted or breached bodily margins also underscore the imminent loss of the Tionghoa dream. As a preventive measure, the disruptive properties of the transgressive female body must be restrained through social forms of discipline and punishment so as to safeguard Tionghoa masculinity, culture, and nationalism. Although distorted and unrealistic, the dichotomous stereotypes of Tionghoa womanhood as either virtuous/virgin or immoral/whore nonetheless demonstrate how female purity as an ideological trope is constructed and produced as the opposing, moralising, and, ultimately, nationalising force.
Still, the parochial and insular sentiments and vision on which Tionghoa nationalism is built also reveal its limits, grounded as it is in sexist, and racist, operations of desire, fantasy, and repression. Underlying the unrealistic expectations of women is a complex psychology at work, reflected in the male insecurities and anxieties that revolve around the figurations of loss. Both novels warn about the consequences of transgressive female behaviour on moral men like Sian-giok and William, both of whom are described as victims and are ‘lost’ in different ways: Sian-giok is morally lost but ultimately saved, unlike William whose loss is seen in his untimely demise. Above all, it is the loss of female purity that prompts the emotional outrage and criticisms, thereby forming the heart of the novels’ moralising message. Closer scrutiny however reveals something more: the extreme reaction to the loss of female purity is indeed suggestive of an unrealistic attachment to the ideals of racial and cultural authenticity. This is ironically highlighted by the Peranakan writers’ use of low Malay to define and defend their Chineseness in literature and the press — an act that also speaks of dissociation (from their acculturated history and heritage) and dislocation. As such, the loss of female purity goes deeper than mere nationalist expression or anti-colonial opposition, rooted as it is in the history of loss, displacement, and non-belonging suffered by the Peranakan as a subordinated and alienated group in the colonial hierarchies of race, class, and gender.
For all their attempts to rewrite history, the Peranakan continued to be haunted by the memory of their inscribed inferiority as feminised ‘Cina’. In the end, these fears would come true as their world disintegrated with the demise of their Tionghoa dream under the Japanese Occupation in 1942. They never recovered after these severe blows. As Indonesia was ushered in as a modern nation-state in 1945, the Peranakan community as a whole and their Sino-Malay literature — together with the virtuous Tionghoa woman within those pages — slowly ‘disappeared from popular memory’,Footnote 124 erased by the homogenising narratives and processes of Indonesianisation. But, from time to time, when there are violent clashes or protests targeting the Indonesian Chinese, we may be reminded once more that the past is still very much alive, and that the alienation of the Indonesian Chinese as racialised and gendered Other has never truly gone away.Footnote 125
