Characters:

Siu-Yong – First Wife

Luan – Second Wife

Eling – Third Wife

Tieng-Bing – husband

Ahn – Siu-Yong and Tieng-Bin’s daughter

For Tieng-Bing, Christianity and the West represent a fashionable, attractive, and modern way of approaching life, as opposed to the rigid "Xiao" obligation, or adherence duty, and ethical traditions he feels wrapped around his marriages and love life -- and, by extension, his country. For the wives, however, it's a different matter. In the old Ming dynasty, where women were socially powerless, the wives were forced to learn Realpolitik. The cruel reality lies where Tieng-Bing envisions a new, free life, Luan and Siu-Yong see only that if he converts to Christianity, the two of them must go.

The Setting & Characters

The story is told in flashback by the ghost of Siu-Yong’s daughter, Ahn, who, as a 10-year-old, observes the power struggle in the household and her mother.

Second Wife, an ambitious opportunist, seizes the chance to advance her status against the First Wife and that of her children by embracing her husband's new ideas.

While First Wife, a proud, traditional wife bound by archaic rules that only “purposed” women to secure a peaceful household, despises Eng's curiosity and admiration towards her father’s journey in the west, and condemns a social system in which one does not flatter – blind conservatism to unjust belief, resorting to stoic silence, and the fixed mindset with resistance to all change. Siu-Yong would do anything to avoid the breakdown of the family, even if it meant pretending and fooling herself and adopting drug usage.

Third Wife is romantic and amenable. She best fits Tieng-Bin’s image of a delicate, modern lover, in contrast with the tedious and strict First Wife, from whom he felt bland and pressured into traditional family duties.

Cultural Clash: East Meeting the West

“The fact that something is new simply means it has not had time to disappoint us”

Nevertheless, in this case, the clash between the East and the West results in wreckage destroying all characters. The power struggle among the wives becomes shallowly entertaining. This irony seems, in high regard, to reflect the darkness in human nature to find joy in the pain of others – appealing enormously to women at the time suffering in their subordinate position without any sign of support. The tragic ending seems to drop in another serious play -- one in which the characters have earned the right to have their sufferings taken seriously by the audience. When Tieng-Bin is paired with Siu-Yong, his fresh and catchy offerings and principles are greatly deduced to merely a blatant sphere of naivety and oppressive idealism that had been taken for granted out of her hard work. Remember, Siu-Yong, when her husband was gone, had to manage not only the household operation with some servants but also the local family business to support expenses. To the audience’s dismay, one accountable fact is that women of the time were not, in any regard, educated. For all three wives, growing from a young and passionate girl to a traditional role engaged with heavy duties was never easy. This reminds the audience of one crucial thing – none of them lived dumb, but, in fact, intelligent and quick to learn through their networking around the house. The big-and-small affairs, as well as her husband’s irritation that Siu-Yong had to deal with, strategic attempts taken by Luan to progress her status, and the profound motives behind the love of Eling all, signal the complexity and ruthlessness women bear at the time, as part of their daily routine. Even when women did possess aggression and ambition to improve their lives, the toxic traditions repressed them to an extent in which the only method to attain their goals would be to ingratiate themselves with their husband and compromise with the other wives.

Falling Action and Resolution: Significance of the Wives’ Ending

It seems that none of the characters, except Tieng-Bing, made good ends. One underlying cause shown through Tieng-Bing’s fondness for Christianity is how he tried to manipulate his faith to overshadow the wives’ character. As a result of his pursuit, he wanted to convert all his wives to Christianity. The responses from the three wives were distinctively intriguing: Siu-Yong looked at her parents’ altar and firmly rejected it, Luan saw the opportunity to gain “favour” and immediately agreed, and Eling was still hesitating over her decision. These actions perhaps relate to their family background: all three were “sold” or “traded’ into the family in different ways, so the family did not matter as much to Eling and Luan, except for the conservative Siu-Yong. 

As soon as Tieng-Bin heard about Siu-Yong’s rejection and increased opium addiction, he was angry. This anger derived not just from worry, but also from the severe "offence" received from his wife, whom he felt should be inferior to him but refused his order. For once, it is as if the power dynamics are reversed; Siu-Yong became the imperative Commander, and he was the mechanical soldier waiting to be directed. So here he came, destroying her family altar and shattering his in-laws’ photos.

The irony is built again that, for a man who so much hated the old traditions, he was still bound by them. Moreover, in a harsher reality, he is confined to grasping the best of both worlds, establishing a rathe self-contradictory image – taking in what benefits him the most in Chinese traditional culture like grabbing hold of the superior position forever, and Christianity, seeking the young love and leaving responsibility. Hence, the question comes in – did he truly, in his most sincere manners, want to convert?

If not, it seems like another dramatic irony is put into place, in which the entire conflict of Tieng-Bing putting all his efforts into conversion ends into a simple complacency of his esteem.

The Big Picture: Women’s Suffrage

All these scenes serve to unwrap women’s past suffrage. Their unfortunate family background, the subordinate position they held in a small household, and the husband’s executive attitude and enforced ideals upon them all point to the misery and dreads they were constantly facing. The disastrous consequence of attempting to stand up against authority is also presented in Siu-Yong’s end. Even dead, Siu-Yong’s ghost comes back and haunts Eling, convincing her that she will never be able to become entirely western as Tieng-Bing wants. Hence, Eling sacrifices herself and the unborn child. The discouragement is thus hindered in a Bildungsroman mockery of how effortlessly the world labels women and how effortful the old society chains women's minds.

Undoubtedly, the deaths of the characters brought the play to the next level – the adversity of the wives became an impossible yet eternal struggle that goes beyond mortality.

Stranded in treacherous and complicated relationships, they fought. The wives’ inescapable fate to be struggling forever within the household compared to their husband’s expeditionary sail or the incredible Journey To the West further demonstrates the miserable and dire nature of the feudal system. Primarily the responsibility and pressure endowed upon Siu-Yong -- they had forced her into opium consumption, costing her a painful overdose death. Yet, meanwhile, Tieng-Bin and the other wives became baptized. Through this excellent work, Hwang cleverly presents a satire of the separate paths each had taken and vividly describes a typical household of the Qing Dynasty.