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Although Zhu was an outstanding woman in the feudal China, with her courage to pursue free life and ideal love, she faced an environment armed with a deeply-rooted ideology of male-chauvinism, which barred her from realizing her dreams[1][P101].
Therefore, going to school for learning, which is a simple thing today, was quite difficult even prohibitive for a woman at that time. She could only succeed in her wish by disguising herself as a young man. When Zhu asked for studying in school like other boys, her sister-in-law created difficulties for her even ridiculed her, saying Zhu would lose her chastity during the period. Then Zhu had to put a flower into a flower vase and swear that if she behaved improperly, the flower would die, and if not, it would keep alive until she came back. Later on, she went to school. But her sister –in-law did not give up, she put some boiled water into the vase in the hope that the flower would die at once. Fortunately, her plot failed, the flower grew more and more beautiful. This episode before the later love tragedy signified in advance the huge feudal pressure on Zhu[2][P34]. In such an environment, Zhu’s pursuit of love was not like Romeo and Juliet’s. Zhu fell in love with Liang, but because of the feudalism as well as her family status, Zhu could not show her love openly. Compared with Romeo and Juliet, she was brought up to be reserved. Therefore, her love to Liang could only be developed little by little, slowly and subconsciously.
Zhu fell in love with Liang, without revealing her true identity. She invited him to visit his home and meet his younger sister (Zhu herself). Throughout all this time, Liang was completely oblivious to the fact that Zhu was in fact a young woman who fell hopelessly in love with him. When the time came for them to return to their respective villages, Zhu tried in vain, to let Liang know the truth. Liang fell in love with his classmate's female form; and promised to return to marry her. When Zhu returned home, her father had already arranged a different suitor for her and prepared to marry her off to a powerful noble's son. By the time Liang rushed to her home to seek her hand in marriage, it was too late. Her father's will had prevailed and she was betrothed.
It was not long before Liang succumbed and died of a broken heart. The conflict between ideal love and feudalism deprived them of their love and even lives.
2.3 The differences between these two conflicts
In these two plays, the leading roles’ pursuits of ideal love and marriage expressed the characters’ natural instincts[3][P6]. In Romeo and Juliet, the leading roles’ families were the representatives of the feudal power. They would fight on the street even when they just happened to meet each other, let alone permitting their posterity to love each other. Here are the sentences by Juliet’s father:
To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither,
Out, you greensickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow-face![3][P30]
We can find that when Juliet refused to marry the man she did not love, her parents scolded her severely and threatened her to leave the family. Therefore, Juliet could resist her father with much less compunction than Zhu. This was why she was luckier than Zhu. For her family and Romeo’s were deadly enemies, but in their hearts they still had a dream, which was to escape with the help of the Catholic father, leaving their families, giving up their family names and living happily together with each other in another place forever[4][P49]. In order to realize this dream, they could do anything. And the conflict would be cleared away if they succeed.
In The Butterfly Lover, the environment they lived in was similar to Romeo and Juliet’s. What they faced was also a heavy feudal society. The difference was that Zhu could not resist her family strongly and completely like Juliet. Although her family forced her to marry the other young man Ma Wencai, that’s because they love Zhu. For in traditional feudal China, in people’s mind, including Zhu’s parents, marrying a rich family was good to Zhu, so they just persuaded Zhu time and time again with good intentions. Maybe this kind of love was not suitable for Zhu, but she could not refuse. Therefore, Zhu could not resist them like Romeo and Juliet. And this was why Zhu was more unfortunate than Romeo and Juliet.
3. Characterization
People are not isolated, especially for the leading roles in a play; living in specific environments, people tend to inherit part of their character traits from their surroundings[5][P49]. And their characters decide their will. Then they will take all kinds of actions under the control of their wills. This part will examine how the characterizations in each work contribute to the differences in theme presentation discussed above.
3.1 The characteri上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 下一页
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