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            November 11, 2008
            Madame White Snake: East Asian Femme Fatale of Old
            The Chinese legend of Madame White Snake, the snake demon that takes human form and
               becomes the wife of a man, has exerted a lasting influence over East Asian folktales
               and fiction for centuries. Two quintessential novellas, “The Lust of the White
               Serpant” from Ugetsu Monogatari by the Japanese author Ueda Akinari and “Eternal
               Prisoner under Thunder Peak Pagoda” a traditional Chinese story, are both relatively
               complex and demonstrate not only the evolution of the White Snake figure to become a
               more believable human, but also what aspects may have given her enduring appeal.
               While both these stories are ostensibly morality tales about the dangerous beauty of
               this femme fatale, the true source of pleasure from these narratives is the femme
               fatale’s transgressive behavior, not her eventual punishment for it.
            Early tales of Madame White Snake appeared in China as early as the Song Dynasty, and
               initially her portrayal was fairly direct, as a villainous demon who drains the life
               force out of her human husband.
                  Lai, Whalen. "From Folklore to Literate Theater: Unpacking "Madame White
                     Snake"." Asian Folklore Studies 51, no. 1 (1992): 52.
                But over time, characterizations of her became more complex, and the persona
               of Madame White Snake became more sympathetic, and perhaps even a model of the ideal
               Confucian wife, particularly in “Pagoda”. Whalen Lai notes, “She was a loving wife, a
               caring mother, rescuer of her family from the first flood, and, at that point, a
               general benefactor of man. She took on the virtues of a traditional Chinese female,
               particularly forbearance”.
                  Ibid., 53.
                But if she were really an ideal wife, why could she not live happily with her
               human mate? Her dangerous sexuality is the key.
            Femme fatale might seem an unusual term to apply to a character from pre-modern
               Chinese and Japanese literature who may exemplify the virtues of an ideal Confucian
               wife, since it is primarily associated with film characters, particularly those of
               the film noir genre. But this term, which is relatively speaking, a neologism (The
               earliest uses were around the beginning of the 20th century
                  Oxford English Dictionary, “Femme, ” Oxford University Press,
                     http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50083541/50083541se3?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=femme+fatale&first=1&max_to_show=10&hilite=50083541se3
               ), is an apt description of the depiction of Madame White Snake and all her
               incarnations. It refers to a woman who is dangerously attractive, and lures men to
               their downfall with her sexual attractiveness. In both incarnations of Madame White
               snake, the authors depict her as bewitchingly beautiful. Toyoo, her human lover in
               “Lust of the White Serpant” cannot shake the image of her beauty from his mind and
               dreams of her, and finds himself “disturbed and agitated” by her “ethereal
                  beauty”.
                  Ueda, Akinari. Ugetsu Monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain : A Complete
                     English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the
                     Supernatural. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1974,
                     162-164.
                In “Eternal Prisoner,” Madame White Snake’s bewitching beauty follows her
               lover Hsü into his dreams, and the next morning “he was so distracted that he could
               not concentrate on doing business.”
                  “Eternal Prisoner under the Thunder Peak Pagoda.” Trans. Diana Yu, in Y. W. Ma
                     and Joseph S. M. Lau. Traditional Chinese Stories : Themes and Variations.
                     Boston: Zheng & Zui Co, 1986, 358.
                Both of these stories align negative connotations with her beauty, suggesting
               that her sexuality is the cause of their distraction.
            In addition to distracting sexuality, the irregular characterization of Madame White
               Snake might be another trait her character has in common with the archetypical noir
               femme fatale. In her essay analyzing the noir film from a feminist perspective,
               Christine Gledhill writes “Not only is the hero frequently not sure whether the woman
               is honest or a deceiver, but the heroine’s characterisation is itself fractured so
               that it is not evident to the audience whether she fills the [femme fatale]
               stereotype or not”.
                  Christine Gledhill, “Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism,”
                     in Feminism and Film, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (New York: Oxford University Press,
                     2004), 81.
                While both stories each characterize Madame White Snake fairly consistently
               within their narratives, the uneven characterization in film noir perhaps mirrors the
               evolution of her character over time: readers may not be sure whether she is a pure
               villainess or whether she is a good wife who is badly treated by society, because
               there is evidence of both throughout her legend. She is a loyal wife to her husband
               as she has promised, but she also causes him to find trouble with the law and
               deceives him about her supernatural nature.
            The complications in her character serve to undercut the ostensible didactic intent
               of these stories. A simple reading of the story might produce the idea that Madame
               White Snake represents dangerous female aggression and sexuality that traps the man,
               and she must be defeated and punished by society. This is quite similar to the
               expected end for the femme fatal character in films - she is punished in some way so
               that social order and proper gender roles are restored. In both stories, Madame White
               Snake’s secret is uncovered and a monk comes to exorcise her, and she is eventually
               rendered powerless and trapped under a pagoda. Her husband becomes a monk, and this
               further implicates Lady White Snake, this time from a Buddhist perspective. Female
               beauty is a dangerous thing that ties men to the transitory world and prohibits them
               from being free from desire and ascending to Nirvana. Furthermore, Lady White Snake’s
               lover is far from the ideal man. He is weak-willed and not particularly useful. In
               “Lust,” the priest informs Toyoo “Those creatures took advantage of your fair looks
               and tempted you. But you, yourself, owing to a lack of courage and spirit, fell
               victim to their temporary form” 
                  Ugetsu Monogatari, 177-178.
               . The implications of this are that a stronger, more capable man would not
               fall for the Lady’s trickery. But are the morals of these stories entirely sincere?
               If they were, Madame White Snake would be unmistakably depicted as an evil
               character.
            Instead, both these stories feature many moments where readers have great sympathy
               for her, despite her depraved sexuality. Certainly, readers admire her patience and
               loyalty: “I searched everywhere, and now that at last I’ve found you, I’m very
                  happy,”
                  Ibid.,173.
                she gushes to him in “Lust.” Readers must also acknowledge that her human
               lover is breaking his promise to her when he leaves her. She pleads with him, “We
               have a love bond between us, as constant as the T’ai Mountains and the Eastern Sea,
               and we must live and die together. Please, since we are already married, take me
               back, and let’s stay together the rest of our lives. Wouldn’t that be
                  wonderful?”
                  “Eternal Prisoner,” 369.
                In another traditional vernacular story, “Tsu Shih-Niang Sinks the Jewel Box
               in Anger,
                  “Tu Shih-Niang Sinks the Jew Box in Anger,” trans, Richard M. W. Ho, in Y. W.
                     Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau. Traditional Chinese Stories : Themes and Variations.
                     Boston: Zheng & Zui Co, 1986, 358.
               ” the male protagonist breaks a promise he made to his concubine lover, and
               suffers for it, suggesting that traditionally, loyalty and keeping ones word was
               valued on the man’s part as well as a woman’s. So her husband’s failure to follow
               through on his end of the bargain, completely forgetting the love he once had for
               her, makes readers more sympathetic to Madame White Snake’s plight. 
            However, no matter how much sympathy Madame White Snake may gather from readers, the
               story still ends with her trapped under the pagoda. These stories draw from the long
               tradition of supernatural and ghost stories, which usually end with the demon
               destroyed or at least subdued. In the initial versions of this story Madame White
               Snake harmed her human lover, so her entrapment under a pagoda by a Taoist monk or
               later, a Buddhist monk
                  Lai, 53.
                would have been a satisfying ending. Readers of early versions of the story
               might have been cheering for the defeat of this demon disguised as a beauty, and
               would have enjoyed reading the stories for the lurid horror details and later her
               crushing defeat. Conversely, the authors of the two stories examined here do not give
               readers motivation to wish for the death of Madame White Snake, so the pleasure of
               the narrative - to borrow appropriate phrasing from film theory - comes not from the
               death of the insubordinate, disruptive force, from watching the transgressions
               themselves. 
            In an essay on the femme fatale heroines of film noir, Janey Place argues that the
               strong behavior of the female characters supersedes the moral lessons supposedly
               imparted by their morals at the end. She writes, “the final ‘lesson’ of the myth
               often fades into the background and we retain the image of the erotic, strong,
               unrepressed (if destructive) woman.”
                  Janey Place, “Women in Film Noir” in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan
                     (London: British Film Institute, 2003), 48.
                In these two stories, the femme fatale Madame White Snake is going to live on
               in the minds of readers not as the shrunken snake trapped under a pagoda, but the
               sexy, aggressive woman who took a weaker human man as her lover. 
            This resistant reading of the text may be too colored by modern viewpoints, since it
               is impossible to know for certain what readers in the past enjoyed about these
               stories. However, consciously or unconsciously, these authors created a female
               character who fits the characteristics of a feisty heroine. In fact, Communists in
               the PRC in the 1970s reclaimed her as a feminist symbol for women who rebel against
               the patriarchy.
                  Lai, 52.
                Just as the dangerous femme fatale of noir films has reemerged as a heroine
               in her own right, rather than the sexy death trap for the male protagonist, so too
               Lady White Snake should be reclaimed for her sexual assertiveness and life slightly
               outside the bounds of conventional social expectations. 
         
      
   
