Defender of the Concubine and of the Unmarried Mother

Ho Xuan Huong

Ho Xuan Huong denies the male’s superiority consecrated by Confucian ethics. She complains of the fate of unlucky women.
A lonely voice, unique in feudal literature, she rises with bitterness against concubinage.
To share a husband with another… what a life!
The one sleeps under the covers, well tucked in the other freezes.
By chance he comes across you in the dark, once or twice a month… nothing!
You hang on hoping to get your share, but the rice is poor and underdone.
You work like a drudge, save that you get no pay.
And had I known it would be like this
Willingly would I have stayed alone just as I was before,

Ho Xuan Huong complains of the fate of unlucky women in her poems
Ho Xuan Huong complains of the fate of unlucky women in her poems

In reading this poem, we are sure to think of this “ca dao” which is almost like a reply:
How unhappy to be a concubine
Transplanting
Tilling
And at night
No husband,
Quite alone,
Sleeping without a mat
In the biting cold.
“-Eh, you, the second one.”
The first wife cries out,
“As early as daybreak
Boil the bran,
Peel potatoes
Chop duckweeds”
Oh, my dear parent,
Am I thus condemned?
Day after day
Because of your poverty?
Ho Xuan Huong also defends unmarried mothers while the society of her time condemned all extra-legal unions and qualified a pregnancy which had not been legitimized as a ‘criminal pregnancy’ (The unmarried mother, like the adulterous woman, was subjected to cruel punishments).
Her pleading is both ironical and sorrowful:
One moment of complaisance only and I’ve got into a mess!
Oh! My beloved one, do you feel my pains?
Heaven has no sooner given me the sign of destiny
Than a stroke comes to bar the willow trunk!
All your life, you’ll bear the burden of wrongdoing!
I accept to carry the fruit of our love!
I care little what people say about us
Cautious or not, I have my own wisdom making light of criticism.
The poet brings in an unequivocal verdict: the responsibility of the “wrongdoing”, that is going to stain all the woman’s life, devolves on the man.