Social Realism Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) (1865-1914)

• The original 1912 edition of Mrs. Spring Fragrance was published with an elaborate scarlet cover and “oriental” motifs inscribed on each page. Ask your students to consider the effects of this physical presentation, and why Sui Sin Far’s book was bound this way. Why might the elaborate, ostentatiously Chinese-looking design have appealed to the white audience to whom the book was marketed? Ask your students to discuss how the experience of reading “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” might change if they read it in the original edition rather than in The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
• Although Japan had been open to the West since 1853, “the Orient” remained a place of great mystery, reverence, and intrigue for modern Americans. Readers revelled in the exotic paraphernalia of Japanese daily life in works such as Matthew Calbraith Perry’s The Americans in Japan: An Abridgement of the Government Narrative of the U.S. Expedition to Japan, and fascination with the Orient spilled over into U.S. architecture and literature, particularly in the poetry of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams (see the Core Context on “Orientalism” in Unit 10). Postcolonial theorist Edward Said has argued that for Westerners the Orient was “almost a European invention”: the Orient becomes an “other” against which the West defines itself, rather than a place with its own reality. Have your students test whether Sui Sin Far’s fiction breaks down or reinforces this “otherness” by having them diagram what constitutes Western and Chinese culture and identity in Sui Sin Far’s work.
• At one point in the story, Mrs. Spring Fragrance recites lines from “a beautiful American poem” by a “noble American named Tennyson.” Of course, Tennyson, the poet laureate of Great Britain, was not an American. Ask your students to think about the function of this mention of Tennyson in the story (Mr. Spring Fragrance crucially misunderstands the meaning of the lines and becomes suspicious of his wife’s affection and fidelity). Is the joke here on Mrs. Spring Fragrance for mistaking a British poem for an American one? Or is this a commentary on the state of American poetry and American literature generally? How does Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s conflation of British and American culture compare to many Americans’ inability to distinguish among various Asian cultures?

1. Comprehension: In what ways is Mrs. Spring Fragrance “Americanized”? What traditional Chinese values and customs does she retain?
2. Context: How does Sui Sin Far portray Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s domestic activities and home life? How do her relationships with her neighbors and her husband compare to European American norms? How does Sui Sin Far’s description of Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s attachment to her home compare to Anzia Yezierska’s portrait of Hanneh Hayyeh’s joy in her kitchen?
3. Context: In “Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” Sui Sin Far twice alludes to Mr. Spring Fragrance’s brother, who has been detained in a “detention pen” at the Angel Island Immigration Center in San Francisco. Why does Sui Sin Far include these references to Mr. Spring Fragrance’s brother, who is, after all, not an actor in the story? How does his immigration experience complicate the tone and resolution of the story?
4. Exploration: How might Sui Sin Far’s work have influenced later Chinese American women writers, such as Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston? Do these three authors deal with some of the same issues? How are Tan’s and Kingston’s concerns different from Sui Sin Far’s?
5. Exploration: Could Sui Sin Far be considered a “regional realist,” like the writers featured in Unit 8? Why or why not?

[1111] Anonymous, In the Heart of Chinatown, San Francisco, U.S.A. (1892),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Memory.
Thousands of Chinese immigrants were hired to work on the transcontinental railroad and were often given the most dangerous jobs. While discrimination, biased immigration policies, and other hardships limited the rights of Chinese Americans well into the twentieth century, they nevertheless established vibrant communities which preserved many of their traditional ways, such as Chinatown in San Francisco. Cathy Song’s poem “Chinatown” depicts her view of this neighborhood. Early examples of Chinese American literature include the poems from Angel Island and the works of Sui Sin Far.

[6164] Arnold Genthe, Street of the Gamblers (By Day) (1898),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4- 3890].
Photograph of pedestrians in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) combatted stereotypes of Chinese immigrants as heathen, unclean, and untrustworthy and provided insight into the culture of America’s Chinatowns.

[6169] Anonymous, Chinatown, New York City (1909),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-72475].
Chinese immigrants brought their traditions and customs to America, where they established strong communities to provide familiar support in an otherwise unfamiliar world. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has written personal and deeply reflective portraits of Chinese immigrants’ experiences.

[6171] Arnold Genthe, Children Were the Pride, Joy, Beauty, and Chief Delight of the Quarter, Chinatown, San Fransisco (c. 1896 -1906),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4- 5265].
Four children in traditional Chinese clothing on a sidewalk in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Writing about the time this photograph was taken, Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) sought to make the lives of Chinese immigrants understandable to white audiences.

[8183] Anonymous, The Voyage, No. 8 (c. 1920), reprinted in Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910 -1940,
courtesy of the University of Washington Press.
“How has anyone to know that my dwelling place would be a prison?” asks this poem, one of many written on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Center by Chinese immigrants held there by U.S. authorities. Examples of these poems, which play a role in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, can be found in the archive, [8184] through [8191].