Damsels in Distress vs. Distressed Dudes in Jin Yong Stories (Part 2)

This is part of the Rambling Series about Sexism in Jin Yong Stories.

Content note: this post discusses violence against females

In the previous part, I talked about damsels in distress in Jin Yong stories. In this part, I’ll discuss female Jin Yong characters who rescue distressed dudes. I will start with an example from The Smiling Proud Wanderer.

Qu Feiyan in the 1996 TV adaptation of The Smiliing Proud Wanderer, also known as State of Divinity

Qu Feiyan is about ten years old. This does not stop her from being one of the cleverest characters in the entire story (her entry in Baidu Baike, which is China’s equivalent of Wikipedia, claims that she is one of the most intelligent characters in the Jin Yong canon). She watches the male protagonist, get severely injured, and it is pretty clear that, without medical treatment, he is going to die. Qu Feiyan first arranges for him to be moved to a safe location where his enemies won’t find him easily, she finds and persuades a nun to bring the medicine that he needs, and she manipulates a villain into serving as his bodyguard while he is unconscious. Thus, she saves his life. This is a clear example of a female character rescuing a distressed dude (actually, two female characters, since Yilin also deserves some credit).

After the protagonist is no longer at imminent risk of dying from his injuries, this is what happens in the next scene where Qu Feiyan appears (this is highly summarized and thus leaves out a lot of details and context):

Minor Character: Her grandfather is evil, therefore she is evil too, and you must kill her!
Protagonist: No, I’m not going to kill a child!
Minor Character: If you refuse to kill her, then you’re evil too.
[Minor Character kills Qu Feiyan]
Minor Character: Since you’re still heavily injured, you can’t defend yourself, so now I’m going to kill you too.
[A martial arts master comes out of nowhere and kills Minor Character]

To summarize the summary, the deus ex machina comes in the nick of time to save the male protagonist’s life, but not in time to save the life of Qu Feiyan.

In fact, Qu Feiyan herself is mainly a deux ex machina to save the protagonist’s life, albeit one who is well disguised by having a clever, cheerful, and mischievous personality. Once she’s served that purpose, she’s disposable.

Now, at this point a lot of Jin Yong fans would point out that this novel was written during the Cultural Revolution and Hong Kong riots of 1967, and that the murder of Qu Feiyan is clearly part of the political allegory. I agree that this scene sends a clear and deliberate political message, and if this were an isolated incident, I would not necessarily consider it an example of sexism or misogyny.

The thing is, it’s not an isolated incident in Jin Yong’s fiction. In fact, in the very same novel, The Smiling Proud Wanderer, a different female character saves a male character’s life, and later, that very same male character kills her, and after he has already delivered the killing blow, she decides to save his life one last time right before she dies. That is, unless one considers that ‘male’ character to be a transwoman (which is a possible interpretation of the novel – at the very least, that particular character is queer-coded) which would mean that, on top of everything else, this part of the plot would be transmisogynist.

Ah Zhu and Qiao Feng from the 1996 TV adaptation of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils

You may remember that I mentioned Ah Zhu in the was probably the most intelligent character in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, and also mentioned her in the previous post as one of the most clearcut examples of a damsel in distress. If you don’t already know her story, you can find it at Wikipedia under ‘Azhu’.

Major Spoiler warning for the next two paragraphs.

She lets her fiancé kill her so she can save her father. This is in spite of the fact that she has had very little contact with her father because he was a deadbeat dad. But, really, she lets her fiancé kill her so she can save her father. I had a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around that when I first read the novel.

But there’s more. She becomes a Lost Lenore / Gwen Stacy, and to top that all off, her sister, Ah Zi, is so moved by Qiao Feng’s feelings when he buries her that Ah Zi falls in love with him. That’s right, Ah Zi falls in love with the guy who killed her sister while he is burying her sister. You can see it for yourself (and you don’t need to understand Chinese because there isn’t much dialogue in that scene).

An illustration showing Cheng Lingsu

I’ve mentioned Cheng Lingsu a couple times in this series already. Like Qu Feiyan and Ah Zhu, she is hype-intelligent, possibly the most intelligent character in the novel where she appears. You can also get a summary of her story from Wikipedia, though I think the fact that I am putting her in the same category as Qu Feiyan and Ah Zhu is a huge hint.

I could cite more examples, but at this point, I think you get the idea (this does not always the most intelligent character in the story, but the more intelligent female character are at greater risk of falling into this pattern). Basically, the female character is first exploited to save a male character (usually, though not necessarily, the protagonist), and then dies to cause the male protagonist emotional anguish.

I am trying to think of an example of a male Jin Yong character successfully rescuing a female character and then tragically dying and … the only examples I can think of are where his eventual tragic death was a MUCH later and completely unrelated event, unlike these examples I cited in which the female character dies while saving a male character. There are certainly plenty of moments where male characters volunteer to sacrifice their lives to save a female character, but those male characters end up … not dying (I am surprised to learn that TVTropes does not have a page for ‘Averted Heroic Sacrifice’ – but maybe the trope simply has a different name).

One could look at this and say ‘hey, the female characters are good at rescuing male characters, this shows that female characters can be competent at something other than being a sex object / love interest!’ However, even if a female character is not being exploited for sex or romance, it is still exploitation.

What I see is that female life is not being valued as much as male life. And that’s a problem.

That is not to say that all female Jin Yong characters who rescue distressed dudes die during the story. Some of them marry him after they save him from distressed dude status. Once in a while, a female character will even save a distressed dude, NOT marry him, yet still be alive at the end of the story (amazing, but true, and probably means she is a nun or will become a nun).

What it boils down to is that, generally, when a female character rescues a distressed dude, she is either in love with him, will fall in love with him, or she wants to make the dude she is in love with happy by rescuing the distressed dude. And, as TVTropes put it, because this time TVTropes is right:

Fans have also noted a common trend to the fate of female characters in Jin Yong’s novels. Most of the female characters that do fall in love with the protagonist but doesn’t end up with him (or knows that there’s no way he can reciprocate the love) either remains celibate or encounters a tragic end.

I generally don’t have a problem with celibacy, or a character choosing to abstain from sex for life, but when there is a PATTERN of female characters choosing that path after not ‘winning’ the male protagonist with whom they fell in love, there is a problem. And a lot of those ‘tragic ends’ for the female characters who don’t ‘win’ the male protagonist is martyring herself for him.

And when a prominent male character experiences a tragic end, then pretty much all of the women in love with him who are not already dead will join him in that tragic ending (UNLESS they are pregnant with his son, in which case they will get a reprieve – but only temporarily, since they will die tragically when their sons are capable of fending for themselves).

Whether it’s male characters saving damsels in distress, or female characters saving distressed dudes, it can all be done in a sexist way or a non-sexist way. That’s because damsels in distress vs. distressed dude does not get to heart of the matter. What is the heart of the matter? The heart of the matter is whether or not it’s about the male character’s character journey or the female character’s journey (or both). That is the topic of the next post.