A Clever Maid Maneuvers Her Way into Romance
詐妮子調風月
CONTENTS
You can find modules that analyze various adaptations of A Clever Maid Maneuvers Her Way into Romance at the links below. To get a sense of the main themes and historical import of the original Maneuvering into Romance please consult the "General Background" below.- Yanyan 燕燕 (2016)
- A module on a recorded performance of a Sichuan opera adaptation of Maneuvering into Romance.
GENERAL BACKGROUND
The Yuan zaju drama A Clever Maid Maneuvers Her Way into Romance (Zha nizi tiao fengyue 詐妮子調風月, hereafter Maneuvering into Romance) is one of the plays attributed to the major zaju 雜劇 dramatist Guan Hanqing 關漢卿 (c. 1220- after 1279). The play belongs to a group of thirty plays that are among our earliest extant dramatic imprints (Yuankan zaju sanshi zhong 元刊雜劇三十種, mid-fourteenth century).In characteristic Guan Hanqing fashion, Maneuvering into Romance features a bold, spirited, and complex female lead (dan 旦) (Sieber 2022). The four acts of the play revolve around Swallow (Yanyan 燕燕) (cast as the zhengdan 正旦), a maid in the service of a wealthy Jurchen household. Each act gives Swallow an opportunity to voice her feelings around the central dramatic conflict of the play: should a woman of her lowly station be content with being a diligent, obedient, and forbearing servant or should she trust the promises of an eligible bachelor of higher station and wager the “capital” (benqian 本錢) of her virginity in exchange for marriage? In every act, the tension slowly builds, starting with Yanyan’s high moral self-regard (act 1), her surrender to intimacy (act 2), her public cursing of her man (act 3), and culminating with her maneuvering her way into a happy ending (act 4).
Thus, in what may well be a first in Chinese literary history, a humble maidservant occupies the emotional and moral center of a serious play. Endowed with moral aspirations, complex feelings, and a superior command of many linguistic registers ranging from swear words to classical tropes, the role of the maid exceeds what an audience might have expected from someone of that station. For one, contrary to the stereotypes of maids as loose women, our main character prides herself on her ability to exercise sexual restraint and cleave to a path of virtuous abstention; at the same time, having given into her romantic feelings, she insists on single-minded fidelity, a course of conduct typically associated with gentry women rather than the laboring classes. For another, in contrast to being reduced to the typical role of a simple intermediary facilitating other people’s happiness, our protagonist is shown to have an inner life that rivals that of women of higher standing. Finally, as with Guan’s other heroines, our maid is superbly articulate, eloquently drawing on polite and vulgar language alike, a skill she puts to use to advocate for her own moral integrity and for her own marriage fortunes. As such, Maneuvering into Romance paves the way for other highly developed maid characters in Chinese drama such as Crimson (Hongniang 紅娘) in The Story of the Western Wing or Spring Fragrance (Chunxiang 春香) in The Peony Pavilion.
In terms of a detailed plot summary, in act 1, a relative of the Lady of the House (cast as bu'er 卜兒, an old lady), the noble, handsome, and wealthy Junior Chiliarch (Xiao Qianhu 小千戶) (cast as zhengmo 正末, a non-singing male lead role), pays a visit to the household. In the military organizations of steppe peoples such as the Jurchens, decimal numbers designated military rank similar to the numerical system of the Roman empire. The Lady of the House tasks Swallow with attending to him, an assignment to which Swallow reluctantly agrees. Swallow introduces herself on the stage through an emphasis on her steadfast rejection of both romantic affairs and marriage, a type of union that, according to her, is merely based on an arranged match. Her encounter with Junior Chiliarch, however, changes her perspective when he promises to not only marry her, but redeem her from her indentured status. Here, Swallow confronts a dilemma of whether she should consent to the young man’s proposal and take advantage of this opportunity to leave behind her life as a servant. After some back and forth, Swallow accepts the proposal and has sexual intercourse with Junior Chiliarch. In act 2, Swallow finds out by chance that Junior Chiliarch is now in communication with a wealthy lady from a Jurchen household who has given him a gift, a likely prelude to a marriage proposal. Swallow enters a phase of emotional turmoil. Beset by many conflicting emotions that range from rage to sadness, she resolves to cut her ties with the young man who, she feels, betrayed her.
In act 3, the Lady of the House, unaware of the affair between her nephew and Swallow, sends Swallow to arrange the match between Junior Chiliarch and the young maiden Oriole (Yingying 鶯鶯) (not to be confused with the female character of the same name in The Story of the Western Wing). Swallow seizes this opportunity to stage a tongue lashing of the young bachelor in an attempt to thwart the union between him and Oriole. Nevertheless, not only does this attempt backfire, but Oriole curses Swallow, who at this stage seems to have lost all her hopes of getting married. In act 4, during the wedding ceremony between Oriole and Junior Chiliarch, Swallow gets Junior Chiliarch ready for the wedding. At the time of the toasting, though, unable to contain her frustration, Swallow breaks into an emotional outburst where she tells the Lady of the House about Junior Chiliarch’s vow to marry her. In what we interpret as a happy ending, the Lady of the House in the end agrees to let Swallow become Junior Chiliarch’s concubine.
Maneuvering into Romance dropped out of the Ming transmission of the Yuan zaju corpus, but it nevertheless enjoyed considerable popularity when it first appeared, as is evident in the many contemporaneous sanqu (散曲) songs that touch upon the story:
Day after day, that scoundrel does not rest his hand.
Who would have thought that thereafter I would not receive even a shred of news from him,
Making this as vexingly involved as Yanyan and Yingying’s predicament in Maneuvering into Romance
(QYSQ, 2:1239; trans. modified from Wang 2021: 312).
WORKS CONSULTED CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE
Sui Shusen 隋樹森, ed. Quan Yuan sanqu 全元散曲 (The Complete Yuan Sanqu Songs). rev. ed. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989.
Shih-pe Wang. "Plays Within Songs: Sanqu Songs from Literary Refinement (ya) to Popular Appeal (su)." Trans. Erxin Wang. The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 8:2 (2021): 307-340.
Patricia Sieber. "The Pavilion for Praying to the Moon and The Injustice to Dou E: The Innovation of the Female Lead." In How To Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology, edited by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, 78-100. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.