The Enduring Wisdom of Pearl S. Buck: Revisited

This essay builds on an essay written over 20 years ago and submitted to a conference held in Zhenjiang, China, in celebration of what would have been Pearl Buck’s 110th birthday. In that earlier piece, I asserted that in her writing and in her life as a modern woman, mother, artist, and activist, the author created a legacy for the generations that would follow her both substantial and enduring. Referencing several of her published works, both fiction and non-fiction, I attempted to demonstrate the timelessness and timeliness of her insights on war, peace, the unity of all people, and the plight of women and children in a war zone.

Events of the past twenty years, especially those of recent months, prompt me to return to these insights. Thus, this essay updates and expands on the earlier one by addressing recent world events to which Pearl S. Buck’s insights continue to be relevant and instructive and by adding illustrative examples of these insights from a few of her many, many short stories, a genre not addressed in the earlier version. Doing so, I hope, will underscore the truly enduring quality of both her writing and her wisdom.

Almost any schoolboy or girl can tell you that the test of a classic work of art is its relevance through time to the experience of the ordinary person. To last, a work of art must speak to the human heart across the ages on matters that engage us, regardless of time and place details. Thus, Homer’s Odyssey continues to touch modern readers because, like Odysseus, we are involved in our own journeys, where the sirens of consumerism beckon, the crashing rocks of violence, disease, and poverty threaten, and disorder and infidelity undermine the security of homes and families. Over and over again, we return to such classics, hoping to find in them what we need to make sense of our own lives and times, and they rarely disappoint us.

Such is the case with the writing and life of Pearl S. Buck. The truth of this statement became particularly clear to me following the events of September 11, 2001, when, reflecting on her writings, I was struck by their enduring wisdom. And in the midst of more recent conflicts and events such as the Afghan War, the invasion of Ukraine, the struggle between Hamas and Israel, the plight of refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers, her words remain as relevant and applicable to our current world situation as they were when she wrote them many decades ago.

Often, Buck places her wisest insights into the mouths of the peasants and farmers of China, whom she knew, loved, and respected. Such is the case with the following excerpt from the 1942 novel Dragon Seed where the main character Ling Tan, reflecting on how ill-suited the human person is to war, says:

The gods made us human beings of soft and easily wounded flesh, for they dreamed us good and not evil. Had they been able to see what men would do to each other, they would have given us shells such as turtles have, into which we could have drawn our heads and our soft parts. But we were not made so, and the gods made us and we cannot change ourselves. We can only bear what is to come and live on if we can, and die if we must.

(83)

This touching, deep, sad reflection demonstrates well how far human beings can fall from their true nature, which Ling Tan and Buck believe is essentially peaceful.

Later in Dragon Seed Ling Tan speaks again – bestowing an eloquent curse on all who wage war – a curse that is timeless in the accuracy with which it describes war’s destructiveness:

“Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars!” he shouted, “and curse them for spoiling our homes and fouling our women and making our life a thing of fear and emptiness! Curse such childish men that cannot have done with fights and quarrels in childhood but must still be children when they are grown and by their fights and quarrels ruin the lives of decent people such as we are!”

(189–90)

Buck, speaking as herself, could be equally eloquent on how to achieve a peaceful world. In A Bridge for Passing, she writes:

Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world, inclusion in national commonwealth, inclusion into an international commonwealth of nations. […] It is only the simple that can be large enough to comprehend all confusions.

(1962, 19–20)

Although she is reflecting here on her beliefs concerning the situation at the United Nations in 1961, her words are appropriate to the contemporary world situation in a variety of ways. And we need only remind ourselves of how often the exclusion of some from the sources of economic and political power have inspired terrorism and unrest all over the world (Think Venezuela, Kenya, France, Argentina, etc.).

For Buck, peace demanded that cultures understand each other. Over her lifetime, she devoted several of her books to building bridges of understanding, making it her mission to bring the peoples of the East and West together. As a result, her novels not only paint detailed pictures of Chinese and other cultures, they also humanize and individualize “the other,” allowing readers to identify with the characters and to recognize in them their common humanity. For example, in the portrait of Ling Tan and his wife Ling Sao in Dragon Seed, Buck creates an archetypal older couple, whose mature and feisty love is easily recognizable as genuine and believable regardless of its national or geographic setting. She writes:

[T]hese two were so close after all the years that she could not bear a word from him if he thought her wrong. To hear anyone else curse her and curse her mother and call her father a turtle did not touch her anywhere. She would only laugh or grow angry and curse back the bigger mouthful. But let her husband say she should have done other than she did, and though she would try to muster up her anger to flout him with, still she never could, and his words, though only two or three, would sink into her heart like a dagger, and she would carry it in her for days. So Ling Tan had learned never to speak to her to say she was wrong unless he must and he let many a small thing pass, knowing how warm and impetuous this woman of his was and how eagerly she secretly wished to do what he liked, though she would have denied she was so, and would have said what she so loved to say, that she feared no man, and not him either.

“You are the best mother in the province,” he said, “and where is there one like you beyond the seas? I would not have you a cool thin soul. I like you hot and gusty and I like your quick tongue even when it is turned on me.”

He laughed as he spoke, and she grew red with pleasure and began to comb her hair again and to hide her pleasure she tried to be surly while she smiled.

“You old turnip,” she said, and searched for something she could do for him. “Come here, old man, and let me see that spot on your cheek and see if you are to have a boil after all these years.”

(96–97)

Likewise, in the character of Madame Wu of Pavilion of Women (Buck 1946) we may recognize the woman who desires personal freedom and autonomy after several years of marriage, and in O-lan of The Good Earth (Buck 1931) the bravery and resourcefulness of refugees and survivors of war seen around the world.

The continuing oppression of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan brings to mind the numerous efforts in Buck’s writing to portray the power and potential of women in a variety of public and private roles. Capable, heroic women abound in her writing. Some, like O-lan of The Good Earth and Ling Sao of Dragon Seed, though of humble peasant stock, have the common sense and ingenuity that help bring prosperity to their households. Quite remarkable is Peony, the bondswoman in the novel of the same name (Buck 1948) who becomes the unlikely instrument in restoring order to a troubled family in the Chinese Jewish community in the city of Kaifeng. Educated women like Jade and Mayli of Dragon Seed represent the new generation of Chinese women whose influence expands beyond the household and becomes political.

Even more remarkable, is the seemingly frail, old woman – Mrs. Wang – of Buck’s 1939 short story “The Old Demon” – who heroically saves her village by harnessing the power of a river. Left a widow when her husband dies young in the nearby river, Mrs. Wang raises her children and farms alone, proving herself a strong, decisive, independent, fearless leader in her community. When all flee her village because of bombing by Japanese planes during the Second Sino-Japanese War, she remains and walks to the dike that holds back the river and opens it, drowning the invading Japanese and herself.

Even prostitutes and bar girls take on dignity and nobility in Buck’s hands. Her most moving portrayal of the prostitute may be one that appears in Dragon Seed in the episode depicting the shelter run by a white Christian woman for women and children escaping the dangers of the Japanese soldiers following the fall of the nearby city of Nanking. To this place Ling Tan has sent his wife, Ling Sao, along with all the women and children of his house. Late one night a group of 100 Japanese soldiers arrive at the shelter and threaten to enter. To buy time, the administrator of the shelter makes a bargain with them. If they agree to stay outside of the shelter, they will be given some women. When the administrator asks the women in the shelter for volunteers, all of them remain silent. Again, the administrator speaks to the soldiers, who are now beating on the gate and shouting. Returning to the women, she reports that she cannot hold back the soldiers any longer. This time, the author writes, “Ling Sao saw that which she was never to forget so long as she lived, a thing which until she died kept her heart soft and tender toward all women called evil” (151). The beautiful young courtesan, next to whom she had slept since her arrival at the shelter and had grudgingly spoken to a few times, rises and says: “Come, my little sisters…come, get up and smooth your hair and put on your smiles again. We must go back to our work” (151). “We are ready” (152), she tells the administrator as the other six follow her out to the gate. Once again there is complete silence among the remaining women, a very different sort of silence, I suspect. Returning to her room, Ling Sao lies there, “her heart crumbling inside her with pity and sorrow and tears came to her eyes and as soon as she wiped them away they came again” (152).

Pearl Buck could look at the darker side of the human community – its prejudices, injustices, rejections, and things kept hidden and secret – when many would not. Back in 1938, she bravely addressed the topic of abortion in a story entitled “If It Must Be So,” posthumously published in 1979 in the collection The Woman Who Was Changed. It tells the story of Dr. Steadiman, a self-described “old-fashioned” doctor who is steadfastly opposed to abortion and refuses to perform one on a long-time patient. Her family is in deep economic distress during the Great Depression, a situation that has caused her husband to suffer very poor mental and physical health. She fears that if she must leave her recently acquired job to take care of an infant, he will decline even further, and she begs the doctor to recommend someone who would be willing to help her if he cannot. He tells her to see him the next day. By that evening, he has just about made up his mind not to perform the abortion when he learns from his young daughter that she had had a so-called back-alley abortion two years earlier. At this point the doctor experiences a dramatic turnaround. In the bright light of his love and devotion, he rejects his principles and defies the law, and in a flash seems to become an advocate for safe, legal abortion. Angry that his daughter was forced to take such a risk, he tells her, “I’d have done it myself…. Damn the law” (118).

This story offers a thoughtful, frank (for 1938), multi-faceted look at this controversial issue, in which the author seems to be recording a culture in transition. The author, however, chose to make clear her own position on the topic in a foreword for Robert Cooke’s 1968 book The Terrible Choice: The Abortion Dilemma, in which she wrote: “At no point […] either as life begins or as life ends [can] we who are human beings […] for our own safety, be allowed to choose death, life being all we know […] Where there is no knowledge except for life, decision for death is not safe for the human race” (39).

Through her life, her writing, and her activism, Pearl Buck urged all to engage with and reflect on the ills and the needs of humanity, and skillfully showed how one person could make a difference. Thus, Welcome House was established, and unadoptable, racially mixed children – the rejected and hidden – were brought into the mainstream of an American community in rural Pennsylvania, inspiring a whole new attitude on the part of adoptive parents and the nation. Thus, it became acceptable for parents to admit that there was an intellectually disabled child in their family. Thus, cultures of the East became known to the West. Thus, the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements received attention.

Remarkably, this legacy of insight and perspective was left by a real, flesh-and-blood woman – no plaster saint. She was a woman who loved beautiful clothes, jewelry, travel in chauffeur-driven cars; a woman who loved hobnobbing with movie stars and world leaders, but also enjoyed mixing with peasants, villagers, and shopkeepers. She was a woman who could be vain about her age, once saying that she had gotten to a point where her age had become indefinite. And she could lose her temper, once dashing a valuable and treasured wooden plate to the floor in a moment of jealousy. She could take pleasure in simple things like a hot bath at the end of a day’s work. She could feel grief and insecurity, but she could struggle through her grief, using the healing power of work, nature, and friends. And she could be honest, very honest, about wanting to believe in an afterlife, but needing some evidence, some scientific proof, of its existence. This she seems to have discovered before her death in 1973. Writing in a 1972 essay entitled “What I Believe,” later published in the 1976 collection Mrs. Stoner and the Sea and Other Stories, she said: “Do I believe in the persistence of my soul, my being, now housed in my mortal frame? My answer is yes, I do believe in a continuing existence” (161).

We can warm to a woman like this – whose accomplishments we might otherwise find daunting – and we can see ourselves carrying forward, in whatever small ways we can, the great legacy she left behind. Doing so continues to be important work. Surely, her wisdom endures.