Sui Sin Far's Wisdom of the New
Defending Pau Lin's Maternal Filicide
Sui Sin Far’s The Wisdom of the New ends with the shocking death of Pau Lin’s son. This essay argues that the primary reason for the maternal filicide is due to cultural resistance and the protection of her son, not the popular interpretation of revenge.
Pau Lin’s Love
Despite the fact that Pau Lin’s feelings of love are never shared, she obviously loves her son. She raised him for the first six years of his life in another country. She plays with him, sings to him, and is the proper Chinese mother. The narrator chooses not to reveal Pau Lin’s feelings of love toward her son, even though the love is evident.
Pau Lin’s Cultural Resistance
Pau Lin’s resistance to culture is evidenced from the very beginning when she “showed no disposition to become Americanized.” She sees her husband with other woman and does not agree with this aspect of American culture nor understands it. She is uncomfortable, a foreigner, who no one tries to understand. She cannot identify with American values and to her becoming “American” and denying your cultural is mortifying and the equivalent of death. When told of a woman who kills herself after becoming Christian, Pau Lin has no visible reaction because she can identify with the story.
Cultural Resistance and Pau Lin’s Son
Her resistance spreads to her son, because he too was raised in a Chinese environment, with the same values as his mother. Pau Lin wanted her son to maintain the Chinese ways and resist American culture. She does this in several instances. Her first sign of displeasure is when she hits her boy for mimicking his father speaking English. She is also very disappointed her son when he let his father cut his queue off. Pau Lin had pride in her Chinese customs and in her upbringing of her son.
Motivation: Not Retaliation
Pau Lin did not kill her son out of retaliation primarily because of the way the short story ended. If her sole motivation had been revenge, she would have made some comment about how now he couldn’t steal her son from her or about how his white woman could no longer affect her son. However, she does neither of these things. She seems genuinely confused as to why he is upset. There is no mockery or sarcasm in her words about her son being free from the cocoon. She believes she has killed her son with good intentions, without revenge.
Protecting Her Son
As a mother, Pau Lin only has her son’s best interests in mind. She does not like the “American man” her husband has become and she does not think it is wise for her son to follow his footsteps. Pau Lin is confronted with a new culture imposing upon her son, she must act out and protect her son (as she sees it). Even her husband sees that Pau Lin has frees her son from “the wisdom of the new” through death. The term “wisdom” is sarcastic for Pau Lin who cannot see the value of the “new” American culture.
Maternal Filicide
Although the majority of readers, especially American, fail to identify with Pau Lin, it does not mean her actions are wholly unjustified. Killing her child is immoral, but she did not did not do it out of revenge or jealousy; she did it out of concern for her child and ultimate cultural resistance.
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