Shin-Kickers From History: The Trung Sisters of Vietnam
In 39 CE, two young women led Vietnam in its first rebellion against the Chinese empire, which had then ruled the country for 150 years.
Trung Trac and Trung Nhi were born in a small town in north Vietnam around 14 CE, the daughters of a Vietnamese lord who served as a prefect under the Chinese. According to legend, the sisters were trained in the arts of war by their mother.*
In 36 CE, a new, more oppressive, governor, To Dinh (aka Su Ting) took over the province. He demanded bribes and raised taxes on salt** . He taxed peasants for fishing in the rivers. In short, he was just the type of greedy and inept official who triggers rebellions in classic Chinese historiography.
Trung Trac, together with her husband Thi Sách, plotted to mobilize the local aristocracy to revolt. Learning of their plots and assuming that Thi Sách was the driving force of the conspiracy, To Dihn had him arrested and hung his body from the city gates as a warning to other would-be rebels.
To Dinh's efforts to put down the rebellion by cutting off its head back-fired. Instead of giving up, the sisters raised an army of 80,000 troops, most of them in their twenties and a large number of them women.*** Their elderly mother served as one of their generals.(Evidently shin-kicking is hereditary.)
The Trungs and their untrained army drove the Chinese from Vietnam, liberating sixty-five strongholds along the way, and created a new state that stretched from Hue in the south into southern China. To Dinh was so terrified that he disguised himself by shaving off his hair and fled the country in secret.
For two years the Trung sisters ruled their newly independent kingdom unchallenged. In 41 CE, the Chinese emperor sent an army commanded by one of his best generals to reconquer Vietnam. For two years, the sisters defended their borders against the Chinese, but eventually they were worn down by the empire's military and financial superiority. The Trungs fought their last battle near modern Hanoi in 43 CE. Thousands of Vietnamese soldiers were captured and beheaded and more than 10,000 surrendered.
The Trung sisters were not among those who surrendered. Instead, they committed suicide, which the Vietnamese believed was the more honorable option. Some sources say they drowned themselves in the Hát River; others claim they floated up into the clouds.
In the centuries that followed, the Trung sisters were held up as idealized examples of national courage in the struggle against first Chinese and later French domination. Over time,a Buddhist religious cult grew up around their memory and temples were built in their honor. Today they are remembered as national heroines in Vietnam, where the anniversary of their suicide is a national holiday.
* It may well be true, but this kind of thing has to be taken with a whole shaker of salt. As Antonia Fraser points out in The Warrior Queens, the Tomboy Syndrome is a standard trope in stories of women warriors.
**Always a bad idea. Salt is more than just a condiment.
***Vietnamese stories emphasize the heroism of the young women in the Trung's army: one, General Phung Thi Chinh is said to have given birth on the battlefield, strapped the infant to her back, and continued fighting.
The Lost Art of Dress
I've put off reviewing Linda Przybyszewski's The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish for several months now. In part because life was busy life-ing. In part because I had other things I wanted to write about. But mostly because I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the book.
The Lost Art of Dress is the history of what Przybyszewski calls the "Dress Doctors": teachers, writers, retailers and designers who taught American women how to dress in the first half of the twentieth century. And if that were all it is I would be perfectly happy with the book. She begins with the rise of home economics as a branch of the Department of Agriculture and ends with the 1960s, when youth revolted against dictates on personal style as well as other forms of social constraint. Przybyszewski's history is solidly researched, engagingly written and often surprising.*
But Przybyszewski has an axe to grind--the slovenliness of modern America--and she grinds it hard. (Now that I think about it, the title sort of gives it away) I have some sympathy with her position. I feel that Casual Friday in the workplace has proven to be the thin-edge of the wedge in many businesses. And I regularly see people wearing clothes in public that I would be embarrassed to wear at home while doing grimy work.** Nonetheless, I often found myself grinding my teeth, putting the book down and muttering "no, no, no".
There is a great deal to admire in The Lost Art of Dress. If you are interested in the history of clothing or the changing roles of women, I recommend it strongly.*** Perhaps with a salt-rimmed margarita on the side.
* I was particularly stunned by the feminist roots of home economics. My personal experience of home economics class was--not feminist. And not pleasant. My strongest memories are being yelled at for mixing biscuit dough with my hands (a great way to get the texture right but not hygienic enough for the instructor), walking around the classroom with books balanced on our heads for posture (I'm very good at this), and learning to take off gloves properly. Not to mention the girl who ran the sewing machine needle through her finger. Screams! Blood!
**Let me make it clear I am not talking about the creative and/or subversive dress styles of the rebellious young.
***If you're specifically interested in twentieth century clothing, let me point you toward The Vintage Traveler .
Laughter in Ancient Rome
At some level, humor is a personal thing, as any one knows who's made a joke only to be greeted with a fish-eye stare or squirmed uncomfortably as everyone around her laughs at something that seems--not funny. Humor seems to be tied to time, place, personality, age, and occasionally gender. If that's the case, why do we still laugh at some Roman jokes two thousand years later?
In Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up, classicist and social commentator Mary Beard addresses not only the questions of when, how and why ancient Romans laughed, but what their "laugh culture" tells us about their society--and ours.
After a brief introduction in which Beard considers two examples of laughter from Roman history, the book is divided into two parts. The first looks at theories of laughter (ancient and modern), the methodological difficulties of writing a history of laughter, the differences between Roman laughter in Latin and Greek texts and the question of what we mean by "that superficially unproblematic adjective Roman." The second part focuses on four aspects of Roman laughter: the famous orator Cicero's discussion of the proper (and improper) ways to evoke laugher in an audience, the relationship between laughter and power in ancient Rome, the importance of mimicry in Roman humor, and the Roman joke book known as the "laughter lover." Along the way, Beard debunks the popular image of Saturnalia as the precursor to Carnival, argues that smiling is a social construct, looks at the Roman roots of "monkey business" and stops just short of claiming that the joke as we know it was a Roman invention.
Written in Beard's trademark combination of erudition and effortless prose, Laughter in Ancient Rome is a fascinating combination of history, psychology, linguistic exploration and humor. This is scholarly writing at its best: using a seemingly narrow topic to illuminate larger cultural issues.
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.