Discussion of Quotes from the Primary Source Reading

[David Ojeda]

I loved that Dr. Tran's session to be very engaging, especially because she chose a text that stirred a lot of emotions in the reader/audience. The primary source begins by reaching out to a female audience, stating that all the mistreatment women endure is due to the importance of food. Women suffer because they are forced to depend on a master for food (the master hits the women); women work arduously in factories to acquire food; women sell their bodies due to poverty; there are also concubines, widows, female farmers, and married women must also suffer because they depend on males to move them ahead in life (390-91). In “Destroying the Family,” Han Yi says the following:

The family is the origin of all evil. Because of the family, people become selfish...women are increasingly controlled by men. Because of the family, everything useless and harmful occurs (people now often say they are embroiled in family responsibilities while in fact they are all just making trouble for themselves). Because of the family, children...are made the responsibility of a single woman. (395)

I do not completely agree with this perspective. Looking at our society, I think families do more good than harm. The quote’s context, though, is a time when women were shackled to the home, unable to survive unless a man in her life lead the way. I can somewhat see her perspective that, for a woman, a family and family obligations can hold her back. If the author of “Destroying the Family” was alive today, I wonder how this essay would change, and what new findings of progress or stagnation the author would find while reflecting on our society.