A Wife’s Frontier

Original link: https://tyingknots.net/2022/07/janet-elliott-wulsin/

Janet Elliott Wulsin, naturalist who walked the Chinese frontier in the early 20th century, expedition doctor, financier and liaison, daughter of New York-raised railroad tycoon, explorer Frederick Wu Erxin’s wife.

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Like many wives who have been “taken into the fields,” she sees the frontier not as the hunting ground her husband intended to build fame, but as a space to share secret words with Tibetan and Mongolian women, a fluid and unbalanced home that she is more responsible for. parents. Although her natural history practice is limited by thousands of families, academic circles and frontiers, it also has many deficiencies from the current academic and gender perspective. A close reading of Jenny’s deeds and reflections on the frontier can give us a clear view of the colonial West. The inner differentiation of travelers. The field view of the omniscient and omnipotent white tough guy can also make us think about another color of the frontier, another possibility of natural history.

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This article, which rethinks the encounter between Western natural history and China from a female perspective from Jenny, will be published in the 5th issue of Dushu magazine in 2022.

Author / Li Jin

01

In the first half of the twentieth century, there were two Wuerxins on the Chinese frontier. Frederick Wulsing is an explorer and zoological researcher who has visited China twice on behalf of Harvard University and the National Geographic Society. On these expeditions, he was accompanied by his wife, Jenny Wolsing, the daughter of a New York-raised railroad tycoon. In 1980, Harvard’s Peabody Museum published Frederick’s account of the two expeditions, but it wasn’t until 2003 that we saw Jenny’s writing and photographs. In this book “The Lost Kingdom,” Jenny Wooshin’s letters and photos take us back to the vanished frontier regimes such as Zhuoni and Dingyuan Camp. These historical materials give us an opportunity to rethink the encounter between Western natural history and China from a female perspective.

Cover of The Lost Kingdom. Source: Author

In the nineteenth century, the European envoys and officials who promoted the development of natural history in China were basically men. Using their spare time at work, these people explore Chinese nature and species around the trading ports, study Chinese language and history, and record Chinese society and life like anthropologists. But we rarely hear of these people’s wives having similar hobbies. The bravery and perseverance required for exploration and investigation seems to always be tied to men. Men are believed to be more tolerant of harsh natural environments and conditions than women, and to withstand the shock of exotic cultures and diseases. They will emphasize the fact that the collection of animal and plant specimens and human race data around the world is mostly male, and the helpers they hire are mostly male.

Janet Elliott Wulsin, 1921. Source: Author

However, it is likely that women were only prevented from participating in the production of naturalistic knowledge because of the constraints of the colonial system. Many European countries did not allow women to make a living in the colonies until the mid-to-late nineteenth century. They feared that the presence of women in large numbers would damage the strong image of European civilization around the world. , these families would demand subsidies because of increased expenses, or they would turn to Bolshevik identification by falling into abject poverty, both of which would increase the burden and difficulty of governance for the colonial government. Therefore, for a long time, some countries only allowed single men to go to overseas colonies to pan for gold, which caused an imbalance in the sex ratio of the population in the home country. In 1911, the British female population was 1.3 million more than the male population. In order to prevent the extra females from being unable to find a spouse, European countries relaxed the control on the movement of women.

It is expected that women who go abroad will continue to perform household chores in accordance with European standards in the newly settled land, ensuring that husbands and children can continue to maintain the identity of the mother country’s culture. Under this white family view, interracial intimacy became taboo, colonial officials who had an affair with natives had to leave their jobs, and white wives were seen as the most conservative force to maintain racial boundaries. George Orwell demonstrated the influence of this discourse in his own Burmese Years through a woman named Elizabeth. In his book, the character has no possessions or skills to earn a living and goes to Myanmar to join relatives after his mother’s death. She hates Burmese culture and markets, and the looks and bodies of Burmese women. To this end, she rejected the pursuit of an enlightened officer who had an affair with the Burmese, and chose to marry an elderly administrator as his wife. Orwell criticized this group of white wives and the closed circles they created: “The innate indifference and viciousness became more and more evident, and the servants were all afraid of her (Elizabeth). She always held intoxicating dinners, Know how to receive the wives of subordinate officials….” However, this discourse, to some extent, uses the colonists’ wives as scapegoats for the system, using them to explain the disconnect between the colonial system and local society. There is a saying that once there are these women, their husbands must build walls to keep them comfortable and prevent them from being raped by the wrath of the natives. Male officials are therefore unable to draw closer to the locals. This stigma suggests that women living abroad may not have the freedom to explore the world around them that might interest them, as men do.

George Orwell, The Years in Burma. Source: Author

The story of Jenny Woolsing, whose husband is an explorer and zoological researcher, has the potential to give us another version of history, and she must follow him on his expeditions in the ethnic regions of China. What does this flow mean to a white woman? During her travels, did she make a contribution to modern science that we don’t know about? Reassessing the role of a wife in modern natural history will be related to the reflection and revelation of power relations: whether the natural history is bound to the male image only because the social environment of the time confines women to the family ? This critique of power can lead to a larger feminist framework: once we have a chance to show that white women are not passive bystanders in the examination, do they have a chance to encounter third world women while being aware of them in each other A common identity as a woman?

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Jenny Woolsing’s upbringing doesn’t seem to have anything to do with adventure. Growing up in the wealthy neighborhoods of New York and Boston, she was taught that women should focus on family business. Her father was in charge of the railroads throughout New England, and it may be that she often looked out the window from the train as a child, and she wanted to escape the circle in which she grew up as a girl. At the age of twenty-three, she met Frederick, a Harvard engineering graduate, at a ball, a man Jenny had never met in her life, who wanted to pursue a career in zoology and anthropology, and The specimens have been collected in East Africa for a year for Harvard’s Museum of Zoology. The two young men quickly fall in love. After the outbreak of World War I, Frederick signed up for the army and was later sent to the front lines in Belgium. In order to be closer to her lover, Jenny was recruited by the American Red Cross to work as a nurse in Paris.

Frederick’s mother was a woman active in Parisian culture. In Paris, she guided Jeanne to the most cutting-edge literature and theatre, drawing nourishment at the salons of the intellectual and the press. This circle replaced the influence of the family of origin on Jenny, but her marriage to Frederick did not escape the class gap. In order to please Jenny’s father, Frederick joined an American company to do finance after the war, but after only one year, he realized that he could not give up his dream of exploring. In 1921, Harvard University asked Frederick if he would accept another commission from the Zoological Museum to collect specimens in China. The American economy was already showing signs of depression at the time, and Jenny’s father hoped that Frederick could use this opportunity to help the family develop overseas markets. He helped Frederick get eleven letters of recommendation, including the Secretary of State. Frederick and Jenny have been preparing for two months. They set off from Seattle, took a boat through Japan and Manila to Shanghai, and boarded a train to Peiping.

Arriving in Peiping, Frederick had given up his business plans. At that time, there was a circle of foreigners in Peiping, and there were many famous animal and plant surveyors, which strengthened Frederick’s determination to conduct surveys. He and Jenny formed a team in Peiping, and the two led the team from Taiyuan, Xinzhou, Datong to Hohhot in Saibei, searching for rare mammals and birds along the way. Frederick contracted malaria in Shanxi. For the next six months, he could only send assistants to continue to collect specimens in Jiangnan, and he recuperated in Shuimo Hutong in Beijing. His team eventually found specimens of Chinese alligators, baiji dolphins and several other rare birds and frogs, helping Harvard scholars refine their knowledge of Chinese and Mongolian animals. It only took a year for the Wu Erxin couple to establish their reputation in the circle.

The first expedition. Source: Author

In May 1922, Frederick returned to the United States to recuperate. He told his father-in-law that he did not find business opportunities in China, but saw a way to climb through academics. He believes that China’s ethnic minorities will sooner or later arouse the interest of the academic community. If he can use the opportunity to collect specimens to study these ethnic groups, he is confident that he will find a job at Harvard and then use his contacts in China to get involved in politics. Whether or not he convinced his father-in-law, Frederick persuaded the president of the National Geographic Society. He and Jenny will receive a two-year grant, this time targeting ethnic minorities in China.

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In 1923, Wu Erxin and his wife formed a new team in Peiping. At first they wanted to go to Guizhou, but eventually chose the relatively stable northwest. Many of the duo’s friends had visited the Northwest, and they all thought it wouldn’t be an easy trip. At that time, the one who knew the northwest best was Anders, who discovered dinosaur egg fossils in the Gobi Desert. Andrews’s wife told Jenny that she had stayed in Peiping when Andrews was investigating, and she had never heard of any woman who would follow her husband to the frontier. This made Jenny even more reluctant to leave her circle in Peiping. She felt that this circle was very similar to the Paris she once lived in, and she also liked the spiritual stimulation that the city of Peiping gave her. The last time she came to China, what she liked most was to decorate her small home in Shuimo Hutong with furniture, silks, blankets, calligraphy and paintings from antique stores. This made her realize that what she wanted was not the adventure of sleeping in the wind. For her, wandering may be more like finding a place comfortable enough to call home.

The family couldn’t live without Frederick, her husband, so Jenny chose to sacrifice. She cut her hair short, and in a letter to her parents, she said that the daughter you carefully raised was “dead forever” and that the short-haired woman in the mirror was going to be “a wild flower on the prairie.” The expedition arrived in Baotou first. From there, they crossed the Tengger Desert to Lanzhou, and then from Lanzhou to Xining and Tibetan areas further afield. Frederick and Jenny will survive every catastrophe along the way, including not only sandstorms, robbers, and water cuts, but also the crippling opium. Every once in a while, they have to pick a place to rest. Whether it is the Dingyuan Yingqi Mansion in Bayanhot, the small building full of poppies in Lanzhou City, or the wooden house assigned to them by Tuoni Zhuoni, in every such place, Jenny always insists on decorating them with the furniture she chooses. Create a sense of ritual in life and a home atmosphere.

The second expedition. Source: Author

But like most husbands, Frederick ignored Jenny’s feelings. He was always anxious about his work, about whether he could control the budget for his expeditions and meet the National Geographic Society’s expectations for photos and specimens. Examiners of that era faced fierce competition for contracts with large institutions. Before they set off, the National Geographic Society promised Frederick to promote the expedition in February and March magazines, but they didn’t see the text until August. Frederick’s report to the National Geographic Society has never been answered, nor has there been word on the gift he sent. In Gannan, the expedition team received a brochure from Harvard, which mentioned all the American expeditions in China, but did not mention them. Frustrated, Frederick felt forgotten. Jenny only dared to express her concerns about her husband when she corresponded with relatives and friends. She believed that her husband was simply unlucky not to make an explosive discovery, and she felt that Frederick wasn’t as good at hyping himself up as Anders or Locke. In an article for National Geographic, Locke claimed that he was the first to film Joni’s Chaum Puja, but he actually arrived at Joni later than Frederick and Jenny. To increase Frederick’s exposure, Jenny even wrote to her family, hoping they could use their ties in New York and Washington to exert some influence.

Surprisingly, even with such great compromises and sacrifices, Jenny still worries about dragging her husband down. In a letter to her mother, she mentioned: “Frederick loves his work, China and the problems he studies. He has begun to think like a scholar… But the problem is with me. Although this life is interesting, But I don’t want to live like this forever.” She didn’t want their marriage to lose their common language, but she couldn’t find a way to help her husband outside of the housework: “It’s a sad thing to love someone but not be able to give him what he wants. ‘, she told her mother-in-law. These occasional self-reproaches show Jenny Woolsing’s contradictory side. She chose an explorer as her husband, and she chose to keep her vision of the unknown world; but when she really had the opportunity to face that world, she somehow failed the encounter because of her concern for her husband. Some feminist scholars may lament that if Jeanne Wolsing had been braver, she might have made a greater contribution to world natural history.

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Either way, Jenny Wooshin proves that it’s entirely possible for women to upend our imaginations about the career of natural history. Although her husband complained that “bringing one woman in the team is equivalent to taking four men,” Jenny has specific and critical tasks in the team. She is responsible for the liaison and finance of the team, as well as the sorting and transportation of specimens. When necessary, she catches snakes, hunts wild boars, and packs the camel team just like the male team members. Frederick took up photography after receiving a grant from the National Geographic Society, and he gave Jenny the task of developing and enlarging the photos. Along the way, Jenny developed thousands of negatives in a makeshift darkroom. She also uses her experience as a nurse to keep the team healthy. By practicing medicine and donating medicine, she helped the team win the goodwill of the local society, and many of the specimens actually came from farmers and hunters who came to see a doctor. These details are proof that women can influence the production of naturalistic knowledge as much as men, and there must be many women throughout history who have driven nineteenth and twentieth century investigation in ways we don’t know of.

Perhaps, the more we look for the figures and voices of female examiners in history, the more likely we are to discover the discipline and power that surrounds them. Compared with many women of the same generation, Jenny Wulsing did not slip into obedience to patriarchal politics from childhood. On the contrary, her unique life trajectory and marriage proved that this is a woman who wants to control her own life. But Jenny Wu Erxin still fell into the whirlpool created by her husband: he brought her to China, but he did not give her the China she wanted. In the conflict, she could only choose to compromise and sacrifice. Jenny Woolsing shows us the complex side of female subjectivity. When unequal gender practices and unjust family relationships shape women’s sense of love, they may also run into the cage of power when they want to break through. There is no clear boundary between women as agents and women as victims, and seemingly free choices may be the replication and confirmation of power relations.

We may be able to understand Jenny Woolsing’s interactions with frontier women from this swing. Whether it’s in a formal social setting or a chance encounter on the road, Jenny especially likes to write about these interactions in her letters. When talking about how Tibetan girls made fun of Frederick’s appearance, she said they were “beautiful” and “direct”. Talking about how she communicates with Mongolian women about jewelry, sewing kits and braids, she says it’s “a common language for all women.” Jenny Wurshin undoubtedly has a vague sense of the common identity of women, which explains why she cares so much about Chinese women’s smoking addiction, footbinding, poor hygiene, and the hierarchical relationship between older and younger women. As postcolonial researchers have pointed out, white women traveling overseas are more likely than men to notice how unequal social institutions limit the development of local women. But we don’t know if Jenny Woolsing, when she bemoaned the plight of women on the frontier of China, by putting herself in the position of an observer, temporarily forgot that a similar mechanism of power also limited her as a white man through unequal marriage. women’s freedom.

Jenny Wooshin’s story highlights the implications of gender inequality for understanding the colonial world. Influenced by the post-colonial trend, when scholars criticize how Western colonists used strong discourse to shield the voices of the bottom, they often ignore that there are also divisions within the rulers. Any scholar who wants to critique colonialism from a gender perspective needs to realize that white women are just as likely to be victims of the colonial system as Indigenous women. European women were deprived of their freedom to enter and leave the colonies for a long time. After being able to participate in the construction of the colony, they were also relegated to the worst side of the colonial order, as if without their interference, the male colonists could better achieve reconciliation with the local society and realize the colonial power as the enlightener side. Jenny Woolsing certainly had more freedom than many of her contemporaries. But when her class advantage is diluted in China, thousands of miles away, she makes it clearer that even girls from the upper classes are subject to male-dominated marriages as individuals.

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