'A hundred loves', 'a thousand lovers': Portrayals of sexuality in the work of thidaa bunnaak

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 451-470

  Harrison, Rachel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER ISSUE; LITERATURE REVIEW; SEXUALITY;

ASIA; EURASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; THAILAND;

EID: 18444370405     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463402000334     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. See, for example, George Bataille, Eroticism (London: Calder and Boyars, 1962);
2. Hélène Cixous, 'Difficult Joys', in The Body and the Text, ed. Helen Wilcox et al. (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 5-30;
3. The Sexual Imagination, ed. Harriett Gilbert (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993);
4. Bloomsbury Guide to Erotic Literature, ed. Jane Mills (London: Bloomsbury, 1993);
5. Lynne Segal, Straight Sex. The Politics of Pleasure (London: Virago Press, 1994);
6. and Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons, Warrior Lovers. Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001).
7. Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 1985);
8. Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London: Viking Penguin, 1990);
9. Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996.)
10. Carla Kaplan, The Erotics of Talk: Women's Writing and Feminist Paradigms (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996);
11. Sidonie Smith, Subjectivity, Identity and the Body. Women's Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993);
12. John Phillips, Forbidden Fictions (London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 1999).
13. Fedhwa Malti-Douglas, Woman's Body, Woman's Word (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991);
14. Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker, The Woman's Hand (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
15. Rachel Harrison, 'The Good, the Bad and the Pregnant. Why the Thai Prostitute as Literary Heroine Cannot Be Seen to Give Birth', in Women, Gender Relations and Development in Thai Society, ed. Virada Somsawasdi and Sally Theobald (Chiangmai: Chiangmai University Press, 1997), pp. 323-48;
16. Harrison, 'Sense and Sensuality: Thai Women's Writing of Erotica', paper presented at the Centre of South East Asian Studies, SOAS, June 1998; Harrison, 'The Madonna and the Whore: Self/"Other" Tensions in the Characterization of the Prostitute by Thai Female Authors', in Genders and Sexualities in Modern Thailand, ed. Peter A. Jackson and Nerida M. Cook (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 1999), pp. 168-90;
17. and Harrison, 'The Disruption of Female Desire and the Thai Literary Tradition of Eroticism, Literature and Aesthetics', Tenggara, 41 (2000): 88-125.
18. Susan Fulop Kepner, The Lioness in Bloom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996);
19. Kepner, 'Dropping the Towel: Images of the Body in Contemporary Thai Women's Writing', in Transnational Asia Pacific: Gender, Culture and the Public Sphere, ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim et al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp. 159-79;
20. Niels Mulder, Southeast Asian Images: Towards a Civil Society? (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, forthcoming);
21. Orathai Panya, 'Gender and Sexuality in the Work of Thai Women Writers' (M.Phil/Ph.D. diss., University of London, forthcoming).
22. Interview with Suchaat Sawatsii, March 1997. Thidaa's earliest short stories were published when she was only fourteen years old. According to one source, she produced numerous novels, serialised on the pages of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines; see Bon thanon reuang san: 26 reuang 26 nakphraphan [On the short story road: twenty-six short stories, twenty-six authors], ed. Warun Chatrakun na Ayutthaya and Thawii Ketawandii (Bangkok: Samnakphim Phadung seuksaa, 1962), p. 155. The titles of eight of Thidaa's books are: Kham saaraphaap rak khong ying saao [Confessions of a young woman's love life], Roi phitsawaat [A hundred loves], Mum meut khong dichan [The darker parts of my life], Baap thii saam [The third sin], Saen sawaat soophii [The passions of a young woman], Kinnarii raai ram [The dance of the Kinnari], Jumphit sii chomphuu [The rose-tinted kiss] and Reuduu rak pheung ja phli [The season of love has only just arrived]. A novel entitled Wimaan loi naam [The floating chamber] is advertised in the first edition of Roi phitsawaat and appears to be by Thidaa, though this is not clearly stated. According to Warun and Thawii (p. 156), Thidaa also wrote under the pseudonyms of 'Pink Tulip' and 'Aasaariti'.
23. The only publicly accessible library that possesses any examples of Thidaa's work is that of Cornell University, which catalogues a single copy of Baap thii saam. No other copies appear to be available in public or university libraries, either inside or outside Thailand. Despite references to both Baap thii saam and Mum meut khong dichan in the card index of the National Library of Thailand, copies of the texts are not in fact to be found on the shelves. During field research for this article in 1997, library officials explained that this was because the books in question had been sent away for rebinding, though over a three-month research period they were never reshelved. It is possible that the books were removed from the open collection due to their sexually explicit or socially controversial content; but it is more likely that, as with so much of the literature collection, they have simply been misfiled or lost.
24. Indeed, it was Suchaat Sawatsii who first brought to my attention the existence of Thidaa Bunnaak as a writer of erotica, in our discussions on the treatment of prostitution in Thai short stories; see Harrison, 'The Madonna and the Whore'.
25. Thidaa Bunnaak, Baap thii saam [The third sin] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Laeng phim reua bai, 1966).
26. Thidaa Bunnaak, Mum meut khong dichan [The darker parts of my life] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Phadung seuksaa, 1964).
27. Thidaa Bunnaak, Roi phitsawaat [A hundred loves] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Chokchai thewet, 1950). This novel is sometimes referred to as Roi pact phitsawaat [One hundred and eight loves], possibly because at least one edition was published under this revised title. The number 108 has a broader meaning in Thai as simply 'miscellaneous' or 'multifarious'.
28. Something of the male-dominated nature of the Thai literary world in which Thidaà operated is suggested by the particular phrasing of the 1962 commentary on her career in Warun and Thawii ed., Bon thanon, namely that Thidaa was one among 'a group of women writers of a certain era that were able to write such insightful stories that even male writers had to acknowledge as successful in their genre [yom kom hua hai nai naew khian]' (p. 154, emphasis added).
29. Most notably, it takes up some of the strands of debates raised in Jackson and Cook ed., Genders and Sexualities, and in Penny Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000).
30. When Sarit came to power in 1958, Article 17 of his interim constitution in effect placed a ban on the publication of material, fictional or otherwise, that was deemed supportive of any broadly 'leftist' ideology. In such a climate, creative literature lost all traces of social and political commentary and instead turned its attentions to themes deemed by radical critics as escapist and bourgeois. See, for example, the comments made by the literary critic Suchaat Sawatsii, referred to in Sidaoru'ang, A Drop of Glass (Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1994), p. 18.
31. See, for example, Suwannii Sukhonthaa, Khwaam rak khrang sut thaai [Love for the last time] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Saamsii, 1997 reprint);
32. Sukhonthaa, Khon roeng meuang [The story of Phring] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Dok yaa, 1997 reprint);
33. and Sidaoreuang's short story 'Fan rak khong Saai Rung" [Saai Rung's dream of love], available in English translation by Susan Kepner in The Lioness in Bloom: Modern Thai Fiction about Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 218-27.
34. The sensuous elements of Suwannii's work are discussed to a limited extent in the same volume, pp. 107-14, which also includes a translation of her short story 'Nguu rong hai dokmaai yim' [Snakes weep, flowers smile] ; in Harrison, 'Sense and Sensuality'; and, in detail, in Orathai Panya, 'Gender and Sexuality'. The topic of sensuality in Sidaoreuang's short stories is covered in greater depth in Rachel Harrison, 'Writing and Identity in the Short Stories of Sidaoru'ang' (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1996).
35. See, for example, the novels by Sujindaa Khantayaalongkot: Jai duang pliaw [A lonely heart] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Baan nangseu, 1994);
36. Daet naao [The cool sun] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Baan nangseu, 1995);
37. Daet sii khaao [The white sun] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Baan nangseu, 1995);
38. and Plmap raang meuan jing [A seemingly true picture] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Baan nangseu, 1997).
39. Sujindaa (b. 1951) is a prolific and well-established writer of sexually explicit fiction of the 1990s. The definition of her work as erotic by some and pornographic by others is a topic discussed in detail in Harrison, 'Disruption of Female Desire'. Sujindaa's approach to female sexuality in her work is too complex a subject to be dealt with effectively in this article and is instead to be discussed separately in future publications. 18 See, for example, Sumitraa Jan-ngao, 'Khon baap' [Sinners], in Reuang rak nak khian ying [Love stories by women writers] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Dok yaa, 1996), pp. 183-202. Having worked as a journalist for the Matichon group throughout her career, Sumitraa (b. 1959) began publishing erotic short stories in the 1990s; 'Khon baap' provides a good example of her style. By comparison with Thidaa's work, Sumitraa's text is much more sexually explicit and erotically charged and the female protagonist contrastingly less cynical and more romantic. Similar to Thidaa's writing in its liberal interpretation of sexual morality, the story deals with an apparently loving relationship between a married man and his mistress, brought to a premature end on the orders of the man's wife.
40. Arayaa (b. 1957) is a well-known contemporary artist and a lecturer in art at Chiangmai University. She wrote her first short story in 1981 and is the author of two short story collections discussing aspects of Thai female sexuality. Her style is defined by the editor of her 2000 collection as pleuay tae mai po (revealing but not pornographic). See, for example, Phuuying tawan ok [Eastern women] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Khlet thai, 1993); and Kheun sin klin kaanmrot [The night that sexual desire ended] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Saamsii, 2000).
41. It has not been possible to discover any further information on this author, other than that her short story 'Feminiin' [Feminine] was published in the literary magazine Cho' Kaaraket (31 [1997]: 108-18), edited by Suchat Sawatsii, and provoked considerable controversy. For further details of this text see also Harrison, 'Sense and Sensuality'.
42. Praathanaa is a young, feminist columnist writing for the weekly journal Matichon sut sapadaa [Matichon Weekly]. The opinions expressed in her column have proved highly contentious and solicited numerous letters of complaint. She is the author of a short story in Thai with the English title 'Fake Orgasm', published in Sanaam Yaa [The grass patch] (Bangkok: Samnakphim Kokaandii, 2000).
43. See also Harrison, 'Sense and Sensuality' and 'Disruption of Female Desire' and Orathai, 'Gender and Sexuality'.
44. Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson, 'Genealogies of Western Desire: The Thai Night Market in the Western Imagination', in Jackson and Cook ed., Genders and Sexualities, p. 191.
45. This theme is studied in detail in Harrison, 'The Good, the Dad, and the Pregnant", 'The Madonna and the Whore', and 'Disruption of Female Desire'. The topic of women with multiple partners and those with experience of widowhood is well catalogued in the novels of Suwannii Sukhonthaa, such as Khwaam rak khrang sut thaai and Khon roeng meuang.
46. Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand, p. 189.
47. John Knodel et al., 'Sexuality, Sexual Experience, and the Good Spouse: Views of Married Thai Men and Women', in Jackson and Cook ed., Genders and Sexualities, p. 96.
48. Van Esterik, Materializing Thailand, p. 193.
49. Ibid., pp. 192, 194.
50. For an overview of Thai literary eroticism, see Harrison, 'Disruption of Female Desire'. Wibha Kongkananda argues that Lilit Phra Lo may well have been written by a female courtier owing to the sensitivity of its understanding of motherhood and the emphasis on the beauty of Phra Lo as opposed to the princesses he seduces; her evidence has not been substantial enough to achieve widespread acceptance among her peers. See Wibha Kongkananda, Khomuum sammutithaan lag tritsadii mai kiawkap kawiiniphon Reuang Yuan Phaai lae Lilit Phra Lo [Some new speculations and theories relating to the poetic works Yuan Phaai and Lilit Phra Lo] (Nakhon Phathom: Silpakorn University Press, 1995).
51. Kepner, Lioness in Bloom, p. 10.
52. Jetsadaa na Baangluang, 'Chiiwit Thidaa Bunnaak' [The life of Thidaa Bunnaak], in Thidaa, Roi phitsawaat, p. 293.
53. Ibid., pp. 289-91. Thidaa's choice of reference to Maria Montez (1912-51) is an interesting one, doubtless inspired by showings of films starring the Dominican-born actress, who was popular in Thailand at the time. Known as an exotic and tempestuous leading lady, Montez was also called 'The Queen of Technicolor' and 'Dominican Dynamite'. She appeared in a number of films about the 'Orient', playing the part of Asian women from both the Middle and Far East.
54. This is substantiated by both Jetsadaa (ibid., p. 344) and Orathai, 'Gender and Sexuality'. It has not been possible, owing to the paucity of material available, to ascertain how many times her work was reprinted and in what quantity. The first edition of Roi phitsawaat had a print run of 2000 copies, standard for most Thai literary works.
55. Personal interviews with Suchaat Sawatsii and the librarian of Daily News, April 1997.
56. Warun and Thawii ed., Bon thanon, p. 155; for full details on her readership, see Orathai, 'Gender and Sexuality'.
57. See Utsanaa Phloengtham, Reuang khong Jan Daraa [The story of Jan Daraa], 6th edn (Bangkok: Phraew Samnakphim, 2000); and Utsana Phleungtham, The Story of Jan Darra, tr. Phongdeit Jiangphatthanarkit and ed. Marcel Barang (Bangkok: Thai Modern Classics, 1995).
58. See also Marcel Barang, The Twenty Best Novels of Thailand. An Anthology (Bangkok: TMC, 1994). The film director Nonzee Nimibutr established an international reputation with his 1997 film 2499 - anthaphaan khrong meuang [known in English by the title 'Daeng Bireley and the Young Gangsters'] and Naang Naak, made in 1999.
59. Thidaa, 'Kulaap paa lae malaeng phu meuang [The forest rose and the city carpenter bee] in Baap thii saam, p. 129. The insect allusion is extremely well established, noted as early as the fifteenth century in the niraat poem Khlong thawaathotsamaat [Verses of the twelve months]. For fuller details of this symbolism see Harrison, 'Disruption of Female Desire', pp . 95-6.
60. Thidaa, 'Kulaap paa', pp. 122-3.
61. Ibid., p. 137.
62. Ibid., p. 137.
63. Jetsadaa, 'Chiiwit Thidaa Bunnaak', pp. 337-8; the comment on phet pralaat is on p. 346.
64. Ibid., p. 336.
65. In the link established here between writing erotica and prostitution, one is reminded of the early experiences of the well-known Western writer of erotica, Anais Nin. Of Cuban, Spanish, Danish and French descent, and working from Paris in the 1940s, Nin wrote her first erotic pieces for a private collector for the commercial fee of a dollar a page. In a postscript to her diaries, written in 1976, she made the important observation with regard to women's writing of erotica that 'At the time we were all writing erotica at a dollar a page, I realised that for centuries we had only one model for this literary genre - the writing of men'; Anais Nin, 'Postscript', in Delta of Venus (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 13. Nin goes on to comment that 'I was already conscious of a difference between the masculine and the feminine treatment of sexual experience .... I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate' (pp. 13-14).
66. Thidaa, 'Naam taa jnak hua jai' [Tears from the heart] in Baap thii saam, pp. 171-2; the story is discussed in greater detail in Harrison, 'The Madonna and the Whore'.
67. Thidaa, 'Phan chuu [A thousand lovers] in Meum meut, p. 203. The name Ritchong has no obvious meaning in Thai and sounds as though it may even have been adapted from a foreign language such as French. As Athiraat himself comments in the text, the name Ritchong sounds beautiful (phro') and has a chic (ke) and stylish (ko) ring to it, 'like the name of a woman in a fantasy novel that he could repeat to himself over and over again in his dreams' (p. 106).
68. Ibid., p. 213.
69. Ibid., p. 215.
70. For further details see Harrison, 'Disruption of Female Desire'.
71. Wibha Kongkananda, 'A Study of the Hero in Lilit Phra Lo,' paper presented at UNESCO, Paris, November 1982, p. 21.
72. Thidaa, 'Phan chuu, p. 204.
73. Thidaa, 'Saneh in Baap thii snam, pp. 183-4.
74. Ibid., pp. 183-4.