Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

well that I should be dutiful to my parents-in-law and be respectful to my husband, but as soon as I see him, everything is changed. I suppose this must be due to a deep hatred toward him incurred in my previous life. I can’t control myself because I am possessed by ghosts and spirits.¹⁸⁴

From the story, it emerges that she cannot but behave with hatred and violence as the lack of marital obedience and filial piety is beyond the power of her will. For a modern reader, one’s success or efforts may appear consistent with the fruits of one’s karma. But less understandable is bad behavior imposed by destiny. Who is responsible for that behavior? Can the idea of karma be used to justify one’s own violent and aggressive behavior, offer an excuse for unjust actions, and ultimately write them off with an impersonal scheme where subjects are considered nothing more than docile instruments? It is always possible to appeal to moral responsibility that consists of the protagonist’s lack of self-cultivation to overcome the legacy of the past as well as the pressure of external phenomena. And to a greater extent, what is the boundary between coercion and license, conditioning and manipulation?

One may object that fiction is not a moral theorem, and thus we cannot expect a coherent answer to such questions. Nevertheless, the evolution of a plot follows a narrative logic. If we consider how the protagonist Chao Yuan ignores all the warnings of the spirits and wastes all the good possibilities of his destiny, abandoning himself to depravity despite having learnt through dreams of his previous existence and the disastrous future that awaits him, the story demonstrates his responsibility in influencing fate.¹⁸⁵ Plaks casts heavy doubt upon the interpretation that the novel is built upon a didactic framework of karmic retribution, although its narrative structure is based on the concept of retribution and the didactic “message” is explicit in the title, in the introductory chapter, as well as in the introductory verse of each chapter and in scattered comments by the author.¹⁸⁶ Plaks demonstrates that one should not fall prey to an overly simplistic understanding of the novel, which appears to point only to retribution as a sincere protestation of universal justice. In reality, the