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

This social influence has been well explained by Durkheim’s conception of the homo duplex, with his body, appetites, and biological nature, on the one hand, and his social and moral consciousness, on the other. Taken together, these two natures of humans best typify the interaction of education, culture, and emotions;¹⁰ thanks to language and culture, the tension between the two is reduced and more or less conciliated as a product of socialization. Not only are self-esteem and the other emotions related to self-assessment—namely pride, shame, and guilt, which combined, account for the internalization of social control and sanction—influenced by society, but all other sentiments, as constructionists have stressed, are also the result of social interaction.¹¹ Continuing along this line, if we take into consideration all aspects of personality in its adaptation to different contexts and situations, we can even talk of homo triplex-multiplex and so on, according to the group and context. This representation of a lacerated self appears again in Honglou Meng in symbolic scenes, which contain the dialectical confrontation of alternative perspectives, such as uniqueness and impermanence of the self. The double Zhen/Jia Baoyu and their encounter through mirror and dream let the reader doubt the consistency or illusory nature of the self and its emptiness.

Not to mention the self-deceptive representation of one’s self,¹² other important subjects of the debate are the “defensive” and “offensive” functions of “face/mask,”¹³ which stand for the attributes of personality involved in the conceptualization of self, as well as a person’s traits, attitudes, and dispositions:¹⁴ It is the “face: that one claims for him/herself through interaction with others, as well as the face recognized by others to him/her. In Chinese literature, we can better elucidate this through a literary case from the “Peony Pavilion” (Mudan Ting 牡丹亭). The contradictions in Du Liniang’s 杜麗娘 personality, before and after her resurrection, between the frail girl, awakened to love and desire, and the strong lady conscious of her family and social duties serve our purpose well here. Du’s regret for the lack of love is the dominant element in her personality before she is brought back to life, while later she struggles