Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233

Nhung Tuyet Tran,‘Woman as Nation: Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories’
Gender & History, Vol.24 No.2 August 2012, pp. 411–430.

Woman as Nation: Tradition and Modernity

Narratives in Vietnamese Histories
Nhung Tuyet Tran

In many national histories, certain features become distinct signifiers of cultural au-
thenticity within that country’s traditions. In current academic, political and popular
discourses on Vietnam, ‘Woman’ emerges as the embodiment of Vietnamese tradi-
tion and as a key signifier of that country’s readiness for modernity.1 The Vietnam
Women’s Union, the key state institution charged with implementing gender equity
laws in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, proclaims that Vietnamese women ‘preserve
[Vietnamese] uniqueness and play an important role in the development of identity and
cultural genius of its people (giữ gı̀n phát triển bản sắc tinh hoa văn hoá dân tộc)’.2
As the embodiment of Vietnamese tradition, ‘Woman’ is represented in the schol-
arly and popular imaginations in three reified forms: a sign of Confucian oppression,
of Vietnamese uniqueness or of Southeast Asian cohesiveness. At the heart of these
representations is the notion that Vietnamese women’s historical social status signals
the country’s readiness for modernity.3 In this article, I argue that these models of
Vietnamese womanhood, born out of French colonial efforts to define Vietnamese
authenticity and re-articulated by Vietnamese political actors and scholars to represent
national uniqueness, have been central to the formation of the modern Vietnamese
nation state. In the twentieth century, French colonial scholars and their Vietnamese
counterparts deployed the image of the ‘traditional’ Vietnamese woman as an impor-
tant measure of the ‘cultural distance’ between Vietnam and the West, a practice that
Westerners have long used to mark the stage of modernity for the colonised world.4
In the postcolonial era, these discourses have lingering effects on the lives of contem-
porary Vietnamese women, whose economic and political futures are tied to national
and international representations of their experiences.
When represented as the embodiment of Confucian oppression, Vietnamese
women and their historical social position characterised all that was wrong with lo-
cal culture – Chinese influence, patriarchal rule and Vietnamese backwardness. In
this context, only the establishment of Western-style modernity in terms of secular-
ity, individualism and democracy could free Vietnamese women from the shackles of
tradition. French colonial officials charged with implementing the civilising mission,
Vietnamese nationalists advocating the adoption of Western institutions and interna-
tional development organisations hoping to emancipate Vietnamese women from their
traditional roles have collectively produced and perpetuated this model of Vietnamese

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412 Gender & History

womanhood. In the second major model of Vietnamese womanhood – that of the

‘Woman’ embodying a uniquely national tradition – she paradoxically represents the
country’s authentic traditions and she marks the country’s readiness for Western-style
modernity. This image of Vietnamese womanhood relies upon the widely accepted
claim that Vietnamese women enjoyed unparalleled property rights in the early mod-
ern period, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, demonstrating the country’s
historic resistance to Chinese cultural domination.5 For the promoters of this model, the
existence of a fifteenth-century legal code that is believed to have guaranteed women
equal property rights signalled the potential for the Vietnamese to adapt the ideals of a
modern, industrialised society to their own traditions. A second generation of French
colonial scholar officials, the Vietnamese legal scholars they trained to harmonise West-
ern institutions with local traditions, Vietnamese nationalists and Western scholars hop-
ing to link Vietnamese development with European modernisation narratives became
the key engineers and transmitters of this particular model of Vietnamese womanhood.6
By embodying Vietnamese identity, the Vietnamese ‘Woman’ symbolises a cul-
tural tradition to be either destroyed or preserved. ‘Traditional’ culture, in these dis-
courses, is represented as the structures and meanings attached to Vietnamese insti-
tutions before French colonisation. In each of the narratives, Vietnamese ‘Woman’ is
often contrasted with an idealised image of a Chinese ‘Woman’, whose bound feet
symbolise the oppressiveness of Confucianism. This historicist narrative traces the de-
volution of matriarchal rule into a patriarchal society under Chinese influence, which
reached its zenith in the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1945).7 The advent of European
thought systems – whether religious or political – could potentially emancipate the
country (or its women) from a doomed trajectory. On the flip side of the discussion, the
existence of such enlightened institutions in traditional Vietnamese society – such as
equal property rights for women and a codified bilateral succession system – signalled
the country’s potential to embrace political modernity and Western liberal or socialist
institutions.8 These discourses were ostensibly about Vietnamese women’s legal status
in the pre-modern period, but they have been central to debates about Vietnam’s cul-
tural identity and its development. Though they shape contemporary understandings of
Vietnam’s past and development potential, these models of Vietnamese womanhood
emerged out of colonial-era debates on legal reform.

Colonial rule, gender and historiography

The imposition of formal French power in the nineteenth century brought models of
linear historical writing to Vietnam.9 Prior to the introduction of this linear model,
history writing had enjoyed a prominent role in Vietnamese court life, with each
imperial dynasty commissioning a chronicle of the major events, natural calamities
and fortunes of the previous one. Though these chronicles also provided explanations
for the emergence of the current regime, the narratives were based on a cyclical notion
of time, reset at the beginning of the new dynasty.10 The new version of history
writing that the French introduced supplanted dynastic time with linear time and
drew upon particular institutions to represent Indochina’s past and its potential for
development.
French colonial narratives of Vietnamese history explicitly placed the country’s
development within a linear framework, with the Vietnamese (or Khmer and Lao)

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 413

native occupying a perpetually less developed position than his counterpart in the
metropole. French colonial rule, through enlightened political and social institutions,
could lift Vietnamese natives from their state of backwardness as a result of Chinese
influence.11 The earliest officials charged with realising the civilising mission em-
phasised Vietnam’s special relationship with China, arguing that Vietnamese society
and culture simply mimicked that of its neighbour to the north.12 As was popular in
other colonial histories of the period, they identified women as key markers of cultural
authenticity. Like their Chinese counterparts in similar narratives, Vietnamese women
appeared as victims lacking agency, oppressed by Confucian cultural practices and pa-
triarchal kinship patterns preserved by an insular village system. Eliacin Lurô’s Cours
d’Administration Annamite, a 700-page manual for officials training in the colonial
corps, efficiently transmitted this construction of Vietnamese womanhood to the new
agents of France’s colonial experiment, the students who would become civil servants
in the colonial administration. Future officials learned from the manual that the Viet-
namese father was ‘lord of the house’ (chúa gia), who wielded absolute power in the
family.13 Though Lurô acknowledged that women might have enjoyed limited property
claims, he argued that they were nonetheless relegated to vastly inferior positions in
society. Luro’s colleague Paul Ory implicitly suggested that women were dispossessed
in Vietnamese society by noting that only male babies could be registered for benefits at
the village or state level.14 This particular model of the oppressed Vietnamese woman
enabled an enlightened colonial official to justify his role in colonial domination as
one step within the broader goal of modernising the colonised world.
As France’s colonial experiment in Indochina evolved, a younger generation
of scholar officials uncomfortable with the assimilationist goals implicit in colonial
rule created a model of Vietnamese womanhood that challenged the assimilationist
narratives. The need to offset the popularity of the Japanese victory over the Russians
in 1905, the emergence of a strong Chinese nationalist movement, general difficulties
in implementing the ‘civilising mission’ and a shift in French intellectual trends in the
métropole created opportunities for association advocates to emerge.15 For colonial
officials on the ground in Indochina, the pressures of the Chinese nationalist movement
are likely to have influenced their identification of Vietnamese culture and history as
unique and separate to its powerful northern neighbour.16
The new-orientalist anthropologists and historians of France’s scholarly arm in
Indochina, the École Francaise Éxtrême Orient (EFEO), helped to shift the debate on
colonial rule in general and legal reform in particular. Charged with finding ways to
harmonise indigenous tradition with French institutions, they used the expertise they
acquired through their study of local culture. They mediated between intellectual trends
toward ‘association’ in the métropole and their responsibility to govern Indochina in
the face of the external threat of pan-Asian nationalism and anti-French uprisings
internally.17 Supported by none other than the Indochinese Governor Général Paul
Doumer, these scholar-officials directly linked France’s colonial goals with research
that would discover and describe the origins, explain the anomalies and illustrate
the diversity of France’s colonies.18 They made their arguments by publishing nu-
merous scholarly essays, highlighting the uniqueness of Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese
cultural institutions, in the mouthpiece of the EFEO, its annual Bulletin. In these es-
says, they championed a form of colonial rule that melded indigenous practice with
Western-liberal institutions.

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414 Gender & History

Like the colonial officials before them, the young orientalists drew upon Viet-
namese ‘Woman’ as the embodiment of tradition, though their model reflected the
readiness of Vietnamese culture for French civilisation. To support their argument,
these scholars wrote Vietnamese women into an ancient, tolerant culture that could be
guided toward modernity by culturally appropriate policies. In 1908, Claude Maitre,
director of the EFEO, articulated the clearest link the colonial government would make
between women’s status, Vietnamese culture and legal reform. He commissioned Ray-
mond Déloustal to provide a French translation of the Lê Dynasty’s (1428–1783) legal
code, arguing that its regulations reflected authentic Vietnamese custom. ‘The study of
justice under the Lê [is] not only important for the study of history [but] also important
for understanding Annamite mentality’, Maitre claimed.19 The provisions in the Lê
Code that guaranteed women’s property claims, he added, ‘[reflects] the only way in
which the Annamites have demonstrated their incontestable superiority over the other
peoples of the Far East in the roles that they have given to women, roles [which]
were almost equal to men’s roles’.20 Although Déloustal’s translation was much more
ambiguous than this distortion, Maitre’s claims created a new role that Vietnamese
‘Woman’ would play in the country’s history.21 She now stood as the key signifier of
the country’s readiness for modernity.
Part of the EFEO’s mandate included the training of indigenous intellectuals to
supplant the Confucian scholar model, perceived to be sympathetic to the revival of
the Vietnamese monarchy, with that of a ‘disinterested intellectual’.22 These French-
trained intellectuals became key transitional figures in elaborating the significance of
‘Woman’ as markers of Vietnamese uniqueness into the new century. Although they
were an integral part of the colonial project, many of these men worked tirelessly
through their scholarship and advocacy to wrest increased political autonomy for
themselves and their compatriots. One of the greatest successes of this era included
the establishment of a committee to reform contemporary (French colonial) civil law
in 1927.23 In the next two decades, these scholars argued that ‘traditional’ Vietnamese
custom, as exemplified in the Lê Code’s statutes on women and property, represented
the country’s approaching of Western modernity.24 The legal code of the Lê Dynasty,
argued one, ‘was not content with simply affirming in theory of equality between the
spouses . . . but elaborated a system to protect the married woman’.25 Nguyễn Huy Lai,
elaborating on this model, suggested that the modern features of traditional marriage
practices meant that the Vietnamese were ready for greater political autonomy.26 If, as
Tường, Lai and Chương argued,Vietnamese women enjoyed such rights in the deep
recesses of their history, then the principles of individuality, democracy and gender
equality – key markers of a modern society – were ingrained in Vietnamese custom,
proving that the country was on the cusp of modernity.
Male political leaders also deployed this model of a gender egalitarian past to
offset growing demands for women’s liberation within Vietnamese society. By the
1920’s young Vietnamese students had been calling for social reforms that would free
young women from ‘traditional’ culture, though they differed on how to define that
tradition. Responding to these calls, Nguyễn Ma.nh Tường and Trần Văn Chương, pro-
lific contributors to the EFEO’s publication series, advised young Vietnamese women
to eschew Western models of women’s liberation and look to their heritage for evi-
dence of gender equity.27 More than the native ‘disinterested intellectuals’ the French
had hoped to create, men like Nguyễn Huy Lai, Nguyễn Ma.nh Tường and Trần

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 415

Văn Chương became powerful power-brokers in twentieth-century Vietnam, working

within the colonial system to promote their vision for the future of their country. Along
with their competitors and colleagues, they drew upon the model of the unique Viet-
namese ‘Woman’ for their particular political agendas. Born out of an effort to improve
colonial rule, the image of a unique Vietnamese ‘Woman’ became a key signifier of na-
tional uniqueness who would be marshalled in the rhetorical struggle for the country’s
future.

Vietnamese nationalism and the emergence of ‘Woman’ as nation

Voices calling for Vietnamese freedom from French rule were by no means uniform,
but they shared a reliance on using ‘Woman’ as a symbol for the country’s cultural
traditions. Whether ‘Woman’ represented the problems of the country or the promise
of its future, she embodied the country’s position on the development timeline. An
older generation of reformist scholars had argued that the only way to save the nation
was to understand the unique role that a woman played in the country’s future: she
would preserve its traditions through the proper education of its new (male) citizens.
Young radicals eschewed any pretence of preserving tradition and appropriated the
image of an oppressed ‘Woman’ to signify the country’s weakness. Elite women drew
upon the prevailing discourses for their own purposes. Some women concentrated on
concrete reforms to improve their social positions. Other young radicals suggested that
women’s oppressed status reflected the evils of the capitalist system. Gender, thus,
became a prism for understanding Vietnam’s past and its future, and the image of
‘Woman’ embodied the contradictions of these nationalist discourses.
Anti-colonial neo-Confucian scholars and Vietnamese bureaucrats working for
the colonial government found common ground in representing Vietnamese women
as the keys to preserving the country’s traditions. 28 The famous anti-colonial scholar
dubbed the ‘father of Vietnamese nationalism’, Phan Bội Châu, wrote prolifically on the
centrality of women’s participation in the creation of the nation.29 As nurturing devoted
mothers, they would educate a new generation of (male) patriots who would wrestle
independence from the French; as loyal wives, they would support their husbands in
their task of leading the country toward its future. The contribution that mothers played
in the nurturing of its new citizens would not be forgotten by the nation.30 Though short-
lived, the influential school and cultural movement that Phan Bội Châu founded, known
as the Tonkin Free School (Ðông Kinh Nghĩa Thực), promoted women’s education
by producing lively plays that valorised Vietnamese heroines.31 Though the French
authorities closed the school within a year, its influence in advocating for women’s
education and its emphasis on iconic Vietnamese women extended long beyond its
formal existence.
Pha.m Quỳnh, the EFEO interpreter and reformer derided by radicals as the arch-
collaborationist, devoted much space to the ‘woman question’ in the pages of his
journal, Southern Ethos (Nam Phong) and often appealed to images of ancient Viet-
namese heroines.32 As Director of Sino-Vietnamese Studies at the University of Hanoi
and later the Minister of Education (1933), Quỳnh became a key figure in the colo-
nial government’s educational reform policies. The central task for dealing with the
‘woman question’, Qùynh argued, was ‘to create a kind of frank woman who can
preserve the traditions (giữ ąược cái cốt cách) of our country and [who can] acclimate

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416 Gender & History

(ha.p tho.) to the modern philosophies’ (my emphasis).33 In the pages of his journal,
Quỳnh argued that women’s education was essential for the production of valuable
citizens for the colony. The new wives would provide a link to the country’s past by
maintaining proper family values. They would also serve as the bedrock of the coun-
try’s future by educating their sons to become proper bourgeois citizens of the new
society.34 Although each of these writers alluded to the famed Trưng sisters or Lady
Triệu, who led successful rebellions against Chinese invaders in the first millennium,
they nevertheless gave women few alternatives other than to play the supporting roles
of mother and wife for their agentic male family members who would bring Vietnam
into the future.35
As national essence became conflated with Confucianism and women became the
emblematic carriers of that tradition, a younger generation of revolutionaries chal-
lenged those ‘traditions’.36 For some, the Confucian family system, as imagined
by twentieth-century neo-traditionalists and their critics, had oppressed Vietnamese
women. Women’s emancipation quickly became a thinly veiled metaphor for the na-
tion’s political independence.37 The family and the status of Vietnamese women in
the family became primary signs of a backward tradition that failed to protect the
state against Western domination. To these young radicals, women’s liberation rep-
resented national freedom from the shackles of French domination.38 While the calls
for women’s education and emancipation were vociferous in the first decades of the
twentieth century, this commitment to individual emancipation ultimately gave way to
other concerns. Women’s emancipation as a metaphor for national liberation was soon
displaced by calls for national solidarity. In order to achieve this solidarity – which
was never realised – Vietnamese revolutionaries required the silencing of Vietnamese
feminism. Before this configuration reached its fullest articulation, women’s periodi-
cals and ‘printed books’ (loa.i sách phu. nữ ) provided a forum for this transformation.
The recent educational reforms guaranteeing girls primary schooling enabled (some)
women to help shape those discourses, directing them toward the practical concerns of
women throughout Vietnam.
In the first quarter of the twentieth century, some elite women challenged the
universalising tendencies of male discourses on women’s issues. They took issue in
particular with the goal of ‘equal rights [between] men and women’ (nam nữ bı̀nh
quyền). In 1918, the daughter of a famous anti-colonial scholar and accomplished poet
in her own right, Sương Nguyệt Anh, founded a newspaper, Women’s Bell (Nữ giới
chung) in the southern colony of Cochin-China, giving voice to (elite) Vietnamese
women for the first time. Anh formally promised the governor-general that the paper
would eschew political subjects and devote its pages solely to issues relevant to the
lives of its (elite female) readers, including child-rearing, arts and crafts and household
management.39 That said, while the colonial censors might have perceived the publica-
tion’s editorials and essays on women’s education, patriotism and duties as apolitical,
the journal’s editors worked to create national solidarity by soliciting the opinions
of their counterparts in the two protectorates of Vietnam: Annam and Tonkin.40 By
doing so, they called for readers in all three regions of Vietnam to share in this ‘imag-
ined community’ of Vietnamese women.41 The editors vociferously argued for the
advancement of ‘women’s education’ to widen female literacy. While they accepted
male dominance in their society as a reality, they also envisioned a ‘world for all’, in
which Vietnamese women could someday participate. Sương Nguyệt Anh specifically

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 417

rejected the Euro-American notion of ‘equal rights for males and females’, which she
interpreted as ‘women enjoying equal authority with men’ (ąờn bà cũng ąang hưởng
cái quyền lợi ngang như ąờn ông) as having no immediate relevance to Vietnam’s
women.42 Sarcastically referring to ‘several gentlemen who stand up to support this
philosophy’, Anh agreed in principle the desirability of such a goal. However, to Anh,
such a goal was unattainable in country where women were (mostly) ignorant about its
history and they were only beginning to become literate.43 Wanting to avoid domestic
upheaval that women’s liberation along the Euro-American model might create, Anh
urged her readers to ‘preserve traditional morality and to open new educational oppor-
tunities’ for women so they could assist in building the modern [Vietnamese] nation.
As the first female editor-in-chief of a major newspaper in colonial Vietnam, Sương
Nguyệt Anh explicitly challenged the notion that there was one model of modernity
and women’s liberation and argued that Vietnamese women could achieve it in their
own way.
Women’s Bell served as an important medium for elite women to articulate their
own forms of patriotism as they fought for expanded female literacy, created solidarity
between (elite) women in the three regions and provided an alternative vision for
women’s roles in the modernisation debate. As 1918 wore on, Women’s Bell published
thinly veiled critiques of the French colonial record on women’s education. In an
editorial lamenting the lack of printed educational materials for women and girls,
Sương Nguyệt Anh cleverly compared the French record to that of the Chinese.
Remarking on the ubiquity of Western scientific texts in China, Anh reminded her
readers that ‘in over sixty years [of ruling Cochin-China] our adopted mother, the
Great France, the most civilised country in the world, has not translated a single book
that is relevant to the lives of [Vietnamese] women’.44 Whether attempting to build
solidarity among Vietnamese women in thinly disguised articles valorising France’s
national heroines, calling upon their ‘fellow sisters’ to demonstrate civility through
philanthropic activities, or emulating their counterparts in less-developed regions of
Vietnam, the editors at Women’s Bell intervened in the discourses that represented
women as subjects to be emancipated or to be reified as paragons of national essence.45
Cognisant of prevailing discourses about what ‘Vietnamese women’ represented, they
rallied, ‘Oh sisters of the Hồng-Bàng house . . . one day, we [will] inherit power and
we thus [must] wash away the ugly reputation that others have bestowed upon us in
yesteryear’.46 By eliciting the name Hồng Bàng, Vietnam’s mythical first dynasty that
ruled until Chinese colonisation in the third century BCE, Anh traced a shared historical
past for all the women of Vietnam.
Within the context of their social and political positions, as elite women in the
southern colony of Cochin-China, the contributors and editors of Women’s Bell carved
out spaces of agency for women of their class and allowed them to imagine a shared
ethnic identity among members of their gender in the protectorates of Annam and
Tonkin as well. Because Anh elicited the tacit cooperation of the colonial state, she
could quietly agitate for the widening of women’s educational opportunities (while
implicitly critique the state) while representing hers as an effort to preserve ‘tradition’.
Women’s Bell spoke to the concerns of elite women and had no pretensions of reflecting
issues relevant to the vast majority of Vietnamese women: workers and peasants. Over
a decade later, another elite women’s periodical would attempt to mobilise elite women
to take on that task.

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418 Gender & History

‘Women’s News’ (Phu. nữ tân văn), in print from 1929–34, explicitly provided
a forum for women to claim ownership over their past and future, rejecting the no-
tion that men were solely responsible for women’s oppression.47 Although the myriad
of opinions expressed in the periodical are difficult to generalise, taken as a whole,
Women’s News served as an important outlet for women and men to articulate their
visions of a modern and independent Vietnam, while elaborating on what role women
would occupy in that society. Its responsibility, as claimed in the first issue, was to
address pressing concerns about the ‘woman question’ in the modern world. These
overlapping goals included inculcating women with a sense of openness (to educa-
tion) while reaffirming their primary role as guardian of the domestic – the ‘interior
general’ (nội tướng); emphasising the importance of women’s ‘natural duties’ (thiên
chức) within the household; teaching self-reliance; valuing fundamental ‘Vietnamese’
traditions and educating them about Vietnamese history so that they would learn to
love their country (yêu nước).48 How this mandate would be articulated was left to the
individual contributors of the paper, who did not always share the same vision of what
role women would play in this modern Vietnam.
The editors of Women’s News took for granted the solidarity of women throughout
Vietnam that Women’s Bell worked so hard to foster, and concentrated their efforts on
creating a class conscience (if not consciousness) among their elite female readership.
In editorials or stories attributed to the paper or individual women, writers urged
readers to use their purchasing power to raise money to educate poor Vietnamese
students.49 These pieces critiqued what they referred to as ‘male’ visions of gender
equity and the ‘woman question’. While acknowledging the desirability of gender
equity, the editors of Women’s News criticised male commentators for ignoring the
importance of women’s everyday contributions to national affairs (quốc sự ), such
as household management, the education of children and economic participation.50
While the editors acknowledged that there had indeed been exceptional female figures
in their country’s history, they urged readers to resist fighting for political power and
to concentrate on practical ways to contribute to the nation. By contributing to the
economy and society through their everyday activities, women would recognise that
‘women’s rights’, in the Vietnamese context, meant not allowing French industrialists to
exploit their less fortunate lower-class sisters.51 Certainly, the contributors to Women’s
News acknowledged the gender inequities in society, attributing them to the social
enslavement of women (xã hội nó trói buộc chung ta), but stressed that equality
could only be achieved through the education of women.52 This separation between
economics and politics eroded in subsequent years, as Women’s News metamorphosed
from defender of domesticity into an outlet for young revolutionaries to agitate for the
emancipation of women through economic liberation.
As the Great Depression took its toll on the Vietnamese populace, the editorials
in Women’s News shifted focus from topics concerning elite women and their roles in
the modern world to a greater emphasis on uncovering the inequities in the colonial
economy and its effects on the peasantry. The shift in tone and content of the paper’s
stories can be traced to 1933, with the replacement of the original editorial staff
with a younger, more radical generation and with a male essayist, Phan Văn Hùm.
A committed Trotskyist, prominent intellectual and member of the editorial staff of
a favourite target of the colonial state, the newspaper La Lutte (The Struggle), Hùm


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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 419

and his fellow contributors argued that the origins of women’s oppression lay in
the economic foundations of society and the specific configurations of capital and
power in Indochina.53 While loud and explicit in their calls for gender equality, the
editors and contributors of Women’s News firmly rooted their discussions on Marxist
interpretations of history and development.54 Although short-lived, the period during
which Women’s News served as a key forum for this transformation popularised the
discourse and gave impetus for other printed texts to expand the discussion. In the
following years, a number of texts proliferated in urban areas throughout the three
regions of Vietnam, and these ‘women’s books’ echoed the sentiments expressed in
the last incarnation of Women’s News. These printed texts, according to two young
radicals, transmitted the methods that ‘our sisters must use and the path we must take
to achieve absolute gender equality and freedom and independence’.55 Though the
writers and editors of Women’s News advocated for a more radical approach to social
revolution than those of Women’s Bell, the goal of women’s emancipation faded behind
the struggle for national independence.56
Although elite Vietnamese who called for Vietnamese autonomy in the emergent
public sphere did so from an entire spectrum of political persuasions, they found
common ground in the symbol they used to represent Vietnamese tradition. ‘Woman’
became a metaphor to reflect Vietnamese heritage, whether to be preserved, destroyed
or modified. Despite their philosophical differences, these authors shared a theory of
history that was linear and causal. How each group deployed the image of ‘Woman’
to narrate its story of Vietnamese historical development was influenced by their epis-
temological backgrounds. For example, Nhất Linh, the founder of the ‘Self Reliance
Literary Movement’ (Tự lực văn ąoàn) of the 1930s employed the symbol of an
oppressed Vietnamese woman as the symbol of tradition that was to be rejected.57 Elite
women resisted the reification of their gender by challenging the universalising tenden-
cies implicit in their male counterparts’ historical narratives. Despite drawing attention
to the impracticalities of such overarching stereotypes, the particular socio-economic
circumstances of each period shaped how they articulated their concerns. The effects
of the world depression on the Vietnamese populace made the plight of the underclass
a key signifier of French exploitation and put pressure on these factions to build soli-
darity across gender and class lines. Although this solidarity was never achieved, these
voices found common ground in using ‘Woman’ as the embodiment of Vietnamese
essence. Ultimately, national liberation supplanted the need for individual liberation.58

Visions of the future, constructions of the past

Vietnam’s declaration of independence from France in 1945 inaugurated another thirty
years of fighting for visions of the country’s future, during which time the Viet-
namese ‘Woman’ continued to embody the country’s heritage. Although political ac-
tors and scholars most often called attention to the image of the exceptional Vietnamese
‘Woman’, perceptions of an oppressed ‘Woman’ lingered in international discourses.
For the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (north Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam
(south Vietnam), evidence of gender equity in the country’s past reflected the country’s
moral superiority, allowing each regime to lay claim to the righteousness of its vision
for the country’s future. The key difference between how the two states deployed this


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420 Gender & History

image rested in its leaders’ narratives of the historical development of each. For the
northern regime, the uniqueness of Vietnamese gender relations before Chinese and
French influence reflected the negative effects of Chinese feudal influence and French
imperialism on Vietnamese peasants. This narrative enabled the northern regime to
mobilise women in support of the revolution. For the scholars and politicians of the
southern regime, the same model demonstrated the progressiveness of Vietnamese cul-
ture, the promise of a non-socialist route to modernity and justified the appropriateness
of the American democratic exercise. By deploying the image of ‘Woman’ to anchor
their narratives of Vietnamese development, these actors fashioned a historical past to
lend credence to their visions of the country’s future.
North Vietnamese scholars and their Western sympathisers linked the country’s
historical development to the devolution of women’s social roles, in a Vietnamese
version of Frederick Engels’s (Engels’s) Origin of the Family.59 Vietnamese society
had transformed from a matriarchal (mẫu quyền) into a patriarchal (phu. quyền) society
under the influence of Confucianism (Chinese rule) and the feudal system.60 In 1966,
the prominent female academic, Mai Thi. Tú, argued to an English reading audience
that the origins of the liberation of Vietnamese women could be traced to the founding
of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in 1930, when it ‘resolutely engaged in the
democratic national revolution led by the working class, which aimed at suppressing
foreign domination together with all forms of exploitation and inequality, including
the inequality of the sexes and the enslavement of women’.61 In 1973, on the heels
of the northern regime’s Paris Peace Accords with the United States, Tú’s collabo-
rator and Vietnam’s most prominent female scholar, Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết, explicitly
linked Vietnamese independence to the communist revolution. With the declaration
of independence in 1945, Tuyết argued, ‘the Socialist Republic of Vietnam came into
this world. Along with the liberation of the people, the movement to liberate women
wrestled a decisive victory (giành ąược một thắng lợi quyết ą.inh)’.62 A product of the
times, these works written by two prominent female scholars of contemporary Vietnam
unequivocally gave credit for the emancipation of Vietnamese women to the ICP. Other
scholars from the north Vietnamese Marxist tradition echoed these claims.
Historians and legal scholars who have traced the development of Vietnamese law
and government returned to the Lê Dynasty to re-affirm arguments about Vietnamese
exceptionalism, especially in the area of gender relations. Another important female
legal scholar, Vũ Thi. Phu.ng, directly linked the property claims of Vietnamese women
during the Lê Dynasty to modernity. Though Phu.ng acknowledged that Vietnamese
women did not quite enjoy equality in premodern Vietnamese society, ‘women still
enjoyed some rights that the laws of the Lê Dynasty respected . . . these regulations
are similar to the progressive laws of today (pháp luat .̂ tiến bộ ngày nay)’.63 Other
influential (male) scholars of the northern tradition echoed these claims.64 The Lê Dy-
nasty lawmakers’ protection of women’s property rights, argued Trần Quốc Vượng,
popularly recognised as one of the four ‘pillars’ of Vietnamese history, served as ‘a
testament of the struggle of Vietnamese women by recognising and codifying a number
of customary practices that reflect the unified communitarian and democratic spirit of
[its] working class’.65 By tracing these practices to the Lê Dynasty, these scholars re-
minded readers that the last Vietnamese dynasty, the Nguyễn, had betrayed Vietnamese
traditions by implementing a thoroughly feudal state and by losing the country to the
French. With the declaration of independence from the French in 1945, the Vietnamese

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 421

Communist Party, as the ICP would later be known, restored Vietnam’s tradition of
gender equality, marking the country’s arrival at modernity. Western scholars sympa-
thetic to the Vietnamese revolution have replicated this argument to varying degrees,
although few fully accepted this narrative.66
In the southern regime, a vision of a modern, non-communist Vietnam rested in the
implementation of Western liberal institutions during the period of American influence
in the 1950s and 1960s. There, legal scholars with close ties to the south Vietnamese
government relied upon arguments made about women’s property rights in the Lê
Code to bolster their claims of an emergent modernity in South Vietnam. The most
influential of these scholars, Vũ Văn Mẫu, a veteran of the generation of legal scholars
trained by the French, served as professor and dean of the Saigon Law School, where he
replicated EFEO’s strategy by commissioning modern Vietnamese translations of key
‘traditional’ legal texts. Mẫu explicitly identified traditional Vietnamese law as ‘civil’
in its origins, and was instrumental in linking the argument to the political initiatives of
the southern regime.67 During those years, a young legal scholar emerged to provide the
clearest articulation of the link between pre-modern Vietnamese law and modernity in
South Vietnam. A law professor in the southern regime for ten years before joining the
Harvard Law School faculty in 1975, Ta. Văn Tài argued that traditional Vietnamese law
encoded an indigenous feminist tradition.68 Tài argued that the codification of equal
property rights for daughters and sons in this fifteenth-century legal text demonstrated
that ‘the Lê Code represented genuine Vietnamese custom [and gave] equal civil rights
to Vietnamese women’.69 He has also argued that early Vietnamese legal practices
embodied the key values of international human rights as articulated in the United
Nations Convention of 1945.70 Tài’s scholarship suggests that one can find roots
of ‘modernity’ in traditional Vietnamese law, an important postscript for those who
believed in the promise of the failed democratic experiment in south Vietnam.71

Vietnamese women scholars, Vietnamese exceptionalism, and gender

inequality
In recent years, the writings of Vietnamese women scholars have reflected a tension
between their stated goals of achieving gender equity for women and conforming to the
approved state narrative of Vietnamese exceptionalism. The earliest works describing
the development of Vietnamese women’s conditions, produced during or immediately
following the American War, quite closely followed state narratives about the effects
of feudalism on women’s conditions in Vietnam. Over time, and especially since the
liberalisation of the Vietnamese economy in 1986, these same scholars have quietly
challenged the claims of gender equity made explicit in the Vietnamese state’s narrative.
The most prominent of these scholars, Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết, founded the Centre for
the Study of Women and Gender Studies (now the Institute for Research on Gender,
Family and the Environment and Development) in 1990 and has been at the forefront
of research on women and gender in Vietnam.72 By working within the framework of
the state’s declared goals of gender equality and crediting the state with establishing
gender equality in the law, these women scholars have carved out spaces where they
can work toward the empowerment of women.
These female scholars can best be described as social scientists working on
issues related to women, gender and development, rather than ‘feminist’ scholars. This

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422 Gender & History

distinction is important partly because no Vietnamese term exists for ‘feminist’, though
there is one for the ‘feminist movement’, awkwardly rendered as the ‘movement in
which women demand equality’ (phong trào phu. nữ ąòi bı̀nh quyền).73 If one were
to ask a person if they believed in gender equality (or equal rights between men and
women) (bı̀nh ąẳng nam nữ ), many Vietnamese would likely answer in the affirmative.
Indeed, the manual for women’s studies and gender research in Vietnam does not
include a definition for ‘feminist’.74 The absence of a Vietnamese word for ‘feminist’
reveals the state’s influence on these discourses more generally. On the one hand, to
bolster its narrative about Vietnamese exceptionalism, the state has had to subdue the
‘feminist’ movement by laying claim to it. The Communist Party and the state have
‘regarded the liberation of women as a [central] goal in the revolution and [have]
viewed women as the basic force behind the revolution’ (lực lượng cơ bản của cách
ma.ng).75 By taking credit for women’s emancipation, the state positions itself as the
sole arbiter of Vietnamese women’s rights in contemporary Vietnam, eliminating any
need for a (competing) feminist movement.
Despite explicitly repeating the state’s narrative about Vietnamese exceptional-
ism in their publications, contemporary women scholars have implicitly challenged
the state’s claims through their research topics. Thus, recent research on gender and
development in Vietnam has focused on measuring levels of gender equality along key
social and economic indicators. Though such studies always begin with such acknowl-
edgements as ‘gender equality has been established quite early’ with the founding of
the ICP, they often gently demonstrate inequities in social practice. In particular, studies
concentrate on how women’s contributions to society are not matched by their share
of economic, social, political and familial influence.76 For the most part, the works of
Vietnamese women scholars have highlighted the use of social scientific methods to
measure divergences between women and men’s living standards. These studies then,
implicitly (if gently) acknowledge that the state has not been able to achieve gender
equality, despite its proclamations.77 In the years since the first sanctioned narrative
on Vietnamese women’s history, women scholars of north Vietnam, like their south-
ern counterparts in the pages of the colonial-era journal Women’s Bell, have elicited
the support of political power-holders to carve out spaces where they can voice their
concerns about the gap between rhetoric and reality in Vietnamese women’s lives.

Postcolonial Vietnam?: colonial paradigms and the persistence of an

imperialist model
Speaking about the production of historical narratives in north Vietnam from 1945–55,
Patricia Pelley suggests that the term postcolonial is an ‘essential but problematic’
label for Vietnam, not least because it can be impossible to indicate precisely when
colonial influence ends in a particular space. If postcolonialism can be defined by
the ‘extrication from colonial paradigms and structures and the effort to implement
new notions and new sources of authority’, then with respect to representations of
women, it has not yet reached Vietnam.78 There, state models of exceptional women
are rooted in colonial constructions of an authentic Vietnamese culture that could
be studied and described by the new orientalist scholars of the EFEO. Though the
contemporary nation state has made efforts to supplant French and American forms
of governance, countries with investment interests, international donor agencies and

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 423

foreign academics have replaced the French and American states and have engendered
equally problematic relationships of dependency.
This phenomenon is most clear in the establishment and development of the field
of women and gender studies in contemporary Vietnam. Scholarship produced about
women and gender in Vietnam, as Steffanie Scott and Truong Chi have argued, has been
characterised by ‘donor-driven agendas’.79 While these agendas have helped to raise
the profile of women and gender issues academically, they also frame the discourses
within Western-influenced epistemologies. International donor agencies fund gender
researchers to produce writings relevant to their needs, such as ‘gender-mainstreaming
kits’ for their workers or studies measuring gender equality across key economic
indicators.80 In the last two decades, much of the ‘gender research’ in Vietnam has
been produced in these consultancy settings rather than as academic endeavours.81
Vietnamese scholars take on these consultancies because they are not paid a living
wage in their teaching and research jobs. However, the disparity in power between
Vietnamese scholars and their international donors means that the researchers and
their subjects (Vietnamese women) are represented from the perspective of the donor
agency or the Western collaborator. In this literature, the scholar/activist/donor agency
emancipates the Vietnamese ‘Woman’ from her present condition to bring her in line
with global norms of modernity, as marked by Western themes associated with women’s
liberation and especially economic independence. The Vietnamese scholar, dependent
on the state for her/his position and on the international donor to supplement her/his
income, must adhere to one of two narratives: that of the paradigm of the state, which
emphasises Vietnamese exceptionalism or that of the international donor agencies,
which emphasise the country’s (relative) backwardness.
Development agencies deploy the image of Vietnamese ‘Woman’ for their par-
ticular agendas. In its ‘Strategy 2020’, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) listed
‘gender equity’ as one of the five ‘drivers of change’.82 In line with this plan, the
ADB commissioned studies measuring the effectiveness of ‘Gender Action Plans’ in
countries where it makes loans and development programmes, including Vietnam. In a
commissioned study of the effects of its ‘Gender Action Plans’ the ADB concluded that
its loan programmes led to the increase of women’s land entitlements and participation
in community decisions.83 Not surprisingly, the ADB concluded that gender equity
(and by extension) development, would be best served with local institutions involving
the expertise of ADB resident gender experts.84 The ADB’s implicit suggestion that
it and its (foreign) gender experts are integral to the realisation of gender equity (and
modernisation) is not unique in the development community, though its conclusions
may be less subtle. In 2011, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in
Vietnam initiated a call for proposals to ‘Empower Women to Claim their Land Rights
in Vietnam’, seeking a Vietnamese research team and an ‘International Gender Expert’
to lead that team in their research. The terms of reference for the programme thus
implicitly gives agency to the international expert, while the research team performs
duties as directed by this gender specialist.85 By framing the issue of women’s land
rights in this way, the UNDP positions itself and the international gender experts it
hires as the agents who ‘empower’ Vietnamese women, perpetuating the myth of a
passive ‘third world woman’ who awaits emancipation. Similarly, the newly renovated
Vietnam Women’s Museum in Hanoi has dedicated two of its three spaces for tempo-
rary exhibitions to programs highlighting domestic violence in Vietnam, both funded

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424 Gender & History

through the initiative international organizations. In these development discourses,

Vietnamese women continue to serve as markers of tradition and international devel-
opment agencies provide the conditions for the establishment of gender equity, a key
marker of a modern country.
In the cultural sphere, Western representations of the nineteenth century female
poet, Hồ Xuân Hương, and her use of the Vietnamese demotic script, chữ nôm, have
served as a metaphor for the country’s potential for development. Developed by the
literati elite sometime in the medieval period, chữ nôm was a system of writing that used
combinations of Chinese characters to reflect spoken Vietnamese. In 2000, an American
poet published an English translation of Hồ Xuân Hương’s verse and triggered a media
blitz focusing on the translator’s efforts to save Vietnamese culture. In an early review
of the volume in the Utne Reader, one critic proclaimed that these ‘efforts go far
beyond adding a fresh Asian voice to the canon of proto-feminist poetry’. He is
‘spearhead[ing] the recovery of Vietnam’s lost cultural legacy’.86 As the cover design
for the book illustrates, a (Vietnamese?) woman’s naked body embodies the culture
that is to be saved. The editor of the volume argues that Hồ Xuân Hương, a nineteenth-
century concubine, defied rigid Confucian tradition by writing sexually suggestive
verses lamenting the double standards that women endured.87 As the image of an
anonymous nude female body on the cover of the book displays, an ‘ancient’ exotic
script, a lithe (Vietnamese) body and sexually charged lyrics symbolise a femininity that
is at once traditional and modern, awaiting release from the chains of Confucianism.
This female poet, imagined as the ‘brilliant bad girl of eighteenth (sic) century Vietnam,
throwing her erotically charged darts into the sexual hypocrisy of all ages and cultures’
by the war-era scholar, Frances Fitzgerald, replaces the image of a sexualised south
Vietnamese prostitute popularised in fiction and film.88 She is sexually liberated but
not sexualised – she owns her sexuality. Perhaps what is most modern and remarkable
about this metaphor is not Xuân Hương, however, but the interpretation of her writing
in the context of her positionality. In China during the Ming Dynasty (1398–1644), for
example, most female writers were courtesans who wrote intimate verses about their
relationships with their literati patrons.89 That the writings of only one such Vietnamese
woman remains, allows her to stand in for all Vietnamese women.
As an important subtext to this discourse, the demotic script, which represents
that culture in danger of being lost forever, can still be brought to modernity. In this
narrative, a US-based foundation leads the effort in rescuing Vietnamese culture for its
population of eighty million people by creating a computerised program to reproduce
the script so that the Vietnamese can once again learn how to read it. The ability to read
the demotic script, which the foundation claims that only thirty of Vietnam’s eighty
million people have, and ‘the heritage [it represents] is nearly lost’.90 By fashioning
itself as the saviour of Vietnamese culture and bringing it to modern society, the
foundation reproduces the asymmetrical power relations that were prevalent in the
colonial era. The deployment of Hồ Xuân Hương and her writing in this script as
the embodiment of a liberated woman reflects how an imagined Vietnamese ‘Woman’
continues to serve as a metaphor for the country’s progress toward modernity.

Conclusion
In this study, I have tried to trace the origins of two seemingly opposite models of
Vietnamese womanhood – one of a strong, emancipated woman and the other of a

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 425

Confucian (Chinese) oppressed woman – both of which have provided history writers
with a common purpose. The assumptions scholars and political actors have made about
each representation reveal a historicist world view that marks the West as modern and
Vietnam as somewhere else on the development trajectory. The discursive process
that has led to the reification and dominance of these two ideal types reflect how the
construction of historical truths – however distant they may seem – can affect the lives
of everyday people in our own era. As markers of Vietnamese tradition, women in
that country ultimately embody that country’s stage in the development paradigm; how
much individual agency they are accorded depends on the state’s willingness to accept
modifications to its role as patron and arbiter of women’s equality.
As markers of authenticity, Vietnamese women have served as models of an
unchanging, static society waiting for external actors to bring it to modernity.91 Out-
sider morality systems – whether Chinese, Western imperial or international devel-
opment/feminist – serve as the catalysts for social change to those bodies and their
experiences. Although I suggest that these discourses leave Vietnamese women with-
out agency, they have not been hegemonic. Since the colonial period, some women
have been able to pierce these developmental narratives, though only within the ap-
propriate parameters. In particular, women who elicited the support of the political
power-holders and appealed to the role of women as guardians of Vietnamese tradition
have been the most successful at articulating their vision for gender equity in Vietnam.
In the early-twentieth century, elite women who gained the explicit endorsement of
the government were able to gain moderate success in building solidarity among the
women of Vietnam. In the contemporary period, female Vietnamese scholars, commit-
ted to mainstreaming gender equity initiatives in Vietnamese society, have also found
moderate success in articulating their vision of gender equity only with the support
of the state.92 By vocally embracing the state narrative of Vietnamese exceptionalism,
these scholars have been able to argue quietly for more effective implementation of
gender equity policies in areas affecting economic, family and social life questioning
the state’s claim to be the sole arbiter of women’s equality.

Notes
I would like to thank the editors of the journal, Alexandra Shepard and Garthine Walker, the anonymous reviewers
of the article and Jack Merchant for their helpful comments and suggestions. All mistakes are my own.
1. I follow Chandra Talpade Mohanty and use the term ‘Woman’ to refer to ‘a cultural and ideological com-
posite other constructed through diverse representational discourses’ and ‘women’ ‘as real material subjects
of their collective histories’. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses’, in Chandra Talpade Mohanty (ed.), Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory,
Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 14–42, here p. 19.
2. Vietnam Women’s Union, ‘Sự ra ąời của Hội Liên Hiệp Phu. nữ Việt Nam’, (2004), <http://hoilhpn.
org.vn/newsdetail.asp?newsid=249&CatID=14.>
3. Here, I refer to the institutions and ideals of a political modernity that have been associated with Western
societies. Such institutions, which include individualism, secularism, human rights and the public sphere, are
impossible to think of outside a historicist narrative that traces them to the European Enlightenment. Though
these concepts have never been fully realised, they are usually associated with Europe, as critiqued by
Chakrabarty. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 4.
4. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 8.
5. For almost a thousand years (42–939 CE), the area of what is now northern Vietnam was a Chinese colony
known as Giao Chỉ. Later Vietnamese dynasties borrowed from Chinese bureaucratic models and cultural
practices, including its writing system, political philosophies, laws and spiritual practices. Elsewhere, I have

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426 Gender & History

argued that this particular reading of the early modern sources distorts the meaning and the logic of the
law. Nhung Tuyet Tran, ‘Beyond the Myth of Autonomy: Daughters’ Inheritance Rights in the Lê Period’,
in Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid (eds), Việt Nam: Borderless Histories (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2006); Nhung Tuyet Tran, ‘Gender, Property and the “Autonomy Thesis” in Southeast
Asia: the Endowment of Local Succession in Early Modern Vietnam’, Journal of Asian Studies 67 (2008),
pp. 43–72.
6. C. E. Maı̂tre, ‘Critique sur l’ouvrage de M. Briffaut, Etude sur les biens cultuels en pays d’Annam’,
Bulletin de l’Ecole Francaise d’Etrême Orient [hereafter BEFEO] 8 (1908), pp. 236–49; Vũ Văn Mẫu,‘Les
successions testamentaires en droit vietnamien’, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1948), 2
vols; Vũ Văn Mẫu, Cổ luât Việt Nam-thông khâo và tư pháp sử (Saigon: 1974), 2 vols; Trần Quốc Vượng,
Truyền Thống Phu. Nữ Việt Nam (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Hóa Thông Tin, 2001); Ta. Văn Tài, ‘The
Status of Women in Traditional Vietnam: A Comparison of the Code of the Lê Dynasty (1428–1788) with
the Chinese Codes’, Journal of Asian History 15 (1981), pp. 97–145; Ta. Văn Tài, ‘Women and the Law
in Traditional Vietnam’, Vietnam Forum 3 (1984), pp. 23–54; Yu Insun, Law & Society in Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Century Vietnam (Seoul: Asiatic Research Council, 1990).
7. The Nguyễn Dynasty was effectively defeated in the late nineteenth century with the formal imposition of
French colonial power. The Dynasty remained titular head of the state until August 1945, when the Japanese
formally overthrew the French colonial state (they had occupied Indochina since 1941). Friedrich Engels,
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, ed. Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York: International
Publishers, 1972), pp. 119–21. For iterations of this narrative in the Vietnamese context, see Lê Thi. Nhâm
Tuyết, Phu. nữ Việt Nam qua các thới ąa.i (Hanoi: NXB Khoa Ho.c Xã Hội, 1973); Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết and
Mai Thi. Tú, La femme au Viet Nam (Hanoi: Éditions en langes étrangères, 1978) pp. 6–31; Keith Taylor,
The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), p. 72.
8. See also Tran, ‘Beyond the Myth of Equality’; Tran, ‘Gender, Property and the “Autonomy Thesis”’.
9. History writing has enjoyed a prominent space in Vietnamese political history, with the earliest narra-
tives produced in the twelfth century by literati commissioned by the Trần Dynasty. Each subsequent
dynasty edited and re-wrote the polity’s history to satisfy its particular political agendas. For an example
of the rewriting of the dynastic history, see Yu Insun, ‘Lê Văn Hưu and Ngô Sĩ Liên: a Comparison
of their Perception of Vietnamese History’, in Tran and Reid (eds), Việt Nam: Borderless Histories,
pp. 45–71.
10. For an example of an official dynastic history, see Ða.i Việt sử ký toàn thư (d d d d d d), tr. into
modern Vietnamese by Ngô Ðức Tho. (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa Ho.c Xã Hội, 1993). For an example
of a private history using the same convention of cyclical time, see the manuscript written by the Catholic
convert, Bentô Thiện, ‘Li.ch sử nước Annam’, unpublished manuscript, Archivum Romanum Societatis
Iesu (ARSI) Jap/Sin vol. 81 (1659), pp. 240–62.
11. Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Rule, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1961).
12. Emblematic of this kind of characterisation is the work of the historian and archivist of the Paris-based
Missions Étrangères, Andrien Launay, who argued that ‘the Annamites contributed little to Chinese civili-
sation, or to its arts and sciences, [demonstrating] that without Chinese domination, Giao-chỉ of old times
would have rested in savage tribal communities, just like the Mường who live on the frontiers of their
country’. Adrien Launay, Histoire ancienne et moderne de l’Annam, Tonkin et Cochinchine, depuis l’année
2,700 avant l’ère chrétienne júqu’à nos jours (Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1884), p. 37.
13. Eliacin Lurô, Cours d’Administration, l’Ecole Francaise d’Etrême Orient [hereafter EFEO] Library, Paris:
Ms. Vietnam Droit 1, p. 24.
14. Paul Ory, La Commune Annamite au Tonkin (Paris: Librarie Coloniale, 1894), p. 58.
15. As Alice Conklin has demonstrated for the French empire in west Africa, the civilising mission was never
easily categorised as ‘assimilationist’ or ‘associationist’, but continually changed to meet the changing
colonial context. Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: the Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 6.
16. Alfred Schreiner, Étude sur la constitution de la propriété foncière en Cochinchine (Sài Gòn: Menard,
1902); Camille Briffault, Études sur les biens cultuels familiaux en pays d’Annam (Paris: J. B. Sirey & du
Journal du Palais, 1907); C. E. Maı̂tre, ‘Critique de l’ouvrage de Briffaut, Étude sur les biens cultuels’.
17. Pierre Singaravélou, L’École françáise d’Extrême-Orient ou l’institution des marges (1898–1956) (Paris:
L’Harmattan, 1999), p. 72.
18. ‘Lettre de M. Barth à M. le Directeur [Louis Finot]’, BEFEO 1 (1901), pp. 1–6, here p. 3.
19. C. E. Maı̂tre, Preface, ‘La justice dans l’ancien Annam’, BEFEO 8 (1908), pp. 177–81, here p. 177.
20. C. E. Maı̂tre, ‘Critique sur l’ouvrage de M. Briffaut, Etude sur les biens cultuels en pays d’Annam’, p. 249.


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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 427

21. R. Deloustal, ‘La justice dans ancien Annam: Appendices’, BEFEO 10 (1910), pp. 461–505, here p. 500.
22. In the late nineteenth century, the ‘Aid the King’ Movement (cần vương) gained considerable popularity
when Confucian-educated scholars rallied local populations in an uprising against the French. For more
on the movement, see David Marr, Vietnamese Anti-colonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1976), pp. 44–76. For the link between the EFEO scholars and the attempt to supplant
the intellectual with a Western-educated one, see Nhung Tuyet Tran and Anthony Reid, ‘Introduction: the
Construction of Vietnamese Historical Identities’, in Tran and Reid (eds), Vietnam: Borderless Histories,
pp. 5–22.
23. Sarah Womack provides a convincing critique of the ‘collaborationist’ model, arguing that these individuals
were not merely puppets of the regime but pursued autonomous personal agendas to fulfil their patriotic
duties within the framework of French colonial rule. See Sarah Whitney Womack, ‘Colonialism and the
Collaborationist Agenda: Pham Quynh, Print Culture, and the Politics of Pursuasion in Colonial Vietnam’,
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Michigan, 2003).
24. Buı̀ Văn Thi.nh, L’usufruit familial et la veuve en droit vietnamien (Saigon: Imprimerie de H.O., 1949); Hồ
Ðặc Diễm, La puissance en droit vietanmien (Paris: Jouve, 1928); Lê Văn Hồ, La mere de famille annamite
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1932); Nguyễn Huy Lai, Les regimes matrimoniaux (Paris:
Les Editions Domat-Montchrestien, 1934); Nguyễn Phu Ðức, La veuve en droit vietnamien: contrabution
au l’étude du patrimoinie familial en droit Vietnamien (Saigon: Ministère de l’education nationale, 1964).
25. Lê Văn Hồ, La mere du famille annamite, p. 11.
26. Nguyễn Huy Lai, Les regimes matrimoniaux, p. 19.
27. Nguyễn Ma.nh Tường, L’individu dans la vielle cité annamite: essai du synthèse sur le code des Lê
(Montpellier: Imprimerie de la press, 1932), p. 247; Trần Văn Chương, Essai sur l’esprit du droit sino-
annamite (Paris: Montpellier, 1925). Trần Văn Chương was the father of Trần Lệ Xuân, better known as
Madame Nhu, the wife of Ngô Ðı̀nh Nhu, the brother of the president of the Republic of Việt Nam, Ngô
Ðı̀nh Diệm. Madame Như led the Women’s Solidarity Movement in the South Vietnamese government.
28. David G. Marr and Hue Tam Ho-Tai have offered detailed overviews of the Phan Bội Châu and Pham
Quỳnh’s writings on the ‘women question’. See Marr, Vietnamese Anti-colonialism, pp. 190–251; Ho-Tai,
Radicalism, pp. 88–113.
29. Phan Bội Châu, Nữ quốc dân tu trı́ (Hue: Nữ Quốc Ho.c Hội, 1927); Phan Bội Châu, Vấn ąề phu. nữ
(Saigon: Duy Tan Thu Xa, 1929).
30. Ho-Tai, Radicalism, p. 95.
31. For a discussion on the Tonkin Free School movement, see Marr, Vietnamese Anti-colonialism, pp. 165–200.
The school included two female teachers who taught the Chinese classics, though reserved all leadership
positions for men. David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial: 1920–45 (Berkeley: University of
California, 1984), p. 200.
32. Educated at the College of Translators in Hà Nội, Pha.m Quỳnh worked at the EFEO from 1909 until 1917,
when he took charge of the journal, Southern Ethos, under the auspices of the colonial government. Laurent
Dartigues, L’Orientalism francais en pays d’Annam, 1862–1939: Essai sur l’idée francaise du Việt Nam
(Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2005), p. 422.
33. The spelling of the words of the phrase ‘ha.p tho.’, which I translate here as ‘to acclimate’, was particular
to southern uses at the time, when the written language was in flux. In modern Vietnamese, the word is
typically spelled differently, and is defined as ‘to suit’. However, in the context of this passage, I believe
that Pha.m is referring to the adaptability of this new Vietnamese woman. Pha.m Quỳnh, ‘Trả lời Bà Nguyễn
Ðức Nhuận’, Phu. nữ tân văn, 6 June 1929, pp. 8–9, here p. 8.
34. Tai, Radicalism, pp. 99–100.
35. The numerous monuments commemorating honourable mothers and widows who sacrificed their sons and
husbands in the revolution attests to the continuing hold that this particular image has on public memory
in Viet Nam.
36. Ho-Tai, Radicalism, p. 92.
37. Ho-Tai, Radicalism, p. 101.
38. See, for example, Qua Ninh Ðăng, ‘Phu. Nữ giải phóng ở Ðông Dương’, Rassemblement (18 March 1937).
Full text included as preface in Cựu Kim Sơn and Văn Huệ, Ðời Chi. Em (‘Our Sisters’ Lives’) (Hanoi:
Sách Dân Chúng, 1938).
39. ‘Lời tựa ąầu’, Nữ giới chung, 1 February 1918, pp. 1–4.
40. Of the three regions of Vietnam – Cochin-China, Annam and Tonkin – only Cochin-China was a formal
colony. The other two were ‘protectorates’ of France.
41. As Benedict Anderson has argued, newspapers aid readers to imagine themselves within a larger community,
in which they do not necessarily know all those who belong in the community, but believe that they share


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428 Gender & History

common desires and goals. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso Press, 1992).
While this particular point is beyond the scope of this paper, it could be argued that Women’s Bell might
have created a notion of ‘Vietnamese solidarity’ among its elite female readership before one emerged
among elite males in Vietnam. See, for example, Christopher Goscha, Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting
Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism (1887–1954) (Copenhagen: NIAS, 2005).
42. Sương Nguyệt Anh, ‘Xã thuyết: nghĩa nam nữ bı̀nh quyền là gı̀?’, Nữ giói chung, 22 February 1918, p. 1.
43. Anh, ‘Xã thuyết’, p. 2.
44. Sương Nguyệt Anh, ‘Bàn về sách dậy ąờn bà con gái’, Nữ giới chung, 4 April 1918, p. 1.
45. Nguyễn Thi. Ðồng, ‘Lòng yêu nước của phu. nữ Pháp’, Nữ giói chung, 12 April 1918, p. 1; Nguyễn Song
Kim, ‘Bàn về long bác ái’, Nữ giói chung, 19 April 1918, pp. 1–2; Nguyễn Thi. Hồng, ‘Phải cái gı̀ bay
giờ?’, Nữ giói chung, 28 June 1918, p. 2.
46. Kim, ‘Bàn về long bác ái’, p. 2.
47. David Marr has provided a detailed description of the evolution of this paper. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition,
chapter 5.
48. ‘Chương trı̀nh của bổn báo’ Phu. nữ tân văn, 2 May 1929, pp. 1–2.
49. Here, I say ‘attributed to individual women’ because it is not certain that those who wrote these stories
were indeed women, or simply using feminine pseudonyms to advocate their positions. Editorial, ‘Phát cờ
bác ái: lời trung cao với ąồng bào’, Phu. nữ tân văn, 16 May 1929, pp. 5–7; Cao Thi., ‘Ý Kiên tự do: sự
ąe.p’, Phu. nữ tân văn, 2 May 1929.
50. Editorial, ‘Ðờn bà cũng nên làm quốc sự’, Phu. nữ tân văn, 9 May 1929, p. 5.
51. Editorial, ‘Ho. lợi du.ng chi. em ta hết sức!’, Phu. nữ tân văn, 9 May 1929, p. 6.
52. Ðào Hoa, ‘Sức khôn của ąờn bà có thua ąờn ông hay không?, Phu. nữ tân văn, 29 May 1929, pp. 12–13.
53. For more on Hùm’s writings, see Judith Henchy, ‘Performing Modernity in the Writings of Nguyễn An
Ninh and Phan Văn Hùm’, (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Washington, 2006).
54. Shawn McHale, ‘Printing and Power: Vietnamese Debates over Women’s Place in Society, 1918–34’, in
Keith Weller Taylor and John K. Whitmore (eds), Essays into Vietnamese Pasts (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast
Asia Program Publications, 1995), pp. 173–94, here p. 192.
55. Cựu Kim Sơn and Văn Huệ, Ðời Chi. Em, Introduction.
56. In a recent biography of Bảo Lương, Việt Nam’s first female political prisoner, Huệ-Tâm Ho-Tai expertly
demonstrates this point in the Revolutionary Youth League in Cochin-China. Hue-Tam Ho-Tai, Passion,
Betrayal and Revolution in Colonial Saigon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2010).
57. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, p. 334.
58. Late in the editing phase of this paper, Jack Merchant reminded me that one only need to look at photographs
of the period, where men pose in three-piece suits while women often appear in the ‘traditional’ Vietnamese
tunics marking the agentic modern man from the female carrier of tradition.
59. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Property and the State (New York: Pathfinder Press, Origins, 1973),
pp. 119–21, 162–3.
60. See Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết, Phu. nữ Việt Nam qua các ąời (Hanoi: NXB Khoa Ho.c Xã Hội, 1975), pp. 30–59;
Thi. Tú and Nhâm Tuyết, La Femme au Viet Nam, pp. 6–25.
61. Mai Thi. Tú, ‘The Vietnamese Woman: Yesterday and Today’, Vietnamese Studies 5 (1966), pp. 1–59, here
p. 30.
62. Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết, Phu. nữ Việt Nam qua các ąời, p. 210.
63. Vũ Thi. Phu.ng, Li.ch sử nhà nước và pháp luật Việt Nam (Hanoi: Trường Ða.i Ho.c Luật, 1993), p. 110.
64. Phan Huy Lê, Li.ch sử chế ąộ phong kiến Việt Nam (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Du.c, 1998), vol. 2, pp.
162–3.
65. Trần Quốc Vượng, Truyền Thống phu. nữ Việt Nam (Hanoi: NXB Văn Hóa Thông Tin, 2001), p. 37.
66. Trần Mỹ Vân, ‘The Traditional Status of Women in Việt Nam’, in K. M. De Silva and Sirima Kiribamune
(eds), Asian Panorama: Essays in Asian History, Past and Present (New Dehli: Vikas Publishing House,
1990), pp. 274–83; Ðỗ Chi Lan, La Mère et l’enfant au Vietnam et d’autrefois (Paris: Harmattan, 1996);
Stephen O’Harrow, ‘Vietnamese Women and Confucianism: Creating Spaces from Patriarchy’, in Wazir
Karim Jahan (ed.), ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Developing Southeast Asia (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001),
pp. 161–80.
67. Vữ Văn Mẫu, ‘Lời giới thiệu’, in Hồng Ðức Thiện Chı́nh Thư (The [Book] of Good Government), tr.
Nguyễn Sỹ Giác (Saigon: Trường Ða.i Ho.c Luật, 1959); Cổ luật Việt Nam thông khảo và tư pháp sử , 3 vols
(Saigon: s.n., 1974).
68. The Lê Code: Law in Traditional Vietnam (a Comparative Sino-Vietnamese Legal Study with Historical-
Juridical Analysis and Annotations), tr. Nguyễn Ngo.c Huy and Ta. Văn Tài (Athens: Ohio University Press,
1987), vol. 1, p. 81.

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 Tradition and Modernity Narratives in Vietnamese Histories 429

69. Ta. Văn Tài, ‘Women and the Law in Traditional Vietnam’, Vietnam Forum 3 (1984), pp. 23–53, here p. 23.
70. Ta. Văn Tài, The Vietnamese Tradition of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
71. It is difficult to exaggerate Tài’s influence in contemporary scholarship on Vietnamese history, especially
as it relates to gender and the law. Virtually any work that is written about Vietnamese gender relations
cites Tài’s claims that Vietnamese women enjoyed equal property rights in the Lê Dynasty.
72. Steffanie Scott and Truong Thi Kim Chuyen, ‘Gender Research in Vietnam: Traditional Approaches and
Emerging Trajectories’, Women’s Studies International Forum 30 (2007), pp. 243–53, here p. 5.
73. Trân Thi. Vân Anh and Lê Ngo.c Hưng, ‘Nghiên cứu khoa ho.c phu. nữ: một số vấn ąề lý luận và thực tiễn’,
in Trân Thi. Vân Anh and Lê Ngo.c Hưng (eds), Phu. nữ, giới, và phát triển (Hanoi: NXB Phu. Nữ, 2000),
pp. 15–35, here p. 15.
74. Anh and Hung, ‘Nghiên cứu khoa ho.c phu. nữ’, p. 15.
75. Anh and Hung, ‘Nghiên cứu khoa ho.c phu. nữ’, p. 67.
76. Ðỗ Thi. Bı̀nh, ‘Tiếp cận quan ąiểm giới qua hoa.t ąộng nghiên cứu và giảng dậy của trung tâm nghiên cứu
khoa ho.c về gia ąı̀nh và phu. nữ’, in Nguyễn Linh Khiếu, Nghiên cứu và ąào ta.o giới ở Việt Nam (Hanoi;
Trung Tâm Nghiên Cứu Khoa Ho.c Về Gia Ðı̀nh va Phu. Nữ, 2000), pp. 34–47, here p. 35.
77. Lê Thi. Nhâm Tuyết, Phu. nữ Việt Nam trước thềm thế kỷ XXI (Trung Tâm Nghiên Cứu Giới, Gia Ðı̀nh, và
Môi Trương Trong Phát Triển, 2001).
78. Patricia Pelley, Post-Colonial Việt Nam: New Histories of the National Past (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2002), chapters 2 and 6.
79. Scott and Chuyen, ‘Gender Research in Vietnam’, p. 245.
80. Huynh H. Son, ‘Occupational Segregation and Gender Discrimination in Labor Markets: Thailand and
Viet Nam’, Asian Development Bank Working Paper Series No. 108 (2007); United Nations Gender
Briefing Kit: Việt Nam (2002); Lynellyn D. Long, Le Ngoc Hung, Allison Truitt, Le Thi Phuong Mai,
Dang Nguyen Anh, ‘Changing Gender Relations in Vietnam’s Post Doi Moi Era’, The World Bank Policy
Research Group (June 2002); Naila Kabeer, Trần Thi. Vân Anh and Vũ Ma.nh Lợi, ‘Preparing for the
Future: Forward-Looking Strategies to Promote Gender Equity in Vietnam’, A United Nations/World Bank
Discussion Paper (June 2005).
81. Scott and Chuyen, ‘Gender Research in Vietnam’, p. 246.
82. Asian Development Bank, ‘Strategy 2020: the Long Term Strategic Framework of the Asian Development
Bank’, http://beta.adb.org/about/policies-and-strategies.
83. Julie Hunt, Kate Nethercott and Helen Thomas, ‘Results in ADB Projects: Regional Synthe-
sis of Rapid Gender Assessments in Indonesia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam’, (2010), p.
40, http://beta.adb.org/publications/gender-equality-results-adb-projects-regional-synthesis-rapid-gender-
assessments-indone.
84. Hunt, Nethercott and Thomas, ‘Results in ADB Projects’, p. 72.
85. It should be noted that the current (non-Vietnamese) author submitted a proposal critiquing these univer-
salising tendencies of the development community and placed herself in the (Vietnamese) research team,
suggesting that there should not be a false dichotomy drawn between local researcher and international
expert. The UNDP accepted this argument and has commissioned the Team to assess women’s access to
land across nine provinces, though this is now no longer conceived as a project to ‘empower women’, as
externally defined.
86. Jon Spayde, ‘Ho Xuan Huong’s Spring Essence’, Utne Reader (July/August 2000), <http://www.utne.
com/issues/2000_100/short_takes/1248–1.html>.
87. John Balaban, ‘Introduction’, Spring Essence: the Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương (Port Townsend: Copper
Canyon Press, 2000), pp. 3–15, here pp. 3, 11.
88. Frances Fitzgerald, Spring Essence: the Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương, back matter.
89. Susan Mann, ‘Women, Family and Gender Relations’, in Willard Peterson (ed.), The Cambridge History
of China, vol. 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 428–72, here p. 447.
90. These assertions are simply wrong. There are many more than thirty Vietnamese who do read this script
and others in the international community. While it is true that reading the script is a special skill to be
acquired, the exaggeration of the dearth of readers feeds into the story that an important part of Vietnamese
culture is dying, and that it is up to a Western foundation to ‘save it’. For assertions of these figures,
see interviews of the foundation’s executive board in Jon Spayde, ‘Ho Xuan Huong’s Spring Essence’,
Utne Reader (July/August 2000), <http://www.utne.com/issues/2000_100/short_takes/1248–1.html>;
Sam Howe Verhovek, ‘From Woodcut to Bytes for a Vietnamese Poet’, New York Times, 15 March 2001,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/15/arts/15POET.html?ex=1189656000&en=d2407fe3e58cea29&ei=
5070>; Jane Perlez, ‘Deciphering the Code to Vietnam’s Old Literary Treasures’, New York Times,
15 June 2006, <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/world/asia/15hanoi.html>. The Vietnamese Nôm
Preservation Foundation states that worldwide, only a hundred people can read nom. This estimate

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was changed after the current author disputed the Foundation’s claims that very few Vietnamese can
read the script. See <http://nomfoundation.org/about/whatisnom.html>. It is also important to note that
Vietnamese programmers and researchers created the original software program for the script and though
the Foundation has done much to publicise the project, the effort began with individual Vietnamese
researchers without access to international sources of funding.
91. I borrow the use of the term ‘authenticity’ from Prasenjit Duara, who has used it to refer to the use of
Chinese women as markers of tradition. Prasentjit Duara, ‘The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness,
Gender, and National History in Modern China’, History and Theory 37 (1998), pp. 287–308.
92. For more on Vietnamese state feminism, see Steffanie Scott and Truong Thi Kim Chuyen, ‘Reconciling
Feminist, Socialist, and Other Agendas: Approaches to Gender Analysis in Vietnam’, Gender Relations
Centre, RSPAS, The Australian National University, Working Paper Number 18 (2006), pp. 5–6.


C 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.