Innocence and Patriarchy: ‘Aloeswood Incense’ (Eileen Chang, 1943)

Aloeswood Incense, Eileen Chang (1943)

Relatability is an overrated virtue in a lot of modern literature. Young men love quasi-autistic antiheroes because they are “Literally me”, and I’ve written about My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which was so widely loved for making many of its readers ‘feel seen’.

But it is unsurprising — and not necessarily groundbreaking — that a novel should stir emotional resonance when a story portrays an approximation of the reader’s experience.

Eileen Chang’s Novella Aloeswood Incense holds the high accolade of delivering a punch in a story whose characters and era are quite alien to many of it’s readers — creating an emotional connection beyond any ability to closely relate to the diorama she paints.

Set in Hong Kong during the 1930s, Aloeswood Incense follows the induction of 16-year-old Weilong into a high society composed of ancient Chinese dynasties and newly wealthy elites. Hong Kong is still a colonial melting pot, Qing-era decadence fading into the modern world and a feeling of change abutting the ancient rigidity of gender, caste, and religion. Social standing is the currency that this sect of Hong Kong society trades upon. Human interaction — parties, gossip, reputation and sex — are the avenues through which this commerce takes place. Even though this story revolves around women, it is a patriarchal system. Weilong is dazzled and entranced by her aunt, Madame Liang, who slowly ensnares her as a pawn in a mercenary trade.

In this world of social climbing, individual ambition is an all-consuming obsession. Weilong is so sympathetic precisely because she comes from outside the clique, setting the novella in motion with her academic, rather than social, ambitions. Though even she is later seduced into the game by luxury, patronage, and the prospect of love. The interplay between her growing (though inadequate) social acumen and girlish, romantic impulses is the animating tension of the novella—and what makes its conclusion so heartrending.

This obsession with social advancement blinds Weilong to the fact that you must conform to climb the hierarchy. The cost of admittance it to follow societies demands, and in Weilong’s patriarchal world, the women always lose. Even Madame Liang, ostensibly a great broker in the influence trade, is portrayed as miserable, spiteful, and at the mercy of callous men.

In a sense, Weilong succeeds in her quest for social betterment, but only on the terms of her tyrannical aunt and her clique. To attain a role within Hong Kong high society you must be subsumed by it and, if one is a woman, frequently abused by it. Aloeswood Incense portrays a devil’s bargain taken only out of naivete. Despite the unfamiliarity of this incense-clouded world, a bygone era already fading into history in the novella itself, Chang still manages to deliver the story with a deep emotional impact. Illuminating the suffering inherent in a system where women are the disposable pawns of the rich and powerful. 

-Ben Shread-Hewitt