Abstract

Abstract Woman

The article focuses on the book "The Mother," by Pearl S. Buck. Buck's heroine has no name. She is simply the wife of a small Chinese farmer surnamed Li who is never called anything except "the man," and she is the mother of three children who are referred to as "the elder son," "the daughter," and "the younger son." Indeed, there is a whole Chinese village, which passes its monotonous days in a perfect and murmurous anonymity--the murmurousness coming from Buck's style as much as from anything else, though it comes also from the type of event which she repeatedly and accentlessly intones. Buck's refusal to name characters and her selection of a wholly unaccentuated style are doubtless proper for the kind of novel she has written, which is a kind that many may write during decades to come when, happily or unhappily, classes are likely to be considered more interesting than individuals as material for fiction.