PHUONG

In regards to Phuong we only know what Fowler or Pyle choose to tell us. Edward Said tells us in _Orientalism_ how Flaubert depicts an Egyptian courtesan, we know what “HE” says about her but we never get to really know her emotions because he speaks for her and represents her, and I think the same happens to Phuong.

What we learn about Vietnamese women in the novel is depicted in images we are told from Fowler:
“Lovely flat figures—the white silk trousers—the long tight jackets in pink and mauve patterns”, bicycles at sunset, female gossip, and sexual intercourse.

Sex is “received” by women either passively as in the case of Phuong (this is one of the differences I have found between the book and the film) or the other face of sex is with prostitutes (Granger in the House of the Five Hundred Girls).

So, the general perception I have got is that the main feminine traits of Vietnamese women are: submissiveness, quietness and obedience. I don’t know if these really correspond with the reality at the time and place. I personally found these ideas rather phallocentric and misogynist.

Fowler is a cynical man who doesn’t want to get involved in war and who is not committed formally to his romantic relationship. He treats women as dumb objects. He uses them and likes to be served and pampered by them.
In the middle of one of the violent war encounters in which he is immerse, he thinks in Phuong, but not in her as her beloved partner, but rather, he wonders if she has taken his suits to the cleaners.

However as we can expect from Graham Greene, Paradoxes are present and this cynic man turns to be the good one at the end of the novel whereas the supposedly “good”, innocent and courteous American, Pyle, turns out to be a dangerous, merciless and unscrupulous man.

Again paradoxically, on the one hand, we have Pyle. He is the one who wants to marry Phuong and the only one who treats her with real courtesy and respect and wants to offer her a decent life back in the US (or at least what a decent life is in his mind). However, his intentions, even when they are good, are very “theoretical” as if taken from a recipe or book of moral values, just as the rest of his ideas.
On the other hand, Fowler is happy having her as his mistress. In his mind Phuong is there to prepare his Opium pipes and have sex with him. It is only when he feels afraid of losing her (and his comfortable position) or maybe out of the realization of some kind of selfish love towards her, that he changes his mind and we witness how he desperately competes with Pyle as if Phuong was a prize to be won.

Again Phuong is like a numb character. I think that what she really wants is to get out of Vietnam, no matter with whom.
It is not as her sister believes; it is not related with having or not having babies. She moves like the wind, towards the most promising future. When she realizes that her marriage with Fowler is not possible due to the letter her sister reads to her, she moves in with Pyle and when Pyle dies she goes back with Fowler. She even has sex with Fowler the same night Pyle is killed!!
So she is basically described to us as an emotionless girl. The only instance where she shows some type of emotion is at the very end when she finally sees that her dream of getting married and emigrate from Vietnam is around the corner because Fowler has got the divorce.

Hadn’t Pyle died, Fowler had lost Phuong forever.

As Michael Foucault and Edward Said would argue: we are given a piece of discourse on what Vietnamese women are like.

But if we think of Cixous theories, we can clearly see how phallogocentrism is pervasively present in Greene’s book and this is applicable to both Phuong and to her sister (Miss Hei). Even when the latter is given the chance to talk (because she knows how to speak in ENGLISH!!!) we get the structuralist binary opposition of angel/monster that Gilbert and Gubar have written about.

I see the opposition angel/monster (within a patriarchal hegemonic system) in Phuong and Miss Hei, one is docile, submissive, quiet, shy, gentle whereas the latter is ambitious, self-determined, talkative, dominant.
It is not a coincidence that the latter is described as a nuisance, who spoils Fowler’s plans and lies.

I might sound a bit farfetched but if we follow Cixous, who believes that our sexuality is directly tied to how we communicate in society and we think of Phuong, we can see a relation between her passive personality and her passive sexuality.
Another important thing is that Phuong also represent the stereotype assigned to other Vietnamese women. I will now add some significant passages of the novel to complement my comments:

“Phuong on the other hand was wonderfully ignorant; if Hitler had come into the conversation she would have interrupted to ask who he was…”
……
Pyle: “Oh, but I know you’re straight, absolutely straight, and we both have her interests at heart.”
Fowler: “Suddenly I couldn’t bear his boyishness any more. I said, “I don’t care that for her interests. You can have her interests. I only want her body. I want her in bed with me. I’d rather ruin her and sleep with her than, than…look after her damned interests.”
He said, “Oh,” in a weak voice, in the dark.
I went on, “If it’s only her interests you care about, for God’s sake leave Phuong alone. Like any other woman she’d rather have a good…” The crash of a mortar saved Boston ears from the Anglo-Saxon word.
……
Pyle: “But she loves you, doesn’t she?”
Fowler: “Not like that. It isn’t in their nature. You’ll find that out. It’s a cliché to call them children—but there’s one thing which is childish. They love you in return of kindness, security, the presents you give them—they hate you for a blow or an injustice. They don’t know what it’s like—just walking into a room and loving a stranger. For an aging man, Pyle, it’s very secure—she won’t run away from home so long as the home is happy.”
…….
“Kiss me, Phuong.” She had no coquetry. She did at once what I asked and she went on with the story of the film. Just so she would have made love if I had asked her to, straight away, peeling off her trousers without question, and afterwards have taken up the thread of Mme Bompierre’s story and the postmaster’s predicament.
……

“She didn’t change; she cooked for me, she made my pipes, she gently and sweetly laid out her body for my pleasure…”

Phuong sexuality is linked with his quietness and passivity in both talk and feeling. She has completely accepted and internalized all the phallocentric values that the system puts on women. As Foucault would say she has internalized the hegemonic discourse.

According to the novel the only thing that is clear in Phuong’s mind is to get married. It doesn’t matter who the candidate is as long as is someone rich and even more important from THE WEST!!!

Phuong is depicted as an empty heart, as if she were a fickle that moves towards the word “marriage”, regardless of the person who will become his husband and regardless his background, morale or principles. We could even say that she is being depicted as a person lacking of dignity. She doesn’t even express feelings when she knows about Pyle’s death. The important thing for her is to marry, the man is replaceable.

Finally, I think we need to remember that Greene used to travel to places where cultures hadn’t been spoilt by Western civilization. He wanted to find his own “Heart of Darkness”. So, in a way, he is also a colonialist looking for the exotic, for the primitive, for the past of humanity and both him and his character Fowler could be labeled by Said as Orientalists. Is this possible? What do you think?