Keywords

3.1 Introduction

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a radical change took place in French colonial Vietnam: women went to school, wrote in the newspapers, gave lectures, published novels and books, led associations, and campaigned for the status of women. What happened in the lives of Vietnamese women? What happened such that women began to think and act for themselves?

We propose to look at the life of an educated woman, Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa who was born in 1896 into a family of Confucian scholars. She is known for her activities in favor of women, as well as for her writings. Her novel, The Western Beauty (Tây phương mỹ nhơn), published in Saigon in 1927, tells the story of a young Vietnamese man who fought in France during the First World War and married a French woman; both of whom were highly critical of the colonial system. By using a biographical approach and analyzing her writings, we hope to gain a better understanding of the life of an educated woman who lived in Vietnam in the early twentieth century.

To understand Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s life, I propose first to analyze her novel in which the main heroine can be considered a role model, as is expressed in the title. Then, within the limits of the available sources, I will try to tell her life story. Finally, based on her writings, I will analyze three aspects of her activities, as a feminist and modernist, as a writer, and as a researcher.

3.2 Body of Work and Sources

I first came across the name Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa during my dissertation research, because of her essay on the kingdom of Champa, and I read her novel at the French National Library in Paris around the year 2000. At that time nobody knew her name. In 2003, Mr. Trương Duy Hy wrote a short biography of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa and re-edited some of her writings.

In recent years I have become interested in the subject of Vietnamese migration to France during the First World War and last year I translated her novel The Western Beauty into French. To study Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s career more fully, we identified the corpus of her writings and now have access to the first editions of three of her publications:

  1. (1)

    The novel, Tây phương mỹ nhơn [The Western beauty] (Saigon: Nhà in Bảo Tồn, 1927), seventy-six pages; prefaces by Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, Tản Đà, Bùi Thế Mỹ. French translation: La Belle d’Occident (Fuveau: Decrescenzo Editeurs, 2021).

  2. (2)

    The reformed tuồng drama (tuồng cải lương), Huyền Trân công chúa [Princess Huyền Trân] (Hue: Imprimerie Tiếng Dân, 1934), thirty pages; forewords.

  3. (3)

    The scholarly synthesis work, Chiêm Thành lược khảo [Summary study of Champa] (Hanoi: Imprimerie Đông Tây, 1936), sixty-four pages; seven photos and one color drawing; preface by Phạm Quỳnh; forewords in Vietnamese; afterwords in French.

We also have at our disposal:

  1. (1)

    A travel story, “Banà du ký: Mấy ngày đăng sơn lên thăm núi ‘Chúa’” [A story of the trip to Banà: A few days in the mountains visiting the Mount Lord], Nam phong [Southern breeze] 163 (June 1931): 552–559.

  2. (2)

    An article, “Nhân cách phụ nữ” [Women’s personality], Nam phong 191 (December 1933): 545–551. This is record of a speech given at a market in Tourane (now Đà Nẵng) on December 31, 1933, as part of a charity event.

  3. (3)

    An interview, “Vì sao tôi cúp tóc?” [Why did I cut my hair?] Phụ nữ tân văn [Women’s news] 244 (August 31, 1934): 17–18; two photos. This interview was conducted by the Women’s News team and is also published in Nam phong 197 (1934): 390–392, one photo.

As for the other activities of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, we have some documents published during the colonial period, such as press articles and book reviews. For this study, articles in periodicals or books published before 1945 have been very helpful. We have the publications of the Women’s Work Learned Society (Nữ công học hội) in Hue of which Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was a member, namely four volumes of General Knowledge of Women’s Work (Nữ công thường thức) published between 1928 and 1931. The association also published revolutionary Phan Bội Chau’s Things Female Citizens Should Know (Nữ quốc dân tu tri) in 1926 (second printing in 1927).

After a long period in which nothing seems to have been written about Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, Lại Nguyên Ân published an article about her in 2001 (Lại 2001), followed by a book by Trương Duy Hy (2003, 2010). Trương Duy Hy carried out a field investigation in Đà Nẵng and with the family of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa. Various articles subsequently published in the Vietnamese press are mainly based on his publications. Thanks to his work, Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is now known in Vietnam and in her hometown, Đà Nẵng, where a street now bears her name.

As for archival records produced during the colonial period, the research I have conducted on Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa as well as on her family at the Archives nationales d’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence has been fruitless. We can hope that the archives in Vietnam, the Center No. 4 in Đà Lạt in particular, in the series on the control of the press and associations, can reveal some information.

To answer our initial questions, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s writings, especially the prefaces to her three publications in which she takes care to explain her ideas and positions, are essential. However, it is her first fictional text that should be of particular interest to us. The first known publication, signed only by her name Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa as a woman of letters (unlike the two following publications which are signed by her married name, followed by her name), the novel, presents the ideal of a modern woman, embodied here by a Frenchwoman, who is a responsible citizen, while demonstrating feminine qualities in accordance with Confucian tradition.

3.3 A New Model of an Ideal Woman

The Western Beauty tells the story of Tuấn Ngọc, a young man from Tam Kỳ, a village in central Vietnam, who goes to France as a colonial soldier. He is wounded during the great battle of Verdun and sent to a military hospital. There he meets a French nurse, Bạch Lan (her French name is transformed into Vietnamese). After many difficulties, they are allowed to marry, and they have a baby girl. In 1918, at the end of the war, Tuấn Ngọc asks the authorities to be allowed to stay in France with his family, but he is sent to Indochina and cannot return to France. When his wife receives his letter, she decides to go to Indochina with their little daughter. She discovers the racism in the colony: the French authorities do not want her to find her husband, because he is Vietnamese. She has to fight, with great courage, and in the end, they are allowed to meet, but are not allowed to live in Indochina. The reason is that, according to the authorities, a colonized man should not marry a French woman.

Bạch Lan’s fidelity, uprightness, and courage are admired by the Vietnamese people. When she leaves Indochina with her family, many Vietnamese people come to the boat to say goodbye. The title of the novel, The Western Beauty, pays tribute to this woman whose beauty is complete: in her soul as well as in her physical appearance.

What does the novel have to tell us about women in modern society and how they should be? In this novel, there are many female characters, both French and Vietnamese. Some may represent the traditional model of a woman devoted to her family, like the mother of Tuấn Ngọc and his brother Minh Châu, as well as Minh Châu’s wife. On the other hand, Tư Hiệp, a young and educated Vietnamese girl, does not hesitate to help Bạch Lan, going so far as to try to get her out of her guarded hotel in secret. On the French side, the figure of Bạch Lan’s mother, a loving mother but not always understanding of her daughter, is opposed to Duy Liên, her older sister, who brings her moral and financial support to help her sister leave for Indochina. Sa Nhi, her servant, is very kind and ready to follow her mistress. Other female figures appear throughout the story, especially in the eyes of the main hero, bringing complementary touches and nuances. Unlike Bạch Lan who signs up as a volunteer nurse, Vietnamese women have no idea of their responsibility in society, but not all French women are like her, as other nurses at the hospital are quite racist toward the colonial soldiers who have nevertheless come to risk their lives for France.

Among all these female characters, Bạch Lan, which means “White Orchid,” a very noble flower in the Vietnamese imagination, is the embodiment of moral values. The first time she appears in the novel, she appears in Tuấn Ngọc’s eyes like a wonderful apparition:

One day, suddenly awakened from a bad dream, Tuấn Ngọc saw a young woman of great elegance beside his bed. She was holding a glass of milk. She smiled at him and said:

“Are you feeling a little better already? Drink some of this milk to regain your strength.”

Tuấn Ngọc, who was gradually healing from his wounds, grabbed the glass and thanked the young woman while looking at her more carefully. Oval face, eyebrows like willow leaves, skin white as snow, lips vermilion red, teeth shining like pearls, hair as light as silk thread, eyes like autumn water, a smile like a spring flower. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 13–14)

The description is conventional, but a Vietnamese reader accustomed to the criteria of traditional female beauty will certainly appreciate it. This beautiful woman works as a volunteer nurse in a military hospital. Tuấn Ngọc admires her courage and her spirit of a citizen. He contrasts her to the Vietnamese women from rich families who know nothing beyond their comfortable daily life.

This very elegant young woman must have been from a good family. Yet she is not afraid of hard work and volunteered for the Red Cross to help wounded soldiers. She really deserves to be praised (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 14)!

Knowing her better through their discussions, Tuấn Ngọc appreciates her respectful behavior, as well as her knowledge and open-mindedness:

Sometimes, at quieter times, she would stay and talk with him for a while. He learned that her name was Bạch Lan and observed that she was the only one among the orderlies who treated all the soldiers from different countries fairly, while the others were contemptuous of the wounded, soldiers from overseas who had risked their lives to defend France. Bạch Lan also enjoyed discussions with Tuấn Ngọc about life and current events and often asked questions about the society and customs of the country of Annam, which he was happy to answer. Sometimes they talked about literature and history, commenting on the exploits of heroes, and they understood each other as long-time friends. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 15)

The reader then sees Bạch Lan in the next chapter presented in her family environment. In fact, she is the daughter of a high-ranking French officer in “the city of Alsace”:

. . . the youngest, named Bạch Lan, was just twenty-nine years old. She was of remarkable beauty and virtuous character but did not abuse her freedom like so many other young women born in a civilized country. She held her parents in great respect, observed the rites, was very talented in needle and thread work. Beauty and talent, she had all these qualities, but she placed virtue above all and paid no attention to stories of butterflies flirting with flowers. So, she remained single while waiting for a soul mate, and shunned gold and honors. Her parents let her do as she pleased and allowed her to volunteer for the Red Cross. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 16).

In the meantime, Tuấn Ngọc is assigned to the service of a French officer, as his personal secretary, who is none other than Bạch Lan’s father. Their reunion, warm and friendly, is followed by regular meetings where they play music and discuss everything. She even asked very direct questions: Why did he become a soldier? Why did he not avenge an injustice done to his parents? Why did he not enjoy a quiet life in the village instead of risking his life in the war in France? Having understood that he is not a coward, but a man who has a high opinion of his responsibility as a man (xả thân vì nghĩa), she falls in love with him (yêu vì hạnh, phục vì tài), but remains reserved (không điều gì trái lễ) (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 21). Tuấn Ngọc is also in love with this “admirable woman” (bực hiệp nữ), but remains discreet, being aware of his condition as a colonial soldier. Scenes are described where two lovers are courting Bạch Lan, one from an influential family in politics, the other with a large fortune. Jealous, they manage to make her father feel that he could not allow Tuấn Ngọc into his house. Then forced to be separated, they finally find each other thanks to a combination of circumstances that allows them to declare their mutual love. Bạch Lan has the courage to ask her parents for permission to marry Tuan Ngoc, arguing: “Since he saved my life, it is not necessary to consider wealth or poverty” (Chàng đã có công cứu tử, sự giàu nghèo có đáng kể chi) (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 32). Their marriage takes place “in church” and the couple live in respect and harmony:

Since this couple of a European woman and an Asian man lived under the same roof, united by the bonds of marriage, the understanding and harmony were perfect, a rare thing, even among spouses from the same country. However, they did not live in ease, for the monthly salary of a soldier was quite modest. Fortunately, Bạch Lan knew how to be thrifty and often took on sewing and embroidery work with her golden fingers so as not to waste her time and to bring some income into the home, which she did with grace and devotion, not wanting to be a burden to her husband. A woman of high moral qualities, she did not abuse the word “equality” like so many others, despite being born in a civilized country. Since her marriage to Tuấn Ngọc, she dressed simply and took care of everything in the house, showing love and respect to her husband, like how in the old days the lady Mạnh Quang served her husband at every meal.Footnote 1 With this newlywed couple, it was only agreement and harmony. She excelled in the household arts, he showed his talent in poetry and music. The spectacle of this happy family life was a joy to witness. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 35–36)

Unfortunately, with the end of the war Tuan Ngoc is sent back to Indochina, officially because his contract has ended. Having no way to return to France, even clandestinely on a ship, he decides to write to his wife to give her back her freedom. Dated June 12, 1919, the letter arrives in France in the fall. The news is like a thunderclap for Bạch Lan who refuses the idea of remarriage suggested by her mother. On the contrary, she decides to defend their love:

We hoped, she said to herself, that we would soon meet again, without suspecting that by saying goodbye, we were separating forever! She silently blamed this arbitrary and perverse power that had separated a couple who lived in harmony, wondering why her letters written to her husband had never arrived. There were still many revolting things in Vietnamese society! If I marry again, she thought, it is against the moral code; if I stay here alone, life will be too hard. The right decision would be to find my husband. Should I cross the ocean to join him, following my role as a wife? I am not afraid of rough seas, high mountains or the dangers of the long road, I will not spare myself the pains to fulfill my duties. I will honor my duty of love. But if I leave, who will take care of the parents? (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 49)

Encouraged by her elder sister who assured her that she would take care of their parents, she decides “to find her husband to fulfill her moral obligations” (đi tìm chồng cho trọn đạo) (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 50). After a long journey, she arrives in a colonial city and has to confront the reality of a racial hierarchy. Faced with an administrator who advises her to take a return ship to France, she replies in a dignified manner:

In this world of five continents and six races, all individuals are equal as human beings, no one can be looked down upon. In any society, morality dictates our duties, and mine is to follow my husband. Should I abandon him because he is poor? A French citizen who acts according to the law and fulfills her duties is rather a subject of pride for the people of France. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 55)

The struggle to find her husband begins in this way, with still worse obstacles to overcome, eventually leading to the desperate act of a suicide attempt. In front of the same stubborn French administrator, she says:

Sir, the people of Annam are of another race, it is true, but they are a people with a culture and rituals, and moreover they have helped us in a difficult time. I hold them in respect, and that is correct. How can you say that it is shameful? My daughter and I came from far away and spent a lot of money, hoping to see my husband, her father, without knowing that here we would be oppressed and that you would use force to make us leave. I would rather die than live to suffer like this! (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 67)

As she speaks these words, Bạch Lan pulls out a pistol, determined to end her life to free herself from this arbitrary power. The administrator is seized with panic, but nevertheless manages to take the gun from her.

Advised by a Vietnamese employee who “praised her uprightness and fidelity” and who assured him that “the people of Annam would... be very admiring of the fidelity of a woman of noble France” (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 67), the administrator finally summons Tuấn Ngọc to come to his office to find his wife. Bạch Lan finds her husband and requests to go to the village to meet his family. Her wish, however simple, is forbidden “so as not to make France lose face” (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 74). In order not to cause more trouble to her family-in-law and the village, she has to comply with this order. The solution is to invite her sister-in-law, her brother-in-law, and two other relatives to come to the town: “When they arrived, Bạch Lan welcomed them warmly and respectfully, although they were country folk. The visitors were delighted and, on their way home, spoke highly of her qualities” (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 74).

The novelist Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa describes Bạch Lan as endowed with the essential qualities in a woman according to the Confucian tradition, namely work, appearance, words, and actions (công, dung, ngôn, hạnh). We see her as a perfect housewife, thrifty and hard-working, even able to earn money to support the household. She is beautiful as is described from her first appearance, then by the conventional expression of “face like a flower, skin like jade” (mặt hoa da ngọc) (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 28). As for her other qualities, we see her respectfulness toward her husband to whom she demonstrates, even at the cost of her life, exemplary fidelity. We understand the admiration of the Vietnamese who sympathized with her situation. Once she is reunited with her husband, they go to Cochinchine (Nam Kỳ) where people welcome them with great kindness:

When they arrived, a great number of people came to meet them, for everyone had heard good things about this foreign woman who was so faithful to her Vietnamese husband. . . many people brought them food and sweets. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 75)

In addition to these qualities exalted in the Confucian tradition, the character of Bạch Lan is also exemplary for her courage. In the colonial context, a heroine who dares to stand up to the authorities is not common, if not unique in Vietnamese literature. She has a strong sense of her place in society, participating according to her abilities in the defense of her homeland in times of war, but also respecting and defending the rights of human beings. We see this through her kind attitude toward all soldiers, without distinction between French and colonials, and her firmness toward the administrator, and against the racial hierarchy in the colony. Her open-mindedness and curiosity about the Other, different from herself but equally worthy of attention, are in deep contradiction with the attitudes and ideas of the colonial regime. The following passage describing a trip through the countryside shows her wonder at the landscape and her attention to the women she saw:

Along the road, nature was waking up with the return of spring. . . Bạch Lan was attentive to the people they passed along the way. At the sight of the women who, carrying heavy loads of goods, remained smiling, she remembered the stories told by Tuấn Ngọc when he was still in France. “Here is an example of the qualities of the women of the Eastern countries,” she said. She felt compassion for these frail bodies who had to perform hard labor to feed their families, thus taking on the duties that fell to them. She compared them to women in France who led an easy life with many freedoms, were respected in society, but who invoked the law to ask for a divorce at the slightest problem in their relationship. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 73)

This passage, a kind of summary of women’s issues, must be read in relation to the answer that the character Tuan Ngoc offers regarding the colonial context. He answers her as follows:

Before, women respected the rules of the three obediences and the four virtues. France has brought the seed of civilization, but it has not made the tree of modernization grow high enough among those who have learned things without really understanding them. Men no longer respect the law, women break morals. Fortunately, there are a few people living in the countryside who are not yet contaminated by bad morals. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 73)

This exchange between the two main characters toward the end of the novel can be used to refine Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s idea of the ideal modern woman for Vietnamese society. First, she must have qualities to ensure her responsibilities within the family. Like the character, through her actions and words, she must also consider herself a citizen and share with the man her responsibilities in society. But freedom and rights do not mean being above everything and without regard for anyone. The character, Bạch Lan, while arguing to have her vows accepted, remains respectful and obedient to her parents: when her father forbids her to see her lover, “she was sad, but did not dare to contradict her parents” (không dám trái ý) (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 24). Once married, she “took care of everything in the house, showing love and respect to her husband” (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 1, 36). Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, by creating this character, shows that a modern woman must have irreproachable moral qualities and must participate in social actions, and fight for human rights, even in a colonial society, and women’s rights. What is completely new is that it affirms, through the character’s determination, that a woman must choose her life partner and must have the courage to defend her love. Compared to the three Confucian obediences, it is really a female revolution that is described in the novel The Western Beauty.

This is the heroine of the novel. Is she in any way like Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa in her life? Did the author have the same qualities as the “Western beauty” she highlighted in her novel?

3.4 Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa (1896–1982): A Woman Who Lived Under Colonization

We have some information about Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s life from Trương Duy Hy’s field investigation. He writes about her birth and origin as follows:

Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Thái whose pseudonym is Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa or Huỳnh Bảo Hòa, was born in 1896 in Đa Phước Homeland, Hòa Minh Commune, Hòa Vang District, Quảng Nam Province - Đà Nẵng (now part of Đà Nẵng). Her father was called Huỳnh Phúc Lợi, her mother Bùi Thị Trang. Mr. Lợi was a military mandarin serving the Nguyễn dynasty and participated in the Cần Vương movement in Quảng Nam Province. (Trương 2003)

The year 1896 is given without reference to any document. Let us keep this date, however, because what is important is that she was probably born around 1900. Her childhood took place at a time when French colonial control was already established, but still shaken by anti-French events.

We can see here a change in name. Huỳnh Thị Thái, a young girl, at one point took on a pen name, which we can see as a statement of intent. Bảo Hòa, a name which seems to mean “to preserve harmony,” can probably be related to the Đà Nẵng region which has several names of localities with the word “hoà” such as Hoà Vang, Hoà Ninh, Hoà Khánh, etc. However, we do not know exactly her native village. Đa Phước, perhaps the district with a well-known communal hall, or đình, in Đà Nẵng city, is mentioned as “quê,” a term indicating the place of origin of the paternal family but does not mean that the person was born or lived there. Moreover, a complementary field survey will be necessary to complete, or even rectify, this information.

Trương Duy Hy wrote that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was born into a “mandarin family.” She herself said, reports Huỳnh Thúc Kháng in the preface to the novel, “I come from a family that loves learning, my father is a retired mandarin. Since my early childhood, I loved to learn” (Huỳnh Thúc Kháng 1927: 1). But we have no further details. According to Trương Duy Hy, her father “was a military mandarin and participated in the anti-French Cần Vương movement” in the years 1885–1895. We cannot say for sure, but it is possible that this element would play a role later in the involvement of her children in the struggle for Vietnamese independence.

The most important thing to note is that the father was literate and could teach his daughter Chinese characters and Confucian classics. Girls at that time were excluded from the traditional education system and the only way for them to learn was to have a teacher at home, or to dress as a boy to go to school. If she was an only child, this was even more plausible. The fact is that we have no other information on her family, nor on her possible brothers and sisters. We do not know exactly when and how she began to learn the Vietnamese quốc ngữ script, and also French, but she wrote both well, as can be seen from her publications in Vietnamese, as well as from the afterword in French of the book about Champa.

According to Trương Duy Hy, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa lived in the countryside until her marriage and then came to the city as a young bride:

This young country girl who had to leave all her habits to become a lady in a modern city, a French concession that was completely foreign to her, was not frightened, but on the contrary, quickly became accustomed to the urban way of life and in particular became imbued with the modernist (duy tân) spirit promoted by the various patriotic movements. (2003: 10).

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa married in 1914 (we have a picture) with Vương Khả Lãm. He had been granted the title “Hàn lâm viện đại học sĩ” which can be translated as “academician,” but seems to be more of an honorific title (on the mandarin hierarchy see Poisson 2004). Another photo shows him in a traditional tunic and turban. In Đà Nẵng, he seems to have been a personality who could enjoy friendship with mandarins and scholars, such as ministers (thượng thư) Hồ Đắc Trung and Lê Bá Trinh, and exam graduates (phó bảng) Dương Hiển Tiến and Lê Văn Chiểu (Phạm and Lê 2001, cited by Trương 2003: 10). No other information is available, however, we can formulate a hypothesis that he worked rather in relation with Western circles: on the one hand, their residence in the center of Đà Nẵng, a French concession, excluded the membership of the mandarinate; on the other hand, his wife wrote in the account of their stay in the climatic resort of Bà Nà reserved for Westerners, that he had to return to Đà Nẵng at the “end of his vacation leave”(hết phép nghỉ) (Huỳnh 1931: 555). At present, it is through his wife that he is known: in the list of members of the Women’s Work Learned Society published in 1929, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is mentioned under the name of her husband, as in general were the other members of the association in the 1929 list, as Mrs. Vương Khả Lãm (Anonymous 1929: Vol. 2, 30). She is the sixty-ninth member listed and is part of the Tourane, or what is now called Đà Nẵng, section which had seven members. Her publications in 1934 and 1936 are also signed under her husband’s name, followed by the clarification, “that is” (tức là), “Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa.”

Let us consider that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa got married in 1914. She was then 18 years old, not a very early age for those times. Five children were born in the 1920s, including two sons and three daughters. Their eldest son, Vương Khả Hàn, born in 1922, would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1945. Their daughter, Vương Thị Nguyệt Thu, born in 1924, would join the anti-French resistance as early as 1945 and died in 1951 in the maquis. The younger son Vương Khả Thụy (whom Trương Duy Hy met around 2002), born in 1928, would join North Vietnam in 1955 along with his older brother. Two daughters were born in 1930 and 1932, Vương Thúy Lan and Vương Thiên Hương. They would live with their youngest daughter until their deaths in the family house in Đà Nẵng.

These dates, which are known thanks to Trương Duy Hy’s fieldwork, call for a remark. The exceptionally long time between the marriage (1914) and the birth of the first child (1922), i.e., 8 years, is not normal. Except for an exceptional case of a health problem, we could formulate the hypothesis that Mr. Vương Khả Lãm, shortly after their marriage, had to leave his wife for a few years. The Great War (1914–1918) could be this cause, but research should be carried out in a thorough way in to try to find information about an individual from among the 90,000 Vietnamese enlisted men who went to France during this period. This could be one of the explanations for the genesis of the novel.

In any case, we can assume that the couple lived happily with their five children, as much as was possible in those troubled years in Vietnam’s history. Two portraits seem to have been taken at the same time, with the same oval frame, showing them in traditional clothes, with serene and complicit expressions. In her account of her trip to Bà Nà, published in 1931, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa mentions her husband with the affectionate term “nhà tôi” (my husband) in recounting this two-week family stay at the hill resort. Mr. Vương Khả Lãm passed away in 1968, if a photo of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa in mourning dated 1968 is to be believed. Given Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s activities, especially very active in the years 1926–1936, when their children were still very young, we can imagine that this was not possible without a perfect understanding between spouses and real support from her husband.

Further, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was a personality in her city and far beyond. In 1926, she participated, with other “important” people, in the organization of the funeral of the modernist leader Phan Châu Trinh. Bùi Thế Mỹ, in the French-language newspaper Annamese Echo (Echo annamite), presented her in 1928 as a “feminist,” an active supporter of female education (Bùi 1928: 1–2). In 1934, a delegation from the emblematic feminist magazine Women’s News (Phụ nữ tân văn), visited her and interviewed her about her decision to cut her hair short. In the 1940s, she was well known from north to south. A note in the first issue of Renewed Knowledge (Tạp chí tri tân), published by a group of eminent intellectuals in Hanoi, shows the consideration she enjoyed in the intellectual milieu at that time, stating, “To Mrs. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa in Tourane—Did you receive my letter? Please answer. Please think of promoting Renewed Knowledge. Thank you” (Anonymous 1941: 20). Meanwhile, Ái Lang (1943) and Hoa Bang (1943) both spoke of her as a pioneer in women’s journalism.

Based on current sources, we believe that the activities of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa can be divided into two periods. From 1926 to 1929, she was very involved in actions in favor of women’s education and women’s rights. She was a member of the Tourane section of the Women’s Work Learned Society association founded in Hue by Mrs. Đạm Phương and inaugurated on June 28, 1926. Two years later she created another Women’s Work Learned Society in Tourane which was inaugurated on November 18, 1928, for which we have a photo of the ceremony. It was during this period that she wrote regularly in the press, notably in the Industrial People’s News (Thực nghiệp dân báo) of which we have a photo of her journalist’s card dated 1927. According to Bùi Thế Mỹ, a well-known journalist in Saigon:

As for the articles she gave to the various Annamese newspapers, and more particularly to the Voice of the People [Tiếng dân] and the Indochina Times [Đông Pháp thời báo], and in which the author deals most often with women’s issues, they are always written with good sense, even with authority, in a pleasant style. (Bùi 1928: 2)

The novel, The Western Beauty, written probably in 1926, was published very quickly in 1927, with prefaces by three intellectuals: Bùi Thế Mỹ, Tản Đà, the great poet from Hanoi, as well as Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, whose official title was President of the House of the People’s Representatives of Annam, but above all, was a modernist leader who had spent years in colonial prisons.

During the following period, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was mainly interested in her region as the territory of the ancient kingdom of Champa. In 1929, she visited an ancient Cham site discovered by the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient (French School of the Far East, or EFEO). She certainly visited other sites, worked in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, and studied the available literature on Champa from the historical, cultural, architectural, and artistic points of view. Her work of synthesis on Champa, published in 1936, received a glowing review in the Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient by Nguyễn Văn Tố, one of the greatest historians of the time (Nguyễn 1936: 506–507). But before this work, she had already published in 1934 a traditional tuồng drama, Princess Huyền Trân, in which she dramatized a well-known episode in Vietnamese history when in the thirteenth century the Trần king gave his daughter in marriage to the king of Champa. This piece, fortunately preserved in the legal deposit at the National Library of France in Paris, testifies to another aspect of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s activities. More specifically, in the preface of that work she speaks of the importance of theater in society and of her wish to contribute to the reform of traditional tuồng theater, not only by arranging old plays and writing new ones, but also by financially supporting a theater company for about a year, from the end of 1931 until the economic crisis was heavily felt (Huỳnh 1934a, b: 2–4).

In 1931, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa also published an account of her family’s trip to Bà Nà, a hill station at an altitude of 1400 m created for French personnel, during which she noted the inequalities and injustices between human beings (Huỳnh 1931). It seems that she was then no longer active in feminism as in the previous period. The interview she gave in 1934 about her hair being cut short for a year leads us to believe that she advises Vietnamese women to have the courage to assert their will, first in the private domain, such as hair and clothes, while waiting to obtain more freedom in the public domain. The reaction of a Woman’s News reader shows that cutting one’s hair was not as trivial as it may seem to us today and required a high opinion of womanhood that most did not have (Bạch 1934: 21). Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s interview reveals a page in the history of feminism in Vietnam, showing us at the same time the great difference between the reality and the ideal of a modern woman described in the novel published seven years earlier.

The Summary Study of Champa published in 1936 is Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s last known writing. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa may still have written in the press, but we do not have any such works. From 1945 on, she probably did not publish anymore. According to Trương Duy Hy:

In 1945, after the August Revolution, she continued her activities at the Đà Nẵng Women’s Association until the beginning of the Indochina War. After a brief period of evacuation [tản cư], she and her husband returned to live with their youngest daughter Vương Thiên Hương in the family house, No. 18-20 Phan Châu Trinh Avenue in Đà Nẵng. . . In 1975 after the reunification of the country, she made a trip to Hanoi to visit friends. A few years before her death, she lost her eyesight and became progressively weaker (Trương 2010).

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa died on May 8, 1982, in her house in Đà Nẵng and was buried at the family plot, and then transferred in 1988 to Hồ Chí Minh City to a house of worship under the responsibility of her grandson Nguyễn Thành Nghĩa. Some family members remained in Đà Nẵng, including Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s youngest son. About Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s life before 1945, especially her novel and play, the memory was lost, even in her family, until the book about her was published in 2003.

3.5 A Modernist and Feminist Woman

In Đà Nẵng, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is now known as the first woman in the city to have short hair and to ride a bicycle. Trương Duy Hy was fortunate to interview “elders born in Đà Nẵng like Mr. and Mrs. Đoàn Bá Từ, retired executive and members of the Thái Phiên Club” who kept this image in their memory (Trương 2003). The short hair and the bicycle are not just an appearance, but rather a symbol of her adherence to the ideas of modernization. Here it is necessary to say a few words about the modernist moment which is very important in the history of Vietnam in general, and in the region where Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa lived in particular.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in parallel with the armed anti-French struggle which Phan Bội Châu organized from Japan, the modernists (literates, but also new French-speaking graduates) were persuaded of the importance of “modernizing” (duy tân) Vietnamese society in order to prepare it for independence, which remained their objective. The regional and international context lent itself to this, and reformer Phan Châu Trinh was in a position to publish an open letter to the Governor-General of Indochina to explain the modernist project and to demand more rights for the Vietnamese.

The central region of Vietnam, named Annam by the French, was a field of very dynamic activities such as the establishment of modern schools and businesses. The image of an immobile royal court in Hue is certainly not the whole picture. It should be noted that the modernist leaders Phan Châu Trinh and Huỳnh Thúc Kháng came from the center and that modernist activities were more precocious there at the beginning of the century, although for posterity the Đông Kinh Free School (Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục school), created in Hanoi in 1907, has become the emblem. This modernist episode was brief, as it was suppressed as early as 1908, following an anti-tax protest in the center in March. The scholars, identified as troublemakers, were targeted by the colonial and mandarin authorities and forced to leave the public scene.

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was between ten and twelve years old in these years. The young Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa could of course see or even participate in some of the modernization activities, but we do not know exactly where she lived at the time. Note, however, that the village of Phan Châu Trinh (Tam Lộc, Phú Ninh) and that of his cousin and reformer Lê Cơ (Tiên Sơn, Tiên Phước) are distant from each other by about thirteen kilometers, are only seventy kilometers from Đà Nẵng, and thus are quite accessible, even on foot (Sở văn hóa thông tin tỉnh Quảng Nam 2006). The area is thus one of the nuclei of modernist activities in the years 1900–1908.

The first trace of any public activity by Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa dates from 1926. A witness, who later became a Communist Party first secretary of Quảng Nam Province, attests to her participation in 1926 in the organization of Phan Chau Trinh’s funeral:

The workers gathered in mutual aid associations, as well as some important personalities in Đà Nẵng at the time such as Nguyễn Tùng, Phạm Doãn Điềm, Nguyễn Đình Thuần, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hoà. . . and took the initiative to organize the funeral of Phan Châu Trinh in a very solemn way. Thousands of people came to the town hall to participate. (Phan 1980 cited in Trương 2010: 12)

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is the only woman listed among the organizers. It took courage to show respect to the old modernist leader who literally sacrificed his life for his country. Without a doubt, she must have also enjoyed a situation that allowed her not to be worried by the colonial authorities. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was certainly not naive. In the novel she was probably writing at the same time, she has her character say many times that her country “has lost its independence” and that its inhabitants are like “slaves.” Her heroine, the Frenchwoman, complains about the “arbitrary power” in France as in Indochina. As one can see, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa did not only write beautiful words in a novel, but she also acted in her life according to her convictions.

Her activities in favor of women’s education and the defense of women’s rights also show the correspondence between her ideas and her actions. We can see this in the Women’s Work Learned Society founded in Hue in 1926 of which she was a member, and in the chapter that she founded in Tourane in 1928. She had the idea of creating a federation of women’s associations from different cities and regions which seems to have been supported, for example, by a member of the Hue Women’s Work Learned Society who lived in Nam Định in the north and who wrote a letter to the Women’s Work Learned Society in 1927 that was published in its journal the following year (Bích 1928: 30).

What did it mean to be a feminist in colonial Vietnam? First, it meant giving lectures on practical subjects and calling on all women to educate themselves and to participate in social life. According to Trương Duy Hy, in numerous conferences in Đà Nẵng, “organized by different movements,” she:

. . . aimed to improve women’s knowledge, encourage them to adopt a new way of life, urge them to be thrifty, to know how to raise and educate their children, etc., using, for example, soapberry [bồ hòn] fruit as soap to clean clothes. By calling on women to learn quốc ngữ, she showed the benefits of knowing how to read and write for oneself, for the family, and for society. She explained how to save money by using bời lời [Litsea glutinosa] to make ink. (Trương 2010: 11)

As Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was a member of the Hue chapter of the Women’s Work Learned Society, the activities of this association should help us to know more about its mindset and its own activities. The “women’s work” in its title is a reference to the domestic arts, which is quite harmless. The journalist Bùi Thế Mỹ wrote in 1928:

The purpose of the association is household education. Conferences are organized accordingly, where members can teach each other everything related to housework.

Apart from that, we also take care of school-age girls. In fact, on their days off, many of them attend the lessons given at the association’s headquarters. The members of the [Women’s Work Learned Society] are in charge, in turn, of telling these free pupils how to make a child’s costume, embroider a handkerchief, prepare certain dishes, make gifts, etc. In a word, these kids are taught everything that a well-educated Annamite girl should not ignore. (Bùi 1928: 1)

Reading the publications issued by the Hue chapter of the Women’s Work Learned Society, we can also see that the objective of the association, at least of Mrs. Đạm Phương, its founder, and members like Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, was not limited to training a good wife and a good mother. The announcement of its foundation in the newspaper Center and North News (Trung Bắc tân văn) on May 17, 1926, specifies its three objectives concerning women “(1) Improving skills; (2) Defining responsibilities; (3) Opening the mind.” A speech by Phan Bội Châu, “the revered patriot,” at the inauguration of the association on June 28, 1926, in Hue, clearly assigned a much higher objective, by urging women to contribute to the collective efforts of the Vietnamese people (Phan 1926: 18–27). Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, another modernist leader, as the Chairman of the House of People’s Representatives of Annam, in response to Mrs. Đạm Phương at this inauguration ceremony, was also very clear:

Look at the civilized countries in Europe and America, women are competing with men in the affairs of society, not only in the fields of studies and techniques, but they also demand participation in politics, elections, etc. Moreover, the bright evidence is that in the recent war in Europe, women have led many businesses and companies. (Huỳnh 1926: 31)

Europe and the United States are put forth here as examples, which was not only a rhetorical effect intended for the colonial authorities, present at the inauguration in the person of Pierre Pasquier, future governor-general of Indochina. Like The Western Beauty that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa would publish shortly after, with a preface by Huỳnh Thúc Kháng that praises her effort to spread modern ideas to women, the intention to follow the West in its best, was sincere.

The Women’s Work Learned Society was therefore not a simple association that taught “household arts.” Phan Bội Châu, in his book published by the Women’s Work Learned Society in 1926 comprising twenty-five “chapters” in the form of short poems, affirms the eminent role of women in human society from the first poem entitled “General Idea”: “Girl or boy, all carry the burden of the country’s affairs together/But the girls have a more important share/For being a mother (of the national community) is a female task” (Phan 1926: 3). After poems about “what a woman should know” as a child, then as a wife and mother, in the family and social relationships, the last one with the title “Do you have a husband yet?” (Mầy đã có chồng chưa?) expresses the voice of a Vietnamese woman who lost her husband (her country): “His last name is Việt, his first name is Nam. He is more than 3000 years old, not very old... Heaven, how can you be so cruel? By taking my husband away from me” (Phan 1926: 16). Strange as it may seem, this little book, reissued in 1927, was well published, circulated for a time, and was kept in the colonial legal deposit. We must undoubtedly deduce a moment of softness in Indochinese politics, probably with the appointment on July 28, 1925, of the socialist Alexandre Varenne to the post of governor-general until 1929, the year when Mrs. Đạm Phương, despite her status as a member of the royal family, was imprisoned for two months, suspected by the authorities of being in contact with the nationalist Tân Việt party.

A text by Mrs. Đạm Phương, dated February 14, 1928, and published in the first volume of the General Knowledge of Women’s Work in 1928, in response to critics of her project, allows us to better understand the steps necessary to obtain equality of women with men:

Following the wave of women’s rights that recently arose in our society, several people, women or men, asked my opinion, probably wanting to ask me this question: when women proclaim women’s rights, why do I say that we must take care of the education of women’s work [nữ công]. . . Women’s work is a step towards women’s rights. Let me explain: A country that has no rights is so because it has lost its independence, a family that has no rights is also because it has lost its independence, a human being who has no rights is again because he has lost his independence, a woman who has no rights is because she has lost her independence and has become accustomed to relying on others and being a slave to them. Independence is about two things: 1) Independence of the mind; 2) independence of the body. Independence of the mind means independence in knowledge and ideas. In order to be independent, it is necessary to widen one’s knowledge to be wise in different fields. Independence of the body means independence in one’s life. You have to learn how to do things yourself, so that you can support yourself. . . A girl who wants to have rights must her two independences. This is quite contrary to the Chinese ideology of the three obediences, which is to obey and rely on others. (Đạm Phương 1928: 26–27)

The lecture given by Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa on December 31, 1933, at a market in Tourane for a charity event corresponds to the ideas espoused by Đạm Phương. She agrees with the necessity of teaching trades so that women can become financially independent, but this is only a step to go further, that is to be equal with men. Her lecture, “Women’s Personality” (Nhân cách phụ nữ) gives a deplorable account of the situation of women in the world, then offers a history of the place of women since antiquity in different civilizations and religions, before asserting that women, representing half of humanity, must have their dignity and their place in modern society. She underlines the opposition in the Vietnamese society between the conservatives and the moderns (duy tân) who:

. . . want women to obtain their full quality as human beings, to have enough knowledge to manage their affairs, to educate their children, to participate in society, to be able to be independent to do whatever they wish in order to create happiness for the family and society. . . in the family as well as in society, it is necessary to fight and eradicate the old morals and customs which are mistakes of the past, especially men should no longer consider women as treasures, society and law should no longer consider them as minors. (Huỳnh 1933: 552)

The novel, The Western Beauty, beyond its role in the history of the Vietnamese language and literature, must be situated in this perspective. The character of the beautiful and educated French woman, model wife, and responsible citizen, is proposed as a model for Vietnamese women. In our opinion, this novel should not be read as an old-fashioned novel telling once again the story of a faithful and devoted wife. The objective of its author is much more of a rupture with traditional morality, by choosing the novel form to spread as widely as possible the ideas in favor of the liberation of the woman. She confided in Huỳnh Thúc Kháng who reports her words as follows:

During the last decade or so, which saw the emergence of the women’s studies movement [nữ học], I liked to collect newspapers and magazines, with the idea of reading to educate myself. Of these readings, I much prefer the novel, which gave me the courage to try my hand at it myself. (Huỳnh 1926: 1)

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s project was completely in agreement with the modernist spirit, as Huỳnh Thúc Kháng also affirmed in his preface, that the novel was an incomparably effective means to diffuse ideas.

The tuồng drama, Princess Huyền Trân, can also be considered in the modernist and feminist spirit: the story of the princess highlights the role that a woman can play in history, as the protagonist sacrifices herself for her country, but also her right to love, once her husband has died. The publication of this play also allowed us to know, thanks to the preface, that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, according to modernist recommendations, also contributed economically, by financing a theater company. By giving work to about twenty people, women and men, she helped to revive and reform a traditional art.

However, the fight for women’s rights was not an easy path. Numerous articles in the press of the time testify to the difficulty of changing mentalities, starting with the idea of manual labor allowing a woman to support herself. Concerning Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, her short hair and her practice of cycling mentioned above are not a simple matter of appearance. Let us recall in passing that in the early twentieth century, hair was worn long by men as a symbol of filial piety and that modernist scholars were known precisely as the “cut hair” and were subject to repression by the colonial power.

For women, it was still a problem a quarter of a century later. In the interview given in May 1934 to the magazine Women’s News, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa clearly explained that her decision to cut her hair was part of the exercise of her rights as an individual, until equality between men and women could be achieved:

. . . The right to equality and the right to participate in governance will surely be achieved one day, but for the time being, they are only an ideal, especially since in order to exercise these rights, we will have to ask for authorization, because the power to give them belongs to others who must consent to them. As for the change of our look, this is a freedom of each individual, we do not have to ask for authorization from anyone. That is why, after cutting my hair short, I am studying to see how to change my habits, such as playing sports, cycling, and changing clothes and shoes. Do not think that I am doing all this to try to make myself more beautiful, because the truth is that I want to change so that industry, commerce, and technology can progress. (Huỳnh 1934b: 17–18)

These changes, while possible immediately, required a real change of mindset. Her hair cut in 1934 needed a lot of determination:

We must arm ourselves with courage and will to face and fight inertia; the necessary weapon here is confidence and determination. When I made my decision, I entrusted without hesitation my long hair to the scissors; after that, I did not pay any attention to the words of some or others, to the hostile glances that stare at my short hair, in order to completely realize my will. (Huỳnh 1934b: 18)

The letter from a woman reader, after the publication of this interview, shows how difficult it was to change the mentalities in the Vietnamese society of the time. After giving several examples of women who wanted to wear short hair but did not dare, this woman admitted that she herself did not succeed in doing so and hoped that her daughters would do better. She praised Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa for her courage, saying, “I admire Ms. Bảo Hòa for this. She does what she wants to do” (Bạch 1934: 21).

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa wanted precisely to write a novel to show a female example and she did so. Thanks to this novel rediscovered in the 2000s, her name has become familiar again to the Vietnamese reader.

3.6 The First Woman Novelist

Recent research shows the importance of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa in the history of Vietnamese literature. Yet her name and her work were “forgotten for seventy years.” Lại Nguyên Ân, while casually reading an account, discovered the existence of the novel The Western Beauty and found it in the National Library of Vietnam in Hanoi. First in a blog post, dated December 2000, and then in an article in the Journal of Literature (Tạp chí văn học) published in June 2001, he hypothesized that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa was the first female novelist. At that time, he was not aware of any other publications by Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa.

Trương Duy Hy then took over, but unfortunately did not have access to all of Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s publications. In the book he released in 2003, Trương Duy Hy re-edited The Western Beauty, the travel story, and the book on Champa (from a manuscript kept by the family) but could only point out the possible existence of a play. We now have the published play. These literary texts allow us to better know Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa the writer who may have published other works, short stories, or essays, in periodicals.

We have here the modest intention to briefly present her literary work. First is the question of interest to the literary history of Vietnam. Is Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa the first female novelist or not? The three authors who wrote prefaces to her work emphasize the innovative character of a novel written by a woman. According to Bùi Thế Mỹ, for instance, upon its release the novel “enjoyed a rare success in Cochinchina” (Bùi 1928: 2). Meanwhile, Diệp Văn Kỳ, journalist and owner of the Indochina Times, wrote a review in his newspaper in October 1927 (Diệp 1927) while journalist and writer Thiếu Sơn mentioned the novel in 1934 (Thiếu 1934: 7). About fifteen years later, however, Vũ Ngọc Phan, author of a monumental history of modern Vietnamese literature written in quốc ngữ, seems not to have known of its existence (Vũ 1951). Hoa Bằng, in an article published in Renewed Knowledge, in an issue dedicated to women’s literature, which cites Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa as a pioneer in journalism, does not mention this novel either (Hoa 1943: 2).

Lại Nguyên Ân and Trương Duy Hy argue that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s novel is the first written in Vietnamese and published by a woman. However, Lê Thanh Hiền, known for his research in theater, has contested this hypothesis and proposes instead a novel by Đạm Phương, published in book form in 1928, after being serialized in several issues in a magazine (Lại 2001). Similarly, Võ Văn Nhơn, in a work on literature from the first half of the twentieth century, mentions other earlier published novels (Võ 2007). However, Nguyễn Kim Anh, who compiled a book on women’s writing in the twentieth century, and who had access to other sources, considers that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is indeed the first female Vietnamese language novelist (Nguyễn 2002).

In our opinion, the title of champion is not interesting, but the question of which woman had published the first modern Western-style novel in Vietnamese has the merit of attracting the attention of scholars and hopefully stimulating further research. We want to emphasize that from the point of view of content, unlike these other novels that may have been published earlier, The Western Beauty presents a story anchored in contemporary society, which speaks of a major social fact. The commitment of many young Vietnamese to come to France during the First World War is a reality that is little discussed in historiographical research in France and Vietnam. To our knowledge, there is no equivalent in colonial literature, even though colonial soldiers did contribute to France’s victory. It is also necessary to underline the criticism of social injustice, that of the corrupt mandarinate, but also that of colonization, which runs through the whole novel. We can quote the passage when the couple receives the prohibition against Bạch Lan visiting the village to see her family-in-law “not to make France lose face.” Bạch Lan reacts like a Frenchwoman and “did not want to hear anything”:

Her husband had to find the right words to reason with her: “In my country, we are not free like in France. If we do not submit it, it will be a catastrophe. It is useless and will only bring us misfortune. As the road is bad, if you really want, I will go to the village alone and bring back the family so that you can see them. Then we will have to make arrangements to return to France because they won’t let us live here in peace”. (Huỳnh 1927: Vol. 2, 74)

As for the form, although the structure of the novel follows a traditional model, summarizing the content of each chapter by two verses, it reads easily, with common words and despite references to classical Chinese literature. These are perhaps numerous for a modern reader, but this is quite understandable with a main hero who began his studies with Chinese characters, before going to a French school. The Western Beauty also gives much space to inner monologues which give access to the thoughts of the main characters. Lại Nguyên Ân notes Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s efforts to make her sentences natural, avoiding rhythmic and symmetrical sentences, as well as avoiding imposing her point of view and letting the characters evolve.

Apart from the novel, we know that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa experimented in two other literary genres. In 1931, she published in the magazine Southern Breeze an account of a trip to the hill resort Bà Nà. Now well known to tourists, the resort, which is at an altitude of 1400 m and twenty-five kilometers from the bay of Tourane, was not so easily accessible at that time, and for part of the journey, the traveler had to leave the car and be transported in sedan chairs. In the tradition of the travelogue inaugurated by Phạm Quỳnh, editor of Southern Breeze, the reader is provided with information on all the stages of the journey so that he could make it himself. The author takes care to inform about the organization of the place, the access conditions, the accommodation, the landscape, and the climate, as well as the sites of interest in the surroundings. The reading is pleasant, we appreciate the clarity of the language which is not encumbered by expressions of Chinese origin. The following passage could give us an idea of the style:

One afternoon I took a book and came to the foot of a pine tree to read in peace, in the company of my children, about seven - eight years old, who were running around after butterflies and picking flowers. Absorbed in my reading, I did not pay attention to the clouds that were accumulating until I saw in the hollow of the mountains, something white like a big cloud rising strongly. . . obstinately, I stayed until the fog began to envelop us, and only then I hurried back, the children running ahead of me in the fog, their blue and red clothes floating like little immortals walking in the clouds. (Huỳnh 1931: 557)

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, a connoisseur of tuồng theater, rearranged other ancient texts for the needs of the troupe she was sponsoring in 1931, before writing the play Princess Huyền Trân, with the aim of renewing tuồng drama (it is specified on the cover page that it is a “tuồng cải lương” or “renovated tuồng”). Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa deplores the situation of tuồng, unable to withstand the competition of cải lương, or “renovated theater” which was very popular in the south, and wishes to contribute to improving this ancient performing art not only by funding the training of male and female singers, the manufacture of stage clothes and scenery, but also by enriching the content of the repertoire. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa writes in the preface that the story of the princess whose marriage to the king of Champa brought Vietnam two provinces deserves to be known to understand the history of Vietnam, especially its relationship with the kingdom of Champa. As is expected in a tuồng play, ancient expressions are numerous, but one can find dialogues with a much more common language as in this scene where the princess is about to leave her country:

Princess (appears [on stage]) - Your Majesty my brother, I am only a woman who could not pay the debt to her birth, now that you have given me to the kingdom of Champa, father and yourself, do not pay attention to my fragile life, what matters is the peace of our country and the strength of our ramparts.

. . .

Princess (looks at [the man she loves, Trần] Khắc Chung) - South and North are now separated, save the wish of faithful love for the next life”. (Huỳnh 1934a, b: 20)

In this play dedicated to a traditional theatrical practice, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa also brings something new. Unlike the repertoire of other plays, this work takes as subject a fact in the history of Vietnam, and not the history of ancient China. The exemplary role of the princess is emphasized, “fidelity, filial piety, love, duty everything is fulfilled” (Huỳnh 1934a, b: 4), but with a certain audacity, because her sacrifice (for the country) is on the same level of honor as her choice to follow her love.

This figure of a Vietnamese princess in the land of Champa seems to have allowed Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa to start a scholarly work that led to the publication of a synthesis work on Champa in 1936.

3.7 Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa as a Researcher of Her Native Land

In her publications, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa shows a great attachment to her region which seems to be a source of inspiration. The novel, The Western Beauty, tells a story that took place there, real according to her statements and that of Bùi Thế Mỹ who had heard it told by his family living in the region. It is not our purpose here to discuss the relationship between fiction and history (which must wait for research in the archives in Vietnam and France), but it seems to us that it is relevant to underline the attention that Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa pays to what happened around her. She had an inquisitive mind, was open and in constant motion. While staying in Đà Nẵng for most of her life, it was by visiting places around her home and studying the history of the region that she wrote her writings.

The work of synthesis on Champa, A Summary Study of Champa, published in 1936, is the result of a work of research that must certainly have been spread over several years. It is also necessary to include the travelogue and the theatrical play which attest to her “scientific spirit,” the object of great attention in the milieu of Vietnamese intellectuals of the time. Her play, Princess Huyền Trân, takes as its subject a real historical episode and relies on the historical sources she had at her disposal. The account of the trip to Bà Nà shows that the author was very concerned about the exactitude of the information and sources she mentioned, making her own comments on the possible veracity of these statements, whether it was about Lord Mountain (Núi Chúa) on which the future king Gia Long established his base, or about varieties of insects or a rock that changes color with the passage of time.

A Summary Study of Champa has this subtitle: “Traces of the Chàm (Champa): population—religion—kingdom—literature—architecture—music—fine arts—history—personalities.” The book is fairly long at sixty-four pages and includes one color drawing, as well as seven photos of sculptures and monuments, which was a great novelty. The author’s foreword states her objective: “... this land (Trung Kỳ) where we live now, was the territory of Champa. The history of this people has close links with that of our Vietnamese people. Our duty is to study it in a thorough way” (Huỳnh 1936: 5). The preface by Phạm Quỳnh, Minister of Education in Hué (Thượng thư bộ Giáo dục Huế), in welcoming the author’s effort to offer Vietnamese readers the first book on the ancient kingdom of Champa, is marked by nostalgia for the time of Vietnam’s independence: “The life of a people, of a kingdom, is in fact quite fragile!... To exist, one must be able to rely on one’s own strength, we should meditate on this” (Phạm 1936: 3).

The originality of the book is not therefore its subject. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s contribution, by synthesizing the scientific research of the EFEO and by doing fieldwork, is to propose a work that aims to give the reader an overall and objective view of this ancient kingdom. She states in her foreword that she has been able to take advantage of the collection at the Museum of Cham Sculpture near her home, has read books in Chinese characters, and recent research in French “thanks to the help of friends,” but has also gone into the field. She thus recalls a visit to an ancient capital of the Chams as follows:

I had the chance to visit an ancient Champa site in 1929. . . When the Chams left their capital, they completely buried their palaces under the earth; for hundreds of years, the Vietnamese saw only a small hill. Thanks to the French scholars who studied the ancient traces and found this site which they opened, we knew that it was what remained of the capital of the Cham”. (Huỳnh 1936: 24–25).

She also went to the sacred sites of the Cham, Mỹ Sơn and Đồng Dương, so she could tell the story and observe the architecture of the towers:

The towers of Mỹ Sơn and Đồng Dương are two of the most famous complexes in the territory of Quảng Nam province. Having had the opportunity to visit them several times, we will talk in the different sections about their architecture and the paths that lead to them. (Huỳnh 1936: 30)

For this rather long part (31–45), she was helped, as Nguyễn Văn Tố points out in his review, by Võ Quang Quỳnh, secretary at the Museum of Cham Sculpture, for the details concerning the architecture of which several French terms are explained probably for the first time in Vietnamese. This part, moreover, includes a travel story signed by Võ Quang Quỳnh and entitled “Visiting the Towers of Mỹ Sơn (September 1934): Impressions of a Traveler” (41–42).

A chapter is dedicated to the music and arts of the Chams. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa thus speaks about it to her Vietnamese readers, most of whom know nothing about Champa:

The Chams loved music and the fine arts. Among the sculptures that have come down to us, several show figures playing the flute and other instruments, or representing figures holding each other by the back and dancing to the rhythm of the music. (Huỳnh 1936: 21)

In the last part, devoted to the personalities of Champa, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa deplores the lack of sources and says that she strives to portray those who have marked the history of the kingdom, including King Chế Bồng Nga in the fourteenth century, praised for his military talent, but also Queen Mi E who preferred death to dishonor.

Upon its publication, this work was reviewed in the bulletin of the EFEO by Nguyên Văn Tố, then an assistant at the EFEO and one of the best-known Vietnamese historians:

It has the great merit of being clear, relatively succinct, and of recalling all the essential facts. . . There is certainly more than one shortcoming to be pointed out, more than one error to be noted in his work, but these errors and shortcomings, thanks to the very real merits which accompany them, do not prevent his booklet from presenting a serious interest. (Nguyễn 1936: 506–507)

From this erudite man who is famous for his rigor, including pointing out phrases that he felt could be improved, this is high praise. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa’s work surely has its place in the history of the introduction of social sciences and humanities in Vietnam, especially anthropology, by bringing not only knowledge to the Vietnamese public who did not have access to Western research, but also elements of the modern scientific research method, as well as words to express new concepts in Vietnamese. Her work, which she modestly introduces in her preface as “a first step in the study of ancient times by a woman” (bước đầu về việc khảo cổ học của nữ lưu) (Huỳnh 1936: 5), is rightly appreciated as an early synthesis of scholarly research on Champa, thus putting her on par with other male scholars.

It seems important to us also to talk about another aspect of this book. Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa clearly expresses her opinion in her preface on the need to study the history and culture of the Chams whose lands were conquered by the Việts. A chapter of her book is devoted to the history of Champa, through mentions in Chinese and Vietnamese written sources, thus especially mentions of battles between Champa, China, and Vietnam. The question of assimilation (đồng hóa) of the Chams by the Việts is also addressed. In her conclusion, she makes a point of providing her thoughts on the causes of Champa’s decline, which she also repeats in her post-face in French. According to her, the Chams lost their country because of a combination of reasons. The Chams “because of the worship of their deities (see the sculptures and towers that reach us)... did not pay attention to practical things (đường thực tế)” (Huỳnh 1936: 5 60). Excellent warriors “loving war” (61), “they did not hold literature (văn học) in consideration, did not have annals to write their reigns, did not celebrate the work of their ancestors... did not love their country with a warm love (yêu nước nồng nàn), so they lost all the lands of their homeland (quốc thổ)” (61).

Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa manifests here a very innovative spirit at the time, namely the consideration of the populations that would later be called in Vietnam “ethnic minorities,” in the history of Vietnam (written as Việt-Nam in the text). We see this in this book, in her tuồng piece, but also in her travelogue where she mentions only in passing, but with respect, the mountain people living near the climate resort.

3.8 Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that we can consider Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa among the women who made modern Vietnam. In a colonial society, she worked actively for about twenty years in favor of Vietnamese women for whom she wished more freedom, a better education, and a better place in society. She was certainly a feminist, but in the spirit of the Vietnamese modernists of the early twentieth century who held women in high respect and called upon them to participate in the transformation of Vietnamese society, with the idea to prepare for future independence. First woman novelist or not, Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa is in any case one of the female authors who counted at the time. She also participated in the development of Vietnamese scientific research, by making Western methods and results available to readers.

All these aspects of her activities are obviously to be considered in a unity that often escapes the outside eye, distant moreover by about a century. Let us keep in mind that her life is present in her work and her work is intimately linked to her life. I would like to quote a passage from A Summary Study of Champa, when Huỳnh Thị Bảo Hòa, while visiting the ancient Cham towers, meditates on common pages in the history of the Chams and the Việts. She thinks of Princess Huyền Trân, and of a song that is performed in her tuồng drama when right before the princess departs for Champa (Huỳnh 1934a, b: 22). That song is called the “Nam Bình song” (Bài ca Nam Bình), and it mentions a bird called “Red Swallow” (chim Hồng Nhạn). To quote:

Here Princess Huyền Trân of the Trần left footprints of her passages, lived with the Chams, hoping to contribute to the peace and interest of her country. Could this little bird, all cute, with dark red feathers, hopping from one branch to another, be the “Red Swallow” described by the princess in her Nam Bình song? (Huỳnh 1936: 34)