Shira Haas as Etsy.
Let’s talk about horror. I recently watched “Unorthodox,” a four-part Netflix mini-series about a Hasidic Jewish girl from Brooklyn who quickly finds that, as she feared, an arranged marriage is not dreamy. (Highly recommended.) While her new husband is fairly innocuous except for being painfully inexperienced in bed, she wants more from life than the Hasidic Jewish ideal of stay-at-home-baby-making machine who is helping bring back the six million Jews killed by Nazis (their phrase not mine.) Unlikely as it might be for a granddaughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who has never traveled outside of New York before, she chooses to run away to Berlin. There she finds her tribe (music students,) romance, and a career goal (music,) while reconciling with her mother and fending off an attempt by her in-laws to kidnap her and bring her home. She transforms herself with the help of her friends into a confident young woman with a career goal and a new boyfriend.
Sound like a horror story of a heroic journey? Can’t believe it’s still happening in the 21st Century? Well guess what. Marriages have been arranged for millennia and have been a nightmare for millions of girls with no say in the matter.
So what’s the fantasy version of this nightmare? The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo. In this novel, set at the end of the 19th century, the down-at-the-heels father of our heroine, Li Lan, considers betrothing her to the ghost of the scion of a wealthy Malay Chinese family to cancel his business and opium debts. The author explains that her story is based on a rare Chinese practice of marrying ghosts to ghosts, or to live people. Examples include lovers who died before they could marry, or a man who marries the ghost of his concubine to legitimize their offspring, or people who are wed to angry ghosts to end a haunting. A bride would be treated honorably for the rest of her life by the dead groom’s family as a widowed daughter-in-law. In this story, the ghost needing placating is the selfish first son of a wealthy Malay Chinese (“Straits Chinese”) family who was murdered young and is determined to haunt his family and Li Lan until he gets his desire, a marriage to Li Lan.
As will be familiar to those who have studied the classic heroic journey and read our blog, our heroine must overcome challenges in the antithesis world that will transform her into a powerful, confident woman when (if) she returns to her home in the regular world. The alien world to which Li Lan escapes is not Berlin, but an actual Underworld. Based on Chinese religion and mythology, it consists of planes of post-life existence populated by ghosts who eventually must face a judgment and a befitting reincarnation. Woven within this classic Buddhist vision are various Chinese mythological creatures like border guards with ox-heads, and supernatural officials who track down the disobedient dead and haul them before judges, an existence which mirrors the bureaucratic world live Chinese have coped with for thousands of years. And just as in China today, some of those bureaucrats are corruptible. And therein lies the real mystery our heroine must solve and the more frightening dangers she must overcome.
The 19th century Sultan Abdul Samad Building in Kuala Lumpur.
As is often the case with a female hero, family and friends offer critical assistance. Heroines are not lessened by asking for help, unlike many male heroes who rely almost exclusively on themselves. Li Lan’s dead mother still lingers on the Plains of the Dead. The two reconnect, and the mother corrects some lies and provides critical assistance. Likewise, a trusted cook can see Li Lan when she separates from her body as a spirit, and he offers her some important advice.
When Li Lan transforms into a spirit, she is excited to realize she can, for the first time, travel alone wherever she wishes and is so pleased with this freedom she is not in a hurry to reenter her sick body and delays solving her problem. Her new powers give her confidence and independence that she soon realizes will be hard to give up. Intellectually she recognizes that it would be best for her to use her new confidence and understanding of the power dynamics of the real world to succeed in her designated role as wife of a rich and successful young man, but she’s not sure she can play those games and that tightly circumscribed role anymore.
“My two worlds overlap like distorted panes of glass. Haunted, I chafe at the tight orbit of mahjong parties I once thought so glamorous, and I glance over my shoulder for wind and shadows, yearning for the forbidden….I’m afraid I will falter and take the easy way out.”
In the classic journey parlance, she’s grown so much that she cannot return to live happily ever after in the synthesis world.
Meanwhile, on her journey, she falls for a dragon of a semi-divine death investigator and soon realizes that the live man she’s been flirting in the real world with will never be able to live up to her new crush.
Temple in Chinatown, Melaka, Malaysia. Photo by yeowatzup.
I always appreciate fantasy novels built upon a strong framework of complex religion, history, and politics, and a great pleasure of reading this novel is learning details about the lives of the Straits-born Chinese at the end of the 19th century in British-ruled Malaysia. The races held themselves apart at that time. The British brought desperately poor Indians to work in the rubber plantations, work the Malay didn’t need to do to survive. Wealthy Chinese moved as early as the 15th century to the peninsula for economic opportunity, loaned within their clans to raise each other up, and brought coolies in to build. Though they may have lived for generations in Malaysia and Singapore, they thought of themselves as Chinese, returned to China for education, and married each other, though they adopted many aspects of Malay life like food, words, and clothing. In this novel the British loom in the background as remote rulers, never seen but felt through the influence of their laws, political systems, and universities. The details about the differences between English and traditional Chinese mansions, the races’ religious beliefs including Chinese superstitions, and details about clothing and foods of all races enrich this fantasy world immensely.
The Ghost Bride is a satisfying adventure fantasy about a smart heroine born into a family in decline who uses her newfound confidence to overcome her designated traditional role and find her own path in life. Elements of romance and detailed world-building add to the reader’s enjoyment. You can also watch the series on Netflix.
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