Mrs Spring Fragrance

Wou Sankwei has been in America for seven years. He has spent his time mastering the English language and working his way up to junior partner and bookkeeper in the San Francisco firm of Leung Tang Wou & Co. While at work his dear friend and mentor, Mrs. Dean, comes to his office along with her niece, Adah Charlton, and invites Wou Sankwei to her home that evening.

Wou Sankwei’s mother had died a year earlier, and his wife and son have been living with his uncle. That evening Wou Sankwei tells Mrs. Dean and Adah he has decided the time is right to send for his wife and son. When Mrs. Dean mentions to her niece that Wou Sankwei has not seen his wife for seven years, the young woman exclaims, “Deary me! What a lot of letters you must have written!” (30). When Wou Sankwei answers that he has never written a letter to his wife, Mrs. Dean steps in and redirects the awkward conversation. Later, alone with Adah, Mrs. Dean explains: “He has never written to his wife […] because his wife can neither read or write […] It is the Chinese custom to educate only the boys” (31).

When Wou Sankwei goes to the steamer to pick up his wife, Pau Lin, and their 6-year-old son, he brings his friends Mrs. Dean and Adah Charlton with him. At first, Wou Sankwei is not sure which of the waiting passengers are his family members, but then a ship’s officer points out his wife and child. Pau Lin has looked forward to seeing her husband after so many years, but the way in which he receives her leaves her feeling disappointed. When Adah tries to welcome Pau Lin, the woman turns her face from Adah.

Wou Sankwei adjusts to being a family man, and both he and Pau Lin are doting parents to the child they call Yen. It is Wou Sankwei’s intention that Yen will start an American-style education in the next year. When Adah questions him about Pau Lin’s feelings on the matter, he says he has not consulted her.

One day Wou Sankwei comes home to find Yen crying, his hand red and swollen. When Wou Sankwei asks Pau Lin what their child had done to deserve punishment, his wife replies, “I forbade him speak the language of the white women, and he disobeyed me. He had words in that tongue with the white boy from the next street” (34). Wou Sankwei is shocked to learn that his wife wants to prevent Yen from learning English and getting a “Westernized” education.

Pau Lin’s friends in the apartment complex are more understanding of Pau Lin’s stance. One of them regrets allowing her now-estranged son to become westernized, and others tell stories of Chinese-Americans who have become ruined by adopting American culture. That night, Yen comes home with his father, and he shows Pau Lin his new haircut. Wou Sankwei has had their son’s queue cut off, giving him an American-style haircut. Pau Lin cries, “I am ashamed of you; I am ashamed!” (36). She tells herself: “It is for the white woman he has done this; it is for the white woman!” (36). Later, Wou Sankwei and Pau Lin fight over his attachment to the two women, especially the younger one. Wou Sankwei admonishes his wife: “Never speak of her […] Never speak of her!” (37).

Pau Lin had grown up in a family in which her father had two wives, but she considers her current situation to be much worse. While her father’s two wives were treated as equals, Pau Lin can’t stand “the humiliation and shame of bearing children to a man who looked up to another woman—and a woman of another race […] there is a jealousy of the mind more poignant than any mere animal jealousy” (37).

Mrs. Dean and Adah Charlton visit Paul Lin two weeks after her second child is born. After the two women leave, the husband and wife fight about Adah Charlton. Pau Lin says, “She has taken all your heart, but she has not given you a son. It is I who have had that task” (38). Wou Sankwei answers, “You are my wife […] And she—oh! how can you speak of her so? She, who is a pure water-flower—a lily” (38).

Soon after, the baby dies. On the day of his death, Pau Lin finds a miniature painting that Adah had made of the baby and given to Wou Sankwei. Pau Lin blames Adah for the baby’s death, thinking that Adah had cast a spell on the child. Later, she holds Yen close to her, telling him: “Sooner would I, O heart of my heart, that the light of thine eyes were also quenched, than that thou shouldst be contaminated with the wisdom of the new” (39).

Because Mrs. Dean has friends in the Chinese-American community, she eventually hears the gossip that is going around about Wou Sankwei and Pau Lin. She tells Adah the two things that she has learned, the first being that, contrary to Wou Sankwei’s wishes, Pau Lin does not want her son to get an American-style education, and the second being that Pau Lin is jealous. In that moment, Adah understands what it must be like for Pau Lin:

Sankwei is treating Pau Lin as he would treat her were he living in China. Yet it cannot be the same to her as if she were in their own country, where he would not come in contact with American women. A woman is a woman with intuitions and perceptions, whether Chinese or American, whether educated or uneducated, and Sankwei’s wife must have noticed, even on the day of her arrival, her husband’s manner toward us, and contrasted it with his manner towards her. I did not realize this before you told me that she was jealous. I only wish I had. Now, for all her ignorance, I can see that the poor little thing became more of an American in that one half hour on the steamer than Wou Sankwei, for all your pride in him, has become in seven years (40).

Disturbed, Mrs. Dean and Adah decide to go downtown so that they can get a change of scenery and meet up with one of Mrs. Dean’s Chinese-American friends. The two women go to Chinatown in which there is a celebration of the Harvest Moon Festival. While there, they bump into Yen, who is being looked after by one of Wou Sankwei’s American business partners, Mr. Stimson. Mr. Stimson has some knowledge of the festival and gives a rough translation of the benediction that the priest is giving over the moon. Adah responds: “I should think that there would be some reference to the fruits of the earth—the harvest. I always understood that the Chinese religion is so practical” (43). Mr. Stimson explains, “Confucianism is. But the Chinese mind requires two religions. Even the most commonplace Chinese has yearnings for something above everyday life. Therefore, he combines with his Confucianism, Buddhism—or, in this country, Christianity” (43).

Later, when Wou Sankwei arrives, they learn that he plans to start Yen’s American-style education the following week. On hearing this, Adah decides she must speak to Wou Sankwei.

Adah invites Wou Sankei to her aunt’s house when Mrs. Dean is out of town. At first, Wou Sankwei assumes he is there because the women need assistance with a business transaction, but Adah soon tells him the real reason she wanted to speak with him in private: “I asked you to come here today because I have heard that there is trouble at your house and that your wife is jealous of you” (44). Wou Sankwei is reluctant to talk about his family’s business, but Adah persists: “As soon as I heard that your wife was jealous I knew why she was jealous […] you are thinking far too much of other women” (44).

Wou Sankei is genuinely surprised to hear that he’s been thinking too much of other women and asks Adah for her advice: “First of all you must think of your wife. She has done for you what no American woman would do—came to you to be your wife, love you and serve you without even knowing you—took you on trust altogether” (45). She recommends that Wou Sankwei not spend his evenings in the society of other women and encourages him to drop his plans to give Yen an American-style education at the moment.

Wou Sankwei is grateful for the advice, and never questions whether it had been Adah’s place to interfere:

Had he been a white man, there is no doubt that Adah Charlton’s little lecture would have had a contrary effect from what she meant it to have. At least, the lectured would have been somewhat cynical as to her sincerity. But Wou Sankwei was not a white man. He was a Chinese, and did not see any reason for insincerity in a matter as important as that which Adah Charlton had brought before him (46). 

The week before Yen is to start school is a peaceful one. Wou Sankwei decides that if his wife mentions her opposition to Yen starting the American-style school again, he will not pursue it.

The evening before school is to start, Pau Lin sings a song to Yen, as Wou Sankwei whittles a toy ship for the boy. In the middle of the night, Wou Sankwei notices that his wife is not in bed. He finds her in Yen’s room, holding their motionless child. She had given Yen poison, and then held him as he died in her arms. Pau Lin then stands, and says, “He is saved […] from the Wisdom of the New” (48).

Wou Sankwei sends a letter to Adah Charlton: “I have lost my boy through an accident. I am returning to China with my wife whose health requires a change” (48).