Vietnam 1918-1945, Gender and Modernity:

The Emergence of New Perceptions and Experience

Author: Bui Tran Phuong – University of Lyon II
(Translated by Huong Tong)

First, to fill in the blanks

If we consider only the history of Vietnam that people in this country were
exposed to, even though only at certain moments, it is abundantly apparent that its
contemporary history remains deplorably poor on a cognitive level. Very little
information is available about human beings in society (and even less about
women), in space, and in time. In recently performed international research about
Vietnam history, women were not taken into consideration [1]. A potential
pathway was followed that could have included women in the research work that
was based on social history and/or historical sociology. The recent research
provided visibility for the first time of the humble people who were victims of all
kinds of repression. They were given the right to raise their voices, however this
research still did not consider women as to whom they really were. With this
accusatory gap in the general history of women, where political demands were not
expressed directly and explicitly, there was also a veil of oblivion or neglect that
covered intellectual [2] and simple daily life [3] in a Vietnamese society.

Why I chose this subject

In 1992, during my personal career with the establishment of the Department of
Women Studies, then the first and unique program in Vietnam [4], I was invited to
give lectures on the history of Vietnamese women and was immediately
confronted with a bibliography deprived of information in this blank domain.
While searching for research methodology I became acquainted with the History
of Women in the Occident and later with the authors, thus I was initiated to

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reflection on French and then international epistemology. Indirectly my thesis
permitted me to get back in touch with the previously accomplished work on the
thoughts of Nguyen Truong To (1828-1872), a Catholic modernist. [5]

Why did I choose the period of 1918-1945? The year 1918 was marked by two
events: publication of the weekly magazine Nu gioi chung, the first periodical
about Vietnamese women; and the start of the journalistic career of Dam Phuong,
née Cong Nu Dong Canh (1881-1947). The revolution of August 1945
simultaneously brought about massively national living forces for fighting
violence; it ended an effervescently political and cultural period, and it assured
hegemony for Vietnam’s Communist party in their struggle for independence
during the two wars against France and America. During the history-making wave
of Vietnamese feminism, 1945 represented the trough.

Methodology, available sources and documents

Interdisciplinary interaction is a must primarily because the historical terrain has
remained poorly cultivated from the perspective of social and cultural history,
daily history, history of custom, and total history; and secondarily it must be
interdisciplinary because of the reality of the subject. For example,
anthropological and linguistic questions clarify the social status of women and the
evolution or stagnation of male–female rapport. These questions include family,
parents, relatives, hierarchy in the public sphere and private intimacy–primacy of
age, fortune, knowledge, and masculinity. In addition, it includes the rank of the
first wife in rapport with her husband’s other women such as a concubine, or a
child of the concubine, with his mother, etc. These and other themes must be
addressed to grasp and redefine the emergence of the position of women.

Despite mainly working on available sources and documents in Vietnam, I tried to

identify the resources and documents that were related to my scientific project at a

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scale as large and variable as possible. In the bibliography, I clearly indicated
those that are only known and those that were effectively used.

I have benefited from the long time spent in reading, teaching, and researching
general Vietnamese history and culture, problems of colonization, modernism,
nationalism, Vietnamese communism and recently, since 1992, the history of
women. However, I am conscious of my limitations on the investigative
possibilities of methodology because I am not fully informed regarding the
evolvement of time nor have I had easy access to international historiography.

I devoted my time to exploit two essential sources: the press and literature in quoc
ngu. Among the Vietnamese periodicals I obviously had privileged access to the
female press, particularly the collection of Phu nu tan van (Newspaper of women)
and Phu nu thoi dam (Chronicle of women), available at the General Library of Ho
Chi Minh City. To the former, I would like to thank the Southern Women Museum
for granting me exceptional facilities for consultation. I also worked with other
periodicals, notably the than chung (Morning Bell) in the South and the Phong hoa
(Manners) and Ngay nay (Our Time) in the North. The latter two were the most
imposing because they were the organs of the literature group that relied on their
own force (Nhom Tu luc van doan) [6]; the former periodical was one of the most
resolutely modern in the South. On the other hand, regarding literature in quoc
ngu, I queried almost all of the available sources including short stories, novels
and poems. With regard to plays (kich noi), I paid attention solely to the most
contemporarily characteristic authors and productions. With prose, I am certainly
privileged to know the well-known authors and works, especially those of Tu luc; I
rediscovered yet another great-but-neglected author, Ho Bieu Chanh, as well as
other authors who were mostly forgotten or underestimated. Briefly, I tried not to
miss out on any literature works that were considered as premier documents to
scrutinize the representation of women. If I do not place much emphasis on

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authors known as “critical realists” and on their works, which have been in
secondary teaching programs, then it is solely because I find these representatives
of women too biased due to their political point of view. However, I did select
their work though not the authors and the criteria for my choices were more
informative than literary. I attempted to reflect tendencies and diversified nuances;
however, I still concentrated on literary production and/or on certain aspects that
were concerned most directly with the subject: new perceptions and gender
representation.

Although I wrote this relatively recently, recourse to stories or oral sources was
still possible because those who were twenty years old in 1930s or 1940s had not
all died. However, collecting the data was not significantly easy, especially
qualitatively, due in part to the dispersion of our compatriots all over the world. In
spite of that I was able to interview eight people and mobilize family memories of
my grandmothers. The memoirs and biographies were precious aids; to some
extent I tried to compare them with other sources or witnesses to mitigate
inevitable subjectivity. I also interviewed authors who specialized in writing
biographies, such as Le Minh, a biographer of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai.

With regard to methodology of historical research, particularly on the history of

women, I benefited from the richness and fecundity of reflections and works
undertaken for three decades in France; it was the same situation with Vietnamese
historiography. I would have had more difficulty following the evolution of
French and international epistemological reflections concerned with the history of
women and feminism and a gender approach to socio-cultural history without the
precious support from my thesis professor a specialist in the discipline. Thanks to
her, even if my access to documents had come to an end in a limited way, I
believed I had consulted the essential writings about the evolution of methodology
of women and gender.

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In brief, my methodological approach consisted of analyzing different sources of
available documents as scrupulously as possible, and of trying to give an account
of responses or elements of response to varied and often intertwined questions in
the framework of global history.

The thesis
My thesis was composed of three sections. In the first section, to define the
setting, I began by describing and analyzing women’s place and gender issues
within Vietnamese traditions that I demonstrated with sparkling multifaceted facts.

I began analyzing how to name Vietnamese females and how to address them as in
their past heritage. More and more significant existence of a tên (individual name)
was seen as a mark of recognition of an individual that females benefited from
later than males. Sexual inequality was clear in a masculine-feminine relationship
where a masculine individual was named “anh” or big brother” in rapport with the
other “em”, little sister. Words to address this inequality contain a multiplicity of
nuances. They do not always denote the words of lower value; they can mark
respect but it often insisted on the rapport of women with other community
members and thus it took longer for women to reach female individual emergence.

I also used ca dao (popular songs), proverbs (7), classic work, and authors in an
attempt to retrace Vietnamese cultural traditions relevant to women in their
historicity. Then I presented the authors and agents of modernization that not only
became the premier line of public education, but that also had an abundance of
disorderly development such as press, modern literature, women’s profession,
militancy, etc. I emphasized the point that colonial people not only benefited
passively or suffered from a colonial educational policy, but so also did the will of
families and the choice of individuals. That is what proved to be more

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determinantal to student learning, academic results and impacts of education on
each destiny. After overcoming multiple obstacles, an elite female intellectual
emerged.

More specifically, concerned with the way that Confucianism permeated the
ethico-moral principles of mentality and behavior, in reality, I paid attention to the
particularity of the South of Vietnam in the process of modernization. Chapter III
was planned to be longer. Initially I intened to analyze the regional characteristics
of each of the three Vietnamese “countries”, however; in time I realized that
sophistication would have moved me away from the subject. I was content with
myself in emphasizing the specificity and speed of differential evolution in the
territory limits where these two characteristics are seen.

Because heterogeneity can be traced back to anterior episodes of French

colonization, particularly Vietnamese expansion to the South, leading their
cultural cradle in a direction toward the Cham and Khmer territories, another part
of this chapter should have been devoted to Seigneur Nguyen’s party of Dang
Trong that became Annam under French colonization. A shortage of time forced
me to reduce chapter III to a dimension that is somewhat disproportionate in
rapport with others; yet of interest was the concentration on Cochin China where
the premier awakening about feminine and feminist matters effectively occurred,
throughout their social environment.

In the second section of my thesis, I analyzed representatives of women from

printed sources that constituted artist-creations of the epoch, especially literature.
Novels and short stories explored new possibilities in couple relationships,
feminine virtue, as well as the behavior of each member in small and large
families. If the novels involved the more or less revolutionary stance of educated
women and of their behaviors of submission or of rebellion (chapter IV), then

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poems revealed profound transformations of youth’s sensibility (chapter V). In
chapter VI, I presented the life of several women. My primary criterion of
selection was documentary availability; based on this necessary condition, I
diversified the types of female representatives. Thus we found communist and
nationalist militants, teachers, writers, poets, journalists, editors, and also spouses
of eminent intellectuals.

In the last section of my thesis, I responded more directly to the question: to what
extent can we talk about one or more Vietnamese feminisms that emerged before
the Revolution of August 1945? My work allowed me to advance an explicit range
of liberating ideas, innovative practice, and to question their origins. It was
possible to give an account of the existence of veritable Vietnamese feminism
outlined in a summary table and a premier report.

All the activities of women in different cultural and socio-political domains have,
first of all, more or less feminist meanings and influences. The distinction among
the domains allows a much clearer presentation because the actors and actresses
are often the same: modernists with patriotic ardor or patriots who are confident
that cultural or social reforms have political content, for they encourage the
evolution of the role of women and their contribution to the struggle for survival
of the nation. Thereby, for cultural feminism, I presented to Phu nu tan van
(Newspaper of women), a pioneer and leader of the feminist press, a special
project of women’s culture house (Nu luu hoc hoi) emanating from the same group
of modernists and patriots, and also some information on women and sports. On
the subject of socio-political feminism, I addressed the socialization of maternity
and housework. The woman who left imposing but none-the-less impressive work
and practical achievements is Dam Phuong, an astonishing educator of modernity.
I identified her as a gentle feminist, serene but devoted and determined in her
vocation. Being a mother and grandmother of more than a generation of young

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intellectuals, she allocated the responsibility to all of them to live autonomously or
be engaged in revolutionary militancy. She devoted her life to form and organize
education for other female educators with whom she shared knowledge, educative
competence and a belief that “education is not only coercive work; by contrast, it
aims at encouraging the development of the most noble of individual capacities.”
[8] This perspective notably summarizes inspiring harmony between the humane
tradition of initial education based on fundamental Confucianism and the resolute
modernism of a self-educated person who is open to international contemporary
knowledge. Dam Phuong was also the founding president of the Association of
Professional Education for Women (Nu cong hoc hoi), whose office served at the
time as a place to meet where women came to discuss the rights and duties of their
gender (gioi), and as a forum where "rights and legitimate interests are defended”.
[9]

In the non-violent political militant section, I placed the activities in favor of the
right to vote and elaboration of other rights or women’s positions in rapport with
men in political affairs. The political struggle “through a vicarious husband”
always seems to be an attempt by Vietnamese feminists in Sai Gon and constitutes
an original method for self-affirmation. Also in this section, were included the
strikes of schoolgirls and the participation of women in the movement of the
Indochina Congress.

Women are naturally in the forefront of every anti-colonialist fight taking part in
open or clandestine activities. Also the nationalists and communists advocated
feminine emancipation, strongly directing mobilization of this complementary
force for the good of the patriotic cause. The promotion of women with
“nationalism” was publicly declared, or like the decree appearing in the
Revolutionary Voice (Duong Kach Menh) manual of training Thanh nien [8]: “The
Vietnamese revolution needs to have feminine participation to succeed and the

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female gender should follow the instructions of international women to become
revolutionary.” Some female communists of the first generation (Nguyen Trung
Nguyet, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai) tried to organize women into a gender role and
by this, teach their feminine ideas. The information was insufficient to describe
these organizations as well as evaluate the results. However, we notice on the one
hand the undeniable dynamics of these attempts, and on the other hand their
ephemeral and exceptional existence, due not only to colonial repression but also
revolutionary indoctrination or to shrinking hesitation on the part of male officers.

With real experiences and personal reflections of militants confirming their proper
part, there is a persisting gap between open revolt (in mind and in writing) against
principled oppressors (for example Confucianism) and veritable emancipation
from personal aspects; not all militants even the most experienced ones can
overcome that gap peacefully.

I also presented premier elements of investigation into the usage of the terms
feminism and feminist and also a generational approach in conclusion. The intent
of a precursory role in properly feminist militarism and in a theorization effort of a
new tendency for thought and action belongs to the weekly magazine Phu nu tan
van, a media organ established in May 1929. I am convinced that the originators of
the concept of feministic thinking in Vietnam came from the French term; I
enumerated, analyzed and compared different Vietnamese translations and
interpretations that varied in user functions and in the nuances that each wished to
make. One of the youngest and the most resolutely modernistic feminists, Nguyen
Thi Kiem (1914-?), a former-schoolgirl at Sai Gon’s college of young girls (Ao
Tim) and a journalist of the Phu nu tan van magazine also defined feminism: “The
concept designated those who comprehend and examine the situation well and
understand the role of women in society. They are then engaged to defend the
rights and interests of women who have been oppressed and are prepared to guide

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them and to encourage and promote their progress so that women’s level of life in
terms of material and spiritual is equal to men in society. Except for the feminist’s
will to be responsible for the community and their female colleagues, those “who
really dared to live like men” said Kiem, are simply “new women who pursue the
social current of modern time.”

I identified three generations of modern women who fought for feminism. The
first generation consisted of women who transgressed the limits of their generation
and passed the torchlight on to the next generation. They were those from the
beginning of the 20th century; most of them were wives and daughters of
modernists. They were female teachers, girls at the School of Renewal (Duy Tan),
or they sacrificed for their husbands to pursue their anti-colonial mission. The
youngest devoted themselves to and adhered to national and communist parties;
the others such as Nguyen Van Huyen’s mother invested in their offspring. The
second generation feminists were pioneers who effectively raised the flag of
feminism. Some were found to be descendants of royal families like Dam Phuong
and young journalists like Nguyen Thi Kiem admired by their contemporaries for
their being “completely European”; others were communists like Nguyen Thi
Minh Khai and Nguyen Trung Nguyet. The third generation consisted of younger
students or comrades of their first and second generation feminist predecessors.

In another chapter entitled “Another viewpoint and shared experience”, I gave an

account of the stance and attitudes of men who were more-or-less pro-feminist.
Some nostalgically hung on to their traditions, but respected the feminine person;
some were resolutely more pro-feminist. Phan Boi Chau (1867-1940) and Nguyen
An Ninh (1900-1943) belonged to two different generations. The former, a
modernist figure, was one of the initiators of the Renewal movement in the North
and Center (Duy Tan) in the early 20th century. The latter, whose father Nguyen
An Khuong was very active in the Renewal of the South (Minh Tan), was sent to a

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French University. Graduating with a Law degree he devoted his life to militant
journalism, became an intellectual and the most influencing and popular
professional revolutionary in southern Viet Nam from 1923-1940. When
mobilizing women for the anti-colonial fight and for social reform, more likely
toward socialism, Phan and Ninh in their own way recognized the socio-political
role of women at another level. They were not exceptional, however they were the
forefront figures of a confirmed tendency.

Vietnamese modernism is exogenous and the same as feminism. Contemporary

writings often talk about the “surge of the feminist wave (lan song nu quyen)” in
the world. How did this wave hit the Vietnamese coasts and what was the
circulation of information and feminist ideas that benefited the emergence of
Vietnamese gender conscience? I still do not have enough elements of information
for a complete answer. I explicated only some domains where traces of exchanges
are perceptible in the Vietnamese document. “Tan thu” (new books) reached
modernist pioneers starting from the middle of the 19th century. However, only
from the beginning of the 20th century did Vietnamese readers draw upon thoughts
and values from the books that, in addition to egalitarianism implanted in
traditional culture, generated favorable ideas about mobilization of women in
patriotic and reformist causes. This began in late 1910, in southern Vietnam, with
periodicals like Luc tinh tan van (Cochin Chinese Newspaper) and Nong co min
dam (Talks about agriculture and commerce). Especially during the three decades
that followed there was a flow of information and knowledge drawn from a press-
complemented school education in order to invigorate the world of literature and
promote the evolution of modernism and feminism. Despite not being able to
identify sources and documents more precisely, it seems to me that Vietnamese
feminine and feminist periodicals as well as the Vietnamese press in general
utilized articles largely published in periodicals overseas, mostly in French,
Chinese, and Indian. Many eminent Vietnamese intellectuals worked for

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newspapers and used their enthusiasm and knowledge to acknowledge the
legitimacy of gender equality. They also cared about providing useful juridical
knowledge or informing their readers about the evolution of law favorable to
women.

In addition, the feminists and feminist press were interested in analogous or

different Vietnamese manners and customs practiced, that is, those of the physical,
intellectual and moral portraits of women of the world, especially those who were
distinguished by their diverse merits. They imitated and Vietnamized French
practices such as cuisine, the Noel tree, etc. Female writers, scientists and others
were all valued examples from which Vietnamese feminine periodicals
experienced great gain; the international activities of feminists were also
concerned. I acknowledged the inspiring and stimulating contacts with French
feminists among whom was the ethnologist, Suzanne Karpeles. The Vietnamese
feminists regularly kept themselves informed about what was happening in
neighboring countries and also about their customs and cultures, particularly in
China, India and Japan. Thanks to the circulation of information and ideas, relayed
by feminists and the feminist press, evolution of gender conscience was
accelerated and diversified.

In brief, Vietnamese women affirmed themselves in several domains of activity;

they commenced to conceptualize and theorize gender equality and their position
and role in the family and society; they effectively played a political role as
women. Vietnamese feminism in different variants and trends is resolutely diverse
in modernist and patriotic viewpoints. Yet it did not lose its proper identity or
concentrate less on the specifically feminist objectives.

In being identified and affirmed, the majority of Vietnamese feminists opted for
conciliation. I explained the cultural, historical, and temporary reasons for their

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choice. To be affirmed does not mean to be against but to be harmonious with
others, the opposite sex, older or younger generations, and people living in
somewhat analogous situations or having different value systems with a supposed
grand tolerance; it is one of the merest originalities of Vietnamese female self-
affirmation. However, this does not prevent them from strongly asserting their
autonomy. To be autonomous, they were supposed to revolutionize relationships
with other people. Did they succeed in emancipating themselves as individuals?
By using multiple approaches (literary and theatrical representatives, career of
women, etc.), I think I found the basis for affirming the evident and vigorous
emergence of female individuals from 1918 to 1945.

Acquiring the feminist spirit is fundamental; the most essential and durably
effective thing is the legitimacy of the right to learn to become a human being (hoc
de nen nguoi). Learning is of importance, which was always true in a Confucian
society. Learning is vital to women; it is a new perception and a strong argument
for modernists who at the same time are patriots, each one in his or her own way.
To become a worthy human being, in accordance with the major currents of
feminist opinion in 1918-1945, was to be affirmed as a woman who could first of
all do service to the community by participating in the anti-colonial fight. Only a
few women like the feminist Dam Phuong were concerned with “the search for
proper individual happiness” at the same time. This subtle and elusive search
never hindered the primordial or essential objective.

The socio-political situations from 1920 to 1945 supported female participation

which contributed to enrich the diversification of the means used to struggle for
arising feminist themes. The three generations of modern women and/or feminists,
that we in fact identified, correspond to active generations in the Vietnamese
socio-political scene. Those generations of men and women were the promoters
and pioneers in reformistic and feministic thinking and, at the same time, militant

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action. Regarding the anti-colonial fight, the first half of the 20th century was the
time in which this struggle was a dual natured demonstration. One was a peaceful
practice that included social, cultural and economic reform; the other was a violent
practice of insurrectionary or subversive action and one form neither excluded nor
opposed the other. Nguyen Thi Kiem, a journalist and poet, distributed leaflets at a
meeting of the Indochinese Congress movement. Nguyen Thi Minh Khai,
secretary of the Communist party in Sai Gon, insisted on defending her feminist
ideas in the open polemic columns in the Dan chung journal (The People). My
research on the first wave of Vietnamese feminism thus convinced me to replace
again not only the line between men and women but also certain others, those who
are among the most fundamental ones of Vietnamese modern history.

However, why was the fighting flame so fleeting? I re-examined the question once
again: on the one hand I emphasized the factors that explained the emergence of
gender consciousness from a land seemingly not very suitable and the bloom of
ideas and solutions proposed on the matter of women (van de phu nu); on the other
hand, I tried to explain the reasons for the transient character of the first
Vietnamese feminist manifestations.

Some research pathways

We can never explore all pathways around a single problem by working in
isolation, even if it is of great concern. Nevertheless, I regret not having had
enough time to present certain questions that had already been carefully studied.
For example, among the choices in sub-chapter VI (And modern women in
appearance) I would have recounted significant adventures of Vietnamese ao dai.
This Vietnamese traditional costume (ao dai) was redesigned in 1934-1936 by
modernistic Tu luc painters. According to the occidental individualist spirit, it was
considered all over the North at the beginning as a costume too European for
serious women. Almost thirty years later, from the 1960s until the present, it has

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become a symbol not only for “Vietnamese femininity” but also for traditions
jealously defended by current anti-modernists who are afraid that Vietnamese
women would sell love to the Devil – presently of the globalization – if we neglect
it! As I could not handle the stubbornness of the computer, I left the actual sub-
chapter unfinished.

Conclusions
In my conclusions, I indicated some of the aspects that should have great merit.
For example, the cautious study of the inception of feminism before French
colonization in the North and all over An Nam that permitted a better
comprehension of why and how the Association of Educated Professional Women
(Nu cong hoc hoi) could be born in the ancient capital and to better apprehend the
socio-cultural environment from which there was a surge of remarkable feminine
personalities such as the historian Dam Phuong or Tran Thi Nhu Man, the wife of
the scholar, Dao Duy Anh. Or, in contrast, the perverted affect of modernity
especially in women, the reasons that explain the reserve and reluctance of the
modernization of rapport between men and women. I also omitted my initial idea
of studying feminism from a cross-over perspective of views, such as the French
side – a promising issue. Asian culture shared by women in regional countries
represents another research pathway in which the confrontation of analogous or
diversified strategies to problems of colonization and modernity will raise plentiful
lessons. Finally, the experiment of research methodology and tools formed since
the development of women’s history and Occidental feminism opens the
perspective of projects on transnational research which can move the lines of
Occident-Orient and Europe- Asia as others that can be shared.

With my professional responsibilities and other personal constraints I have not

been able to work on the project all the time; however, during the seven years
since this project was defined I feel that I have worked in a careful and

15
methodological manner and to some extent have tried to avoid superficial remarks
and hasty conclusions. Above all, a true historian knows how to take on
responsibility for shortcomings, insufficiency and inevitable subjectivity.

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