In Search of an Identity through Education in The Girl Friends and Orphan of Asia

Abstract

The Girl Friend (1887), set in the mid-1860s in a small district town in the province of Poltava in Eastern Ukraine and written by Olena Pchilka (Olha Drahomanova¬Kosach, 1849-1930) is a story about Lyubov Vasylivna, a young Ukrainian girl, who goes to Zurich to study "to become a doctor" (29) and comes back to her hometown to serve 'the common folks" (54) in the rural country. She is contrasted by her friend, Rayisa Pavlina, a girl of aristocratic blood who despises the country people and eventually marries her German professor and moves to St. Petersburg. Lyubov, who seems to have set her goal of serving her people early on, finds fulfillment and true love through education. In contrast, Orphan of Asia (1945), written by Wu Zhuoliu (1900-1976), offers a powerful depiction of the political, cultural, and psychological impact of colonialism. The central character in this autobiographical novel, Hu Taiming, is a man marked both by his Chinese cultural heritage (inspired by his grandfather) and the opportunities for education and advancement through the adoption of the Japanese language when Taiwan became a Japanese colony (between 1895 and 1945). However, he finds that his Japanese education and his adoption of modern ways have alienated him from his family and native village. When he quits his job as a teacher in the Japanese colonial system after a disappointing love affair with a Japanese teacher, he leaves Taiwan for Japan to embark on a long journey to search for his identity. But neither in Japan, where he makes his mark in the colonial Japanese educational system and graduates from a prestigious college, nor in China, where he marries and has a daughter, does he ever come to feel at home or find his calling; rather, having repudiated his roots, he, a colonized subject, doesn't seem to belong anywhere. Though he returns to Taiwan in the last two chapters of the novel, Hu Taiming ultimately loses himself as he is estranged from all three cultures. This study focuses on the efforts of minority subjects to establish their identity through education and attempts to show how their sense of belonging and dedication to their homeland could affect their sense of fulfillment.