The differences between the novel Marshes of Mount Liang and the drama, “P’an Chin-lien” are quite visible. In particular, the portrayals of P’an Chin-lien are reversed. This essay will narrow its focus on P’an Chin-lien, and will offer an explanation for this reversal.

While the novel depicts P’an as a shallow and lustful adulteress, Ou-yang paints P’an as a brave heroine who is not afraid to admit her crimes and accept of death. When Wu Sung exposes her felony, she asks him, “Is it my head you want, or my heart?” Yet in the novel, P’an instead sets “up a desperate shrieking” as she is about to be executed (Dent-Young, 96).

P’an Ch’ien-lien is also portrayed in the play as a more moral individual than in the novel. Hence, she is attracted more to one’s principle than to one’s sexuality. Despite Wu Sung’s refusal of her affection, she admires him all the more because of his uprightness. Thus she prefers to be killed by such a ethical character as Wu Song, yet refuses to die in the “hands of a man like [Wu Da]” who is an abusive husband (Ou-yang, 73). In the novel, P’an is quite different in that she is concerned more with the male body.

P’an Chin-lien is also a more passionate individual than in the novel. She places romantic love and companionship over sexual gratification. In the novel, P’an’s true feelings about love are shrouded in ambiguity. She is interested in Wu Song and Xi-men Qing, but she never confides as to whom she really loves. Yet in the drama, P’an contends that her affair with Hsi-men affair is an “accident,” for “there was no real love between us”; rather, her true love is Wu Sung (Ou-yang, 73). In contrast to the novel, whose P’an is main interested in sexual liaisons, Ouyang’s P’an Chin-lien yearns to be “loving companions and grow old together” with Wu Sung (Ouyang, 73). Even as she is about to be killed by Wu, she remains faithful as she declares “I’ll be reborn as a silkworm and spin silk to make clothes for you” (Ou-yang, 74).

Moreover, P’an is poignantly portrayed as a victim of an unforgiving Confucian society that oppresses women. Unlike the novel, P’an poisons her husband because he is exploitive “master-husband,” (Ou-yang, 73), not because she wants to continue her affair. She also laments of her forced marriage to Wu Ta because of her refusal to become Chang Ta-hu’s concubine; yet, she understands “there isn’t a man of earth who will speak up for a woman” (Ou-yang, 72). Hence, she engages in the affair with Hsi-men because he is the only man who actually treats her with kindness.

It is likely that Ou-yang Yu-ch’ien composed this drama as a reaction against Confucianism. In the twentieth century, many Chinese intellectuals and writers rejected traditions of the past. Aware that most Chinese already knew the plot, Ou-yang modified this story and shaped it into a critique of Chinese society, and in particular, to highlight the injustices of gender inequality and arranged marriages, two things which leads to the sorry ending for P’an Chin-lien. It is particularly revealing that P’an chides Wu Sung that he would never understand a woman’s plight, asserting, “If you were in less of a muddle you couldn’t be such a good follower of Confucius.”

Hence, the variations between the sixteenth century Ming dynasty novel Marshes of Mount Liang and the twentieth century play, “P’an Chin-lien” are detectable In particular, Ou-yang Yu-ch’ien’s drama focuses mainly on P’an Chin-lien as his heroine, and portrays her as a more moral, passionate, and valiant character than the novel’s depiction of her.