Untitled - Centre for Comparative Literature - University of Toronto

126). 9 This reversal is not simply a play on the critical gaze; it is also an observation of the
many levels of reading called for by the aesthetics of pathos.
choose me: silent pathos
As noted above, the interpretative gap I point to is best bridged in paying close
attention to the depiction of silence in Choose Me. Although an economy of pathos
seems to lend itself to exaggerated emotions, which do not frame well in Lau’s restrained
descriptions of them, literary criticism engaging with suffering cannot neglect the
emotionally charged silences that authors painstakingly represent. In other words, some
pains are too numbing for characters to give way to theatrics. Once more, I turn to Anne
Coudreuse who distinguishes the limits of language from those of suffering:
If pathos is above all characterized by hyperbole and excess, it is also always
turned towards silence. But this is a written or represented silence that is
meant to have more value than the hyperbole or exclamations of pathetic
bewailing. Suffocated by emotion, one can only remain silent because words
reach their [descriptive] limits faster than human suffering does.
Le pathos, s’il se caractérise surtout par l’hyperbole et l’outrance, est toujours
également tourné vers le silence. Mais il s’agit d’un silence écrit ou représenté,
dont la valeur se veut plus grande encore que toutes les hyperboles et les
exclamations des déplorations pathétiques. Suffoqué par l’émotion, on ne
peut que se taire, car les mots atteignent plus vite leurs limites que la douleur
humaine. (290)
At this point, a feminist reading of Choose Me might best explain the violence
Lau asks her readers to witness. While the previous sections of my article deal with the
criticism of Lau’s unwillingness to identify with the Chinese Canadian community, this part
relates directly to the power relations between men and women in the stories. Perhaps
the most tell tale sign of masculine domination in this collection of short stories is the
control exerted over the women’s speech. If the women do not speak it is because the
male protagonists will not listen to them or talk to them without asking what’s wrong. I
am thinking of how critics foreground the undesirability of the ageing man in “A Faithful
Husband” (Cho, 177-178), while overlooking how Lau represents his need to constrain his
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