The Industry Of Marrying American By Vu Trong Pong Summary

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The Industry of Marrying Europeans by Vu Trong Phung (translated by Thuy Tranviet) began with a puzzling scene in a courtroom in the 1930’s where a native Vietnamese woman declared that her occupation was marrying an assistant representative and then a captain. When asked to clarify she said her profession was marrying Europeans. The part that stuck with me was how the word Europeans was plural, meaning she admitted so publically that she had had multiple marriages with multiple different men but she was only twenty-five years old. Her admission also implied a different kind of marriage than the average person’s – her marriages were for profit and gain but were temporary positions. Similar to how a person would move from a lesser-paying job to a better-paying …show more content…

Domestic abuse was already an issue in conventional families, but in these unsolidified relationships, the wives might have become trapped in abusive marriages because they were solely dependent on their husbands for financial assistance and may not have been physically able to leave. These women may have gained freedom in choosing their partners, but their choice could have proved to be limiting when they became stuck in abusive relationships they cannot leave for financial or health concerns. Vu Trong Phung met one couple that demonstrated the trouble of women expressing their power of leaving and how their husbands often reacted to that power, “[Wife: Go away! And right now!]… Slap! The slap terminated those screams and yells. It also ended the threats,” (Vu Trung Phung, 33). Though the wife tried exercising her right to end the relationship, she was trapped in a relationship that she did not want instead of being free to continue picking new husbands. However, even in traditional marriages, there was a possibility of domestic abuse and even less of an opportunity to leave since the marriage was legally

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