The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou Putuan)

CRITIQUE

When the author is exhorting his audience with talk of moral principle, he makes their hair stand on end, and when he sets out to move them with accounts of sexual passion, he drives them wild. Ignorant people will regard this ambivalence of his as a flaw, thus missing the point that the passages where he moves his audience so ingeniously are precisely the occasions when he is most intent on exhorting them to moral behavior. Think what a virtuous girl Jade Scent was before she saw the erotic pictures and how wanton she became after reading their comments! Chastity and wantonness, nobility and baseness, decided in just a moment of time! And all of it the man's fault, for leading her into temptation! Can husbands afford not to pay heed?