Mulan, A Great Example For Women

Mulan is a 1998 Disney film inspired by the Chinese legend Hua Mulan.  This film was a critical and box office success and has become a classic over the years.

Fa Mulan is the young only daughter of Fa Zhou, a former soldier with poor health. Mulan must go to see the Matchmaker to honor her family, everyone is concerned about what may happen on her visit to the Matchmaker, since the aspiration of every woman in her context is to find a good husband and, thus, honor her the family.

Family values ​​and the role of women as a good homemaker are deeply ingrained in today’s society and Mulan will be deeply pressured; she does not feel ready, she has other aspirations and illusions. The visit will be a disaster and Mulan will feel guilty for having dishonored the family and for not finding her place in society.

At the same time, the Chinese army has waged a war against the Huns, so the emperor requests that one man from each family go to fight in the war. In Mulan’s family, the only man is her father, therefore, he will be the one who must serve China. Mulan objects to this decision because she knows that due to her health, her father will not survive. Mulan will pretend to be a man, run away from home and join the army.

Honor and duty in Mulan

The values ​​of the traditional family, of the patriarchal society, where the man is the hero and the woman is relegated to the background, limited to the home, are more than established, but Mulan does not seem to fit them entirely.

During their visit to the Matchmaker, we see the young women keeping their forms and, surely, very excited to find a husband; Mulan, on the other hand, prepares herself at the last minute, makes chops to remember what to say and does not know very well what to do. Mulan knows that she must honor her family and truly wants to bring honor to her parents; However, he fails in his attempt with the Matchmaker, so he reconsiders what his true duties are.

Finally, she breaks the rules, breaks with everything established by going to the army in her father’s place, and she does not only do it to save her father, but she does it for herself. Mulan must find her niche in society and  prove to herself that she is useful for something, for something more than being an exemplary wife.

When Mulan decides to dress as a man, something very symbolic happens, Mulan cuts her hair with her father’s sword. We could ignore this detail and understand it only as Mulan’s transition, the change and the beginning of the adventure, but there is something else; both the hair and the sword are loaded with symbolic connotations.

If we think of mythology or chivalric novels we will realize that the sword has always been linked to honor; the sword is another part of the man it accompanies, it represents victories, personal growth and honor in battle. Every great knight has his sword and, with it, has won battles.

The sword Mulan uses is her father’s sword, the sword with which she brought honor to the Fa family. Mulan takes her instead and cuts her hair with her. Hair also has a strong symbolic charge related to honor, if we think of Samson, the hair symbolized his strength and honor. In turn, long hair is associated with femininity.

As in El cantar de Mio Cid, the Cid ‘s beard was a reflection of his honor and, the more battles he won, the more abundant his beard became. Thus, we see the emperor in Mulan with a huge white beard, a symbol of wisdom and the great honor he possesses, since he is the emperor and is the character with the most abundant beard.

Mulan has failed, she has dishonored her family and herself, for that reason, she cuts her hair and does it with the element that once was the honor of her father. Upon returning from the army and having saved China, Mulan gives his father the sword and the objects that the emperor has given him, thus, he returns the honor to his family.

The women in Mulan

As we have seen, the role of women in society that is presented in the film is totally secondary. Mulan will be a totally atypical female character and never seen in Disney, Mulan will be a rebel, a woman who defies the rules and who shows us that any of us can do everything we propose, because no man is more than any woman.

When the emperor asks for the help of the people, he only asks for the help of one man from each family, and cannot be replaced by a woman, even if his health is weak. Mulan considers this unfair, as she is young and can serve China in better conditions than her father, who probably would not survive such a challenge due to his poor health .

Mulan must measure her words and act like a man to go unnoticed. There is a moment when the soldiers sing a song about women and everyone asks that she be “a beautiful flower”, “that she knows how to cook”, and so on. Mulan appeals to intelligence and cunning, to a woman who can be talked to, something that causes rejection in the rest of the soldiers because they are not the qualities they would expect to find in a woman.

For Mulan, things will not be easy at first. However, she soon  manages to outdo herself and earn the respect and recognition of the other soldiers. When this first obstacle seems overcome, they  discover that it is a woman and some go on to not accept her, although she has saved them and has proven to be a good warrior.

There are several occasions that we could take as a sign of how difficult it is to be a woman in a world of men, where many stop listening and even go so far as to tell you to “hold your tongue in the presence of a man” or that “it will never be worth anything here because she is a woman ”. Despite adversity, Mulan will be a heroine, breaking all those canons and stereotypes and saving her country, showing that she is no less for being a woman.

We see a before and after in her, the young and carefree Mulan that we saw at the beginning has disappeared, proving to be a strong and brave woman, just like any man.

He was probably not aware of the seriousness of the war until he arrived at a camp where there are no survivors. There, he will find a doll that he had lost, a doll that symbolized his feminine and childish part and that he will leave abandoned in that place. This encounter with the doll supposes an encounter with herself, with her true self and, at the same time, the end of innocence and the step towards maturity.

Mulan is not a princess, and her beauty is hardly alluded to. It is far from being the prototype of a Disney princess. It represents the portrait of  a woman like everyone else, with aspirations, illusions and wanting to surpass herself and show that she is not inferior to men.