2. Discuss how women are represented in one
of the novels you have read on the course?
3. Through the stories of The Joy Luck Club, we peer into the secret-laden
lives of eight Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born
daughters.The daughters reject their mothers’ seemingly constant
criticism of everything they choose, from husbands to hairdos.They view
their mothers’ warnings as irrelevant, and their advice as intrusive.The
daughters do not know what has inspired their warnings and advice: the
hardships their mothers suffered in China before coming to America.
Thus, as the mothers see it, their daughters are flailing in their modern
American circumstances, unable to use what is “in their bones,” the
family’s inheritance of pain that led to their determined strength for
survival, which their mothers try to bequeath them.The mothers,
meanwhile, watch with heartache as their daughters’ marriages fail, as
they expect less and less and so accept less and less.They recall
moments in their past when they were faced with similar circumstances
but defied what they believed was bad fate in order to find their true
worth.
4. On her journey she cooed to the swan: "In
America I will have a daughter just like me.
But over there nobody will say her worth is
measured by the loudness of her husband’s
belch. Over there nobody will look down on
her, because I will make her speak only
perfectAmerican English." (I.Prologue.2)
5. This implies that in China, the woman had her
worth measured by the loudness of her
husband’s belch. She wants her daughter to
live in a different culture, one that has better
opportunities for women.
6. But even if I had known I was getting such a bad husband, I had no
choice, now or later.That was how backward families in the
country were.We were always the last to give up stupid old-
fashioned customs. In other cities already, a man could choose his
own wife, with his parents’ permission of course. But we were cut
off from this type of new thought.You never heard if ideas were
better in another city, only if they were worse.We were told
stories of sons who were so influenced by bad wives that they
threw their old, crying parents out into the street. SoTaiyuanese
mothers continued to choose their daughters-in-law, ones who
would raise proper sons, care for the old people, and faithfully
sweep the family burial grounds long after the old ladies had gone
to their graves. (I.3.11)
7. The selection of a wife is as much the
business of the parents-in-law as the
husband-to-be, because the girl chosen will
have as much of an obligation to her husband
as to his family.
8. Because I was promised to the Huangs’ son
for marriage, my own family began treating
me as if I belonged to somebody else. My
mother would say to me when the rice bowl
went up to my face too many times, "Look
how much HuangTaitai’s daughter can eat."
(I.3.12)
9. According to tradition, women belong to
their husbands’ family.
10. The mothers see their duty as encouraging
and, if necessary, pushing their daughters to
succeed; therefore, they feel they have a
right to share in their success (the Chinese
view).
11. The daughters see the mothers as trying to
live through them and thereby preventing
them from developing as separate individuals
and from leading independent lives (the
American view).
