Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

"Snow Flower and the Secret Fan : a novel" by Lisa See

Fiction, 2005, 253 pages

Ratings: 4.5 (Amazon 4.5)

Book Club: NY - B &N Women's Book Club, (Aug, 2007)

Summary:

From Publishers Weekly: Lisa See's engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or "old sames") Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily's voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. Her in-depth research into women's ceremonies and duties in China's rural interior brings fascinating revelations about arranged marriages, women's inferior status in both their natal and married homes, and the Confucian proverbs and myriad superstitions that informed daily life. Beginning with a detailed and heartbreaking description of Lily and her sisters' foot binding ("Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"), the story widens to a vivid portrait of family and village life. Most impressive is See's incorporation of nu shu, a secret written phonetic code among women—here between Lily and Snow Flower—that dates back 1,000 years in the southwestern Hunan province ("My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,/ An invisible rebellion that no man can see"). This is both a suspenseful and poignant story as well as an absorbing historical chronicle.

What I enjoyed about the book was gaining a better understanding about the confining, difficult life Chinese women led including the painful practice of foot binding.

Favorite Passages:

pg 24: ...."how girls and women should behave."
......Whether you are rich or poor, emperor or slave, the domestic sphere is for women and the outside sphere is for men. Women should not pass beyond the inner chambers in their thoughts or in their actions. I also understand that two Confucian ideals ruled our lives. The first was the Three Obediences: "When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son." The second was the Four Virtues, which delineate women's behavior, speech, carriage and occupation: "Be chaste and yielding, calm and upright in attitude; be quiet and agreeable in words; be restrained and exquisite in movement; be perfect in handiwork and embroidery." If girls do not stray from these principles, they will grow in virtuous women.

pg 25....."foot binding"
....Mama and Aunt resumed their pre-binding activities, making more bandages. ...... Everyone was happy, singing, laughing, talking. Now I know there were many things no one said. (No one said I could die. It wasn't until I moved to my husband's home that my mother-in-law told me that one in ten girls died from footbinding, not only in our county but across the whole of China.)
........my goal was to achieve a pair of perfectly bound feet with seven distinct attributes: They should be small, narrow, straight, pointed, and arched, yet still fragrant and soft in texture. Of these requirements, length is the most important. Seven centimeters - about the length of a thumb - is ideal.....

pg. 59....."women's place"
We women are expected to love our children as soon as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were soar? We may love our daughters...but we must train them through pain. We love our sons....but we can never be part of their world.... We love our parents because they take care of us, but we are considered worthless branches on the family tree. We drain the family resources. We are raised by one family for another....

pg. 106...."women's wedding customs"
........my body and soul were weak from hunger, because a bride is not allowed to eat for the final ten days of her wedding festivities. Do we follow this custom to make us sadder at leaving our families, to make us more yielding whem we go to our husbands' homes, or to make us appear more pure to our husbands?.......Mama, like most mothers----hid a few hard-boiled eggs for me in the women's chambers, but these did little to give me strength, and my emotions weakened with each new event.

Recommendation: I enjoyed this book because I learned about China's women and their customs and how they shared their hopes, fears and emotions. What was done as "custom" with footbinding was horrible....you wonder how and why it ever began. I also like the brave, courageous women in this novel.