In early 20th century China, women were forced into marriage. This was known as arranged marriage. In China, women were not equal to men due to their patriarchal society. Often arranged marriages in China had a negative effect on women. Amy Tan portrays how women were mistreated in marriages in her book, The Joy Luck Club. In the chapter,“ The Red Candle” Lindo Jong was forced into an arranged marriage at a very young age and was treated horribly( Tan 23). Arranged marriages portrayed in Amy Tan’s “The Red Candle” clearly exemplify the culture of early 20th century China and its negative impacts on women.
Lindo’s arranged marriage forced her to perform tasks obediently. When Lindo arrived at her new home, Huang Taitai came to get her and pushed
…show more content…
Lindo’s status in the family was considered equal to a servant. Lindo had diminished her self-worth. She thought everyone’s opinions were more important than her own opinion. "I came to think of Tyan-yu as a god, someone whose opinions were worth much more than my own life."(Tan 27). Lindo felt Tyan-yu’s approval was the most important thing in her life. She was physically abused for not sleeping with her husband. "All of a sudden she stood up from her chair, walked over to me, and slapped my face."(Tan 30). She was just used to create offspring for her husband’s family. "My son says he's planted enough seeds for thousands of grandchildren."(Tan 30). "Her position and security within her husband's family remained ambiguous until she produced male heirs."(Hays par 14). It shows that wives had not status until they had children. Lindo had many negative impacts during her arranged marriage.
In the journal,"The Impact of Chinese Cultures on a Marital Relationship", shows an example of a Chinese arranged marriage with negative impacts. The wife is treated as if she is a servant. "Treat me like a nanny."(Scharff 2). Her husband doesn't see her as a wife, he sees her as a worker. The wife needed to produce babies for the husband. "I needed to have a child for him."(Scharff 8). This marriage clearly represents how women were negatively
Yan Zhitui states that, "women take charge of family affairs, entering into lawsuits, straightening out disagreements, and paying calls to seek favor...the government offices are filled with their fancy silks." (Differences between north and south, 111). Yet, even in the Qing dynasty women were still restricted by and expected to uphold more traditional ideals, especially in the public eye. So, in the end, through her virtue, Hsi-Liu’s two children we able to become upright. Here, there is a split between what a woman is supposed to be according to old Chinese tradition, and the realities facing women in Tancheng. The loss of her husband, and economic hardship had forced His-Liu to behave in a different way, as if she were usurping the power from the eldest son so she could teach the two boys a lesson about being good family members. While she still maintains the ideals of bearing children, and being loyal to her husband, even after he dies, out of necessity she is forced to break from Confucian ideals of being only concerned with the domestic issues. This too put her at odds with the more traditional society around her, as the villagers pitied her sons, but vilified the Hsi-Liu for being so strict with them (Woman Wang, 65). Had she remarried, she would have been looked down upon even more because she would had broken her duty to remain faithful to her deceased
In her book, The House of Lim, author Margery Wolf observes the Lims, a large Chinese family living in a small village in Taiwan in the early 1960s (Wolf iv). She utilizes her book to portray the Lim family through multiple generations. She provides audiences with a firsthand account of the family life and structure within this specific region and offers information on various customs that the Lims and other families participate in. She particularly mentions and explains the marriage customs that are the norm within the society. Through Wolf’s ethnography it can be argued that parents should not dec5pide whom their children marry. This argument is obvious through the decline in marriage to simpua, or little girls taken in and raised as future daughter-in-laws, and the influence parents have over their children (Freedman xi).
No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.
However, this “ladder of success” was not as simple as it seemed. First of all, the class of both families will be a huge barrier. We are not even talking about freedom to love here, there is no such thing in late imperial China. Although we can’t say that love doesn’t exist even in such systems, such as Shen Fu and Chen Yun, but most marriages are not about love. Rather, it was about exchange of values. For example, when two families want to become business partners, the parents of the family will have their son and daughter married, so the two families will have closer bonding which made the business much easier. In this sense, we can see that the couple is simply a tool. In the same sense, the families which has not much “values” can only have marriages with the same class of families. Meaning for a women to climb up the ladder of success is not quite possible as the class of her family is a huge deciding factor for marriage in the
Tan likes to show Lindo through indirect characterization. Lindo would always try to make things right. She would be polite to her new mother in law and when she was with her mother in law she would hold out a treat and say “ For you, Mother” (53). Even though Huang Taitai was not her real mother, Lindo would act as though she was, but before Lindo did this she would turn to her mother and ask for forgivness. This shows that she is a caring girl and she will always try to behave and be nice to every one. Tan also shows us how brave Lindo is. When it came time for the family to leave for shanghai, it was said that “the whole family except for Lindo would leave” (53). Lindo didn’t say a word. When the day finnaly came, no one said goodbye. All that was said was, “do not disgrace us”
From the beginning of Wang Lung’s marriage to O-lan, she saved him time, money, and effort without complaint. She offered wisdom when asked and was smart in the ways of the world. During the famine, when the family went south in search of food, O-lan taught her children how to beg for food, “dug the small green weeds, dandelions, and shepherds purse that thrust up feeble new leaves”(p. 128). She raised her children prudently. She knew how to bind her daughter’s feet, and she gave them a better childhood than she had had. O-lan knew that the land was the only consistent thing in her life, so she willingly helped Wang Lung as he bought more and more land. O-lan knew her place in the family was as a wife and mother. As a wife, she fe...
ꀀ ꀀine a world of unequal social status. Envision a world where customs are different, whether that is through family or political standpoints. In America, in today’s day and age, every human being despite their gender is supposed to be seen as equal. In our modern world, gender equality is beginning to prevail, and men and women are looked at on the same level. However, there are still flaws in our society. Some of these flaws are exemplified through Cao Xuequin’s novel The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days, Volume 1. The Qing Dynasty, as depicted through the families in the book, portrays a life of unequal gender relations, through marriage, family matters, and education.
...c. 4). This is an example of one of the seven unequal relationships in Confucianism. Much of the social structure of classical China was based on Confucian ideals (Doc. 3). In Greece the relationship between a husband and wife also very unequal due to her young age and lack of education. Alone a woman had no political rights and limited legal powers therefore is was necessary for a husband to provide for his wife much like a father would (Doc. 6) A woman would learn house hold management and eventually produce heirs. These two similar systems of social roles was not a benevolent system. It did not take into account the welfare of individuals, particularly woman who had little power to leave in a bad marital situation. However by insuring that people know their place, which kept them in line, classical societies were more prosperous and able to run more smoothly.
Women usually worked as secretaries or on the assembly line because “bosses felt that young women were more diligent and easier to manage” (p. 56). Men, however, were either in a high managing position in the factory or worked in the lowest of jobs available, such as a security guard or driver. It was interesting to learn that about one-third of all of China’s migrants are women. These women go to the factory towns to work, but also, a majority of them leave their homes to see the world and experience life on their own for the first time. Chang makes a point that “to some extent, this deep-rooted sexism worked in a woman’s favor” (p. 57). The statement is supported by the idea that women are less treasured in their families; therefore, they had more freedom to do what they wanted with little care from the family. Shockingly, Chang noticed that no woman ever complained about unfair treatment. “They took all of these injustices in stride” (p.58). The women were grateful for the opportunity leave home and gain a sense of freedom; injustice was not a prominent
Gender equality has been an issue in the world for the past century. The contrast between men and women in China begins at home and translates into workplace expectations. In China, the expectation in the home is that men are superior to women and that she should be obliged to serve her husband. According to the Passport to China, “Confucianism is still a major factor in Chinese culture. A direct quote from the Passport to China represents this well. “The Confucian husband rules over his wife as a lord rules his people.” This essentially means that the husband is superior to the woman entirely in households that still maintain the Confucian attitudes of the past.
The first mother/ daughter pair whose experiences were shown are Lindo and Waverly. Lindo was born and raised in China, were women have very little rights, and no say in their futures. At a very young age Lindo was promised by a “matchmaker” to be married to a man when she was 15. She was told from the time she was a toddler that he “belonged” to her future husband, and was already his property and that she needed to act accordingly. At 15 she was forced to go marry a man she had very met, whose face she had never seen and whose age she didn’t know. She was expected to be subservient, obedient and dutiful wife who would produce a son for the Huang family. After her marriage her very, very young husband made it clear to her that he “was the husband and he made the rules” (The Joy Luck Club). When, through no fault of her own, she didn’t not produce a child with him all of the blame was placed on her and she was told if she continued to ...
Is it because he was a woman that he cried out at the sight of a child being harmed? Did he not cry out at the death of his wife because she was a woman? The role of the female in this story reveals a sense of inferiority towards women. These questions that the story raises show how women were viewed as inferior and weak in the eyes of the Chinese culture.
Zhong, Xueping, Zheng Wang, and Bai Di. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
The early part of the novel shows women’s place in Chinese culture. Women had no say or position in society. They were viewed as objects, and were used as concubines and treated with disparagement in society. The status of women’s social rank in the 20th century in China is a definite positive change. As the development of Communism continued, women were allowed to be involved in not only protests, but attended universities and more opportunities outside “house” work. Communism established gender equality and legimated free marriage, instead of concunbinage. Mao’s slogan, “Women hold half of the sky”, became extremely popular. Women did almost any job a man performed. Women were victims by being compared to objects and treated as sex slaves. This was compared to the human acts right, because it was an issue of inhumane treatment.
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...