I am on a brief vacation with my parents in Florida, where they will soon be relocating, and have been immensely enjoying my relaxation time. In the span of a week I have read four books and one in particular has really captured my interest and sparked my appetite for further research. Chinese-American novelist Lisa See wrote a fascinating novel entitled Snow Flower and the Secret Fan which chronicles, in the form of a kind of fictional memoir, the lives and complex relationship of two women in the southern Hunan region of China during the mid 1850’s. See writes about the many hardships, love, joys, and suffering that both women experience throughout their lives. These two women, based on certain matching qualities, were joined in a sort of arranged friendship at the age of seven, which was intended to be a stronger bond than any relationship between a man and a woman could ever be.
In this region of China at this time girls had very little economic value, and usually ended up being a financial drain on their natal families due to the cost of dowries. It was difficult for mothers to express their love for their daughters because daughters did nothing to elevate their status within their husbands’ families, and in many ways were considered to be a burden. Women were taught that the only way for a girl to acquire any status and value, which would be her only source of protection in her adult life, was to be chaste, pure, meek, subservient to men and her elders, and also to have tiny and dainty bound feet. Mothers expressed their love for their daughters by forcing upon them extreme physical pain through the form of foot binding, which, in addition to being agonizingly painful, was an extremely dangerous practice which put many girls at risk of developing fatal infections. Although seemingly cruel, this action was an expression of love because it was a woman’s only means of providing for her daughter a better future and life than her own.
Before reading this novel I was unaware of the extent to which women were crippled in the pursuit of this culture’s ideal of feminine beauty. Of those that survived the foot binding process few women managed to achieve the idealized “golden lilies." In addition to being unable to walk without assistance or a cane, many women with poorly bound feet were unable to marry into higher social stations. As a result, countless women ended up remaining in the poorer, working classes, and were forced to adapt to the physical deformity which had been inflicted upon them in their early childhood, according to See, usually by the age of six!
In See’s novel, the protagonist Lily displays the potential to have perfectly bound feet, and her mother succeeds in breaking her daughter’s bones and reforming them into the much sought after “golden lilies” which were apparently very enticing to young men. At one point in the novel See mentioned the ideal length of a bound foot. Unfortunately I cannot cite a specific page, so I am drawing from memory here, but I believe the ideal length was 7 centimeters/the length of a thumb. I cannot even imagine how much agony young girls suffered in order to reform the bone structure of their feet to this extent. My mom also read this book and was turned off by the graphic and grotesque description of the foot binding process. While I also found it to be extremely difficult to read, I respect See for not glossing over the gory details. It is important that people be aware of what women have been forced to endure in order to survive in patriarchal societies since the beginning of time. Although generally not as extreme, women in western societies have also inflicted physical pain upon themselves in the pursuit of a male concept of feminine beauty. Take, for example, corsets which constrict breathing, and probably break a few ribs here and there. If men noticed women and found them to be beautiful they were more likely to improve their social status, and hopefully, the quality of their lives. As they say, pain is beauty. What I did not realize until I had finished reading this book was that foot binding surpassed the realm of pain and entered that of self-mutilation.
What I really liked about this book was that See demonstrated the internal conflict families faced when bringing up daughters. Parents, mothers and fathers alike, did not want to become too attached to their daughters because once they had children they would permanently move in with their husbands' families and they would possibly never see each other again. In the book Lily’s parents loved her in their own way, but struggled to express this love, because society told them that women and girls were worthless. As I mentioned above, Lily’s mother demonstrated her love through the foot binding process, which was a traditional manifestation of “Mother Love.” See emphasizes the pain that was deeply imbedded in the love between mothers and their daughters. I cannot remember the exact translation of the character for mother love but if I remember correctly mother love literally means “pain” and “love” in Chinese (Mandarin Chinese I think.) In the beginning of the novel Lily wishes her mother would pay more attention to her and is overjoyed when she begins to display her “mother love” through the process of foot binding. See writes, from Lily’s point of view, “with her fingers Mama pulled my loose bones back and up against the soles of my feet. At no other time did I see Mama’s mother love so clearly,” (p. 30.)
The deepest, most life-altering form of love existed between “old sames” or laotong. This kind of relationship was rare and was established between two young girls only if they mirrored each other in so many ways that they were essentially the “same” person. Unlike more traditional friendships between Chinese women at this time, this relationship would last throughout their entire lifetimes, and bring them closer to each other than husbands and wives.
In the beginning of the novel when Lily is matched with Snow Flower, a young girl from a wealthy family in a more prosperous village, her entire family is delighted by the prospects of this relationship. Since their daughter had been considered worthy of being the laotong of this young girl based on the merits of her potentially perfect "golden lilies," they had a greater chance of arranging a marriage for her with a boy from a similarly wealthy and highly esteemed family. Little did they know that the matchmaker who initiated the arrangement of this old same relationship was related to Snow Flower by blood and had ulterior motives for establishing this relationship. Snow Flower’s family had been pushed into economic decline by her father’s opium addiction and she needed to learn how to fit in to a lower class. Lily also benefited from the relationship and Snow Flower’s more advanced knowledge of the exclusively female language “nu shu."
Nu shu, a language created by and for women, had flourished for centuries because anything women did was viewed as insignificant and disregarded by men. I find it surprising that men were not at all opposed to women having a secret system of communication, but apparently because it originated from women, men considered it to be too trivial to pose a threat to their dominance. Throughout the course of their lives Snow Flower and Lily corresponded with each other in nu shu, drawing upon its poetic qualities and writing beautiful sentiments to each other, often drawing poems on each others' hands, and even on other, more intimate, parts of their bodies as they began a mutual exploration of female sexuality. Once they were both married Snow Flower and Lily frequently wrote, with thinly veiled bitterness, about their lives with their in-laws. Snow Flower and Lily frequently referred to inspirational stories which had been passed from one generation of women to the next for years. These stories, and nu shu as a whole, served as a means of empowerment for these women, who, regardless of social class, suffered throughout their lives as a result of their gender. Nu shu was an integral part of womens' companionship during these centuries of their suffering at the hands of men. It provided them with a much needed outlet and enabled them to establish close relationships with others that kept them going throughout their lives. This secret language was discovered during the Chinese Revolution and was assumed to be a secret code used by spies, thus it rapidly began to decline. Nu shu has recently experienced a revival as women, and men, throughout the world have become aware of its existence and are striving to protect it from extinction.
I would highly recommend reading this novel if you are at all interested in learning more about this fascinating culture and the secret language women created in order to communicate amongst themselves in an oppressive society. See Lisa See’s website (http://www.lisasee.com/) for a synopsis of the book and her other novels. I would also recommend her newer book Peony in Love which takes place in 17th-century China and explores aspects of traditional Chinese opera, unrequited love, and the influence of Chinese folklore about ghosts and spirits on quotidian life.
I am hoping to get my hands on the documentary “Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China.” This documentary, by a writer See cites in the works cited and acknowledgements section of her book, Yue-Qing Yang, is about the discovery and preservation of nu shu and the life of the last living writer of nu shu, Huan yi-Yang, who I believe is now deceased. Check out this link: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c473.shtml.
Enjoy. :)
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