Divorce In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

As a side note I did look to see if I could find Rose’s diary but was unsuccessful. If anyone can find it I would be interested to read that passage in full context.

 In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values.  This inability to communicate and the clash

She is a housewife. She can't do much in her life because of how she's married. Rose has her own dreams, but she keeps them as a boundary by only focusing on trying to be the best wife and mother she can be. She builds a fence to keep her family together. However things change for her, when she learns about Troy's affair. She starts feeling devastated. She tells Troy, "I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things?" (44). Rose maintained her relationship for eighteen years and has never done anything wrong to mess it up. She sacrificed everything for Troy and her kids, but she never cared or stood up for herself. In order for Rose to survive, she should learn to follow her own

but later on she experiences a physiatric breakdown turning the whole world of the family upside down. the family amazingly handles the situation with a little bit of humor. Rose undergoes through several phases with extreme breakdown like: “Rose went through a phase of having sex with everyone who passed her door.” and “she was in fever for a while, trying to still the voices by fucking her brains out.” In this phase she even persuaded her doctor who handled the situation amazingly.

Well come on…I’ll make a batch of biscuits,” (26). Rose steadily tries to be the best mother that she can be for the Maxson family and not just take care of herself. She represents the primary care giver of the Maxson household by cooking for everybody and bringing the whole family in together to eat. “Okay, Troy…you’re right. I’ll take care of your baby for you…cause…like you say…she’s innocent…and you can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child. A motherless child has got a hard time,” (79). By Rose saying and doing this, it just proves how loving and tender hearted she is. Even though Rose is not the child’s mother, she still wants what is best for the baby. “Stop that yelling. You gonna wake up Raynell. I just got her to sleep,” (80). This shows that Rose has fully accepted Raynell as her daughter. Rose does not see Raynell as just Troy’s daughter but also hers too. Rose says, talking about Lyons, “Let the boy have ten dollars, Troy,” (19). This shows how loving and caring Rose acts towards Troy’s son. Rose and Troy clearly do not have enough money to be giving it out, but she encourages Troy to give some to Lyons because she cares about everyone. Rose is a very good hearted person who uses all of her characterisitcs to keep everyone in the family together and keep them in check.

They look for a facility that she can stay in. The Facility is seen as being rundown and dirty. The narrator Violet says: “One place had no pictures on the wall, no windows, and patients wore slippers with the hospitals crest on them”(Page 1). The patients walking around aimlessly shows that the mentally ill are not taken care of properly. It also shows that they patients have nothing to do while they are in the facility nor are they getting any treatment for their illness. In the story once the mom walks in and sees the patients all walking around like zombies she immediately turns around and takes Rose out of the facility. This further proves the argument that how the mentally ill are treated needs to be

Rose is unable to fully accept herself or the statements made by her mother throughout the chapter, until she reflects back on her relationship and realizes how her mother predicted this by the condition of the garden taken care of by her husband. She understands her mother finally and stands up to Ted, explaining to him how she was going to fight for everything in the divorce.

In its essence, The Joy Luck Club, is about mother and daughter relationships. It especially focused on the want of the mothers to be able to connect with their adult daughters who seemed to not be able to fully understand their mothers due to cultural and generational gaps. There is also an overlaying fear that their collective wisdom and hope and dreams will not be passed on to their daughters. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant…They see daughters who grow impatient

That`s all you got to measure yourself against the world out there.” It’s in this moment that she is carried away to the extent of revealing her painful escapades she went through in her marriage. She explains how she first met Troy, a man she could settle down with and have a baby at the age of thirty. Rose went further in describing the nature of the chores she was responsible for as a wife such as cooking supper, keeping the bed sheets clean and so forth, but things got out of hand letting the man rule all her world. Rose says, “I took up his life as mine and mixed the pieces so that you couldn’t hardly tell which was which anymore”************* This shows the sacrifices that Rose made as a wife and mother just to make her own world comfortable.

She decides to marry Troy, even when there are others out there because she wants to settle down and have a family. In one of her statements, she says that she had a choice of making her marriage different, but she took what life offered her because of she as a woman. As a black woman, Rose feels that she owes it to her husband and gives him everything. She raises Raynell, who is not even her daughter. According to her, the child should not be punished for being born because she did not ask for it.

The story of the magpies was told to An-Mei when she was a child because she was upset about her mother leaving. This same story is connected to Rose’s life through her divorce with Ted. “And for the first time in months, after being in limbo all the time, everything stopped. All the questions: gone. There were no choices. I had an empty feeling - and I felt free, wild. From high inside my head I could hear someone laughing” (194). When Rose gets a divorce from Ted she finally feels free. In the conversation prior, Ted was very controlling and upset that Rose had not signed the divorce papers yet. This is significant because this is where Rose gained her freedom. Rose finally stopped crying and letting the magpies laugh at her sorrow. In this situation, before Rose realized she was trapped and needed to stand up for herself, Ted was the magpie. Ted had all of the power in the relationship and was very controlling. After Rose realized she should be taken seriously, she took advantage of Ted’s frustration and took control of her life. She was able to stand up for herself and get what she wanted out of the divorce. An-Mei was the one that knew the story of the magpies and had learned this lesson in the beginning. “But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first

Here, Rose's actions signify a departure from traditional norms as she prioritizes her own well-being and that of her son over societal expectations. This pivotal moment marks Rose's evolution from passive conformity to assertive self-determination, challenging entrenched gender roles and asserting her

used the Twenty-Six Malignant Gates to discipline her daughter Rose so she would stay out of

According to Sandra G. Shannon, Rose Maxon’s focuses are on “being a wife, mother and homemaker.” (154) Shannon states that Wilson places Rose as a conformed woman by being the nurturer but also demands herself some self-respect. She is loving, supportive, outspoken but inferior to her husband in some ways. Rose is not treated like a second-class citizen but is expected to be understanding and forgiving no matter how small or huge the wrong-doing is. Rose is a mixture of strong because she stayed with Troy even though he had an illegitimate child with another woman. She showed such strength when she took Troy’s daughter as her own to raise and told Troy he was a “womanless man.” She took Troy’s daughter as her own because she told Troy that her daughter is not to blame for her father’s actions. Women’s roles are defined by men still in the 1950s, (155) and she loves Troy enough to accept his flaws up until he confesses having a baby out of wedlock. Women may be forgiving because they know separation/divorce is looked highly down upon and women rely on their husbands financially. Also, women who are alone are less likely to succeed, and will run the risk of constantly meeting worse men. (155) When Troy gives Rose the unexpected news about him becoming a father through another woman, Rose first is in shock; asks why did he wait eighteen years to do that and Rose gets angry. She is in

Rose’s distraught for her marriage with fiancé is very evident in her facial expression as she runs to the stern and looks off to the ocean. When Jack enters the scene, it is apparent that he is nervous; but, as he approaches Rose, his face reflects calm but courage. While attempting to discourage her from suicide, Jack realizes she is actually very disturbed, but afraid to jump.In this case, he shares with her some anecdotes on his experience with ice fishing to ease her stress off. Examining another sub-scene where she trips and falls, we can see his courageous face turning into a face of her new hope for life. Her face is brightened, her eyes are mesmerized, and her mind is strengthened by the end of this shot leaving audience enchanted.