Examples Of Sexism In The Joy Luck Club

First of all, the Joy Luck Club had so many conflicts and misunderstandings between almost all of the characters. Most of the conflicts were between Waverly and her mom. Some conflicts were just differences between Waverly and her mother because of the generation gap between the two. Her mom didn’t like the things she would do and she could never see herself doing things that Waverly was doing back when she was a child. There were also cultural and martial conflicts throughout the book also.

    Of the many stories involving the many characters of "The Joy Luck Club", I believe the central theme connecting them all is the inability of the mothers and their daughters to communicate effectively.

The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first novel. It consists of four sections with sixteen short stories. One of the main issues of the novel is the relationship between Chinese mothers and their Chinese – American daughters. ‘‘Your mother is in your bones.’’ (Tan 1998, 30) There is a cultural chasm between them because of the difference in the way they were brought up and different influences of the environment.

The mother-daughter relationships represented in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club are influenced by many existing factors. Lena St. Clair, Ying-Ying St. Clair’s daughter, is a Chinese-American adult who lives with her forceful husband, Harold. Ying-Ying is a Chinese mother who travelled to America to live a better life after experiencing many hardships in China. Throughout the novel, the relationship between Lena and Ying-Ying is represented as weak and distant. These characters are prevented from having a healthy relationship because they do not support each other, they possess similar characteristics, and they are strong.

Every day, people have to choose whether to do what they want to do or what somebody else wants them to do. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, many of the daughters must choose between their own goals and their families’ hopes for them. Jing-mei struggles to determine what is more important, finding her own path in life or accepting her family’s ambitions for her, in order to show that compromise is a necessity that relationships cannot survive without.

The Joy Luck Club continues with Lindo and Waverly Jong. As a child, Lindo had a pre-arranged marriage, which turned out poorly. She wants her daughter to be able to have a happy marriage with a husband she chooses herself. Throughout Lindo's unhappy marriage, she often wondered why she should have "an unhappy life so someone else could have a happy one"(53). Lindo's thoughts reveal that she wished to live her own life and have the ability to make her own decisions. This desire gave Lindo the extra confidence to figure out a way to escape the marriage, in which she did successfully. When Waverly shows her mother the sweater that Rich bought her, she tells her mother that it was from his heart which is "why [Lindo] worries" (186). Lindo's uncertainties reveal that she only wants the best for her daughter, but Waverly thinks that her mother only has something against Rich. Once Waverly talks to her mother, she realizes that her mother does not have any "secret meaning," but does not want her

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813(Gary vii) a time when women had “few legal and economic rights or even receiving little respect, women can be seen as oppressed victims of a patriarchal society, subordinate first to their fathers and, then, to their husbands who had, of course, been selected by their fathers” (Swords, 76-82). At first glance one might think that Pride and Prejudice reinforces sexist stereotypes, however upon further examination of Jane Austen and her heroine Elizabeth it is clear that Pride and Prejudice in fact erodes the sexist stereotypes of women.

In Lindo Jong’s narrative it becomes evident that Lindo and her daughter share a strength of self identity that allows them to stay true to their inner selves. Lindo had acquired her strength while getting out of a miserable selected marriage. “I... Looked in the mirror... I was strange. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see. That no one could ever take away from me away from me. I was like the wind... I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I

“A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you.”

The novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the life of four mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair and their four daughters: Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. All four of these families fled China in the 1940s and tried to retain and maintain their culture and heritage. All of the four daughters are very Americanized and the mothers try to show and teach each of their daughters a little about the chinese culture. All these mothers hope to give their daughter strength, respect for herself, and to create a strong bond and relationship between themselves. Tan gives us something to relate to by telling us the story of Chinese women and their daughters. The all may

Lindo was arranged to marry Tyan-yu. While the marriage was short-lived, Tyan-yu constantly lied to Lindo, and Tyan-yu’s mother treated Lindo like an object to be bartered between families. Lindo experiences depression being trapped in this lifestyle, so she decides to flee to America in order to escape it. When reminiscing on her marriage Lindo says, “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” (Tan ). Similar to the mother in the beginning, Tan creates appeal to pathos, forcing the reader to sympathize with Lindo. The reader’s sympathy to Lindo allows Tan to expand on the larger issue of sexism, creating an emotional and educational tone in order to coax the reader into, again, understanding the true scale of sexism. Tan drilling this larger idea of sexism into readers changes the reader’s perspective. With new perspective, readers notice the need for change to establish equality between both sexes. Therefore, Tan is using her writing as a tool for a deeper subject: exciting change within the world, and thus, exemplifying Jong’s words.

Amy Tan said in the People Magazine in 1989 about her novel, The Joy Luck Club, “The book could be about any culture or generation and what is lost between them.” Amy Tan reveals that the mothers try to pass on their Chinese heritage and teach their American-born daughters to avoid the mistakes the mothers made growing up in China. However, the daughters often see their mothers’ attempts at guidance as attempting to control their lives. The mother and daughter pair of Lindo and Waverly epitomize this relationship, where Lindo tries to integrate Chinese and American cultures into her own life and Waverly tries to both be independent and keep her Chinese heritage. Although Waverly and Lindo do not mend their cultural conflicts completely, their experiences with one another allow them to change and accept one another.

Like most mothers, Lindo Jong was incredibly proud of her daughter. Waverly and Lindo are both very similar but during her childhood, Waverly cast Lindo as the enemy. As an adult, this fear of her mother continues. Waverly blames anything that goes wrong on her mother. She claims her mother stole her confidence away. Waverly was always fighting but she never realized who she was fighting. Waverly thought she was hiding from her mother’s “side attacks… secret weapons… (and) her uncanny ability to find (her) weakest spots” (Tan 183). When Waverly finally listens to her mother’s words and what she is saying, a huge revelation is made. “But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was really there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in” (183-

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

The relationship a mother has with her daughter is one of the most significant relationships either person will possess. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the stories of four mothers and their respective daughters are established through vignettes, which reveal the relationships between them. Throughout the novel, the mothers and daughters are revealed to be similar, yet different. Lindo and Waverly Jong can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.