The Book Of Wild Swans : Three Daughter Of China

A Daughter of Han begins with Ning Lao as a young girl. Throughout the telling of her childhood the readers get a glimpse of how life way for the Chinese people in the late 19th century. For example, it is discussed thoroughly how a home is set up:

In Six Records of a Floating Life, Shen Fu writes of his wife, “Yün came to this world a woman, but she had the feelings and abilities of a man.” (Fu: 89) Shen Fu and Yün considered each other to be intellectual equals. However, their relationship was still constrained within the gender roles set by their society. They lived during the Qing dynasty, which was a prosperous time for China (“The Manchus”: 266) but also a time when, as Professor Scarlett states in the lecture Daily Life in Imperial China, “the outside world was for men and the inside world was for women.” Shen Fu and Yün’s relationship was pushing the bounds of their culture, but they still kept (mostly) within the lines of social acceptability.

In Wild Swans, Jung Chang describes the life of three generations of woman in her family. Beginning in the year 1909 and ending in present time, it gives an insight into almost eighty years of the cultural history of China. Jung Chang has said in a interview that her intention in writing Wild Swans was to show how the Chinese people, and in particular the women in her family, "fought tenaciously and courageously against impossible odds."

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan D. Spence, paints a vivid picture of provincial China in the seventeenth century. Manly the life in the northeastern country of T’an-ch’eng. T’an-ch’eng has been through a lot including: an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Chinese society in Confucian terms was a patriarchal society with strict rules of conduct. The role at this time of women, however, has historically been one of repression. The traditional ideal woman was a dependent being whose behavior was governed by the "three obedience’s and four virtues". The three obedience’s were obedience to

Furthermore, instead of arranged marriages that only benefited the patriarchal head, intellectuals pushed for marriages based on love which would create happy and productive citizens . In addition, based on her mother’s experience, Bao Qin rejects arranged marriages and intends to only marry for love . After hearing of two concubines who drug Cousin Hu’s mother to feign adultery and gain the favour of her husband, Bao Qin is enraged by the historic “powerlessness of women, [the] barbarity of age-old customs, cloaked in tradition .” With the broad shift from tradition as well as her own personal experience, Bao Qin rejects traditional gender roles and seeks to create her own. Furthermore, as China became divided into separate spheres of influence and opened to international markets, British and American industrialization brought new ideas of opportunities for women, challenging established gender relations . With new economic opportunities and education, women could become self-reliant, broadening their choices and their role in society. Consequently, after disobeying her parents’ command to attend Mr. Liu’s funeral, Bao Qin was able to support herself by enrolling in a new teacher training department . Reducing patriarchal control, industrialization allowed children to head to schools and factories, no longer needing to rely on their parents for education and work . As a result, while foreign

Shen Fu’s work doesn’t construe the treatment of women during this time, but provides a glimpse into an exception to the rule. Women were harshly treated and received little attention during the Qing Dynasty. They were regarded as property and not allowed to leave the house without a man to accompany them. It was highly discouraged that they learn to read or write and they were not allowed to lead fulfilling lives, as they were bound to their husbands. Shen Fu does express some of these characteristics, such as being with courtesans and other mistresses, but he truly had a heartfelt love

Another conflict that arises from Confucianism is when Jing-mei was told to go back to China and tell her half-sisters about their mother. She said “‘what will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything.’” (Tan 31). In Confucianism, very little of tradition is explicitly told from mothers to daughters in the form of text. Ritual actions are supposed to be observed, absorbed and understood in order to be preserved and handed down for posterity. But Jing-mei, who grew up in America, did not have a sense of following the tradition her mother brought to America, or rather considered the Chinese tradition to be eccentric.

Furthermore, in part tree, The Widow, Spence urges the reader of woman's values and her characteristics in T'an-ch'eng county. Through the Local History Spence defines the meaning of property in the seventeen century China. Women like any other piece of

The book is a written as conversational memoir between two women, Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong about their experience during the first three decades of Mao’s era. The two women had gone through almost similar position and situations in their life, faced equivalent hardships, their approach or attitude towards those experiences in a completely different manner. This book is meticulous in its historical detail, making it a standout among similar memoirs of twentieth-century China. It also tries to add another dimension of the general perspective of historic events. The events are described in a chronological sequence and with the right amount of proper relevant information so the reader can understand the conversation.

In such cases, the eldest son emerged as a widow’s greatest ally. Widows however lost their prerogative to prepare sacrificial rites. The story of the widow Hsi-Liu in Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang conveys how morals were paramount in how a woman comported herself both in public and in private. Widowed women were frowned down on if they remarried despite the fact that they depended on men in their lives for economic stability and sustenance. Local histories Spence came across noted that widows, “with determination and strict moral purpose,” sought to raise their children while making a living without getting remarried.

In this time in China, the role that women and men had were very different from each other. Women were expected to be quite, obedient, and respectful. While men were the provider, the intellectual and the decision maker in the family. In Shen Fu and his wife, Yun marriage it started out like the typical relationship in eightieth century China, each one fulfilling the roles that society had in place for them. But as they became to know each other more, Shen Fu saw Yun real personality and wanted someone to experience life, so he started to encourage her to be herself and told her she didn’t have to live up to this gender stereotypes for women. They both were always

The Chinese people have experienced rapid change, in government and culture in the 20th century. Although the common people seemed to have risen up against oppression from the ruling class, liberty and equality often remains out of their grasp. For centuries the dynastic cycle has dominated the culture and collective consciousness of the Chinese people. This process is characterized by unification, followed by prosperity and success, followed by corruption and instability, and finally rebellion and overthrow. This gives way to a new dynasty that was said to have received the mandate of heaven. This cycle, in some ways, ended with the fall of the Qing dynasty. This marked the end of over 2000 years of

Lindo’s upbringing was significant because her family was very traditional. As a result of her family abiding by tradition, Lindo was betrothed to Tyan-yu as a young girl. Lindo’s family treated her as if she was from a different family. When Lindo’s family lost everything in a flood, her father decided to move the family to Wushi. Lindo was old enough to move in with Tyan-yu’s family, so her family left her in Taiyuan with her future in-laws. When Lindo moved in with her new in-laws, Huang Taitai immediately put Lindo to work cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Lindo not only lost her family by moving in with the Huangs; she also lost her childhood innocence since she was forced to abandon playing with other children so she could be put to work. As a child, Lindo faced adversity due to her lack of American opportunities and therefore matured quickly.

For example, Wang Lung is a very good worker. He is constantly out in the fields working to keep his house and so he can take care of his father. In China, each family has it’s own traditions, and it is well known that the elders come first. Wang Lung is staying true to his family’s customs. Throughout the book, he is rewarded with a hard working wife and sons. In their culture, having sons is so much better than having a daughter. He is soon rewarded with a lot of money. Along with Lung, his wife, O-lan, is also rewarded because of the kind of person she is. She receives a great husband, and sons. As a wife in China, having a son is an amazing thing, better yet, she has three sons. The sons grow up to be wonderful, smart men. The last thing she wanted to see before she died was to see her first son get married, and she did. As a mother, seeing their son married is a

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang provides a thoughtful and beautifully painful chronology of three generations of women through some of China’s harshest periods in history. This book review will proceed in two parts. The first will address the significant themes present in Chang’s novel. The second will go beyond literary analysis and delve into identifying the author’s own bias, and comment on the structure and perspective of Chang herself. This review will overview the themes and then critically comment on the efficacy of the author’s development of those themes. Chang shows how adversity can bring out the best in people; and how love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice are imbued in their family.