The Complexity of Mother and Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club
Since the beginning of time the mother and daughter relationship has been complex. The book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is a great example of the mother and daughter relationship. In the book Amy Tan writes about four women who migrate to America from China. All of the women were in search of a better life since the lives they had in China were not what they wanted for themselves. Even though all of the women did not know each other until they met in America, they all share the same horrible memories of their past. The book mainly focuses on the expectations, hopes, and dreams that the women and their daughters have for themselves. Even though at the beginning the mothers and the daughters do not always see eye to eye at the end the daughters start to realize that their mothers just wanted the best for them and not the worst, "The mothers see themselves in the daughters."(Matthews).
The relationship between Suyuan and Jing-mei is somewhat difficult because they are both coming from two different cultures that are completely opposite of one another. Suyuan is trying to teach Jing-mei the Chinese culture when all Jing-mei sees is the American culture, that is on television and all around her. Jing-mei's friends do not even think that she is a true Chinese person. Suyuan wants her daughter to obey her and make her proud even if it means making Jing-mei do something that she does not want to do. As a Chinese women Suyuan knew her role to be a good wife and mother and to always stand by her husband's side. On the other hand Jing-mei does not want this, she wants to be independent, and to be able to make her own decisions because...
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... to teach her about her culture and where she was from, "And now I see"(Tan 331). Jing-mei finally learns the answers to all of the questions that her mother left unanswered when she passed away.
Although Jing-mei fought so hard to not do anything Suyuan said, it was not because she did not like her mother. It was because she did not understand where she was coming from. It is always hard to understand someone when you do not understand any of the hardships that one has been through.
WORK CITED
Matthews, Amanda. Structural Analysis...Thanks to Amanda Matthews. <http:www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~sbowen/314fall/novels/lit.html>.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York, 1989.
Tavernise, Peter. Fasting of the Heart: Mother-Tradition and Sacred Systems in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. <http://www.mindspring.com/~petert/tan.htm>. 12 March 1992
Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much
...r mothers death to meet her half sisters. While in China Jing-mei finds out that she did appreciate her mother although she was worried that she didn't and knew nothing about her. She also realizes that she did not have to prove her Chinese identity to her two half sisters, that she belongs to their family automatically because of Suyuan. After her trip to China she "found" her mother and stops feeling doubt of her and Suyuan's relationship with each other.
In the beginning, Jing-mei, is “just as excited as my mother,”(469). Jing-mei was eagerly hoping to make her mother proud. However, her mother’s obsession with becoming a prodigy discouraged Jing-mei. The daily test began to aggravated Jing-mei because they made her feel less sma...
The mother wanted the daughter to be obedient because of the daughter becoming upset. Jing Mei mother was disappointed in her for all of mistakes she had done in her past life because of her awful piano recital and disobeying her mother. “You want me to be somebody that I’m not, by that she wanted her life to be the same. Jing Mei stopped playing for a few years on her piano during the past years during their fights but in the later years. “Only two kinds of daughters, she wants her daughter to be obedient to her mother and have a perfect life to accomplish when she grows
Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships. The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had. In China, women were “to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,” (Chinese-American Women in American Culture). They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life. These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America “nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch…nobody [would] look down on her…” (3). To represent everything that was hoped for in their daughters, the mothers wanted them to have a “swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for,” (3). This swan was all of the mothers’ good intentions. However, when they got to America, the swan was taken away and all she had left was one feather.
Jing-Mei tries to live up to her mother’s expectations but feels that her mother expects more from her than she can deliver. She doesn’t understand why her mother is always trying to change her and won’t accept her for who she is. She feels pressure from her family when she is compared to her cousin Waverly and all her accomplishments. Soon the conflict grows to resentment as her mother tests her daily on academics, eventually causing Jing-Mei to give up while her mother struggles to get her attention and cooperation. Her mother avoids arguing with her daughter early in the story, continuing to encourage her to strive for fame. Her mother’s next assignment for her daughter is piano lessons. This goes along pretty well until her mother forces her to participate in a talent show. The daughter’s failure on her performance at the talent show causes embarrassment to her mother. Conflict is evident when two days later, after the talent show, she reminds her daughter that it’s time for piano practice and the daughter refuses to obey her mother. The conflict that the daughter feels boils over in an outburst of anger and resentment towards her mother for trying to make her something that she is not. Harsh words are spoken causing the mother to retreat and not speak of this event ever
In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the Mr. Hooper’s black veil and the words that can describe between him and the veil. Hawthorne demonstrates how a black veil can describe as many words. Through the story, Hawthorne introduces the reader to Mr. Hooper, a parson in Milford meeting-house and a gentlemanly person, who wears a black veil. Therefore, Mr. Hooper rejects from his finance and his people, because they ask him to move the veil, but he does not want to do it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper’s black veil symbolizes sins, darkness, and secrecy in order to determine sins that he cannot tell to anyone, darkness around his face and neighbors, and secrecy about the black veil.
Yao, S., Zhang, Z., and Hanmer, L., (2004) ‘Growing inequality and poverty in China’ China Economic Review 15:145-163.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
He appears to vary in how mad he is, sometimes appearing completely sane, and sometimes more insane. His madness is mostly portrayed through his ramblings at the other characters, or through soliloquies. Originally Hamlet was only feining madness in order to reach his goals and discover if Claudius was really the one who killed father. He decides this after meeting the ghost of his dead father: “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on-...”(Hamlet: 1.5.171-172).The other characters pick up on his “madness” as the play progresses further. They were all curious as to the cause of Hamlet’s madness. Polonius and Claudius believe it may be caused by the lack of contact with Ophelia that they had caused, whereas Gertrude’s first thought was that it was to do with his father’s death. Hamlet keeps up his act throughout the whole play, calling Polonius a fishmonger at one point, and also when he berated his ex-girlfriend Ophelia, even stating that she should go to a nunnery. She comments on Hamlet after his rant: “Oh what noble mind is overthrown…”(Ophelia 3.1.144). She starts to believe he has really gone mad, and that he truly does not care about her anymore. This also becomes a problem for the kingdom, as Hamlet is a royal and the heir to the throne, so having madness could be potentially calamitous for all of them. Shortly after
Davis, Tenney L. “The Sanity of Hamlet.” The Journal of Philosophy 18.23 (1921): 629–634. JSTOR. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
The hardest problem communicating emerges between Suyuan and Jing-Mei. Suyuan is a very strong woman who lost everything she ever had in China: "her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls" (141). Yet she finds the strength to move on and still retains her traditional values. She remarries and has Jing-Mei and creates a new life for herself in America. She is the one who brings together three other women to form the Joy Luck Club. The rift is the greatest between Suyuan and June. Suyuan tries to force her daughter to be everything she could ever be. She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ...
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
This essay has critically analysed and examined the effect of Communism on the Chinese Society during the period of 1946-1964. The overall conclusion that can be drawn is that the Chinese Communist Party managed to defeat the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party and achieve victory in the Civil War, in spite of alienation by the Soviet Union and opposition from the U.S. This was primarily because of the superior military strategy employed by the Communists and the economic and political reforms introduced by this party which brought more equality to the peasants in the form of land ownership and better public services. This increased China’s production and manufacturing which not only boosted the country’s economy but also provided a more sustainable supply of food, goods and services for the Chinese people.
Svensson, G., 2001. 'Globalization' of Business Activities: A 'Global Strategy' Approach, Management Decision, 39(1), pp.6-18.