The Roles of Culture, Mothers, and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

1329 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: how does ones culture influence the formation of identity

"A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside of you," said An-Mei Hsu to her daughter Rose (188). And this is true for all four of the mothers in the Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. Unfortunately it was much more complicated than that, because the daughters had minds of their own, to a certain extent, minds that were part American. "The emphasis on honor, obedience, and loyalty among women are immense in this novel" (The Joy Luck Club: An Overview). In America, these characteristics were not emphasized nearly as much – and that is what caused tension between mother and daughter.

The Joy Luck Club was founded by Suyuan Woo, and when she passed away, the Club looked to her daughter Jing-Mei to replace her. Suyuan was a very strong-willed woman who had suffered many hardships. In the process of fleeing from the invading Japanese, she had to abandon her two babies from her first husband. Things like that are what caused her to be so strong, but her daughter was doubtful in her ability to fill the role her mother once played.

Jing-Mei brought much hope to her mother. Suyuan was very critical of the people around her, so she was especially critical of her daughter. Once, Jing-Mei confronted her about being so critical, saying "people rise to other people’s expectations" (31). Suyuan replayed to her daughter, "That’s the trouble, you never rise. Lazy to get up. Lazy to rise to expectations" (31). And that was the basis of the mother-daughter relationship between Suyuan and Jing-Mei. Suyuan always had very high expectations for her daughter – wanting her to be a child prodigy. She would give Jing-Mei tests on things she would read in magazines, like knowing the capitals of the states or multiplying numbers. Jing-Mei ev...

... middle of paper ...

...ough the daughters possessed different personalities, and the mothers varied in strength, they all had one important thing in common – they all wanted their daughters to listen to them. The mother’s firmly believed that if you were obedient to your mother you would grow up a good Chinese woman – but that was the problem. "One of the major conflicts between the mothers and their daughters is the desire of the young generation to become more Americanized" (Ballantine Teacher’s Guide on The Joy Luck Club). The daughters were raised in America, which meant that they were influenced a great deal by American ways. There was no preventing that. The significance of the relationships between mother and daughter were a result of a clash of culture between Chinese belief and American tradition.

WORKS CITED

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Random House, 1989.

Show More
Related

  • Chinese Women In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.

    Read More

  • Comparing The Corner Residents and Dostoevsky’s Underground Man

    2340 Words  | 5 Pages

    Frequently, the public debate over the those problems which occur in poverty-ridden urban environments is presented as if the inhabitants were copies of Dostoevsky's underground man who differed mainly in that they frequently had less education and more pigment in their skin. That is to say, although there are valid comparisons that can be drawn between the Underground Man and the inhabitants of west Baltimore who are so vividly depicted in The Corner, there are also important differences that make any claim of strict equality between a Russian intellectual from the nineteenth century and a 20th-century tout or slinger an absurd caricature. Moreover, the intent of portraying inner-city residents as Underground Men and Women is, frequently, to blame these people for all of their own problems, something t...

    Read More

  • Movie Essay - The Film Based Upon of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.

    Read More

  • The Incarnation Of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    This essay examines the social, philosophical, and psychological elements that had affected the Russian Society as well as the world of Dostoevsky’s novel “ Crime and Punishment ˮ. This essay demonstrates the wild impact and clashes left by these theories on the life, choices, and mentality of the novel and the characters embodied, the most important of which is the character of Raskolnikov. Highlighting an “in-depth exploration of the psychology of a criminal, the inner world of Raskolnikov, with its doubt, fear, anxiety and despair in escaping punishment and mental tortureˮ.

    Read More

  • Bond between Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, author Amy Tan explores the issues of  tradition and change and the impact they have on the bond between mothers and daughters. The theme is developed through eight women that tell their separate stories, which meld into four pairs of mother-daughter relationships.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships - The Mother-daughter Relationship in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.

    Read More

  • Gratitude And Gratitude

    1756 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gratitude is one of the positive emotions shown from research and clinical trials to enhance the general well being of human beings. Gratitude is defined by Emmons (2004) as “a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty. Emmons and McCullough also see gratitude as an attitude, a habit, a personality trait and a way of handling difficult situations response (Emmons & Stern, 2013).

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Joy Luck Club daughters incontestably become Americanized as they continue to grow up. They lose their sense of Chinese values, or Chinese tradition in which their mothers tried to drill into their minds. The four young women adopt the American culture and way of life, and they think differently than their traditional Chinese mothers do, upsetting the mothers greatly. The daughters do not even understand the culture of their mothers, and vice versa. They find that the American way of thinking is very different from that of the Chinese.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    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 between cultures create rifts between mothers and daughters.

    Read More

  • Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships - The Mother-daughter Relationship in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most of the conflicts that June and her mother face are based on misunderstandings and negligence concerning each other's feelings and beliefs. June does not understand or even fully know her mother because she does not know about her tragic past and t he pain she still feels from the memory of it. Because Suyuan lost two daughters in China, and her entire family was killed in the war, she leaves this place behind her and places all of her hopes in America and her family there. She wants the very best for her daughter June. Even her name, Suyuan, meaning "long-cherished wish," speaks of this hope for Jing-Mei, meaning "the pure, essential, best quality younger sister." Suyuan tells her daughter June that she can be anything she wants to be, and that she has great talent. At first June is excited and dreams about what she will become: "In all my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything." (Tan 143) Suyuan pushes June to be successful in many different areas such as dance, academics, trivia, and piano.

    Read More

  • Theodicy and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

    2495 Words  | 5 Pages

    Hansen, Bruce. “Dostoevsky’s Theodicy.” Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1996. At . accessed 18 November 2001.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The Roles of Culture, Mothers, and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Open Document