The Significance of Marriage in "Bone"

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“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.”Simone Signoret. In the novel Bone by Fae Myenne Ng, Ng gives the reader several opposing aspects of marriage. Bone uses marriage as a connection to the relationships of the characters within the novel. The mother of the three daughters in the novel is Mah. Mah’s first marriage was to a man named Dulcie Fu. This marriage was a relationship that was founded solely on infatuation. Mah was young and thought she was in love. Soon after the first daughter Leila was born, her husband up and left to Australia and never returned. This happens all too often in today’s society. Young women in America become overly infatuated without even knowing what a relationship involves. The media portrays relationships at a young age as perfect and unending. However this is rarely the case. According to divorcestatistics.org, “50% of marriages end in divorce of couples married under the age of 25.” Love means something different to everyone. Each person seeks different points of interest in a relationship, and what you put into a relationship will rarely be equal to what you get back. Love can leave a scar on your heart but also healing to your soul. Family became an important aspect in Mah’s life. In the Chinese culture family is typically a vital part of the way of life. Mah may have been ashamed the way her first marriage ended and did not want the same with this man she met named Leon. Leon is a Chinese immigrant and family is his priority. Mah and Leon marry and have two girls, Ona and Nina. They form a family like connection more than ever before. Leon was a fairly stable man and loved his family. Mah and Leon were b... ... middle of paper ... ...o keep the family together, nevertheless the family’s tension, anger, and jealousy overwhelmed them which in the end led to Ona’s suicide. The sisters never had a wholesome relationship to look up to. In turn, the entire family suffered from the past. Works Cited Lore Van Praag, et al. "Divorce, divorce rates, and professional careseeking for mental health problems in Europe:a cross-sectional population-based study." BMC Public Health 10.(2010): 224-235. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. "For a paper son, paper is blood": Subjectivation and Authenticity in Fae Myenne Ng's Bone. Thomas W. Kim.MELUS. 24.4 (Winter 1999) p41. Word Count: 5855. From Literature Resource Center Arias, Mercedes L. University of Minnesota Driven to Discover. Ed. Kelley Hopler. N.p., 26 June 2009. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. .

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