The Joy Luck Club Part 4
Queen Mother of the Western Skies
A grandmother plays with her granddaughter and marvels at her way of carefree laughter. She tells the child that both she and her daughter had once laughed like that but they had both learned to protect themselves.
Chapter 13: Magpies
An-Mei recalls the difficult life that her mother had led as the fourth concubine to a rich merchant. An-Mei had at first been very impressed by the luxury that her mother lived in along with the merchant, but she also realizes that her mother is unhappy and has a very precarious social position. Her mother would often remind her that although she lived a life of dishonor now, she had once been the first wife of an honorable scholar, An-Mei’s father. An-Mei learns the true history of the merchant’s family from a servant that serves her mother. The merchant had been married to a woman who had failed to produce an heir for him, and so the merchant had taken a second wife. This second wife ruled the household now, and she had tried to buy An-Mei’s loyalty by giving her a necklace of fake pearls. Her mother had exposed the true nature of the pearls to her and had given her a sapphire ring. The second wife had once been a reputed singer, but her position in the household had diminished because she could not produce a son.
The second wife had organized for the merchant to marry again to an ugly woman, but that woman had also failed to produce a son. The Second wife had noticed An-Mei’s mother as she had been returning from mourning her husband and had contrived with the merchant to invite her to their home. The merchant had then raped An-Mei’s mother and therefore forced her to become his fourth wife. His mother had given birth to a son, and that son had immediately been taken into the custody of the second wife. An-Mei’s mother tries to take herself away from the merchant’s family but she couldn’t win against the influence that the second wife wielded, and so she committed suicide before an important Chinese festival. The merchant made a sacred promise to raise her children as if they had been his primary heirs to appease her soul. An-Mei understood the sacrifice that her mother had made to protect her children.
Chapter 14: Waiting between Trees
Ying-Ying waits in Lena’s guest bedroom for the table to fall and the vase to break. She can see the faults in her daughter’s relationship with her husband, and she has always been able to tell when things were going to happen. She thinks back to her youth when her first husband had stabbed a watermelon with a knife to indicate his interest in Ying-Ying at her father’s table. Ying-Ying grew to love him very deeply, and they shared a lovely marriage during the first year of their relationship. Ying-Ying became pregnant with his child and she knew that she was carrying a son. She did not have a lot of time to revel in that joy because it soon became apparent to her that her husband was cheating on her. She heard of his escapades with other women through her relatives, and she decided that she did not want to carry his child. She aborted her son and moved to a cousin’s home. She lived there for ten years and then moved to Shanghai, where she worked in a shop, hiding her true wealth. She met Lena’s father while working in that shop, and knew that he would be her husband. After she learned of her first husband’s death, Ying-Ying, allowed Clifford to marry her under the belief that he was rescuing her from poverty. The vase breaks, and when Lena comes into the room, Ying-Ying asks her why she did not stop the vase from breaking.
Chapter 15: Double Face
Lindo and Waverly visit a hairstylist together, and Lindo ponders over the fact that she had once aspired to inculcate a Chinese character in her daughter. She had later come to realize that she had failed to impart her Chinese wisdom to her daughter and that a Chinese character could not be taught in American circumstances. The hairstylist comments that the two of them look very much alike, and this surprises Waverly. Lindo tells her that her mother had told her that she had auspicious features on her face, and she recognizes those features on Waverly’s face as well. Lindo then tells Waverly about the time she had come to America and began to work in a factory of Chinese Fortune cookies. She met An-Mei while working at the factory, and she invited her to the church, where she met her husband. They went to English classes together and did not speak any shared language besides English. Lindo prompted him to marry her by giving him a fortune cookie whose fortune she and An-Mei had selected together. Lindo notices that she and Waverly have the same nose, but Waverly reassures her that she’s always known that they share their crooked nose. She tells Lindo that it is a good thing that they’re two-faced, which lets them get what they want.
Chapter 16: A Pair of Tickets
June goes to China with her father, and she shares the sense of nostalgia that color’s her father’s features. They make a stop before heading to Shanghai, where June is going to be meeting her step-sisters. Before heading to Shanghai, June and her father meet with her father’s aunt. June learns more details of her mother’s life from her father’s discussion with her aunt. She learns that her mother had only abandoned her twins because she was sick with Dysentery and unable to find a means of transportation. She had put the children on the side of the road with all of her money, and a note asking the savior to bring the children to her family’s address where they would be certain to receive a larger reward. The children were found by an old farming couple, who raised the girls as their daughters, but by the time they had decoded the message Suuyan’s family no longer lived at the same address. Suuyan tried to find her twin daughters for a long time and continued the search through her friends even when she moved to America. One of her classmates finally recognized the twins from the resemblance to their mother, but by then Suuyan had already passed. June is worried that her sisters will be very disappointed to meet her and not their mother, but she goes through with the meeting. They meet at the airport and immediately embrace one another. June’s father takes a picture of them, and they see their resemblance to their mother in all of their faces.
Analysis
The final fable for the last part of the book involves a conversation between a Chinese grandmother and her granddaughter. The conversation focuses on learning from the younger generation and reforging a stronger familial bond between mother and daughter. The stories that follow are about Chinese Mothers finding a means of connection with their daughters by sharing foundational information about their own lives. An-Mei recounts the story of her mother’s sacrifice for her children, and she pushes Rose to speak up for herself against the unfairness of her relationship with Ted. Similarly, Ying-ying recounts the trauma of being married to an adulterous man and having to kill the son that was growing inside her womb. She urges Lena to confront Harold about the problems in their marriage.
