47 pages • 1 hour read
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
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Prologue-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: Daughter Days
Prologue Summary: Sitting Quietly
The narrator identifies herself as an eighty-year-old widow who is being cared for by Peony, her grandson’s wife. Lily is choosing to tell the story of her life now, because she has “nothing left to lose and few to offend” (3). She says she longed for love her entire life, an inappropriate desire for a woman, and that this desire caused her to take extreme measures to gain approval, first from her mother, and then from the family she married into. She says she endured physical pain to have her feet broken and shaped according to tradition, but that this experience taught her to endure other types of pain, until she became rigid within her heart, angry and unforgiving. She recalls how she found an emotional outlet in the secret women’s writing, called nu shu, by which she corresponded with her lautong, or secret-writing partner, a girl named Snow Flower. She describes a fan that she has kept over the years, which contains the writings she and Snow Flower exchanged, and which is now a record of both their friendship and the differences that led to the end of that friendship. She says that, after recording the autobiographies of many other women who were unable to write in the secret language, she has now chosen to record her own story. Her intention is that, upon her death, Peony should burn this story so that it reaches her ancestors, her husband, and Snow Flower, before Lily is reunited with them in the afterlife.
Chapter 1 Summary: Milk Years
The narrator’s name is Lily, and she is a descendant of the Yao tribe, as are most of the people in her village of Yongming County. The people in her village are neither very rich nor very poor. She describes her home as a typical one, with animals and food stores kept downstairs where the eating space and the hearth are located. Upstairs there is a room where the women gather and the unmarried girls sleep. Of her life, Lily says, “I was a so-so girl who lived with a so-so family in a so-so village” (10). Lily shares a bed with her Elder Sister and her Third Sister. Her cousin Beautiful Moon, who is the same age as Lily, also sleeps in this room.
Lily is five years old. She and her sisters long for the approval of their mother, who seems to favor Lily’s Elder Sister. Their aunt and uncle are much more affectionate towards them than their own mother. One day, Lily comes to the realization that, as a third child, she will never be of consequence to her mother, merely “a temporary visitor who was another mouth to feed and a body to dress until I went to my husband’s home” (12). She spends the morning outdoors with her Elder Brother and two younger siblings, and then spends the afternoon in the women’s chamber. Elder Sister’s circle of friends, known as sworn sisters comes to visit, and Lily observes them but is not permitted to interact with them.
The adults disagree about the younger girls. Lily’s mother believes they should stay inside and learn their house chores, which will prepare them for adulthood. Her aunt insists that they should go outdoors and learn as much about the outside world in the few months remaining before they reach the age where they will be required to stay upstairs. Lily’s mother relents, and the children play outdoors all afternoon. At the end of the day, everyone is tired. Lily reaches to put an arm around her mother, and her mother pushes it away. Taking pity on her, Lily’s father takes her up into his lap.
Chapter 2 Summary: Footbinding
The diviner comes to the household to determine whether the young girls are ready to begin foot-binding and decides that Lily “is no ordinary child” (18). Consulting with the matchmaker, the diviner suggests that Lily might be able to have a lautong friendship, a relationship even more distinguished than the sworn sisterhoods of the other women in Lily’s family. The matchmaker predicts the family can secure a profitable marriage for Lily. Lily understands that, despite the possibility of her marrying into a higher family, her father will have to spend more money on her dowry. If her father fails to follow the matchmaker’s direction, he will bring shame to his family. Lily is punished by her mother for this distinction, because of the trouble it will cause for her father. The painful slap from her mother makes her happy, because “that slap was the first time Mama had shown me her mother love” (23).
Lily begins her training with the women of her family. She learns of the “Three Obediences” (24) and the “Four Virtues” (24), the teachings that outline Confucian society’s expectations of a virtuous woman: obedience to the male head of household, chastity and submissiveness in attitude, physical grace in movement, and perfection in handiwork. In addition to learning needlework, Lily and Beautiful Moon learn the secret women’s writing called nu shu.
Lily, Third Sister, and Beautiful Moon all have their feet bound on the same day. Lily and Beautiful Moon submit without complaining. However, Third Sister sneaks out of the house and hides to avoid having her feet bound, but is dragged back to the chamber and restrained by the other women as her mother binds her feet. Immediately after the initial binding, the girls are forced to walk across the room. Over the first months of the foot-binding process, the girls have their bindings made progressively tighter until the bones in the toes and feet gradually break. Despite the sickening pain, they are forced to walk on their feet to help strengthen and shape them into the desired lotus shape.
Third Sister develops an infection in her feet, but the women’s efforts to treat the condition are interrupted when the girls’ Grandmother becomes ill. Because the adults are preoccupied with the elder woman’s condition, Lily and Beautiful Moon are left to oversee Third Sister’s deteriorating condition. Third Sister dies at six years old, one day before Grandmother.
Prologue – Chapter 2 Analysis
As a narrator, Lily is keenly aware of the distinctions her culture makes between men and women. She points out the “difference between nei—the inner realm of the home—and wai—the outer realm of men” (24), and indicates that women must honor this distinction both in their physical existence and in their intellectual and emotional lives. She recognizes the ways in which some women subvert their limitations. The matchmaker, for example, dresses in a way that is “gaudy and unbefitting a widow” (19) because, as a businessperson, she is “not a regular woman” (19). While women are not allowed to learn to read and write as men do, they have women’s writing, nu shu, a means by which they can communicate secretly with one another. At the point where Lily’s autobiography begins, she is just reaching the age at which she must begin her grooming into womanhood. She is still aware of the time in her early life when she was able to live free of these female constraints.
The practice of foot-binding reveals a closely interwoven relationship between the physical body, personal character, and social position. The procedure is an important part of a girl’s social development, as it is part of her preparation for marriage. As Lily points out, the perfectly shaped foot “would be offered as proof to my prospective in-laws of my personal discipline and my ability to endure the pain of childbirth, as well as whatever misfortunes might lie ahead” (34). The ideal shape is such that it can hold a coin within the fold of the broken foot. This is in contrast to the undesirable “big-footed girls” (17), those whose feet are not fully bound so that they can work in the fields. Lily tells us that her correctly bound feet “would hold my husband’s fascination during the most private and intimate moments between a man and a woman” (34). The woman’s feet, how they are broken and bound, become both a sign of virtue and a source of sexual arousal for her husband.
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