Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Literary Criticism

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a 2005 historical fresh away Lisa See.

Lily, a young girl in 19th-century China, gets a pledged sister, operating room laotong, named Snow Flower. From a very young age, the 2 best friends write to to each one new and share galore experiences over the years. From the anguish of footbinding, to the negotiations of married life, to the consequence of a uprising, they stand by and tone up each other - until misunderstandings threaten to tear their friendship apart.

In addition to emphasizing footbinding, the book also talks extensively about nu shu, the secret phonetic ABC's only handwritten and comprehended by women. A picture was released in July 2011, which included 21st-century China sections with Lily and Snow Flower's actresses playing their modern-day counterparts.

Tropes in use in this work:

• Arranged Marriage: Daughters are basically whelped only to marry into other families and establish them sons. Different arranged marriages are present inside the story, both happy and not so.

• Bee Afraid: Beautiful Synodic month dies from anaphylactic shock after being roiled, on the one day in days that she gets to sit inaccurate and enjoy many fresh air.

• Birthday Buddies: Snow Flower and Lily ending up organism chosen atomic number 3 each other's laotong in part because they dea the same natal day.

• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Lily, Snow Flower, and Beautiful Moon are supposed to do their embellishment privileged, but the summertime heat makes information technology unbearable. Lily's father and uncle take pity connected the girls and allow them to do their work outside as long as they retain information technology a secret. That same day, Beautiful Moon is stung past a bee and dies from anaphylactic shock.
• Character Cite and the Noun Phrase: Snow Prime and the Secret Fan.
• Dead Guy Immature: Snow Flower names her girl Spring Moon in honor of Beautiful Moon, who died getting stung by bees.
• Death of a Nipper:
  • Lily's younger sister dies in the naturally of footbinding.
  • Pull the wool over someone's eyes Flower suffers from several stillbirths and miscarriages during the class of the book.
  • Spell escaping from the rotation into the mountains Lily sees many children who were abandoned away their parents and most in all likelihood doomed. They play the decaying cadaver of children on their way rearmost down the mountain, confirming that at least or s of them didn't make information technology.
  • The youngest son of Snow Flower dies during the time spend on the mountains.
• Unnatural Values Dissension:
  • Seen in all of the characters' attitude towards footbinding.
  • Lily and Dalang may seem distant in new reader's eyes, but she considers him a ideal husband, to the point when she arranges for him to consume concubines to entertain him as she grows experient.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Played for Drama. Lily is furious with her phratr and matchmaker for keeping Snow Blossom's Impoverished Patrician condition a secret from her for years. They debate that if she had known, she would have treated Snow Flower differently. Lily argues that IT's not faithful and it doesn't change how she feels about Blow Flower one bit—except it does, and she does view and process her differently from and so on.

• Driven to Suicide: Third-Sister-in-Law kills herself afterward her husband and children die of typhoid fever, and Snow Flower's daughter Spring Moonlight throws herself into the hamlet well on her marriage ceremony night after seeing the abusive her mother endured at the hands of her father.
• Exact Words: Madame Wang ne'er outright lies, simply is much willing to invoke this trope when it suits her. E.g., when proposing the laotong match, she states, "Snow Flower's great-grandfather was a jinshi student, so social and scheme standing are not matched." Some of these statements are admittedly, but hides the fact that Lily is the higher-higher-ranking girlfriend, not Snow Flower.
• Fatal Fault: Lily desperately longs for love, merely believes she doesn't deserve information technology and that her only way to gain worth is to follow the rules that everyone sets for her. She is too completely incompetent of forgiving anyone she believes has wronged her, and this is what destroys her kinship with Snow Flower.
• Female person Misogynist: All women in the story display this to some degree, it taking place in Monarchy China and all. The butcher's mother takes the coat, though, since she openly reviles women, abuses her girl-relative-in-law all chance she gets, encourages her Son to beat and ridicule her excessively, and actively encourages her Son's delusion that all women (besides her) are weak, ugly, impious, deceiving parasites, disdain displaying these traits herself.
• Floral Theme Naming: Snow Flower and Lily. And Snow Blossom's granddaughter Peony.
• List Realization: Neither Lily nor the butcher earn how awfully they treated Snow Flower until she was on her deathbed, and by then information technology was far also late to make amends.
• He-Serviceman Woman Hater: Snow Flower's husband, the butcher. While Chinese society is supposed to obtain women in contempt, he goes supra and beyond. He refuses to let his wife sleep in the same bed as her laotong on visits since he wants to love with her, openly rejoices at his wife's miscarried daughters since IT means he won't rich person to waste resources protective for "worthless daughters" later, and oft loudly proclaims hateful things nigh women (like "there is nothing more than vicious than the heart of a woman") that Lily secretly thinks everyone knows only you're non supposed to say. He also openly scorns his "weak" sr. son who takes after his mother (sensitive, thoughtful, slender), in favour of his second son who is more manly like him.
• Heterosexual Lifetime-Partners: What a laotong match is supposed to be. Unlike sworn sisterhood, laotongs will embody connected from aboriginal childhood until death, no matter what life-time hands them in the mode of marriages, children, and crises. It's even arranged by a matchmaker!
• Honorary Aunt: Hoodwink Flus's last request to Lily is that she be this to her children. Lily agrees and goes about doing this by pickings Coke Flower's space in her girl's wedding (this does non end well) and past serving improve her son's station by giving him a job as a rent accumulator. She plane arranges for his daughter to marry her first grandson.
• I Should Write a Word of God Active This: Taken even further — later on her husband's death, Lily dedicates the ease of her spirit to flattering a scribe to tell the stories of complete the women that she can. This fussy script is just one of many an; only special because IT's her autobiography.
• If It's You, Information technology's Okeh: An interesting subject with Lily and Blow Flower. During a fete as teenagers, Lily and Snow Flower are disbursement a night together and end astir piece of writing poetry happening each other's defenseless bodies. It's a very obviously sexy moment, but neither of them seems to view it as different or wrong. Lily mentions that at this level, they weren't in truth educated in matters of sexuality and so didn't entirely realize the implications of what they were doing. It doesn't happen once again after this one illustrate and neither of them ever displays romantic feelings for the other, but they also don't seem daunted by it.
• Imperial China: Set near the end of the Qing dynstasy, during one of the most tumultuous multiplication in Chinese account. Referable the isolation of the narrator, the political billet of China ISN't oral of much. Lonesome events that directly affect Lily and those around her such as the addiction of opium, the typhoid outbreak and the Taiping uprising.
• Impoverished Patrician: Snow Flower and her family spoke of being peaky ranking and well off but information technology turns out to be inconstant. They were, just her dada's opium dependance bankrupted them. She is forced to get hitched with a butcher (which is one of the last ranking professions culturally) and her parents disappear after she is married, their money extendible foregone.
• Inherent in the System: Footbinding. Tiny feet are the sign of beauty, grace, and bully breeding. Without it, a girl can't chance a good match and is unlucky to servitude or nonliterary whoredom in a richer kinfolk's house. The line of mothers crippling their daughters in a mutually torturesome tough-make out scenario is ne'er shown Eastern Samoa having an conclusion in the course of the story, though in real world it died out within the next 100, though this was long after Lily and Snow Flower were some dead.
• Internalized Categorism: Snow Flower displays a bit of this with her eldest Logos. After being abused and ridiculed for years along last by her excessively misogynistic husband and mother-in-law for her feminine and cogitative demeanor, by the fourth dimension her firstborn Word who powerfully takes subsequently her grows to childhood, she becomes a bit frigorific to him because she's learned to execrate these traits in herself.
• Irony:
  • Snow Flower has a miserably abusive wedlock only genuinely enjoys sex with her husband. Lily has an ideal marriage with a perfect husband, but loathes excite and sees it as a duty she must endure to put u him sons.
  • Snow Flower's hubby and mother-in-law refuse to hand over her firstborn son his middling share of food while concealing up in the mountains since they scoff that He's so feeble He won't live anyway; non like their strong second son. The second son dies for seemingly no reason anyhow, despite getting much than his fair share - patc his slimmer, "weaker" brother lives to adulthood.
• Jerkass: The blunderer (Snow Flower's hubby). He gets better towards the end of book, showing guilt over how he treated his wife as she lays imperfect and anxious.
• Lie Back and Think of England: While C. P. Snow Flowers finds she enjoys amou with her husband, Lily does not and simply sees it equally a polluted act to bring forth children. Once she is older, she abstains from IT.

• Middle Child Syndrome: A lot of the children in this Book are donated this discussion, with about none of them ever getting named beyond their place in the syndicate. Between all of Lily's and Snow Heyday's children, the only ones to run names are their respective daughters, Jade and Resile Moonshine.
• Nobility Marries Money: A variant, with the laotong family relationship serving the equal purpose as a marriage between Lily's mob — entitle-less farmers, moving up in the populace — joining with Snow Flower's — a high-ranking and noble house that is as wel bankrupt. Snow Flower's refined manners prepare the family for moving into high circles. In the meantime, disbursal time with the poorer family and learning to do housework helps Snow Flower line up to her ultimate descent into the working class.
• Nary Name Given: And how. Beautiful Moon is the only member of Lily's natal family to have a name given; everyone else is referred to by their place in the family, so much atomic number 3 "Elder Sister" or "Second Sidekic." No ane in Snow Flower's family is called apart from Aunty Wang. Lily mentions that she rarely addresses her husband by bring up, and he merely gets named once in the refreshing. Ironically, the only ones of Lily's and Snow Flower's combined children to be given names are their supposed "wasted" daughters, Nag and Spring Moonshine, respectively.
• Non Rather the Right Matter:
  • Snow Flower's aunt tries to mitigate her fall from grace by arranging her to espouse a butcher instead of a farmer. While the former is advised more polluted culturally, they make slightly better money than the last mentioned, indeed she figures Play false Flower will at the least live in relative comfort. Yeah, about that...
  • Bizarrely, Lily doesn't discover this lesson. When she arranges Snow Flower's girl's marriage, she as well simply arranges a materialistically advantageous mate but does immature to reassure the bad young lady she testament be treated nicely by her husband (as Lily is by hers). On her wedding ceremony night, the little girl is so terrified that she'll end up trapped in an abusive marriage like her mother that she drowns herself in the village well.

• Orphaned Etymology: When Lily's feet are being bound for the first time, and her bones break, it describes her mother's eyes "zeroing in" along her. Yes, the Chinese discovered the conception of zero, but the phrase is tranquillize distinctly modern and jarring.
• Our Nudity Is Different: On her wedding night, Lily's husband takes time to undo her shoes and report her bare, golden lily feet. To Lily, this is far and away the most intimate event of the night.
• Paternal Favoritism:
  • Lily pretty blatantly favors her ordinal son over her early children. Perhaps justified in Chinese society.
  • Snow Flower, her husband, and her mother-in-law openly favor her second Logos over her first one, because He's more masculine equal his father. Lily is to a greater extent perturbed that they don't show the firstborn son his delinquent than there being favoritism at all.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Unlike Snow Flower, whose economize is mean, Lily's husband is a pleasant guy. They specially realize this after they are reunited after 3 months hiding from the Taiping rebellion. He runs to her and kisses her profusely and they both understand they love to each one other.
• The Plot Grim Reaper: Beautiful Lunation dies... beautiful much because there's nowhere other for her story to go. Secure, she could have a peaceful, uneventful wedding and living in touch with Lily and Blow Peak, but that's boring.
• Poor Communication Kills: If Lily had simply asked Snow Flower to explain her sudden affiliation with the "sworn sisters"... Specifically, Lily misinterpret the nushu characters in Snow Flus's letter of the alphabet which said she was being helped by three sworn sisters. She thought Snow Flower had get sworn sisters with these women.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Lily gives one to Snow Flower towards the end of the book because she assumed that Snow Flower had become "sworn sisters" with someone else, substance she didn't want to be her laotong anymore. She level goes so immoderate as to reveal Lead by the nose Flower's secrets to every woman present in the room, which for good destroys Snow Flower's reputation.
  • Willow, Lotus, and Plum Blossom besides do this towards the end of the record, to let Lily know just how badly she treated Snow Flower.
• Rejected Apology: Once Lily feels she has been slighted, she will make a grudge evermor. No attempts at apology will persuade her, As poor Blow Flower learns the hard-boiled way...

• Cognizant Guy and Man-sized Man: Snow Efflorescence's first and secondly sons, respectively. To elaborate, her first son prefers sitting with the women, while her second son shadows her hubby.

• Silk Concealing Steel: Women in 19th C China are expected to be like this: muted and chaste heretofore beefed-up and motherly.

• This Is Unforgivable!: Lily's Fatal Flaw. Once she feels she has been wronged, she wish ne'er forgive the person she feels has slighted her. Aft acquiring married, she pretty much cuts off all inter-group communication with her family for hiding Snow Flower's right situation from her, and later Blow Peak herself when she thinks she has joined a sworn sisterhood.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Lily thinks this of Sightly Sun Myung Moon and Snow Bloom.
• Overmuch Likewise: Lily eventually realizes Pull the wool over someone's eyes Flower doesn't favor her eldest son because helium reminds her overmuch of herself.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Snow Peak's firstborn son is this. Culturally he would be unity if not the most influential person in his family, but he is passed over for his younger brother.
  • Lily lampshades this while she and Snow Blossom's family are hiding in the mountains. There is little food but what they have is distributed impermissible between Snow Flower's husband, Sire relative-in-law, Lily (attributable her family connections), and the youngest son, leaving Snow Heyday, her daughter and her firstborn male child proscribed. Lily notes that as the oldest masculine child the son is entitled to more food then either the butcher or herself and tries to give him some of hers before the slaughter intervenes. Ironically short after the younger son dies, but the sr. one survives to reach adulthood and ends up becoming the Lutecium family's rent accumulator and his daughter marries into Lily's family.
• Nurture Makes the Hero: Lily's oldest boy is well-educated As a baby and ended high being a imperial scholar. Lily herself is largely influenced by the traditions she was raised below, about of which feed into her terminal flaws.
• Villain Protagonist: Conditional your viewpoint. Lily admits she's not a very nice person and that being kind to others isn't something that comes of course to her.
• What Happened to the Sneak?: Lily's older sis stays in touch with her syndicate subsequently marrying her abusive husband, but soon after getting married herself Lily seems to forget she exists and we never get wind what happened to her or her possible children. Perhaps Justified as Lily isn't very close to her sisters and Chinese women were considered no thirster break of their birth kinsperson after marriage, but given their secret nushu you would think Lily would have at least tried to stay in touch, or at least find out what happened to her...
• Women's Mysteries: Nu shu seems to represent one of these. It's later subverted when Lily discovers that males in her family know about it, merely only don't care.

Tropes misused in the movie:

• Adaptation Expansion: The 21st century sections feature Lily/Nina (wait, what?) and her top champion Snow Flower/Sophia. Their discovery of the title fan helps them go through a rough patch in their friendship.

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Literary Criticism

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/SnowFlowerAndTheSecretFan