Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club Essay Example

Family is vastly important, and the relationships you build with them can and will alter the course of your life. Relationships with family are the central topic of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Specifically, she focuses on the relationships between Chinese mothers and their daughters. She explores these relationships through both the eyes of mother and daughter all throughout the novel. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club dives into the family conflict through expectations in regards to culture, success, and gender.

The disparity in culture between an immigrant mother and her daughter is vastly apparent all throughout the Joy Luck Club. Each and every one of the mothers were born in China. Their daughters were all born in the United States. The barrier created by both language and their worldviews affected their relationships greatly. This barrier is broken in “Rules of the Game”. Lindo Jong discovers her daughter Waverly’s innate talent as a chess player, and for some time Waverly feels as if she is able to bond with her mother through playing chess, but after a specific chess tournament, she sees that her mother only appreciates the fact that she wins trophies. She feels conflicted by that as she only wants to play chess. This raises that barrier again. Lindo’s traditional Chinese upbring also makes it very difficult for her to accept Waverly’s new fiancee Rich as he is American and grew up in America. In her eyes, he does not seem to respect or understand Chinese culture. “Auntie Lindo nodded her head, as if the colour were worth this price. and then she pointed her crab leg toward her future son-in-law, Rich, and said, “See how this one doesn’t know how to eat Chinese food.” The expectations regarding culture are a strong source of content for the novel, but alongside that are the expectations surrounding the women’s success in all aspects of their lives. 

Throughout the novel, each of the daughters face the expectation enforced by their mothers regarding the success of their lives romantically, financially, and spiritually. In “Two Kinds” Jing-Mei reminisces about her childhood when she felt pressured to play the piano. during this time she felt as if her mother wanted her to have the sophistication and talent that her mother saw in Lindo’s daughter Waverly. “After the show, the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs from the Joy Luck Club came up to my mother and father. “Lots of talented kids,” Auntie Lindo said vaguely, smiling broadly. “That was something else,” said my father, and I wondered if he was referring to me in a humorous way or if he even remembered what I had done. Waverly looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. “You aren’t a genius like me,” she said matter of factly.” This made her feel as if her mother’s affection was only based on her success as a genius or child prodigy. In “Half and Half” Rose Jordan talks about the events leading up to her divorce. At the beginning of the chapter her biggest worry is that her mother will want her to stay and fight the divorce as her mother is strong willed in that manner. Near the end of the chapter she learns that her mother supports her decision for divorce. 

“‘What’s the point?’ I say. ‘There’s no hope. There’s no reason to keep trying.’

‘Because you must,’ she says. ‘This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. 

This is your life, what you must do.’

‘So what can I do?’

And my mother says, ‘You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying.’”

This piece of dialogue shows the contrast between how Rose believed what her mother thought of her divorce to how she actually believed. Which is that her divorce is fate and she needs to fight for herself and not for anyone else.  Although success and the family’s conflict with the concept of success affected their lives drastically. The one thing that stood out the most in defining the womens identities was their lives as women especially within their Chinese culture.

The novel has many instances where both the daughters’ and mothers' identities as women are shown to affect the way they live their lives. In “the Red Candle” Lindo Jong reminisces about her childhood in China when she was matched to marry a boy from another village. This time is where she also discovered that because of the way she looked she was deemed to have value. “No, it’s not true what some Chinese say about girl babies being worthless. It depends on what kind of girl baby you are. In my case, people could see my value. I looked and smelled like a precious bun-cake, sweet with a good clean color.” (Tan 43). She soon was passed off to her future husband's family where she then discovered that the man she was to marry was a gay man. After a few years with the family she used her power as a child bearing woman to predict a fake prophecy in order to be let go from the house. Which was successful. “Huang Tatai looked impatient as I began to cry softly again. ‘But then the servant left the room with our candle and a big wind came and blew the candle out. And our ancestors became very angry. They shouted that the marriage was doomed! They said that Tyan-yu’s end of the candle had blown out! Our ancestors said Tyan-yu would die if he stayed in this marriage!’” (Tan 60). This lie created by Lindo is what helped her to escape the forced marriage and the Huang family. It also showed her power as a beautiful woman. Another instance of how being a woman changed the mothers lives in China, is in the chapter “Scar”. An-mei Hsu remembers her childhood in rural China in this chapter. She specifically focuses on the first time she met her mother. From a very young age An-mei was always told that her mother was a ghost, someone disowned from the family. This is because her mother had decided to become the fourth wife to a very wealthy man. Once An-mei’s mother returns to visit she is dishonoured and told to leave. Distraught by her mothers departure without her, An-mei absent mindedly knocks a steaming pot of soup onto her neck. While she is healing her grandmother speaks to her and ends up telling her things that will influence her entire life. “Later that night Popo’s voice came to me.

‘An-mei, listen carefully.’ Her voice had the same scolding tone she used when I ran up and down the hallway. ‘An-mei, we have made your dying clothes and shoes for you. They are all white cotton.’

I listened, scared.

‘An-mei.’ she murmured, now more gently. ‘ Your dying clothes are very plain. They are not fancy, because you are still a child. If you die, you will have a short life and you will still owe your family a great debt. Your funeral will be very small. Our mourning time for you will be very short.’

And then Popo said something that was worse than the burning on my neck.

‘Even your mother has used up her tears and left. If you do not get well soon, she will forget you.’” (Tan 39)

This is the dialogue between An-mei and her mother after she had severely burned her neck. This is one of the pivotal parts of her life and greatly defineed the woman she later became. Another example of gender in the novel is in the first chapter, “The Joy Luck Club.” In this chapter we are introduced to Jing-mei, who is filling the position at the mahjong table subsequent to her mothers passing. It is at this point in time that she notices the gender roles that are so ingrained in all four families. The fathers would sit and eat the food made by the women, while the women cooked with only a sliver of time at the end to play mahjong.

Although the women in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club found conflict all throughout their lives in their families, it is one of the pivotal elements that culminated to form their identities as either Chinese immigrants living in America or as Chinese-American women. Despite The Joy Luck Club being a fictional novel it is inspired by many Amy Tan’s personal life experiences growing up as a second generation Chinese immigrant. These experiences are the reason that the novel is able to convey the duality of a Chinese and American worldview so expertly.