Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a historical fiction of women in 19th century China. The story’s lead character and narrator is a girl named Lily, born in 1824 to a poor peasant household. It digs into the experience and placed importance of shaping women’s feet, called foot binding. Lily’s childhood up until her old age is written about in an attempt to show the strict and often harsh social expectations and treatment of women. And yet, attempts to show the beauty that appeared in these women’s lives.
Lily is taught Nushu, a secret written language that allows the women to communicate without the interference of men. Though it is questionable as to whether it was a secret or the men decided to turn a blind eye. She goes through the foot binding and achieves lily feet, a term for a perfectly shaped and sized feet by standards. Because of this, she is able to marry into a wealthy and prominent family despite her peasant upbringing, which shows the dynamic social standing of women.
During this process of foot binding, the Chinese girls enter into a support group, or sworn sisterhood, until every girl of the group was married. But rarely, when two girls were found to have the same potential for feet shape and to have the same eight characters, they could mutually agree to form a Laotong relationship. Where the two girls were bound together until death do them part, as kindred sisters.
A potently gripping story. Rich in historical details of events, social customs, everyday life, and struggles of women in 19th Century China. After I finish my current book, Planet Pirates (a trilogy) by Anne McCaffrey, I will be reading another of Lisa See’s books, Shanghai Girls.
—- Update —-
Shanghai Girls
I did go on to read Shanghai Girls. It reveals how life was by following two young girls in the heart of Shanghai just before, during, and after the Japanese invasion of World War Two.