“Except for three terrible months in the fifth year of Emperor Xianfeng’s reign, I have spent my life in upstairs women’s rooms. Yes, I have gone to the temple, travelled back to my natal home, even visited with Snow Flower, but I know little about the outer realm. I have heard men speak of taxes, drought, and uprisings, but these subjects are far removed from my life. What I know is embroidery, weaving, cooking, my husband’s family, my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, and nu shu. My life course has been a normal one—daughter days, hair-pinning days, rice-and-salt days, and now sitting quietly.”
Lily’s jurisdiction has been principally in the domestic sphere because she is unconscious of other dynamics beyond the domestic territory. Her condition describes the conformist Chinese expectancy for women, which is to engross themselves in home life. Lily’s lifespan is a mirror of the relegation of women since they are disqualified for vital political subjects. Even if she would have sought for a life beyond the home, her gender would have convoluted her prospects of succeeding outside the home sphere. Lily, at eighty, has lived up to the prescriptions of the standard Chinese ethos.
“I don’t think my sisters adored me either, but the indifference we showed one another was just a face we put on to mask our true desires. We each wanted Mama to notice us. We each vied for Baba’s attention. We each hoped we would spend time every day with Elder Brother, since as the first son he was the most precious person in our family. I did not feel that kind of jealousy with Beautiful Moon. We were good friends and happy that our lives would be linked together until we both married out.”
Lily’s acknowledgment signifies extreme sibling competitiveness. The sisters’ indifference towards each other is accredited to the contention for their parents’ adulation. The rivalry is injurious to the sisterly affection which would have flowered among them had they not viewed each other as opponents. Manifestly, Beautiful Moon is somewhat exempted to Lily’s indifference because they are not genetic sisters contending for the same regard. Furthermore, Elder Brother’s standing accentuates the worth ascribed to the male children.
“The preparation for my footbinding took much longer than anyone expected. In cities, girls who come from the gentry class have their feet bound as early as age three. In some provinces far from ours, girls bind their feet only temporarily, so they will look more attractive to their future husbands. Those girls might be as old as thirteen. Their bones are not broken, their bindings are always loose, and, once married, their feet are set free again so they can work in the fields alongside their husbands. The poorest girls don’t have their feet bound at all. We know how they end up. They are either sold as servants or they become “little daughters-in-law”—big-footed girls from unfortunate families who are given to other families to raise until they are old enough to bear children. But in our so-so county, girls from families like mine begin their footbinding at age six and it is considered done two years later.”
Footbinding is equivalent to the tying of a girls’ autonomy. Obviously, the discomfort that is integral in the exercise troubles the girl, but they cannot dodge it because it is a fragment of their ethos. The ritual is effected to astound the men; hence, it is illustrative of the patriarchal command which persecutes women. Girls are trivialized through the practice because its fundamental goal is to augment their ‘beauty.’ Gender parity is extensive considering that the boys are not imperiled by footbinding. Binding of girls’ feet is the exposition of their permanent anguish. Additionally, class impacts the practice since the ‘poorest girls’ are discharged from the binding; the practice is causative in dictating the destiny of a girl.
“The binding altered not only my feet but my whole character, and in a strange way I feel as though that process continued throughout my life, changing me from a yielding child to a determined girl, then from a young woman who would follow without question whatever her in-laws demanded of her to the highest-ranked woman in the county who enforced strict village rules and customs. By the time I was forty, the rigidity of my footbinding had moved from my golden lilies to my heart, which held on to injustices and grievances so strongly that I could no longer forgive those I loved and who loved me.”
Although the intent of the binding is principally physical (to supplement their appeal), the binding triggers hostile psychological upshots. The binding reinforces itself in Lily’s unconscious to the degree that she cannot overlook it all through her existence. In the long run, Lily becomes a hostile and aggrieved woman owing to her unconscious agony which is attributed to the footbinding. Her acrimony deduces that the binding is the basis of the demise of her inherent beauty which the lilies embody. A bitter woman can neither adore herself or other individuals who love her because the unpleasantness dislodges fondness from her heart.
