Feminism is a topic that comes up strongly throughout the movie of The Joy Luck Club. Feminism is extremely important in this film and shows its face quite frequently whether it be between family or relationships. The life of the women characters is the most vital part of the story, meaning, the feminism aspect needs more acknowledgement. Luckily, the author of the series does an outstanding job at illustrating that. The Joy Luck Club depicts the types of hardships women must go through throughout the movie and the novel. They battle against discrimination and sexism, all while trying to keep the burden of their lives on their shoulders. The Joy Luck Club is truly an extravagant series that deserves more validation. Not only that, but it educates …show more content…
Character traits and personality is a key point in The Joy Luck Club. The character aspect is one that is throughout the film and the book constantly. This series centers on the struggles of each, individual protagonist. The Joy Luck Club opens up these women like flower buds, exposing their deep, inner, emotional predicaments. Each character has underlying setbacks with either their mothers or their relationship status, sometimes even both are present. The mother-daughter relations in The Joy Luck Club are crucial and are one of the most noticeably impacting parts of the series. Surprisingly, the majority of people wouldn't know that the mothers and daughters don’t mingle too well. Most all of their relationships start off jagged and rusty, but they finish beautifully in the end; which makes The Joy Luck Club memorable. For instance: the character June. Her relationship with her mother wasn’t the most kind hearted. Suyuan persistently pushed June as a child, due to strict parenthood and wanting her to succeed in being a pianist. June never lived up to Suyuan’s expectations, her merely being a small child, resulting in a bitterness to form in June’s mother. For this reason, June from that moment, did not blend well with her mother. She claimed to barely know her, even though they were family. Clearly, June blames herself for the situation and insists that, “I was the biggest disappointment in my mother’s …show more content…
Setting is the least important puzzle piece of feminism, but it does educate the viewers more about what it was like during The Joy Luck Club. As stated beforehand, The Joy Luck Club took place in the 1980s. Most people assume sexism and discrimination has long died down into the dirt, but it still violently sprouted through the ground with determination instead of withering away. Chinese people were way more strict and cruel when it came to discipline children or being in a marriage. Children, shoved around ruthlessly by mothers, and wives; still experiencing mistreatment by their sorry-excuses of a husband. Under those circumstances, Amy Tan portrays an accurate representation of what it was back in the 1900s for women of Chinese descent. Back when the main characters were teenagers, they did not have any rights to themselves. An incident that explains this more in detail was Lindo’s first husband. Lindo, forced at a young age to move away from her beloved mother Practically insulted, she was required to marry a snobby, ill mannered little boy named Huang Tyan-yu. From the beginning Lindo thought as if she didn't even belong in her family anymore, hence this example, “Because I was promised to the Huangs’ son for marriage, my own family began treating me as if I belonged to somebody else. My mother would say to me when the rice bowl went up to my face too many times, "Look how much Huang Taitai’s daughter can
First of all, the Joy Luck Club had so many conflicts and misunderstandings between almost all of the characters. Most of the conflicts were between Waverly and her mom. Some conflicts were just differences between Waverly and her mother because of the generation gap between the two. Her mom didn’t like the things she would do and she could never see herself doing things that Waverly was doing back when she was a child. There were also cultural and martial conflicts throughout the book also.
The Joy Luck Club is the first novel by Amy Tan, published in 1989. The Joy Luck Club is about a group of Chinese women that share family stories while they play Mahjong. When the founder of the club, Suyuan Woo, died, her daughter June replaced her place in the meetings. In her first meeting, she finds out that her lost twin sisters were alive in China. Before the death of Suyuan, the other members of the club located the address of June’s half-sisters. After that, they send June to tell her half-sisters about her mother’s life. In our lives there are events, and situations that mark our existence and somehow determine our life. In this novel, it shows how four mothers and their daughters were impacted by their tradition and beliefs. In the traditional Asian family, parents define the law and the children are expected to follow their requests and demands; respect for one’s parents and elders is critically important. Traditions are very important because they allow us to remember the beliefs that marked a whole culture.
In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the author chooses to primarily focus her novel on the miscommunications between traditional Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters via the use vignettes from almost every character. Throughout the novel, Tan writes about several characters that have made a hero’s journey according to Joseph Campbell. Campbell states that a hero’s journey includes: a departure, how a hero sets off onto their journey, a fulfillment, their goal that is being accomplished, and a return, how the character impacts others in the story. This blueprint for a hero was executed by Jing-mei Woo. In the novel, Jing-mei Woo faces the death of her mother which, in turn, plunges her into her own heroic journey according to Joseph
Of the many stories involving the many characters of "The Joy Luck Club", I believe the central theme connecting them all is the inability of the mothers and their daughters to communicate effectively.
Many women find that their mothers have the greatest influence on their lives and the way their strengths and weaknesses come together. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters are followed through vignettes about their upbringings and interactions. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, grows up away from her mother who has become the 4th wife of a rich man; An-Mei is forced to live with her grandmother once her mother is banned from the house, but eventually reunites and goes to live in the man’s house with her mother. Her daughter, Rose, has married an American man, Ted, but their marriage begins to end as he files for divorce; Rose becomes depressed and unsure what to do, despite
The Joy Luck Club portrays strong women. The examples that come across most strikingly to the reader are the women who lived in traditional China. An-Mei Hsu gained her strong will from her mother's weak spirit. In her story, titled "Magpies," An-Mei's mother is forced
In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values. This inability to communicate and the clash
Juniors parents were surrounded by the unsupportive. Because of this they never had the chance to come close to even realizing what sort of dreams they can set for themselves. Even if they found the correct expectation for themselves it was ignored because “nobody paid attention to their dreams”. This is exemplified by Junior’s family tree being stated as “poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (Alexie 11). When a family’s failure begins to become a dynasty, the only way for it to be avoided is for expectation to be seen and not completely ignored. Family can do many great things, like show love and care for others, but one thing that the family should not be responsible for is setting expectations. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, June deals with the constant struggle of being overpowered by the rest of her family, always being told what to do and not having the chance to develop her own expectations. When her mother says “Only two kinds of daughters. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!” (Tan 142), Suyuan sets herself up to be a controlling mother. If June is not thinking for herself, she will enter the real world and be get kicked to the ground and will not have a chance to get back up. We can see that at the end of the book June has been a completely
In the novel The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, there are several stories that intertwine into one novel. Each of the stories takes place China where the roles and the actions of woman are vastly different compared to American tradition. In the different stories, they all are about different mothers and daughters. Throughout the book, the reader can see the development in each relationship between mother and daughter with their conflicting backgrounds from China to America.
“We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are... obedient chinese daughters.” This quote sums up the world that May and Pearl live in, that no matter the culture, no matter the time period, and no matter the situation, your gender decides your fate or does it? The theme of gender and how they dictate our roles in society run rampant in Shanghai Girls by Lisa Lee. Lee’s novel covers a great deal about the immigrant experience and the struggles they had to go through to adapt to their new environment but one thing they didn 't need to adapt was the parts they played in their families. The importance of this traditional society,where the men are the breadwinners and the women the caretakers are first shown in how Pearl and Mays family worked. The father was expected to make money and take care of the household, while the mother, May and Pearl were off fooling around. When the situation turns dire, the father does not conform to his role to help his family and takes the easy way out and sells off his daughters. However the father did not account for his daughters refusing the offer he already made to pay back his debts. This caused a thunderstorm of confusion and trouble, which led to the death of respect, Pearl had for her father. For in this critical moment, the father wet himself and could not muster out a word but the mother brilliantly stepped in and defused the situation. “I see hardness in her that I’ve never seen before.”,
Characterization is a widely-used literary tool in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Specifically, each mother and daughter is a round character that undergoes change throughout the novel. Characterization is important in the novel because it directly supports the central theme of the mother-daughter relationship, which was relevant in Tan’s life. Tan grew up with an immigrant mother, and Tan expresses the difficulties in communication and culture in the stories in her book. All mothers in the book are immigrants to America, and all daughters grew up living the American lifestyle, creating conflict between the mothers and daughters due to miscommunication. Characterization of the mothers and daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Club creates and
The relationship a mother has with her daughter is one of the most significant relationships either person will possess. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the stories of four mothers and their respective daughters are established through vignettes, which reveal the relationships between them. Throughout the novel, the mothers and daughters are revealed to be similar, yet different. Lindo and Waverly Jong can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.
Todays society and the society in Joy luck club are very similar because they both involve sexism. In the novel Lindo is forced by her mother in law and husband by making her a slave of some sort. But things get a little out of control when An mei gets raped by her husband but ends up marrying the guy because she has to save her so called honor. But that man that raped her, he can do anything he wants, he will not be pushed around or called names because that is the mans nature. Girls in China can not speak freely for themselves, they are supposed to be listening to the man because supposedly they are so much better and can do anything or everything unlike woman that sits around and does nothing.
With all the cultural clashes that the mothers and daughters are facing in The Joy Luck Club, it is hard for the characters to have a sense of identity. The daughters are torn between Chinese and American culture and are trying to figure out who they are. The daughters are also trying to figure out who their mothers are and how that affects them. The mothers have two lives, the ones they live in America and the ones that they left behind in
Throughout The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan inserts various conflicts betweens mothers and daughters. Most of these relationships, already very fragile, become distanced through heritage, history and expectations. These differences cause reoccurring clashes between two specific mother-daughter bonds. The first relationship exists between Waverly Jong and her mother, Lindo. Lindo tries to instill Chinese qualities in her daughter while Waverly refuses to recognize her heritage and concentrates on American culture. The second bond is that of Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan. In the beginning of the book Jing-Mei speaks of confusion in her recently deceased mother's actions. The language and cultural barrier presented between Jing-Mei and Suyuan