Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lily as narrator describes the young Snow Flower as buoyant, able to rise above the negative circumstances of life. The child Lily is not yet aware of how difficult Snow Flower’s own circumstances are, so she views that buoyancy as the product of a life of happy privilege. She often compares Snow Flower to herself. While both girls were born under the sign of the horse, Snow Flower’s horse “had wings that carried her far above the earth, while mine had a plodding nature” (57). Lily frequently uses the image of wings to describe Snow Flower, such as when she describes the girl’s effect on the women in Lily’s home: “To us, she was like a rare bird that had escaped its cage and was roaming through a courtyard of common chickens. We were amused, but so was she” (63).

When Snow Flower marries and can no longer escape to Lily’s home for pleasure, she becomes depressed. Through Lily’s narrative, we see that she is trapped in a situation that makes her unhappy, and in which she is physically mistreated. Because this is Lily’s story, we see Snow Flower’s condition through the repentant eyes of Lily, who is at first impatient with her friend’s apparent failures, but in the end views her as a victim of the unkindness of the people who should have loved her. 

Lily’s mother embodies the concept of mother love, or teng ai. This dutiful love seeks to prepare the daughter for her difficult life ahead, to teach her to endure the hardships that come with being a wife and mother. Lily’s mother inflicts pain through punishment, which Lily accepts with quiet pleasure, for it assures her of her mother’s love for her. Furthermore, Mama oversees Lily’s foot-binding process, thereby inflicting injury and pain; but Mama is also the one who, Lily tells us, “spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me to go one more hour, one more day, one more week, reminding me of the rewards I would have if I carried on a little longer” (3-4).

When Lily’s grandmother dies early in the novel, Mama becomes the head woman of the house, and therefore the decision maker for matters related to the other women in the household. With this responsibility comes anxiety for the future of her children. Because of her anxiety, she receives the news of Lily’s potential with distrust. She knows it will mean risk and expense for her husband, but the possibility of turning down the opportunity means potential disgrace for the whole family. Because of her responsibility, she sometimes exercises a shrewdness of judgment. She demonstrates this quality, which Lily describes as “something like male ambition” (19), when she negotiates with the matchmaker. 

Lily’s aunt is the other woman in the family who has an early influence on her life. Because Aunt has never given birth to a son, she holds no status within the family, and is the object of pity and disdain in her community. In spite of her low status, Aunt demonstrates an appetite for life through her sense of humor, her overt enjoyment of sex with her husband, and the way she cherishes her daughter, Beautiful Moon. She has no authority in the family, and yet, because of her higher level of education, she is able to influence Lily’s mother in subtle ways on the decisions she makes relating to the girls’ upbringing. Aunt is able to train the girls in nu shu, the secret women’s writing, which Lily’s mother never learned. In later years, when Lily reflects on her aunt’s life, she has enough understanding to recognize that Aunt “had always put a smiling face on what had clearly been a disappointing life” (79).