44 pages • 1 hour read
Lisa SeeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Young-sook is the central character of the novel and her life story, particularly her friendship with fellow haenyo Mi-ja, serves as the main plot. She is first introduced by an omniscient narrator as an eighty-five year in present day. As the book switches to the past, the narration changes to Young-sook’s first-person perspective, and the reader is able to form impressions of her as an anxious baby diver, a wife and mother, and the leader of a diving collective.
Young-sook has a sturdy build, an earthy, pragmatic temperament, is hardworking, and devoted to the welfare of her family. In addition to all of that, Young-sook’s defining characteristic is her deep friendship with Mi-ja. When that friendship is tested by a seeming act of betrayal, Young-sook’s anger knows no limits. She carries a grudge against Mi-ja that lasts decades and stubbornly refuses to listen to any explanations that might exonerate her friend.
Young-sook functions as a symbol of the average Korean after the atrocities of the post-war years. She suffers unspeakable horrors in the loss of family members and carries the memories of those events and the emotional wounds to match. Just like her country, she seems unwilling to let go of either one—preferring to remain in a self-righteous state of rage. At the same point at which Korea is willing to forget old grievances by dedicating the April 3 Peace Park memorial on Jeju Island, Young-sook appears ready to do the same.
Although the same age and also a haenyo, Mi-ja stands in stark contrast to Young-sook in almost every respect. Mi-ja is beautiful and petite. She seems to float on air when she walks compared to her earthbound friend. Unlike the strong family ties that Young-sook enjoys, Mi-ja is an orphan who is treated badly by her guardians. Her dead father has tainted the family name by being a Japanese collaborator.
Whereas Young-sook is confident of her abilities as a diver and the head of her family, Mi-ja has no such self-assurance. Instead, she is corroded by a sense of guilt, going back to the moment she was born. She blames herself for killing her mother in childbirth and assumes the guilt of her father’s misdeeds. This self-flagellation eventually culminates in a disastrous marriage to an abusive rapist. Rather than leave her husband, Mi-ja believes she deserves the punishment he doles out because of her unworthiness.
In terms of the story, Mi-ja symbolizes all the traitorous blame that post-war Koreans seemed so eager to heap on one another. She is viewed as an outsider and an enemy. Her actions are assumed to have dark motives, and she is ultimately rejected by her best friend. The decades of estrangement she experiences are mirrored in the long, painful healing process of South Korea itself after the war.
The diving collectives around Jeju Island are populated by a multitude of women known as haenyo, but they all share certain traits. These are all strong women who are capable of earning an independent income. None of them rely on their husbands for financial support. Their spouses and sons learn how to cook, keep house, and take care of the children while the women are out diving.
The haenyo are the leaders of their respective households, despite the overlay of patriarchal customs like arranged marriages and ancestor worship conducted by males. Their behavior stands in sharp contrast to the rest of gender relations in Korea, and demonstrates a living matrifocal culture long after this type of social organization was supplanted by patriarchy in other parts of the world.
A cast of numerous characters comprises the large extended families within the novel. Rather than focusing on any individual, the author uses these supporting characters to examine some of the major differences between a nuclear family and the matrifocal version found among the haenyeo culture. As discussed earlier, husbands and sons stay home and take care of domestic chores and children. Haenyeo women tend to view their spouses as ineffectual and relatively useless, though they are quite attached to their sons.
Two husbands in the book depart from this pattern and represent extreme deviations from the norm. Jun-bu typifies the ideal mate. He is self-supporting as a teacher, but shares household responsibilities with Young-sook. He is kind, loving, and considerate. When Young-took expresses displeasure at being a housewife, her husband agrees that she should go back to diving. Mi-ja’s husband, Sang-mun, is the exact opposite. He is a bully who regularly beats his wife. Because of his job as a Japanese collaborator, Mi-ja is forced to move away from the village after her marriage. As a result of Mi-ja’s isolation from allies, she and her son are both subjected to physical abuse from this man. Sang-mun’s household is the only one that conforms to the nuclear family pattern rather than the matrifocal extended family. By contrasting these two examples of haenyo husbands, Lee implies that the matrifocal model is best for safeguarding the welfare of women.
By Lisa See