The Joy Luck Club

This section emphasizes the daughters’ attempts to understand their mothers, as they see that their mothers’ Chinese beliefs and perspectives contain lessons they can apply to their own lives. The daughters are like the daughter in the opening story, irritated by her mother’s superstition that the placement of a mirror in her bedroom will lead to marital unhappiness. The mother addresses the situation by adding another mirror, in which she sees herself and her future grandchild. The daughter sees the reflection of her reflection and realizes it symbolizes past and future generations. In a similar way, the daughters in the novel take their mothers’ Chinese lessons and adapt to their American lives.

Lena grew up fearful, with a mother who seemed supernaturally able to understand what others couldn’t. In the present, Ying-ying sees that Lena is unhappy: “My mother knows, underneath all the fancy details that cost so much, this house is still a barn” (181). Lena feels irritated that, as usual, her mother only sees bad signs, but in her heart Lena knows that her mother realizes that Lena’s marriage is failing, a truth that Lena has tried to hide from herself.

This reminds Lena of when she worried because her mother said, trying to encourage her to finish her rice, that she would marry a bad man, so Lena strove to avoid that: “Because when I want something to happen—or not happen—I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid” (182). Lena felt immense guilt when Arnold died of measles. One side of her thought that was ridiculous, but another side caused her to believe that she deserved her bad marriage to Harold, the “Rice Husband” of the story’s title.

Lena values the American tenet of equality, which led her to believe that Harold, who insisted the two pay equally for everything, considered her his equal. But this so-called equality was actually out of balance, and Lena became resentful: “I’m so tired of it, adding things up, subtracting, making it come out even” (198). The lists of household expenses becomes emblematic of how unbalanced their relationship was, as Harold even made her pay for half the ice cream she never ate.

Ying-ying points out the imbalance in Lena’s life, symbolized by the wobbly table that Harold made. “You put something  else on top, everything fall down” (197). Just as Lena’s father “translated” for her mother and ignored her true intentions, Lena had also allowed Harold to dictate what equality in their marriage meant. Her mother shows her that she needs to determine the course of her own future. Ying-ying knows the dangers of seeing bad omens and doing nothing to prevent them and wants to prevent Lena from making the same mistake.

Waverly’s lifelong battle with her mother prevents her from telling Lindo about her impending marriage, for fear that Lindo’s criticisms will poison her feelings towards Rich: “I’d never known love so pure, and I was afraid that it would become sullied by my mother” (213). But the truth is that Lindo’s power over Waverly exists more in Waverly’s own mind than in reality. Much of this stems from Waverly’s childhood. Waverly felt that her success was her own, an American way of thinking: “I hated the way she tried to take all the credit” (206). Since it was considered impolite to brag openly about her daughter, Lindo framed Waverly’s victories as a result of familial teachings, a more typically Chinese sentiment. Waverly viewed this as her mother stealing her thunder and she sought to punish Lindo by quitting chess.

Waverly ended up regretting her actions. She thought her mother would be grateful when she announced she would play chess again, but instead Lindo angrily pushed back against her daughter’s capriciousness: “You think it is so easy. One day quit, next day play. Everything for you is this way” (207). What Lindo meant was that Waverly had an individualistic frame of mind that failed to take into account the effect of her actions on others. When Waverly returned to tournaments, she was shocked that her former ease of strategy had been lost: “It was as though I had lost my magic armor” (209). Waverly’s true opponent, in her own mind, is her mother.

She is still afraid of her mother’s negative influence. When she is older, she devises a plan where Rich can win her mother over by praising her cooking: “I knew she would do this, because cooking was how my mother expressed her love, her pride, her power, her proof that she knew more than Auntie Su” (214). This plan to manipulate her mother failed as well. Lindo was appalled that Waverly believed that she hated Rich and wanted to sabotage their relationship: “You think I have a secret meaning. But it is you who has this meaning. Ai-ya! She thinks I am this bad!” (221). Waverly had blamed her mother for her own fears and insecurities.

Waverly had always thought that her mother didn’t understand her, but now she sees that she had not tried to understand her mother’s perspective: “But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was really there: an old woman […] getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in” (224). To make amends, Waverly invites Lindo to accompany her and Rich on their honeymoon. Together Waverly and her mother will seek balance in their relationship, moving in all “Four Directions” of the story title.

When she was a young child, Rose took her mother’s Chinese sayings literally. But after Bing’s death, Rose turns away from her mother’s advice. The Chinese way has failed her, so now Rose turns to American psychotherapy. An-Mei believes that Rose should listen to her mother, not a psychiatrist: “A psyche-atricks will only make you hulihudu, make you see heimongmong” (230). These Chinese words can’t be translated into English directly but convey a “dark fog” or sense of confusion.

Rose seeks the counsel of her friends, but they can’t help her decide what to do about her life with Ted either: “My mother once told me why I was so confused all the time. She said I was without wood” (233). An-Mei means that Rose is too prone to listening to the opinions of others rather than her own heart. An-Mei tried to teach Rose that a girl should grow straight like a tree, listening to the mother who grew next to her. Otherwise she will end up a weed that others pull up and throw away. The seemingly limitless options of American living had once seemed desirable in contrast with the circumscribed limits of Chinese behavior, but Rose still chose Ted, who made her decisions for her. Now that Ted is leaving her, Rose is overwhelmed. She finally heeds her mother’s lessons when An-Mei reminds her that she needs to develop “wood,” a backbone. Rose confronts Ted and refuses to be thrown away. She finally felt that her words were powerful and now Ted was the one feeling hulihudu, confusion.

Jing-Mei finds herself wishing that she had listened more closely to her mother Suyuan now that she has died. She feels adrift, searching for the meaning behind their relationship. This is symbolized by the jade pendant Suyuan gives Jing-Mei after the New Year’s feast. At first, Jing-Mei thinks it too garish, too “Chinese,” but after Suyuan died, Jing-Mei wore it every day, wishing she knew what her mother meant by giving it to her: “And she's the only person I could have asked, to tell me about life’s importance, to help me understand my grief” (245).

During the New Year’s dinner, Jing-Mei feels the same stinging sense of inadequacy as when she and Waverly had been children. Waverly’s dismissive, patronizing comments about Jing-Mei’s work are made more painful by Suyuan’s seeming insult that Jing-Mei had been born less sophisticated than Waverly. “I had been outsmarted by Waverly once again, and now betrayed by my own mother,” Jing-Mei says, failing to see that her mother’s comment was only a typically Chinese form of polite self-deprecation, not an expression of true feelings.

Suyuan tries to show Jing-Mei that she was proud of her, despite her comments and criticisms. “Everybody else want best quality. You thinking different,” she says (259). What she means is that Jing-Mei is kind, thoughtful, and considerate. Suyuan compares Waverly to a crab, always walking sideways and looking for competitors in her peripheral vision. Suyuan emphasizes that Waverly chose the best crabs for herself and her family, while Jing-Mei chose the worst because Jing-Mei wanted her mother to have a better meal. It is clear that Suyuan considers her daughter to be of the “best quality,” the title of the story, though Jing-Mei doesn’t realize this till after her mother has passed. Jing-Mei had thought her mother gave her the jade pendant because she felt sorry for the humiliation she had suffered, but Suyuan meant for the pendant to link the two of them together.