What are the hopes of the four mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club?

The Joy Luck Club tells the story of four immigrant women from China and their children who grew up in the United States. The title of the novel "The Joy Luck Club" was originally a gathering of mothers playing mahjong. These women have immigrated to the United States for decades, but they are still obsessed with the traditional education they received since childhood, clinging to China's infiltration in women's blood for thousands of years, and almost becoming a feudal patriarchal ideology. Their common ideal is to strictly educate and control their daughters, so that they can escape the fate of their generation of women and become happy women in their eyes. However, for the mother's control, the daughters blindly resisted in different ways. In this American society with unequal race, class and gender, two generations of women staged a tragicomedy from fighting with each other to reaching the same goal and agreeing with each other. In this tragicomedy, the most touching thing is not what the characters say, but what they can't say, touch or keep secret. Behind these words is silence. Here, silence has become a symbol, and its great destructive power has destroyed women's self-esteem, self-confidence and courage, making them lose their ability to survive in severe depression. However, once the silence is broken, this destructive power will disappear immediately, the long-suppressed humanity will be revived, and the balanced and harmonious relationship will be restored. Most of the mother-daughter stories in The Joy Luck Club are woven by the main thread of silence and breaking it.

For example, Wu Suyuan and Wu Jingmei, the mother and daughter, spent many years in silence. When my mother was a child, she resolutely and cruelly gave her daughter the opportunity to learn piano at the expense of being a cleaner, hoping to shape her into an elegant woman different from herself and acceptable to the white society. Daughters, on the other hand, are "ignorant" and blindly resist the will of their mothers and the rule of their rights. In a juvenile genius performance competition held in a Chinese community, her daughter played in a mess, making her competitive mother lose face in front of relatives and friends. When she got home, her daughter thought her mother would be furious with her. However, at this time, my mother was uncharacteristically calm and silent, with a numb expression of "no content" on her face and terrible silence. The performance of the daughter who has not been reprimanded is equally surprising: in the face of her mother's silence, her reaction is neither surprise nor relaxation, nor fear, but "disappointment"! Because then she can't "yell at her (mother) too, cry her heart out and lean on her." Here, silence is like a malignant tumor that grows in the hearts of mother and daughter, tormenting both sides. This matter has been a taboo topic between mother and daughter for many years. My daughter will never play the piano again, and my mother will never insist on her playing. The piano cover locks the daughter's pain and the mother's hope. In silence, my daughter grew up and my mother was old. The result of silence is "Mom and I (Jingmei) have never understood each other. When we translate each other's meaning, I always seem to listen less than what she says, while my mother always listens more than what I say. " Mutual silence and misunderstanding lasted for many years. On the occasion of her daughter's 30th birthday, her mother gave her this piano which had been idle for many years as a birthday present, but it was her last wish. When her daughter opened the piano cover again and played a piece that she used to find difficult, she was surprised to find that the piece was not as difficult as she thought. These silent actions between mother and daughter symbolize the breaking of silence and the ultimate understanding and consideration between two generations. However, the price is too high after all. Sacrificed the mother's expectation of her daughter, sacrificed her daughter's half-life happiness, and left a scar in her heart that could never heal. At this point, we can easily see the great destructive power of silence.

The second example that deserves our attention is the story between Yingying St Clare and Lena St Clare. Their silence is not only the disappearance of words, but the disappearance of the whole person, which is the constant degradation and final obliteration of themselves. This is the ultimate sorrow of women in a patriarchal society. Unfortunately, when the mother's generation has lost itself, the daughter unconsciously repeats her mother's story, even though she once resisted her mother's will so fiercely. At the beginning of the story, the author wrote in a mother's tone:

For many years, I kept my mouth shut and didn't let my wishes show. Because I was silent for too long, my daughter couldn't hear my voice. Sitting by her luxurious swimming pool, the only sounds she heard were her Sony Walkman and her extremely tall husband's voice. ...

For so many years, I always hide myself and run around like a small shadow, so that no one can catch me. My movements are hidden, and my daughter turns a blind eye to me. All she saw was her shopping list, her bookkeeping book and the twisted ashtray on her neat desk.

All I want to tell her (daughter) is this sentence: we have both disappeared. No one can see us, and we can't see others; No one can hear our voices, and we can't hear others' voices. Nobody knows us. (Tan, 1993:64)

As described in the mother's inner monologue, her bitter past to cover up her humiliation-her heartless husband found another lover, the baby in her belly was brutally killed by her to get back at her husband, and she fled the family to find a way out alone-has become a "tiger", an "invisible ghost" and a witch-like figure who can predict the future, see through everything and predict all disasters after suffering from life. This kind of prophetess or witch-like figure is also common in the works of American minority women writers, such as the mother image in Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, which is also very intriguing. Although she later met and married an American husband who was kind to her but didn't know her, and moved to America with him, she left her hometown and everything that happened in the past, but now she has been silent for too long and lost her vitality:

How can I not love this person (her American husband)? But this is a kind of ghostly love. Clearly his hands clasped him tightly, but he didn't touch him; Obviously, a bowl full of rice is in front of me, but I have no appetite at all. I don't know what hunger is and what satiety is. (Tan, 1993:286)

It is such a mother who has been silent for half her life, almost numb and dead emotionally and mentally, but when she saw her daughter's unfortunate marriage, she decisively broke the silence out of maternal instinct:

I want to use this severe pain to penetrate my daughter's thick skin and release her "tiger spirit". She will definitely resist. Because this is the nature of tigers. But I will eventually defeat her and implant my soul into her body. This is how a mother loves her daughter. (Tan, 1993:286)

The mother is going to take action to save her daughter. What about her daughter? What is the fate of this new generation of women in China who listen to the Sony Walkman and drink Coca-Cola, and only know material comforts in the eyes of their mothers? Her story is far less clear and black and white than her mother's. She thinks that she is equal to her husband in school, intelligence and work ability, and even better than him in some aspects: it was her idea to help her husband set up his own architectural design company. So she thinks that no matter from which angle, she is "worthy of such a husband." In fact, her marriage, even her whole life, is quietly loosening and disintegrating under the seemingly equal rules of American-style "split accounts". In the game, she gradually forgot the original intention of the game, lost the concept of right and wrong and self-awareness, and finally even fantasized about exchanging economic tolerance and extra efforts for her husband's feelings. The result of failure made her completely lose her self-esteem and self-confidence. In the face of the deterrence of male chauvinism, she deeply felt her weakness and helplessness, and became helpless and speechless:

I began to cry, and I knew Harold had always hated it. When I cry, he gets upset and loses his temper. He thinks I'm playing tricks. But I really can't help it, because I realize that I don't know the original reason of this quarrel at all. Do I want Harold on my side? Are you willing to pay less than half of that person's expenses? Do I really want to end this lifestyle where everything is clear between two people? Even if it is true, won't we still calculate these accounts in our hearts? Wouldn't that make me feel worse and more unfair? ……

These ideas are all wrong, meaningless, and I'm not sure. The whole person is in despair. (Tan, 1993: 180)

Lena's question is really confusing and thought-provoking. The original purpose of feminism is to strive for equality between men and women in political, economic and social status. In a popular saying in China, women's liberation means "equal pay for equal work for men and women" to a great extent. Let's not talk about whether this ideal has been realized. Even if it is really realized, can women really be equally divided with men from now on? Lena's story is the best answer to this question. The formal equality of every penny conceals the essence of the problem, that is, the more hidden and deep-rooted mindset of preference for sons over daughters, and the concept of preference for sons that people have long been ignorant of. Lena's silence and forbearance of this painful patriarchal concept pushed her to a speechless, helpless and hopeless situation. Isn't it an ironic new interpretation of the concept of "equality" in some people's minds to ruin a marriage under the lifestyle of "equality between men and women" It can be asserted that female silence is a phenomenon that feminists and even the whole society should pay more attention to. Here, "sharing accounts" has become a meaningful irony, a metaphor with practical significance in a broader context.

In The Joy Luck Club, the theme of silence seems to be everywhere, but it seems to be inadvertently revealed by the author. The women in the book are not only victims of silence, but also killers who forge silence into a sword to hurt each other. Lindo and Waverley in the novel are the most typical representatives. My daughter, Waverley, was very talented at playing chess when she was a teenager. Whenever she plays chess with someone, it seems that a god is helping her in the dark. She is invincible. She won trophies in school, city and state competitions, which made her mother very proud. She walked down the street and showed off the cover of a magazine with a picture of her daughter on it. This aroused her daughter's antipathy. After the quarrel, the mother kept her mouth shut for days and turned a blind eye to her daughter playing chess. Finally, the daughter lost her temper and took the initiative to make peace with her mother and continued to participate in the competition. Strangely, however, the magical power in her body disappeared from now on. She lost again and again, until she finally had to give up playing chess and changed from a talented chess player to an "ordinary person". This is a surreal description. The daughter's magical power is naturally endowed by her mother, and her mother's silence takes away her talent forever. In the eyes of the mother, her daughter's life is transparent, and everything can't escape her eyes. However, when the daughter showed her around the newly renovated residence, hoping to tell her indirectly that she had remarried and longed for her approval and blessing, the mother turned a deaf ear, ignored it, or simply ignored it, hanging her daughter in the silent air, which caused her more serious harm than words. My daughter has personal experience of this: "My mother knows how to make people suffer, and this kind of pain is deeper than any other form of pain." This mother can turn "white into black, black into white" and let her daughter have a new adjusted and self-satisfied life-including her newly married husband, the harmonious relationship between her daughter and her new stepfather, expensive gifts from her husband, fur coats and a well-decorated home; Everything becomes useless and worthless. The mother stabbed her daughter to death with the sword of silence, and even more tragically, her daughter inherited her mother's hopeless psychological complex (she had to be affirmed by others to live in peace). One had to, and the other insisted on not giving it. This silent war, which didn't see the smoke, left the mother and daughter exhausted and scarred, causing deep harm to their feelings. One day, when her daughter made up her mind to make it clear to her mother, only when her mother was asleep did Huo Ran discover that her powerful "enemy" turned out to be just a harmless and even fragile old woman. This is the first time in many years that she has discovered her mother's true face. After mother-daughter heart-to-heart. Daughter finally realized:

Really, I finally understand that it is not what she said just now, but that it is true.

I know what I have been fighting for: for myself, a frightened child, a child who fled to a place he thought was safe a long time ago. I hid behind this invisible bunker and knew exactly what was hidden opposite: her possible attack from the side, her secret weapon, and her superb ability to see all my weaknesses. However, at the moment when I put my head out of the bunker and peeped out, I finally found everything there: an old woman who used an iron pot as armor and a sweater needle as a sword, an old woman who was not allowed to wait for her daughter's invitation and became grumpy. (Tan, 1993:204)

What a vivid description it is! Years of emotional and spiritual silence between mother and daughter have caused irreparable trauma to each other. Once this silence is broken, the shadow of war will also disperse, and it will be replaced by a valuable re-understanding and mutual understanding between two generations of women, which is the awakening of women. They finally realized that in a world of racial and gender discrimination, women should become friends and allies. For the two generations of women in the book, it is difficult to decipher each other's real thoughts-those hidden in various forms of silence. But in any case, they broke the suffocating silence in their own way. The younger generation of women draw spiritual nutrition and strength from their mothers and face a new life with a positive and optimistic attitude. This is what Wu Jingmei symbolizes at the end of the novel when she went to the mainland to find her long-lost twin sister on behalf of her mother after her death. The three sisters finally embraced in their mother's native land, and many years of dreams of returning home and reuniting mother and daughter came true with the breaking of silence. What a happy scene this is!

Amy Tan is the second generation female writer in China. Like Wang Yuxue and He, she follows the theme of mother-daughter relationship. They all draw inspiration and material from their mothers. This is one of the reasons for its success. In their works, "mother's demanding represents man's demanding" is a traditional concept of self-degradation, self-exclusion and self-obliteration, which permeates their deep consciousness in a patriarchal society and is a terrible collective unconsciousness. Under such a concept, they will naturally never meet their mother's requirements, nor can they face up to themselves. No matter how hard they try to change themselves and by what standards, the result is always more failure and greater pain. This is the greatest sorrow of some women in China. In this sense, one of the inspirations of The Joy Luck Club is that in the United States, the so-called multiculturalism, that is, the new pattern in which subcultures are consistent with the mainstream culture, is essentially just a cover-up trick, which is a cover-up for subculture assimilation and psychological aggression. Then, China women, like other minority women, can finally enter the realm of "happiness" only by rediscovering their original selves, breaking the silence of culture and gender, and facing life with self-esteem, self-confidence and autonomy in their own way.

Finally, let's go back to a question raised at the beginning of this article: Seeing that the author understands the heart music behind their deep silence through the stories told by her 16 female characters, and thinks about the problems we used to take for granted, can you still digest this novel as a light and delicious snack, whether you are a man or a woman, in the west or in the east? Here, we can't help but think of Hemingway's famous iceberg theory, which I think is also applicable here: if the world of human words accounts for three tenths of his whole world, then who can ignore the power of seven tenths of the silent world under the ice?