A Problem of Self Identity in Joy Luck Club Novel

Introduction

In Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, numerous characters grapple with obstacles in discovering their true selves. One such character is Ying-Ying St. Clair, who, throughout her life as a child, adult, and mother, struggles with reconciling Chinese and American cultures to find her self-identity.

Ying-Ying's Childhood: A Struggle with Cultural Expectations

In her early childhood, Ying-Ying was a feisty, adventurous little girl. She recalled, “I can remember a time when I ran and shouted, when I could not stand still” (Tan, 1989, p. 67). However, her mother would invoke traditional Chinese ideas of gender roles, stating that “A boy can run and chase dragonflies, because that is his nature, but a girl should stand still” (Tan, 1989, p. 72). In this way, Ying-Ying was taught to suppress her inner curiosity at a young age, which she would also unknowingly teach her daughter. As a child, she was told to become someone who she wasn’t, taught that to live a good life, she should become a dependent woman, a subservient housewife.

During the Moon Festival, Ying-Ying's family sails on the ocean, and she accidentally falls into the water, only to be rescued by a village fisherman. He lets her loose, hoping her family will find her. Alone and scared, she encounters a man dressed as the Moon Lady, the wish-granter in Chinese culture. Ying-Ying expresses her wish: “I wished to be found” (Tan, 1989, p. 83). A lonely child, lost from her family and away from her comfort zone, Ying-Ying realizes how important her family is, even if she has to obey her parents and become a subservient woman. She finds that her family is worth more to her than losing her own face or self-identity.

Adolescence: Loss of Self in Marriage

In her teenhood, Ying-Ying was betrothed to a man many years older than her. She at first resisted him, knowing that he was not what she wanted in a man. However, she slowly came to realize that she would marry him, even if she did not want it to happen. Through their marriage, Ying-Ying slowly began to lose her own self-identity, as she states, “I became a stranger to myself. I was pretty for him. If I put slippers on my feet, it was to choose a pair that I knew would please him” (Tan, 1989, p. 247). She became dependent on her husband’s compliments and happiness, mistaking his pleasure for her own, and even conceived a child for him.

Little did she know, she was only a placeholder - she finds later from an aunt that “he had left me to live with an opera singer...Dancers and American ladies. Prostitutes. A girl cousin younger even than I was” (Tan, 1989, p. 247). Devastated, Ying-Ying became a shell of her former rebellious teenage self. The baby in her womb she aborted, so much hatred did she have of her former husband that “When the nurses asked what they should do with the lifeless baby, I hurled a newspaper at them and said to wrap it like a fish and throw it in the lake” (Tan, 1989, p. 248). This child symbolized a culmination of her despair, but also one of her own identity. Along with the memories of her husband, she cast away her dreams and expectations, the ideals that made her who she was, in a sense. Her aborted baby, a boy, was to carry those dreams, but she believed that all hopes of that were lost when she chose to not carry him. It was only much later, when she became a mother, that she realized that she still had her spirit to pass on to her child, Lena.

Adulthood: Rediscovery of Self in America

A decade after she had the abortion, Ying-Ying met Saint, an American man who would take her to a country that she did not know. Ying-Ying did not love this man, but married him to “give up my chi, the spirit that caused me so much pain” (Tan, 1989, p. 251). She left her life in China behind to start a blank slate as the obedient housewife of an American man whom she did not even love in order to ease the pain in her heart. She became “...an unseen spirit” (Tan, 1989, p. 251). When she arrived in America, she did not know the language and her birthdate and name were lost in translation. Her American identification papers symbolized her own life in America - Betty St. Clair, in 1916, not 1914, was a completely different person.

She became a protective mother to her child with Saint, Lena, teaching her own child to behave and obey like she learned to do the hard way. She lost her own voice, and when Lena grew up, Ying-Ying realized that because of that, her own daughter did not have a voice. Her daughter’s marriage was an unhappy one, based around money and position. Although Lena started a company with her husband, Harold, he earned more than seven times as much as she did doing the same things. But she took it, believing that they loved each other, “All I can remember is how awfully lucky I felt, and consequently how worried I was that all this undeserved good fortune would someday slip away...I worried that Harold would someday get a new prescription for his glasses...and say, ‘ Why gosh, you aren’t the girl I thought you were, are you?’” (Tan, 1989, p. 156).

Lena, in a way, became just like Ying-Ying, dependent on her partner’s love, always vying for his approval. Ying-Ying realizes this, and found that she had made a mistake in protecting her daughter from everything during her childhood, because now she cannot live independently - Lena does not have a voice. And thus, Ying-Ying resolves to fix these mistakes so that her daughter does not travel down her own path, finally finding her own tiger spirit again in her years as a mother. This spirit, she stated, she will give to her daughter, “..because this is the way a mother loves her daughter” (Tan, 1989, p. 252).

Conclusion

In conclusion, Ying-Ying St. Clair's journey in The Joy Luck Club exemplifies the complex struggle of reconciling cultural identity within oneself. From her childhood to adulthood, Ying-Ying's experiences reflect the challenges of balancing traditional expectations and personal desires. Her story serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of self-discovery and the enduring influence of familial ties.

References

Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. G. P. Putnam's Sons.