The Kitchen God's Wife

The purpose of this research is to examine The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan, comparing the mother's and daughter's experiences and how those experiences mold their outlook, from a cultural and historical perspective. The plan of the research will be to set forth the narrative context in which the experiences of mother and daughter unfold in the novel, and then to discuss the cultural and historical elements that inform Tan's strategy of characterization.

To understand the cultural and historical features that control the action of The Kitchen God's Wife, it is important to realize the importance of the setting of the novel as a whole. Contemporary Northern California, chiefly San Francisco, provides the environment in which the story within a story can be told about the history of an extended Chinese-American family. The Kitchen God's Wife has dual first-person narrators, that of Pearl Louie, the 40-year-old married daughter of Winnie Louie, who came to the U.S. from Shanghai in the early 1950s, and Winnie herself. Pearl, who has two children and who speaks directly to the reader, attributes the difficulty she has communicating with her mother to "the way religion, medicine, and superstition all merge with her own beliefs," no matter how great or small the problem or memory or simple event. "She's like a Chinese version of Freud, or worse. Everything has a reason. Everything could have been prevented" (27). Logic and reason in the usual sense are impossible, although the

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lds Winnie's outlook. Traditional Chinese culture compounds Winnie's experience, however, because in the extended-family household to which she is sent as the "stepchild" or more exactly step-cousin, she is emotionally isolated and internalizes as givens of life her status as "leftover" from her mother's disgrace. "They forgot I did not have my own mother, someone who could tell what I was really feeling, what I really wanted, someone who could guide me to my expectations. From that family, I learned to expect nothing, to want much" (135). Gradually Winnie learns not to voice her hopes and dreams but to keep them secret; such lessons make her betray her life. Thus it is that in her dreams for a better life, Winnie develops an attachment to Wen Fu, a charming scoundrel who pays court to her cousin Peanut but transfers his attentions to her, or more exactly to her family: "Getting married in those days was like buying real estate. Here, you see a house you want to live in, you find a real estate agent. Back in China, you saw a rich family with a daughter, you found a go-between who knew how to make a good business deal" (164). A bit bewildered by the match and entirely ignorant of the facts of life, but hoping for happiness, Winni

Category: Literature - T