Counterfeit

These chapters cover the rising action of the dramatic structure, illustrating how Ava is drawn into Winnie’s business scheme. Ava continues to portray herself as being preyed upon, using the image of a fly caught in a spider’s web. By admitting that she is competitive, Ava shares a flaw that makes her a rounded, believable, and thus more sympathetic character in the narrative she is constructing for the detective. She shifts direction from her rebellion by accusing Olivier, in a circuitous way, of patriarchal oppression and by portraying herself as the victim of husbandly manipulation. This represents the theme of Counterfeit, Disguise, and Deception. Then she further gains the reader’s sympathies by reflecting on her feelings of comfort in Hong Kong, where she fits in. In picturing herself as fearing attack while on her errand in China and nervous during her first exchange involving a replica handbag, Ava presents herself as incompetent at subterfuge, which is another way to de-emphasize her agency at participating in a crime. She makes the detective think she is Living Up to Expectations to accomplish such Counterfeit, Disguise, and Deception.

Ava continues to stress her anxieties about motherhood as one of her chief sources of conflict, though she pretends to her family—and the detective—that Henri doesn’t need professional supports. By positioning herself as a worried parent, Ava evokes sympathy and plays on the sentimental perceptions of protective mothers. Her competitiveness surfaces in an amusing moment in the preschool play-date when she’s grateful another child, not hers, acts out first. Her note about the white mother’s Evelyne handbag, however, reflects a knowledge about the style, materials, and color of the bag that Ava, if she has been distancing herself from Winnie, shouldn’t know. Ava turns the attention in this scene to her own fears about being a stay-at-home mom and “deluded housewife” by imagining a successful, high-earning Asian wife for the stay-at-home dad, who stands out for his different gender in the same way Ava might stand out for her different ethnicity. She positions this setback in her aspirations for Henri’s preschool as a reason she became even more indebted to Winnie. While Ava expresses resentment at Living Up to Expectations imposed upon her by the broader culture, her family, and herself, she doesn’t consciously recognize that she is pushing Henri beyond his capabilities or preferences. The irony serves to make Ava a more complex and believable character.

In emphasizing Winnie’s manipulative qualities, Ava downplays the way she manipulates her husband by lying to him, manipulates her family to watch Henri while she visits China, and manipulates the sales associate at the Chanel store. She chooses the white woman to approach, presuming that the woman will share the assumptions about Asian American women that Winnie directly voices. Ava’s suggestion that she is rebelling after long years of obedience plays on cultural notions about the primacy of the individual, the importance of personal happiness, and the need to defy restrictions that contrast with the Negative Beliefs About Asia and Asian Identities of conformity, relational obligations, and the need to submit to authority. Even if the reader doesn’t approve of theft, they can endorse Ava’s wish to think and act for herself; that independence and reliance on self-interest is the essence of the American concept of the individual. In valorizing independence, the reader slides along with Ava into a moral grey area where she bribes the preschool through a donation, which is not all that different from falsifying SAT scores to get one’s child into a desirable school.

References continue to surface regarding China’s economic progress; for instance, the mall is on par with exclusive shopping districts in New York City and Paris. Also, the novel references the number of Chinese students in American universities, a sign of prosperity and aspiration for their families. Ava is caught in a similar aspirational mindset. In this upper middle-class world, a child’s future is carefully managed from the beginning, and parents want their children to over-perform from a very young age. Living Up to Expectations comes into play for Henri too. Ava depicts herself as torn between these expectations of what she should do as a parent and the wish for freedom and expression for herself. The Kelly bag becomes a symbol for what Ava longs for: attention, achievement, being colorful, and being admired, instead of feeling monotone and invisible. The accessory tells others she lives a life of ease and luxury, even if she feels the exact opposite.