47 pages • 1 hour read
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
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Chapters 3-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: Daughter Days
Chapter 3 Summary: The Fan
The family holds funeral rites for Grandmother and Third Sister in the spring. Because of Grandmother’s higher status and the family’s limited resources, Grandmother’s body is given as much honor as they can afford, while Third Sister’s death goes almost unacknowledged. The local matchmaker, Madame Gao, who is less prestigious than Madame Wang, visits the family and declares that Beautiful Moon and Lily will both be pleasing to their husbands. The girls are too young to understand her suggestive comments. Elder Sister’s sworn sisters come to the house to celebrate Bull Fighting Day. Together with the older women, they prepare food and share stories that have been recorded in the women’s writing.
Some days later, Madame Wang comes to propose a possible lautong match for Lily. This girl, Snow Flower, is aligned with Lily according to “the eight characters” (40). She was born on the same day, year, and even in the same hour as Lily, their feet were bound on the same day, and they have the same number of siblings. Snow Flower’s family is of higher standing, her uncle being a jinshi scholar, but Snow Flower’s mother is satisfied with the possible match. Madame Wang gives Lily a fan with writing on it from Snow Flower, a gesture of invitation. Madame Wang suggests that if Lily makes this alliance with Snow Flower, there may be better marriage opportunities for Beautiful Moon as well. Lily’s mother warns the matchmaker that Lily is not a good enough girl to make such a connection, and Lily is too young to understand that her mother’s criticisms are part of the negotiation process.
After Madame Wang leaves, Mama and Aunt discuss the opportunity. Mama, who is now the senior woman in the family, resists the prospect because of the expense. Lily’s aunt, who comes from a higher social background, points out the opportunities associated with the connection. Eventually Mama agrees and gains the consent of Lily’s father. Lily sends Snow Flower a pair of hand-embroidered shoes and writes her response to the girl’s invitation on the same fan. Traditionally, the girls would exchange separate fans, but Lily decides she’d like this single fan to become a “symbol of [their] relationship” (45). Madame Wang decides Lily’s unconventional response is an indication that she and Snow Flower have similar spirits. She takes the gift and tells the family that she will arrange for a meeting between the two girls.
Chapter 4 Summary: Snow Flower
On the day that Lily and Snow Flower meet for the first time, Madame Wang arrives at Lily’s house in her palanquin. Seated on each side of the matchmaker, they are both quiet for the whole ride to the fair, fighting motion sickness. When they arrive at the Temple of Gupo, Madame Wang gets out and tells the girls to wait inside the palanquin. In her absence, they begin to speak to one another and peek out through the curtain. Snow Flower tells Lily that she’s been to the fair many times with her mother and sisters, and that she loves the sweets from the taro vendor. Lily is shy and says very little. Snow Flower reassures her that this is a good way for Lily to be, because it will make her more desirable and less likely to get into trouble.
Madame Wang takes them to the paper seller, and the girls select the paper upon which they will write their lautong contract. Snow Flower, being more knowledgeable about paper quality, helps Lily make an appropriate choice. Lily tells Snow Flower what she feels should be included in the contract, and Snow Flower composes the text. They both sign the contract, and Madame Wang tells them that this match is like a marriage in that they are perfectly suited to one another, but unlike a marriage, “this relationship should remain exclusive” (52).
After a meal at the fair, Madame Wang takes the two girls back to Lily’s home, where Lily is surprised to learn that Snow Flower will stay with her for a few days. Inside, the women have prepared a change of day clothes and sleep clothes for Snow Flower. The visitor is nervous, because she is accustomed to a much finer lifestyle. They are given Elder sister’s bed to sleep in, and they spend the night talking long after everyone else has gone to sleep.
Chapter 5 Summary: Love
The narrator Lily reflects on love as a woman’s duty, how she is obliged to love her children, her family members, her husband. In contrast to these dutiful loves, the love between "old sames" is of a different kind, because the lautong relationship is chosen rather than obligated. As a child, Lily tries to nurture this love through her communications with Snow Flower. Lily sends simple messages to Snow Flower in her less-advanced nu shu writing, and Snow Flower responds with much more poetic and advanced messages. Lily perceives that Snow Flower has imagination and longs to expand her world beyond the conventional limitations imposed on her. Lily hopes that by association with Snow Flower, she might be able to “cling to her wings and soar” (61).
One day, Lily receives the fan from Snow Flower with a new message written on it, a request to come and visit Lily. Snow Flower teaches Lily lessons from The Women’s Classic and asks Lily to teach her about making pig feed and hauling water. The girls and women in the chamber enjoy watching Lily demonstrate how to do these chores, and Lily enjoys the attention. That night, as they are getting ready for bed, Snow Flower refuses to use the washbasin first, but rather suggests that she and Lily wash together at the same time. Lily takes this gesture as a sign that Snow Flower loves her.
Chapter 6 Summary: Learning
After several years of visits from Snow Flower, Lily overhears Mama and Madame Wang discuss the fact that Lily has never been invited to visit Snow Flower’s family. When Madame Wang reminds her that Lily is of lower social standing and offers to sever the connection, Mama backs down. Later, an ongoing disagreement over territory between the two matchmakers leads Madame Gao to reveal that Snow Flower’s father “has seen too much gambling and too many concubines” (75).
When the three girls reach eleven, Madame Wang negotiates the “Contracting a Kin” phase. Lily is to be married to a well-connected young man whose father is responsible for a large amount of property. Beautiful Moon will marry the boy’s cousin. They are happy to know that they will remain close to one another. Snow Flower will be married to a man in a nearby village, located within sight of Lily and Beautiful Moon’s homes. They have some concern that Snow Flower’s betrothal is a poor match because of the boy’s birth year, but Madame Wang reassures them that the diviner has made a careful study and determined him to be a good match. Now they wait for the future in-laws to “Deliver the Date” for the weddings.
Lily and Beautiful Moon continue to learn nu shu from Aunt and Snow Flower. Aunt tells them the familiar story of Yuxiu, the sad woman, rejected by her husband and the other women in her household, who invented the handwriting as “a secret code so she could write home to her mother and sisters” (70). Aunt reminds them that, in a society where women are required to leave their natal families, the secret writing is the means by which they maintain contact with one another.
Lily’s betrothed is a cousin to Snow Flower. She describes him as good looking and kind, and tells Lily that, as first daughter-in-law, she may become a high-ranking woman in the household. She explains that his father has three concubines in addition to his wife, a sign of his strength within the community. Snow Flower tells Beautiful Moon that she too will be very happy in her marriage, that her mother-in-law is a kind woman. The girls notice that Snow Flower has tears in her eyes as she tells them how lucky they are.
Elder Sister is the first of the household to be married. After the marriage rituals, custom dictates that Elder Sister continue to live with her natal family until the birth of her first child. After her first conjugal visit to her husband, she returns to her own family in a state of distress, having been mistreated and overworked by her husband and in-laws. The younger girls observe this, while Mama and Aunt express only sadness and pity. Aunt, who is usually joyful, can only say, “This is how it is for women. You can’t avoid your fate” (78).
Chapter 3 – Chapter 6 Analysis
Social standing is an important part of the culture in which Lily lives, but in Chapters 3-6 we gain a greater understanding of the subtleties within these distinctions. The prospect of Lily making a higher marriage, while carrying with it the potential of increasing her family’s wealth, comes with considerable expense and risks her father losing face within his community. Mama is the head woman of the household, but Aunt sometimes has influence over her decisions because she comes from a more cultured background. These nuances in social distinctions become particularly pointed as Madame Gao begins to cast doubt on Snow Flower’s marriageability. At the suggestion that her father’s bad habits may undermine her social standing, we realize that Snow Flower’s good breeding may not be enough to secure her a happy match.
In this section, we become more keenly aware of women’s difficult position within Chinese culture. Lily says, “who has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter” (59), an indication that she sees herself as a disappointment. She understands that a woman’s only value is her potential to produce a male child, and until she achieves this goal, her presence is merely an undesired expense for her family. Such an existence limits women to private chambers within the home, and equally limits their freedom to express emotions. Therefore, love is an emotion only permitted to women inasmuch as it serves the family unit. Women are required to love their children, their husbands, and their in-law families. There is no allowance within Lily’s world for spontaneous or autonomous feelings of affection. Even in her relationship with Snow Flower, special because they have chosen the bond, Lily thinks she must nurture the love between them “through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature” (60).
The stories and songs that the women share in their chamber contain threads of resistance to their practical limitations. Aunt’s story of “The Woman with Three Brothers”, teaches Lily “how the value of a girl—or woman—could shift from person to person” (39), again pointing out that the fixed distinctions within the social order may have subtle variability according to circumstance and emotional connections. Lily observes that some of the nu shu characters “are only italicized versions of men’s characters” (69), suggesting that women have more access to the world of men than might first be apparent. In fact, a line from a song attributed to Yuxiu, the creator of the secret women’s writing, states that nu shu is an “invisible rebellion that no man can see” (71), making explicit the idea that the women are engaging in a form of subversion even as they enact their society’s prescribed female roles.
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