Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Sitting Quietly & Daughter Days: Milk Years Summary & Analysis

Summary: Sitting Quietly

Eighty-year-old Lily reflects on her life, looking toward the past now that nearly everyone she ever loved has died. She thinks of how she spent her life longing for love, which has been the cause of all her suffering. Such was the case in wishing her mother would love her, which was why Lily did not complain during her footbinding. The process of footbinding taught Lily to endure pain, which shaped her entire character. Aside from writing in a language known only to women with her friend, Snow Flower, to whom she was spiritually bound for life, known as her laotong, Lily has obeyed either her mother or husband for her entire life. Now alone, Lily reads the words she and Snow Flower exchanged on a fan, seeing how their relationship evolved from when they were young girls to grown women. She thinks of how much she has learned about love, though she never valued her one true love, Snow Flower, as much as she should have. Lily begins telling her story for those who have died to hear, hoping to explain her actions to her ancestors and to Snow Flower.

Summary: Daughter Days: Milk Years

Lily is born to a family of farmers, not rich but not poor enough for women to have to work. One room in the home is reserved for women to gather, where Lily sleeps with her two sisters, Elder Sister and Third Sister, and her cousin, Beautiful Moon. As young children, Lily and her sisters are indifferent to each other, as they are in competition for the attention of their parents and Elder Brother. One day, five-year-old Lily pays closer attention to her family dynamics. Her Aunt and Uncle are both ugly, yet affectionate toward each other and toward Beautiful Moon. Meanwhile, Lily’s mother, Mama, disregards her entirely. With the clarity Lily has on this particular day, she realizes that, as a second daughter, she is worthless to Mama as she will one day be the responsibility of her husband’s family. Lily vows to be helpful and unobtrusive to gain Mama’s approval. As the older women go up to the women’s chamber, Lily and her younger siblings do their chores in the fields.

After lunch, Lily is permitted in the women’s chamber, where Elder Sister’s sworn sisters visit her. Though they have been sworn sisters since the age of seven, their sisterhood will end when each of them marries. Eventually, Aunt encourages Lily and Beautiful Moon to go outside, arguing with Lily’s mother that they only have a few months to enjoy such freedom before their footbinding. Mama relents, and Lily and Beautiful Moon walk through the village. After dinner, Lily tries to put her arm around Mama, but Mama shrugs her away. Looking back, Lily still remembers the day vividly, especially the emotions she felt upon seeing her family in a new way.

Analysis: Sitting Quietly & Daughter Days: Milk Years

The novel’s opening chapter “Sitting Quietly” establishes that this is a story within a story, as Lily is recounting her early childhood. This narrative style sets the power of storytelling, which will be a crucial theme throughout the novel. Lily is not simply telling her story to entertain the reader or to explain her actions to the living. Rather, she seeks forgiveness from those who witnessed her wrongdoing so that she may find peace with the people she loves in the afterlife. By telling her story late in life, Lily has the perspective she needs to clearly see what went wrong in her relationship with her laotong, Snow Flower. Perhaps this is why she remembers one day from her childhood so well, though it seems as if it is just another ordinary day. However, this perspective allows Lily to see that the dynamics that would lead to certain events in her life were present since she was born, even if she did not fully understand them at five years old as she now claims to.

Most significantly, Lily reflects on her mother’s near-disdain for her as a second daughter. This is especially contrasted with the affection she remembers Aunt and Uncle bestowing on their one child, Beautiful Moon. Throughout the story, Lily will emphasize how the only worth a woman possesses in her culture is in her ability to bear sons. This means girls are worthless to their parents, as they are only raised to be married off and sent to live with their in-laws. From the perspective of Lily as a child, it is obvious how much this lack of love hurts her, as Mama literally shrugs her off. While Mama’s disregard could bring Lily and her sisters closer together, it only drives them apart as they feel they are in competition with one another for a love they cannot attain. This struggle sets up the idea of why female friendship is so treasured in their culture. When girls and women cannot find love from their birth families, or from their families by marriage, female friendship is the only potential source of true love. However, some of these friendships cannot last through marriage, as a woman is expected to devote all of her affection to her new family and, as such, non-familial relationships may suffer.

Though Lily is naïve to the harsh realities of her world at five years old, reflecting on this particular day allows her to see elements that would foreshadow her future. While Lily should still have many years of childhood left to play outside, Aunt reminds Mama that Lily’s imminent footbinding will soon make the simple act of playing or even walking downstairs impossible. Footbinding was the custom of changing the size and shape of a girl’s feet by tightly binding and breaking their bones. This was relatively common in 19th century China as a mark of beauty, as small feet were considered a symbol of femininity and status. As the process would begin with girls as young as five or six years old, footbinding represents the transition from childhood to adolescence and the pain associated with the transition.

Next section Daughter Days: Footbinding