Joy Luck Club Final Essay

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club shows the reader the oppression Chinese women in the 1930s faced. Women in China during the 1930s were taught to be submissive and to swallow their own anguish but yet to be strong willed, within the home, and raise their children right. Many women though had no rights outside the home and were prosecuted or shunned if they had disregarded these beliefs. Tan’s work of fictional stories shows historical accuracy throughout.
Women were often taught to be quiet and discreet; to not make a sound. As well as, openly speaking their mind was frowned upon (Hays). The idea of feminine behavior created a promiscuous attitude. Women, at the time and in the Chinese culture, were supposed to be inferior, passive, and obedient. They were to show no emotion. There are many examples of these traditions in Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.
An-mei’s mother taught her to desire nothing. An-Mei was to absorb other people’s misery and to suppress her own pain. It was their belief that others strived off the pain and anguish people felt. An-Mei received this lesson from her mother who had been disowned by her family and had come back home to see her dying mother, Popo. At the time of this instruction An-mei was around her early teen years, nevertheless a child. She was taught to suppress all her sorrow; no one was ever to tell how she was truly feeling. “Popo said I could no longer be a child.... I could not cry if I was disappointed (Tan 122).” It