Lisa See, with her new novel, “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” takes the reader into a world that is so utterly foreign that it is hard to comprehend and so real that it is impossible to escape. The story of two women in a fictional China, their lives forever entwined as laotongs or “old sames,” is both heartbreaking and heartbreakingly lovely.
Lady Lu, Lily, is 80 when she begins to record her life’s journey. She has lived far longer than is normal for a woman who was born in 1823, and anyone who could be harmed by her words is dead. She is able to recount her experiences with a freedom and boldness unprecedented for women of her time.
See opens a door to a culture that is incomparable to the modern Western world. Just as girls’ feet were bound, so were their lives as women, constricted to a narrow focus by the expectations of society.
Lily’s early years are unremarkable until her mother calls in a diviner to determine the most auspicious date to begin binding her daughter’s feet. The family is poor but not destitute. The first sign that Lily won’t follow the expected path is when the diviner points to the high arch of her insole. This accident of anatomy could lead to a fortunate marriage, one that will make not only her own but also her family’s future more comfortable.
This potential to marry well allows Lily an opportunity quite unusual for those in her class. She can be matched with another girl her age as a laotong, a friendship that will become more intimate than most marriages.
Lily is matched with Snow Flower, a girl from a higher class. Lily first meets Snow Flower through the gift of a fan in which she has written an introduction in nu shu, a form of writing that is meant to be shared only among women. It is this fan that the two girls, and then women, will pass back and forth, recording the happiness and the tragedies of their lives.
The story moves in chronological order, but it is told with the wisdom of age. The two-year ordeal of foot-binding is finished, and its results are such that the matchmaker is very optimistic. The girls spend time together, but it is always Snow Flower coming to Lily’s home. There are no return visits.
The Confucian principles of obedience and virtue rule the girls’ lives as they prepare for their arranged marriages. They join the women’s world, cloistered in a single room of the home. As they grow closer to 17, the age they will be married, they continue to learn women’s skills and share their tales in letters, written in nu shu.
Time passes in vibrant clarity as See immerses the reader in Lily and Snow Flower’s days. The women’s bound feet seem a metaphor for their lives. Unable to walk long distances, they are unable to go out into the world. Society views them, and they seem to view each other, as little more than chattel. Yet the human needs for love and companionship are still there. The women meet these needs in secret, through writing in a way that cannot be read by men.
The women’s friendship continues through the early days of their marriages, and survives the disapproval of Lily’s mother-in-law. As Lily’s fortunes rise, though, much strains the relationship. And the outside world cannot be completely barred from the women’s world. Cholera, the Taiping Rebellion and economic hardship threaten the fragile stability inside the walls of home.
It is impossible to get through “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” without being reminded of Arthur Golden’s “Memoirs of a Geisha.” It is not that the books have closely similar topics, though both deal with women’s lives in the far East. It is the total immersion in a culture that is far from Western sensibilities in a way that makes the lives seem real and understandable. See, like Golden, immerses the reader in an unimagined world that all – the characters and their surroundings – come vibrantly alive.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance book reviewer.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
By Lisa See
Random House, 258 pages, $21.95
