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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 2333rd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2018)Differences of Marital View between China andAmerica in The Joy Luck Club under CulturalDimensions Theory*Huiqin GuoForeign Languages DepartmentHubei University of Traditional Chinese MedicineWuhan, ChinaAbstract—The Joy Luck Club is a famous masterpiecemade by a Chinese American female writer Amy Tan, whichdepicts four groups of immigrant mothers and their Americanraised daughters, and probes deeply into the psychological andemotional conflicts among four pairs of China-born mothersand American-born daughters when facing two differentcultural backgrounds, also unveils the fierce conflicts of theirmarital views under different cultural ideology. Marriage as anessential part of women’s life is also an important topicbetween Chinese and American cultural communication.Based on Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory, this thesisexplores the differences of martial view between China andAmerica in The Joy Luck Club, which aims to deepen theunderstanding of differences of martial view between Chinaand America in international communication.Keywords—marital view; differences; cultural dimensionstheoryI.INTRODUCTIONAmy Tan is a highly acclaimed Chinese-Americanfemale writer, who was born in Oakland, California in 1952.Adapting her brand of Chinese traditional talk story as avehicle for exploring the lives of the mothers and daughtersat the center of her novels, Tan allows readers to experiencethe lives of her characters from multiple perspectives inparallel and intersecting narratives. So far, Amy Tan haswritten a lot of works such as The Joy Luck Club, TheKitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, TheBonesetter’s daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, etc. withdouble identity and vivid perspectives, Amy Tan’s works caneasily show her writing talents, and through her works,readers can touch the sufferings of miserable people andmake them to do some self-retrospection. All of those hergreat works makes her achieve success and gain a goodreputation on Chinese-American literature.With the publication of Amy Tan’s first novel, The JoyLuck Club in 1989, which became the best-seller book fornine-month long, ranked the fourth in the best seller list inNew York Times, and gained a lot of literary awards such asAmerica Book Awards which set off a boom of ChineseAmerican literature, and then all of those pushed Amy Tan tobecome the new-born literary star in America overnight. Indetail, this novel consists of sixteen related stories about theexperiences of four Chinese American mother-daughter pairs.In 1993, director Wayne Wang adapted the book into a film.Both book and film are deeply admired and appreciatedamong literary critics and readers. The film depicts the storyfrom the perspective of women, mainly talks about the lifechanges of four women including Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu,Lindo Jong and Ying-ying St. Clair who lived in China attheir young age, then moved to America and finally settleddown there, and gave birth to their American-born daughtersincluding Jin-mei Woo, Rose Hsu, Waverly Jong and LenaSt. Clair. When Amy Tan explored the mother-daughterdyad, she recognized that the metaphor of umbilicalrelationship gets to extend with time going by, and makesthis relationship becomes disconnect or develop to someextent: the first reason is because of individual, and thesecond is due to different culture. Therefore, it investigatesthe conflicts on culture and value among Chinese andAmerican culture. In The Joy Luck club, this novel can bedivided into four parts; there are four family stories, and thecenter of each part is from one family turning to another, andthe center of a family is formed by spousal relationship.Spousal relationship as the most intimate and the longesthuman relations is the most basic relation in a family. Whatimpressed audience most in this novel is that the relationshipand marriage of those main female characters, and theirmarriages have many problems and lurk some unnoticeablecrisis. As a matter of fact, China is affected by Confucianismbut America is affected by Christian Thoughts resulting fromthe different attitudes on marriage between China andAmerica. So, this paper starts with marital views betweenChina and America, based on the novel The Joy Luck Club,and research on the differences of marital views betweenChina and America by using Hofstede’s cultural dimensionstheory, which aims to help those people to avoid mistakeswho participate in cross-culture relationships.*Sponsored by Technology and Research Department of HubeiUniversity of Traditional Chinese Medicine.Copyright 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license 97
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233II.MISERABLE MARRIAGE OF FOUR MOTHERS IN CHINAA. The Marriage of Suyuan WooBefore the novel The Joy Luck Club begins, SuyuanWoo has died of a brain aneurysm. Actually her life story isunfolded by her daughter named Jin-mei Woo, based onwhat she has already known about her mother's stories, someanecdotes from her father, and what the other members ofthe Joy Luck Club tell her. During the WWII, Suyuan Woohad a husband who was served as an officer in Chongqing,China. Having suffered from the Japanese invasion, SuyuanWoo casted her two twin baby daughters away reluctantlyand got to know that her husband has died.Later, she remarries and goes to America, and forms anew Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese femaleimmigrants she met at church. She gives birth to anotherdaughter called Jin-mei. In Suyuan Woo’s marriage, whatdestroy her most are her two babies left in China. Under thewar, she could do nothing even they are her daughters. Shedied with helplessness and regret as an end of her life andmarriage.B. The Marriage of Lindo JongIn Chinese feudal society, Lindo’s marriage was notchosen by her but forced by her family just like all normalwomen. When Lindo was only twelve years old, she wascoerced to be the wife of a neighbor’s young son calledHuang Tyan Yu through the machinations of thematchmaker. After training for households by her mother-inlaw, she and Tyan-yu got married when she grew up tosixteen. She soon discerned that her husband was just a boyand had no sexual interest in her. Lindo started to take careof her husband as a little brother, yet her cruel mother-in-lawexpected Lindo to deliver a grandchild by restricting her andgiving her no freedom.Decided to get away from this unfortunate situation,Lindo observed the people carefully in the family and finallycame up with a good plan to escape her marriage withoutshaming herself by telling a lie that she brought bad luck toher husband’s family and the servant girl has pregnant achild owned to her husband.Freed from her first tragic marriage, Lindo determined tomove to America. She remarried a Chinese American man,Tin Jong, and has three children: sons Winston and Vincent,and daughter Waverly.C. The Marriage of An-Mei Hsu’s Mother and HerselfAn-Mei’s grandparents and other relatives during raisedher in her early years in Ningbo after her widowed mothercame to be a concubine of a middle-aged man in wealth afterher first husband's death. An-mei has witnessed her mother’stragic marriage and her hopeless suicide in the household.An-Mei later immigrates to America, marries, and givesbirth to seven children (four sons, three daughters). Theyoungest, a son named Bing, drowns at age four.D. The Marriage of Ying-ying St. ClairWhen Ying-Ying is a young girl, she is asked by her richand conservative family that Chinese girls should beintelligent and gentle. Therefore, Ying-Ying marries LinXiao who is a winsome man without love, but she believes itis her fate. Her husband Lin Xiao is uncovered to haveextramarital affairs with other women. When Ying-Yingfinds she is pregnant, she decides to have an abortion and bea hermit with relatives lived in a small city in China. As tenyears goes by, she become a tailor in a clothing store inShanghai, where she meets Clifford St. Clair who courtsYing-Ying for four years, and she consents to marry himafter hearing that her former husband Lin Xiao had died,which makes her decide to move on. Then, Ying-Ying givesbirth to a daughter Lena, after immigrating to San Franciscowith St. Clair. Ten years old as Lena is, Ying-Ying becomespregnant again, but the baby boy dies because he isanencephalic. Ying-Ying is scared when she recognizes thatLena has inherited her negative behaviors and trapped herselfin a marriage without love by owning a controlling husband.III.MARRIAGE OF FOUR DAUGHTERS IN AMERICAA. The Marriage of Jin-mei WooJin-mei Woo is an unmarried writer who is eager totravel to China to meet the half-sisters she has never known.And she tried her best to figure out and understand hermother SuyuanWoo’s marriage.B. The Marriage of Waverly JongWaverly has a daughter, Shoshana, from her firstmarriage with Marvin who shows no duty and care to thefamily with laziness in her young age, and then she isengaged to her boyfriend Rich Schields. Rich loves Waverlyand Shoshana freely and deeply enough, but he does notmake sense the Chinese traditional culture, so, there aresome awkward time in her family dinner such as it needssome soy sauce (Amy Tan, 1989:59) to advice the deliciousfood made by Waverly’s mother but do not understand whatmodesty means in Chinese communication.Just because of Rich’s impolite behaviors, Waverlyalready knew what Lindo would do, how she would attackRich, how she would criticize him. Waverly has neverknown love is so pure before meeting Rich and she wasafraid that it would become sullied by her mother and “Iwondered if perhaps my mother had poisoned my marriage.C. The Marriage of Rose Hsu JordanRose marries a doctor, Ted Jordan, who loves her butalso wants to spite his snooty, racist mother. After amalpractice suit, Ted has a mid-life crisis and decides toleave Rose. Rose confides in her mother and An-mei tells herthe story of her own childhood. When Ted comes for thedivorce papers, Rose finds her voice and tells him that hecan't just throw her out of his life, comparing herself to hisgarden, once so beloved, now unkempt and full of weeds.An-Mei tells her that Ted has been cheating on her, whichRose thinks is absurd, but she later discovers this to be true.898
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233She wants to hire a good lawyer and fight for possession ofthe house, which she eventually wins. This tragic marriagehas struck Rose’s spirit a lot.D. The Marriage of Lena St. ClairLena's husband, Harold, is also her boss. He takes thecredit for Lena's business and design ideas. He demandsfinancial "equality" in their marriage. Lena is an associatewhile Harold is a partner, so he has a larger salary than shedoes. However, he insists that all household expenses bedivided equally between them. Harold believes that bymaking everything equal, they can make their love equal aswell. Lena feels frustrated and powerless. She is like hermother, like a ghost, and her mother wants to help her regainher spirit and stand up for herself.IV. DIFFERENCES OF MARITAL VIEW BETWEEN CHINAAND AMERICA UNDER CULTURAL DIMENSIONS THEORYA. Difference of Conjugal Purpose between Chinese andAmerican under Masculinity versus FemininityChinese and American culture conflict comes along inthe process, and the mother-daughter conflicts are displayedspecially in different ways of life because of disparatecultures. Due to different cultural ideology between Chinaand America, there are different marital views in social life.In The Joy Luck Club, China-born mothers and Americanborn daughters holds different views about marriage. Thefour mothers all had been married to a Chinese man whenthey were in China at their young age. The conjugal purposeof them is almost to finish their duties to form a family, andgave birth to some babies, especially a son to continue thefamily line from social masculinity orientation. Also there isno tolerance for women in china who violate chastitybecause China is more inclined to masculinity than Americabased on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory. But whenfocusing on four daughters’ marriage, gaining happiness bythemselves is the most important thing through their lifetimeno matter the wife or the husband.Take Lindo and Waverly as an example, Lindo is coercedinto a strange marriage because her husband is just a littleboy, but she has no choice. The reason why her mother-inlaw would choose her was just because her appearance isgood and could give this family a grandson. However,Waverly chooses to go to marriage again with Rich justbecause the only reason that they love each other. Theimpact that Chinese traditional culture makes to overseasChinese and their offspring has become more and morevague. Although, Lindo is the mother of Waverly, but asWaverly is raised in America, so Lindo’s opinion about herdaughter’s marriage has little influence on Waverly’s finaldecision. Actually, the difference of conjugal purposebetween Lindo and Waverly unveils the difference ofconjugal purpose between China and America. Chinesewomen’s marriage is like a besieged city without liberty andAmerican women’s marriage is more like a grand palacewith liberty because in the beginning of the marriage, theyhold total different purpose.B. Freedom of Choosing a Spouse under Long-term versusShort-term Orientation Dimension1) Influence of class in marriage: Spouse selection isthe beginning of a marriage. Before the beginning of amarriage, men and women first meet each other by chanceor by arrangement. Owing to the Chinese feudal socialsystem, class has been the most important elements when awoman decides to marry a man since ancient times, andChina is a typical long-term orientation country, men andwomen will take social class, family background and mate’sappearance into account when they choose their maritalpartner because of they consider what their children willlook like and how wealthy their children will be when theywere got birth to. Yet America is a country with short-termfeature, for they always determine to chase what gainsthemselves love and joy when they choose a life spouse andgo to marriage without considering social class or family’ssuggestions.In traditional Chinese culture, parents are entitled toarrange life, future and marriage for their kids who must beobedient and filial. In The Joy Luck Club, Lindo’s first tragicmarriage was arranged to marry a businessman’s familywhen she was a little girl because her mother believed thatafter she marrying to that businessman’s family, she wouldlive a better life with being never worried about making aliving. But this kind of arranged marriage with class wasbrimmed with problems, because Lindo had no right to speakfor herself when meeting her mother-in-law’s suppression.Nevertheless, Lindo had to obey what her mother-in-lawasked for her to give birth to a baby for the family becausefrom the long-term orientation, it was contributed to thedevelopment of the family. Therefore, even Lindo could notget pregnant with her little husband, she also dropped out anidea that using the servant girl’s pregnancy to cheat thefamily that they had the family line to solve the problem andrelease her herself.Conversely, Americans are more focused on currenthappiness due to the western thought of carpe diem. Theshort-term orientation guided them to enjoy love, marriage,and the happiness of pursuing self-value. Lena’s husband isher superior, who is in the different class compared to her,but they get to marry each other just because they fall in lovewith each other with passion, there is nothing with class intheir marriage. Even they own independent property andadopt Dutch treatment in daily life.2) Influence of divorce in marriage: The divorce rate ofAmerica is high enough these years. But in Amy Tan’stimes, to get divorced is an action that rebels againstorthodoxy. From the perspective of long-term and shortterm orientation by Hofstede, Americans are inclined to getshort-term pleasure, yet Chinese go to the long-termperspective. In America, it is more open on the freedom ofmarriage than in China and no one would fuss about peoplehave been divorced or not. Having been divorced is anormal thing that most of American women can accept. But899
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233in traditional Chinese culture, divorce is regarded as anunlucky thing.In The Joy Luck Club, Rose and her husband Ted’smarriage has come to an end. However, Rose cannot bear offthe blow as well as her mother An-mei with total traditionalChinese marital views about divorce. Through Rose’s twiceyell, “You can’t just pull me out of your life and throw meaway” to her husband Ted and “Please don’t tell me to savemy marriage anymore, it’s hard enough as it is” to hermother An-mei, readers can discern that Rose and hermother as two Chinese American women with Chinesetraditional marital views would regard divorce as anashamed thing that would influence Rose’s later marriage.But Ted chooses to get married with another woman aftergetting divorced with Rose who just has one reason that isTed does not love Rose anymore, and he decides to marryanother woman he loves a lot and pursue short-termhappiness. Therefore, the impact of divorce is more onChinese than on Americans when choosing a spouse fromHofstede’s cultural dimension theory.C. Conjugal Differences between Chinese and Americanunder Individualism Versus Collectivism OrientationDimension1) Strength of self-consciousness in marriage: Conjugaldifferences embody in every aspect of a marriage betweenChinese and American. Due to different cultural backgroundand social ideology, it is meaningful to use Hofstede’sCultural Dimensions Theory from Individualism versusCollectivism perspective to analyzes conjugal differencesbetween Chinese and American. Strong collective familyhas a tight family link, and hold close family relationship. InChina, collectivism is the mainstream of the society inanytime and anywhere and it is always put in front ofIndividualism. Family as a little community, husband andwife have duty to keep the family harmonious and shareweal and woe when they live together. In a family, wives ina marriage play an important role in raise children andmaintain her husband’s dignity. Also, the value orientationof collectivism can be found in a marriage is that a wife willuse the collective thought to deal with the conjugalproblems in life and work, and hold the view that she herselfand her husband should not be divided into two parts, shemust be obedient, and she must follow her husband’sarrangements. Even there are some secrets; it should beshared to each other without hesitation. And wives are moreafraid of betrayal in marriage because of they are lack ofsense of security and belonging in the family community ifthe husband betrays her.In The Joy Luck Club, An-mei Hsu is a widow, thenraped by a rich businessman Wu Qing and becomes hisfourth concubine. But in her times, her family feels ashamedto her actions to become a concubine of a man because theyhave sex before getting married for them living in acollective traditional society. As An-mei’s grandmother said,“Your own thoughts are so busy swimming inside thateverything else gets pushed out.” In the end, all kind ofpressure made by her tragic marriage causes An-mei’ssuicide. Therefore, in Chinese traditional culture, thecollective society has weakened wives’ self-consciousnesswhich embody that husbands are stronger in selfconsciousness, and control the destiny of his wife and family.However, there are some differences in American societywhen discussing about strength of self-consciousness inmarriage. Spouse in America are more inclined to strengthenindividualism and pursue the development of individualityand the achievement of self-value, and they prolong theirlove through marriage without making children as theirreasons to keep a broken marriage. In America, marriage ismore like a pact; wife and husband are loyal to each other.Even the couple is get married, the wife and the husbandpursue their private rooms to be their own and do not like toshare everything in detail to each other.Under Amy Tan’s description, Rose Hsu and herhusband Ted get a divorce, and feel confused just like in“dark frog”. This kind of confusion actually comes from themixture of orientation of collectivism and individualismbecause Rose herself is raised in America and owns thevalue of individualism which means she can face up to herdivorce by herself under the help of psychiatrist, but in themeantime Rose cannot refuse what her mother imbue to herabout Chinese collectivism. But Rose yells at her mother andsays, “Please don’t tell me to save my marriage anymore,” InChinese traditional culture, it can never been found that adaughter yells at a mother. But Rose finally determines toaccept Ted’s choice to get married to another woman due toRose’s self-consciousness influenced by Americanindividual ideology.2) Differences of status between husbands and wives inmarriage: There is different cultural ideology which makesdifferent marital view between China and America. In amarriage, the status between husband and wife is being hotdiscussed nowadays. In feudal China, the orientation ofcollectivism pushes wives to feel that they are inferior totheir husbands in all degrees, as a matter of fact, if a womancomes to a marriage, she will sacrifice all herself to achieveher husband, all of those are totally regarded as the mostbasic norm in people’s mind. More precisely, wives’ lowerfamily status can be discerned from what wives have heldless rights in a family such as financial rights, emotionalrights and child education than husbands. In The Joy LuckClub, this kind of inequality can be observed easily in YingYing St. Clair’s marriage history. In her first marriage, sheis arranged to marry to a businessman, and then she loveshim but he shows his infidelity to their marriage again andagain without any respect to his wife Ying Ying.On the contrary, American marriage like Lena and herhusband Harold has showed that Americans chase theequality of everything in marriage including family status.Just like what Lena said, “We are equals. I’ m also smart. Ihave common sense”; “We keep the money things separate”;“We keeping the money things separate”; “We signprenuptial agreement over things.” Under Hofstede’sindividualism theory, family member has separate financial900
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233rights. Lena and Harold work in the same company, haveindependent salary, and can easily sit down calmly to discussabout their spousal problems. All that Lena’s words depictsthat the pursuit of American marriage is equal and respectunder the orientation of Individualism.V.CONCLUSIONThrough probing into the novel The Joy Luck Club byAmy Tan, differences of martial view between China andAmerica can be found clearly in four immigrant motherswith traditional Chinese martial view and their fourAmerican-raise daughters with modern American martialview. This paper aims to clarify the differences from theperspective of conjugal purpose, spouse selection anddifferent situation the spouse stay after marriage whichexisted in Chinese and American society by usingMasculinity versus Femininity Perspective, Power DistancePerspective and Individualism versus CollectivismPerspective in Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory, alsoaims to help people under different culture to discern ofdifferences of martial view between China and America andimprove the better understanding of international marriage.REFERENCES[1][2][3][4]T.Amy, The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books,1989.C. Lihua and X. Man, “Analysis the gender conflicts of The Joy LuckClub ,” Studies in Literature and Language,volⅥ, 2016, pp.101.H.Grice. Negotiation Identities:An Introduction to Asian AmericanWomen’’s Writing. Manchester, UK & New York: ManchesterUniversity Press, 2002G.Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors,Institutions and Organizations across Nations. Shanghai: ShanghaiForeign Language Education Press, 2008,pp 7-9.901
With the publication of Amy Tan’s first novel, The Joy Luck Club in 1989, which became the best-seller book for nine-month long, ranked the fourth in the best seller list in New York Times, and gained a lot of literary awards such as America
