In 19th century China, in the province of Puwei, Lily is the youngest daughter of a farmer. As a daughter, a "worthless branch", Lily is mostly ignored and undervalued. Lily craves for love and does whatever she can to be a dutiful daughter in the hopes of fostering endearment. Her fate changes when a diviner sees great potential in her, believing that she'll be able to marry into a family of higher status and thus raise her own family's living situation. In addition, matchmaker Madame Wang implores Lily's family to allow her to find a laotong ("old same") for their daughter, a laotong essentially being a life long, deep friendship between two girls that should weather anything that life hands them.
Once agreed to, Madame Wang offers a possible match in Snow Flower, a girl around Lily's age who is as kind and beautiful as she is impish. Within seconds, Lily and Snow Flower become fast friends. During the initial period of their friendship, they're taught nu shu, a secret language created by and used between women. With this knowledge, they chronicle big changes in their lives on a paper fan.
In the following years, Lily's bond with Snow Flower will deepen and they both will experience their fair shares of sorrow, joy, pain, and love. However, a misunderstanding will lead to more hardship than either of them can comprehend.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a 2005 historical novel by Lisa See. A movie adaptation was released in July 2011, directed by Wayne Wang.
This novel provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The movie includes segments that take place in the 21st century. These segments feature Lily's and Snow Flower's descendants, Nina and Sophia respectively, discovering the titular fan, which helps Nina and her best friend Sophia work through a rough patch in their own friendship.
- Arranged Marriage: Daughters are basically born only to marry into other families and give them sons. Several arranged marriages are present within the story, both happy and miserable.
- Bee Afraid: Beautiful Moon dies from anaphylactic shock after being stung, on the one day in years that she gets to sit outside and enjoy some fresh air.
- Birthday Buddies: Snow Flower and Lily are chosen as each other's laotong in part because they share the same birthday.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Lily, Snow Flower, and Beautiful Moon are supposed to do their embroidery inside, but the summer heat makes it unbearable. Lily's father and uncle take pity on the girls and allow them to do their work outside as long as they keep it a secret. That same day, Beautiful Moon is stung by a bee and dies from anaphylactic shock.
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase: The title of the novel and the movie that adapts it is both Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Snow Flower is the name of Lily's laotong and the secret fan is a regular paper fan that they use to write messages to each other.
- Dead Guy Junior: Snow Flower names her daughter Spring Moon in honor of Beautiful Moon, who died getting stung by bees during Snow Flower's childhood.
- Death of a Child:
- Lily's younger sister dies in the course of footbinding.
- Snow Flower suffers from several stillbirths and miscarriages during the course of the book.
- While escaping from the revolution into the mountains, Lily sees many children who were abandoned by their parents and most likely doomed. They encounter the decaying remains of children on their way back down the mountain, confirming that at least some of them didn't make it.
- Snow Flower's youngest son dies during the time spent on the mountains.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- During the time period depicted, footbinding was a common practice wherein a young girl's feet are broken and bent in order to make them smaller, as befitting the beauty standards of that era. Because of this, none of the characters nor the main lead herself think of it as horrific torture to put anyone through, never mind a child.
- Lily and Dalang's relationship may seem distant in modern reader's eyes, but she considers him a perfect husband, to the point when she arranges for him to take concubines to entertain him as she grows older.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Lily is furious with her family and matchmaker for keeping Snow Flower's Impoverished Patrician status a secret from her for years. They argue that if she had known, she would have treated Snow Flower differently. Lily argues that it's not true and it doesn't change how she feels about Snow Flower one bit. Lily doesn't seem to know herself that well, for she begins to view and treat Snow Flower differently from then on.
- Domestic Abuse: Snow Flower's husband beats her and generally treats her like garbage.
- Driven to Suicide: Third-Sister-in-Law kills herself after her husband and children die of typhoid, and Snow Flower's daughter Spring Moon throws herself into the village well on her wedding night after seeing the abuse her mother endured at the hands of her father.
- Exact Words: Madame Wang never outright lies, instead opting to phrase things in a specific way and letting her clients interpret them differently. For example, when proposing the laotong match, she states, "Snow Flower's great-grandfather was a jinshi scholar, so social and economic standing are not matched." Both of these statements are true, but it hides the fact that Lily is the higher-ranking girl, not Snow Flower.
- Fatal Flaw: Lily desperately longs for love, but believes she doesn't deserve it and that her only way to gain worth is to follow the rules that everyone sets for her. She's also completely incapable of forgiving anyone she believes has wronged her, and it's this exact flaw that destroys her relationship with Snow Flower.
- Female Misogynist: Snow Flower's mother-in-law openly reviles women, abuses her daughter-in-law every chance she gets, encourages her son to beat and ridicule Snow Flower too, and actively encourages her son's delusion that all women (besides herself) are weak, worthless, wicked, deceiving parasites, despite displaying these traits herself.
- Floral Theme Naming: Most, if not all, of the named woman are named after flowers; Lily and her laotong Snow Flower are just two examples.
- Heel Realization: Neither Lily nor the butcher realize how horribly they treated Snow Flower until she was on her deathbed, and by then it's far too late to make amends.
- He-Man Woman Hater: The Butcher refuses to let his wife sleep in the same bed as her laotong on visits since he wants to have sex with her, openly rejoices at his wife's miscarried daughters since it means he won't have to waste resources caring for "worthless daughters" later, and often loudly proclaims hateful things about women that Lily secretly thinks everyone knows but you're not supposed to say. He also openly scorns his sensitive, thoughtful, and slender elder son partly because he takes after his mother. In defiance of tradition, the Butcher favors his second son who's more manly like him.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: A laotong, or "old same", match is when two young girls are paired together by a matchmaker during their childhood. They are then encouraged to become close friends, staying connected to each other until death and regardless of whatever life hands them in the way of marriages, children, and crises.
- Honorary Aunt: Snow Flower's last request to Lily is that she become an honorary aunt to her children. Lily accepts; she holds to this promise by taking Snow Flower's place in her daughter's wedding and by helping improve her son's station by giving him a job as a rent collector. She even arranges for her own daughter to marry Snow Flower's eldest grandson.
- I Should Write a Book About This: After her husband's death, Lily dedicates the rest of her life to becoming a scribe to tell the stories of all the women that she can. This particular novel is her own biography, written as a way for her to atone for her poor treatment of Snow Flower during their adult years.
- If It's You, It's Okay: During a festival as teenagers, Lily and Snow Flower are spending a night together and end up writing poetry on each other's naked bodies. It's very obviously an erotic moment, but neither of them seems to view it as different or wrong. Lily mentions that at this point, they weren't really educated in matters of sexuality and so didn't entirely realize the implications of what they were doing. It doesn't happen again after this one instance and neither of them ever displays romantic feelings for the other, but they also don't seem bothered by it.
- Imperial China: The novel is set near the end of the Qing dynstasy, during one of the most tumultuous times in Chinese history. Due to the isolation of the narrator, the political situation of China isn't spoken of much, but events that directly affect Lily and those around her- such as the addiction of opium, the typhoid outbreak and the Taiping rebellion- are shown and explored.
- Impoverished Patrician: Snow Flower and her family spoke of being high ranking and well off but it turns out to be false. They were, but her dad's opium addiction bankrupted them. She is forced to marry a butcher (one of the lowest ranking professions culturally) and her parents disappear after she is married, their money long gone.
- Inherent in the System: Tiny feet are the sign of beauty, grace, and good breeding and without it, a girl can't find a good match and is doomed to servitude or informal prostitution in a richer family's house. The line of mothers crippling their daughters in a mutually agonizing tough-love scenario is never shown as having an ending in the course of the story.
- Internalized Categorism: Snow Flower displays a bit of this with her eldest son. After being abused and ridiculed for years on end by her excessively misogynistic husband and his mother for her feminine and thoughtful demeanor, by the time Snow Flower's eldest son- who strongly takes after her- grows into childhood, she becomes a bit cold to him because she's learned to loathe these traits in herself.
- Irony:
- Snow Flower has a miserably abusive marriage but genuinely enjoys sex with her husband. Lily has an ideal marriage with a perfect husband, but loathes sex and sees it as a duty she must endure to bear him sons.
- Snow Flower's husband and mother-in-law refuse to give her eldest son his fair share of food while hiding up in the mountains since they scoff that he's so "weak" he won't survive anyway, not like their "strong" second son. The second son dies anyway, despite getting more than his fair share while his slimmer, "weaker" brother lives to see adulthood.
- Jerkass: Snow Flower's husband, the Butcher, has little in the way of positive qualities: he hates all women (sans his mother), he beats Snow Flower, and scorns his eldest son, even letting him starve while they're stranded in the mountains. The Butcher gets a bit better towards the end of book, showing guilt over how he treated his wife as she lays weak and dying.
- Lie Back and Think of England: Lily does not like sex at all, seeing it as a polluted act that's necessary in order to produce children. Once she is older, she abstains from it entirely.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Most children in the novel are left ignored by the narrative, with almost none of them ever getting named beyond their place in the family. Between all of Lily's and Snow Flower's children, the only ones to be given names are their respective daughters, Jade and Spring Moon.
- Nobility Marries Money: The laotong relationship serves the same purpose as a marriage between Lily's family (title-less farmers, moving up in the world) joining with Snow Flower's, an ostensibly high-ranking and noble house that went bankrupt. Snow Flower's refined manners prepare Lily's family for their eventually assent into higher circles, while spending time with the poorer family and learning to do housework helps Snow Flower adjust to her eventual descent into the working class.
- No Name Given: Beautiful Moon is the only member of Lily's natal family to be given a name; everyone else is referred to by their place in the family, such as "Elder Sister" or "Second Brother." No one in Snow Flower's family is named apart from Auntie Wang. Lily mentions that she rarely addresses her husband by name, and he only gets named once in the novel. The only ones of Lily's and Snow Flower's combined children to be given names are their "worthless" daughters: Jade and Spring Moon, respectively.
- Not Quite the Right Thing:
- Snow Flower's auntie tries to mitigate her fall from grace by arranging her to marry a butcher instead of a farmer. While the former is considered more polluted culturally, they make slightly better money than the latter, so she figures Snow Flower will at least live in relative comfort. Yeah, about that...
- When Lily arranges Snow Flower's daughter's marriage, she too simply arranges a materialistically advantageous match but does little to reassure the poor girl that she'll be treated nicely by her new husband. On her wedding night, the girl is so terrified that she'll end up trapped in an abusive marriage like her mother that she drowns herself in the village well.
- Orphaned Etymology: When Lily's feet are being bound for the first time, and her bones break, it describes her mother's eyes "zeroing in" on her. Yes, the Chinese discovered the concept of zero, but the phrase is still distinctly modern when the novel is from Lily's perspective.
- Our Nudity Is Different: On her wedding night, Lily's husband takes time to undo her shoes and study her bare, golden lily feet. To Lily, this is by far and away the most intimate event of the night.
- Parental Favoritism:
- Lily pretty blatantly favors her first son over her other children.
- Snow Flower, her husband, and her mother-in-law openly favor her second son over her first one, because he's more masculine like his father. Lily is more perturbed that they don't show the eldest son his due than there being favoritism at all.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Lily's husband is a nice guy. They especially realize this after they are reunited after three months hiding from the Taiping rebellion. He runs to her and kisses her profusely and they both realize they love each other.
- The Plot Reaper: Beautiful Moon dies pretty much because there's nowhere else for her story to go.
- Poor Communication Kills: Lily misread the nushu characters in Snow Flower's letter which said she was being helped by three sworn sisters. Lily thought Snow Flower had become sworn sisters with these women, and her pride led her to cut Snow Flower out of her life. If Lily had simply asked Snow Flower to explain her sudden affiliation with the "sworn sisters", she would've been able to have spent more time with her laotong before Snow Flower's death.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lily delivers a scathing speech to Snow Flower towards the end of the book because she assumed that Snow Flower had become "sworn sisters" with someone else, meaning Snow Flower didn't want to be her laotong anymore. Lily even goes so far as to reveal Snow Flower's secrets to every women present in the room, which permanently destroys Snow Flower's reputation.
- Rejected Apology: Once Lily feels she has been slighted, she will hold a grudge forever. No attempts at apology will sway her, as poor Snow Flower learns the hard way.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Snow Flower's first son is sensative and gentle while her second son is more abrasive and hardheaded like the butcher.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Women in 19th Century China are expected to be quiet and chaste while also being strong and motherly.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Once Lily feels she has been wronged, she will never forgive the person she feels has slighted her. After getting married, she pretty much cuts off all contact with her family for hiding Snow Flower's true situation from her, and later Snow Flower herself when she thinks she has joined a sworn sisterhood.
- Too Much Alike: Lily eventually realizes Snow Flower doesn't favor her eldest son because he reminds her too much of herself.
- The Unfavorite: In defiance of cultural tradition, Snow Flower's eldest son is looked down upon by his family due to possessing some feminine traits. While they're hiding in the mountains, what little food they have is rationed out between Snow Flower's husband, mother-in-law, Lily (due to her family connections), and the youngest son, leaving Snow Flower, her daughter and her eldest boy out. Shortly thereafter, the younger son dies, but the older one survives to reach adulthood and ends up becoming the Lu family's rent collector.
- Upbringing Makes the Hero: Lily's oldest son was well-educated as a child and ended up being an imperial scholar. Lily herself is largely influenced by the traditions she was raised under, most of which feed into her fatal flaws.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Lily's older sister stays in touch with her family after marrying her abusive husband, but shortly after getting married herself, Lily seems to forget she exists and we never learn what happened to her or her possible children.
- Women's Mysteries: Nu shu was a specific language used amongst Chinese women so they could talk in secret. While some men are aware of its existence, they generally don't pay it much attention or care about it all.
