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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
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Nineteenth-century Hunan. Lily is paired with Snow Flower in a formal laotong match intended to create a lifelong bond as binding as marriage. The girls undergo footbinding, learn the duties expected of wives and exchange messages in nüshu, the women’s script used beyond the hearing of men. Their fan inscriptions preserve pain, hope and private knowledge within households that value daughters chiefly for obedience and fertility.
Marriage sends Lily and Snow Flower into sharply different circumstances, but ritual visits and secret writing continue to sustain their relationship. The disruption of the Taiping Rebellion, family deaths and a devastating misreading test whether the bond can survive social inequality and accumulated silence. Narrated by Lily in old age, the novel presents women’s friendship as both refuge and obligation under the Qing dynasty.
Historical periods
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