In Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
, Lisa See chronicles the life of Lily, a Chinese girl whose station is elevated by her beautiful face, her tiny bound feet, and her special friendship with Snow Flower, a girl from a better family. After Lily's arranged marriage to an aristocratic young man, she learns a secret about Snow Flower that devastates her and threatens their friendship. The account of foot-binding is difficult to read, and it's even more difficult to imagine generations of women enduring this practice. Although I knew it was extremely painful and crippling, I didn't realize the process could be fatal. The narration vividly depicts this, as well as the agony of learning to walk on bound feet and the continuing challenges to women's safety posed by the inability to move without pain. For example, when rebels invade, Lily joins a group of refugees fleeing to the mountains. As she toddles up a precipitous, rocky trail on her "beautifully" mutilated feet, she watches other women, unable to balance with their bound feet, lose their footing and plunge to their deaths.
In some ways this is a bleak novel; in others, it's what my college friend Becca used to call "redemptive."
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