The Family Problems In The Bonesetter's Daughter By Amy Tan

The American Chinese writer Amy Tan plays an important role in the development of American-Chinese literature. Her novels, all written from her special viewpoint and based upon her family history, focus on the mother-daughter conflict, conveying a strong Chinese family ethics. The dissertation will take "The Bonesetter's Daughter" as an example to analyze how the story exhibits the Chinese family ethics.Chinese family ethics is the basis where Chinese culture starts from, and its importance is well displayed in the novel because the novel is based upon the family stories of Amy Tan, which she also admitted in her interview. The aspect of mother-daughter conflict is worth studying, because it constitutes a main part of the novel and seems to be a persistent topic in her novels. The daughter's mind is filled with the Western ideas of independence and freedom. Due to her "filial piety", the daughter probes deeply into her mother's cultural and personal history, secrets are confessed and discovered, and catharsis is achieved and the daughter comes to understand her mother as a unique though flawed human being. The profound and abiding love of a typical Chinese mother for her daughter and a rebelling daughter's "filial piety" reflect writer's choice when two opposing cultures conflict.The view on marriage and the conflicts between Chinese and Western family ethics is another aspect analyzed in the dissertation. The three heroines have three different love stories, in which the main characters are all of their own choice. The conflicts between Chinese and Western family ethics are mainly due to different views shaped by different cultural background, and Ruth is greatly influenced by Chinese traditional culture.The delicately designed plots and well developed clue of the novel show the great impact the Chinese traditional values have on the writer. The novel ends with all characters happier and more loving than they were at the beginning. The couple reunites, the conflicts between mother and daughter are eased, and mother, in her old age, finds her twilight romance.