Immanence And Transcendence Of Women In The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan (1952-) is a distinguished Chinese American female writer, whose works share great controversy because of their presentation of Chinese culture. They mainly reflect Chinese immigrant mothers'and American born daughters'living conditions and their fate as women. The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's masterpiece, which helps establish her great reputation throughout the world. Four pairs of Chinese mothers and daughters are depicted at length about their life experiences and how they fight for freedom within the text.From the perspective of Simone de Beauvoir's Feminist Existentialism, this paper makes an attempt to analyze these women with distinctive images, to expose the oppression suffered by Chinese women and Chinese American women before and after World War II, and to unravel their awakening and growth in the patriarchal society. Joy Luck mothers suffer severe oppression from the patriarchy in Old China, yet they fight against men's control and gradually realize their value and achieve transcendence. By retelling their stories, they guide their daughters to get rid of their immanence, to get over their obedience, and to control their own life. It contends that women in The Joy Luck Club actually achieve double transcendences——female individuals'self-transcendence and women group's historical transcendence. On the one hand, these four pairs receive unequal treatment both in China and America; however, owing to their own efforts, they go through four stages:submission, the awakening of self-consciousness, resistance and independence, and eventually overcome their dependence and immanence. On the other, during their reconciliation and mutual assistance, Joy Luck mothers and their daughters actually form an alliance, breaking the continuity of the vicious circle and the transmission of femininity, attaining historical transcendence of women group.