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Part 3, Chapter 13
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Crazy Rich Asians, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wealth and Absurdity
Marriage and Money
Family vs. Individuality
Chinese vs. Western Culture
Summary
Analysis
Astrid doesn’t know what to think of this sad, small “love nest” with a vinyl couch and buckets of children’s toys. How could Michael feel he needs to come here? Michael snarls that he can’t believe Astrid got Harry to track him down, but Astrid insists she did this herself. She then asks about Michael’s mistress, and if his son lives here. Astrid screams, throws a toy at him, and collapses to the floor, sobbing. Michael realizes he has to come clean. He says the boy isn’t his son, and he doesn’t have a mistress—the woman who lives here is his cousin, Jasmine Ng. He’s been faking the affair, though he did take Jasmine to dinner. Michael says he didn’t think he had a choice: if he was having an affair, Astrid would want to divorce him, and her family could “save face.”
It’s a huge shock for Astrid to learn that Michael, in fact, has not been having an affair. Michael’s explanation suggests that the real reason he went to such lengths to fabricate the affair was because of her family’s culture around marriage and money. Her family has never really approved of him, as he comes from a middle-class family. But even with that, they also wouldn’t support a divorce just because Astrid and Michael are unhappy—that’s not, he suspects, a “good enough” reason. And so he’s gone to absolutely ridiculous lengths to make a divorce seem like Astrid’s only option.
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Themes
Astrid is stunned. After a minute, she says it makes sense—the whole affair thing didn’t seem right to her. But why did Michael fake an affair? Michael sighs that their marriage hasn’t ever worked. The sex was great and it didn’t seem like it’d be so bad to get married, but then “reality hit.” It’s impossible, Michael says, to be married to “everyone’s idea of” Astrid, as everyone thinks he married her for her money. Everyone judges him for being lower-class, Harry treats his golf caddie better than he treats Michael, and everyone acts like he’s just tech support. Harry and Felicity have never invited Michael’s parents for dinner, and her parents will never respect Michael’s family because they only respect people “born rich or royal.” Realizing he’s right, Astrid is horrified.
Michael basically says that being married to Astrid is like being married to a celebrity, in that people don’t believe someone would marry a celebrity for any reason other than because that person is famous. It doesn’t matter that Astrid is also kind, generous, funny, or anything else, because so many other people see being rich as her defining characteristic. Further, Michael hits on the fact that Astrid’s parents are snobbish and rude to lower classes, which parallels how Nick just called Eleanor and Ah Ma out on the same. That snobbishness is, perhaps, going to end with Felicity and Eleanor’s generation—especially now that Astrid sees how harmful it is—but Astrid and Nick still have to deal with the consequences of their parents’ rude behavior.
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Astrid points out that Michael’s company is doing well, so he’ll be rich enough to impress her parents soon. Scoffing, Michael says he got his first bonus check for $238,000 last year. It was the most he’d ever made, but he realized that Astrid makes more money in a month than he’ll make in his life. He knows this because when he and Astrid got engaged, Astrid’s brothers took him out for lunch, told him about Astrid’s properties, and showed him one of Astrid’s financial reports. They warned him that lawyers protect all her assets, and “no one outside the Leong family” will ever get any money from her—even if she dies. Astrid promises to stop spending time with her family, but choking up, Michael says he has to go. Now is the best time to leave, while Cassian is still little, and he’s tired of resenting Astrid.
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