Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

by

Lisa See

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Snow Flower makes teaching easy.
The narrator of the novel, daughter of Mama and Baba, wife of Dalang, and laotong to Snow Flower. Lily longs for love, even though as a woman, she's considered unworthy of receiving it. As such, Lily conceptualizes love in terms of duty and what she should do to show or earn her love rather than treating it as an emotion. Her feet are perfect "golden lilies" after her foot binding, which allows her to advance socially and marry well. However, the process of foot binding reinforces the belief that Lily's worth is dependent on her feet and her ability to bear sons, rather than her ability to experience emotion or care. Lily is quick to obey those who are superior to her, and learns to fall back on these conventions and traditions rather than express true feelings or sympathy. When Lily feels that someone has wronged her, she develops a habit of lashing out at them and then cutting them out of her life while she hangs onto her grievances for years. It is this habit that ends Lily’s relationship with Snow Flower and also brings about Lily's final coming of age as Lady Lu. Lily does, however, learn the true meaning of "deep-heart" love after Snow Flower's death. While she continues to hold tightly to convention in her old age, she uses her power as Lady Lu to encourage other women to value their lives in a way that she never valued her own life or Snow Flower's.

Lily Quotes in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

The Snow Flower and the Secret Fan quotes below are all either spoken by Lily or refer to Lily . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Gender Theme Icon
).
Sitting Quietly Quotes

For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me—as a girl and later as a woman—to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Footbinding Quotes

For us, the pain didn't lessen. How could it? But we learned the most important lesson for all women: that we must obey for our own good.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Third Sister, Beautiful Moon
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

"A true lady lets no ugliness into her life," she repeated again and again, drilling the words into me. "Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you find peace. I wrap, I bind, but you will have the reward."

Related Characters: Mama (speaker), Lily
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Snow Flower Quotes

"My mother bound my feet—and me to the chair—even tighter the next time."
"You can't fight your fate," I said. "It is predestined."

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower (speaker), Snow Flower's Mother
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Learning Quotes

"Each word must be placed in context," she reminded us each day at the end of our lesson. "Much tragedy could result from a wrong reading."

Related Characters: Aunt (speaker), Lily , Snow Flower
Related Symbols: Lily and Snow Flower's Fan
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

"You married out," Mama said, in a way that seemed oddly detached. "You go to another village. Your mother-in-law is cruel. Your husband doesn't care for you. We wish you would never leave, but every daughter marries away. Everyone agrees. Everyone goes along with it. You can cry and beg to come home, we can grieve that you have gone, but you—and we—have no choice. The old saying makes this very clear: 'if a daughter doesn't marry out, she's not valuable; if fire doesn't raze the mountain, the land will not be fertile.'"

Related Characters: Mama (speaker), Lily , Aunt, Elder Sister
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: Beautiful Moon Quotes

Anyone who tells you that the Yao people never care for their daughters is lying. We may be worthless. We may be raised for another family. But often we are loved and cherished, despite our natal families' best efforts not to have feelings for us. Why else in our secret writing do you see phrases like "I was a pearl in my father's palm" so frequently? Maybe as parents we try not to care. I tried not to care about my daughter, but what could I do? She nursed at my breast like my sons had, she cried her tears in my lap, and she honored me by becoming a good and talented woman fluent in nu shu. Uncle's pearl was gone from him forever.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Beautiful Moon, Uncle, Jade
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: The Flower-Sitting Chair Quotes

And in our local dialect, the word for wife is the same as the word for guest. For the rest of my life I would be merely a guest in my husband's home—not the kind you treat with special meals, gifts of affection, or soft beds, but the kind who is forever viewed as a foreigner, alien and suspect.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Lady Lu / Lily’s Mother-in-Law, Lily's Husband / Dalang
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: Truth Quotes

All of it was women's work—the very work that men think is merely decorative—and it was being used to change the lives of the women themselves.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Snow Flower's Mother
Page Number: 127
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Sons Quotes

We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints—that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:

Sons are the foundation of a woman's self. They give a woman her identity, as well as dignity, protection, and economic value... sons are a woman's crowning glory.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Lily's Husband / Dalang, First Son
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

... Now that I lived in the Lu household, where all the men knew men's writing, I saw that our secret women's writing wasn't much of a secret. Then it dawned on me that men throughout the county had to know about nu shu. How could they not? ... Men just considered our writing beneath them.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

With her bold act, I realized the true purpose of our secret writing. It was not to compose girlish notes to each other or even to introduce us to the women in our husbands' families. It was to give us a voice. Our nu shu was a means for our bound feet to carry us to each other, for our thoughts to fly across the fields as Snow Flower had written.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Related Symbols: Birds and Flying, Feet
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

I retreated to the safety of the formal lines appropriate for a married woman, hoping this would remind Snow Flower that our only real protection as women was the placid face we presented, even in those moments of great distress.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Winter Quotes

Certainly Snow Flower would say something on his behalf. He was the first son after all. But my old same did not love the boy the way she should have.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, The Butcher / Snow Flower's Husband, Snow Flower's (Eldest) Son, Snow Flower's Mother-in-Law
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

The butcher's brokenhearted question was one that appeared in many nu shu stories and songs. I glanced at the faces of the other women around the fire and saw their unspoken question: Could a man—this butcher—feel the same despair and sadness that we women feel when we lose a child?

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, The Butcher / Snow Flower's Husband, Snow Flower's Second Son
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Letter of Vituperation Quotes

And then the strangest thing happened. An image of my mother came to my mind. I remembered that as a child I'd wanted her to love me. I'd thought if I did everything she asked during my footbinding, I would earn her affection.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Mama
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:

"We might expect this loss of affection from our husbands—they have a right, and we are only women—but to endure this from another woman, who by her very sex has experienced much cruelty just by living, is merciless."

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Into the Clouds Quotes

I thought I would never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled with the realization that my laotong's womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor inside her must have been growing for many years. I had a duty to care...

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

So much of what happened reminded me of the didactic story that Aunt used to chant about the girl who had three brothers. I now understand that we learned those songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Aunt, Lotus, Plum Blossom, Willow
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:

"But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men's rules."

Related Characters: Plum Blossom (speaker), Lily , Snow Flower, Lotus, Willow
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis:
Sitting Quietly: Regret Quotes

As girls we are told that we are useless branches, because we will not carry on our natal family names but only the names of the families we marry out to, if we are lucky enough to bear sons. In this way, a woman belongs to her husband's family forever, whether she is alive or dead. All of this is true, and yet these days my contentment comes from knowing that Snow Flower's and my blood will soon rule the house of Lu.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Peony / Snow Flower's Granddaughter
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:

But it went beyond that. I wanted them to place a value on their lives, which for the most part were dismal.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker)
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Snow Flower LitChart as a printable PDF.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan PDF

Lily Quotes in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

The Snow Flower and the Secret Fan quotes below are all either spoken by Lily or refer to Lily . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women and Gender Theme Icon
).
Sitting Quietly Quotes

For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me—as a girl and later as a woman—to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker)
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Footbinding Quotes

For us, the pain didn't lessen. How could it? But we learned the most important lesson for all women: that we must obey for our own good.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Third Sister, Beautiful Moon
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

"A true lady lets no ugliness into her life," she repeated again and again, drilling the words into me. "Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you find peace. I wrap, I bind, but you will have the reward."

Related Characters: Mama (speaker), Lily
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Snow Flower Quotes

"My mother bound my feet—and me to the chair—even tighter the next time."
"You can't fight your fate," I said. "It is predestined."

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower (speaker), Snow Flower's Mother
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Daughter Days: Learning Quotes

"Each word must be placed in context," she reminded us each day at the end of our lesson. "Much tragedy could result from a wrong reading."

Related Characters: Aunt (speaker), Lily , Snow Flower
Related Symbols: Lily and Snow Flower's Fan
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:

"You married out," Mama said, in a way that seemed oddly detached. "You go to another village. Your mother-in-law is cruel. Your husband doesn't care for you. We wish you would never leave, but every daughter marries away. Everyone agrees. Everyone goes along with it. You can cry and beg to come home, we can grieve that you have gone, but you—and we—have no choice. The old saying makes this very clear: 'if a daughter doesn't marry out, she's not valuable; if fire doesn't raze the mountain, the land will not be fertile.'"

Related Characters: Mama (speaker), Lily , Aunt, Elder Sister
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: Beautiful Moon Quotes

Anyone who tells you that the Yao people never care for their daughters is lying. We may be worthless. We may be raised for another family. But often we are loved and cherished, despite our natal families' best efforts not to have feelings for us. Why else in our secret writing do you see phrases like "I was a pearl in my father's palm" so frequently? Maybe as parents we try not to care. I tried not to care about my daughter, but what could I do? She nursed at my breast like my sons had, she cried her tears in my lap, and she honored me by becoming a good and talented woman fluent in nu shu. Uncle's pearl was gone from him forever.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Beautiful Moon, Uncle, Jade
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: The Flower-Sitting Chair Quotes

And in our local dialect, the word for wife is the same as the word for guest. For the rest of my life I would be merely a guest in my husband's home—not the kind you treat with special meals, gifts of affection, or soft beds, but the kind who is forever viewed as a foreigner, alien and suspect.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Lady Lu / Lily’s Mother-in-Law, Lily's Husband / Dalang
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Hair-Pinning Days: Truth Quotes

All of it was women's work—the very work that men think is merely decorative—and it was being used to change the lives of the women themselves.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Snow Flower's Mother
Page Number: 127
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Sons Quotes

We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints—that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:

Sons are the foundation of a woman's self. They give a woman her identity, as well as dignity, protection, and economic value... sons are a woman's crowning glory.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Lily's Husband / Dalang, First Son
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

... Now that I lived in the Lu household, where all the men knew men's writing, I saw that our secret women's writing wasn't much of a secret. Then it dawned on me that men throughout the county had to know about nu shu. How could they not? ... Men just considered our writing beneath them.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

With her bold act, I realized the true purpose of our secret writing. It was not to compose girlish notes to each other or even to introduce us to the women in our husbands' families. It was to give us a voice. Our nu shu was a means for our bound feet to carry us to each other, for our thoughts to fly across the fields as Snow Flower had written.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Related Symbols: Birds and Flying, Feet
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:

I retreated to the safety of the formal lines appropriate for a married woman, hoping this would remind Snow Flower that our only real protection as women was the placid face we presented, even in those moments of great distress.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Winter Quotes

Certainly Snow Flower would say something on his behalf. He was the first son after all. But my old same did not love the boy the way she should have.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, The Butcher / Snow Flower's Husband, Snow Flower's (Eldest) Son, Snow Flower's Mother-in-Law
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

The butcher's brokenhearted question was one that appeared in many nu shu stories and songs. I glanced at the faces of the other women around the fire and saw their unspoken question: Could a man—this butcher—feel the same despair and sadness that we women feel when we lose a child?

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, The Butcher / Snow Flower's Husband, Snow Flower's Second Son
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Letter of Vituperation Quotes

And then the strangest thing happened. An image of my mother came to my mind. I remembered that as a child I'd wanted her to love me. I'd thought if I did everything she asked during my footbinding, I would earn her affection.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Mama
Related Symbols: Feet
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:

"We might expect this loss of affection from our husbands—they have a right, and we are only women—but to endure this from another woman, who by her very sex has experienced much cruelty just by living, is merciless."

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Rice-and-Salt Days: Into the Clouds Quotes

I thought I would never forgive Snow Flower, but instead of dwelling on that my mind tumbled with the realization that my laotong's womb had betrayed her again and that the tumor inside her must have been growing for many years. I had a duty to care...

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

So much of what happened reminded me of the didactic story that Aunt used to chant about the girl who had three brothers. I now understand that we learned those songs and stories not just to teach us how to behave but because we would be living out variations of them over and over again throughout our lives.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Aunt, Lotus, Plum Blossom, Willow
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:

"But you had too much man-thinking in you. You loved her as a man would, valuing her only for following men's rules."

Related Characters: Plum Blossom (speaker), Lily , Snow Flower, Lotus, Willow
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis:
Sitting Quietly: Regret Quotes

As girls we are told that we are useless branches, because we will not carry on our natal family names but only the names of the families we marry out to, if we are lucky enough to bear sons. In this way, a woman belongs to her husband's family forever, whether she is alive or dead. All of this is true, and yet these days my contentment comes from knowing that Snow Flower's and my blood will soon rule the house of Lu.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker), Snow Flower, Peony / Snow Flower's Granddaughter
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:

But it went beyond that. I wanted them to place a value on their lives, which for the most part were dismal.

Related Characters: Lily (speaker)
Page Number: 253
Explanation and Analysis: