Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Secrecy and Misunderstanding
Memory, Culture, and the Past
Storytelling
Women’s Solidarity
Summary
Analysis
Ruth walks to Land’s End to unwind. As she walks along the beach, she recalls when she was a teenager and had a fight with LuLing. LuLing ran to this beach in the middle of the fight and threatened to drown herself in the ocean. The unknown aspect of death leaves Ruth with no desire to die by suicide. However, in a flashback, she recalls one occasion when she did try.
Land’s End is a park located along the Pacific shoreline in San Francisco. Although water often symbolizes rebirth and renewal across many works of art and literature, Ruth has far more negative associations with water, connecting it to one of the many suicide threats LuLing made throughout Ruth’s childhood. The narrative now slips into one of its many flashback sections, as Ruth remembers her difficult childhood, emphasizing the central role memory plays in the novel.
Themes
Ruth is 11. She and LuLing move into a small, run-down bungalow in Berkeley. Ruth hates how little privacy the small house affords her: she’s always in the same room as her mother, who never stops nagging her. Ruth develops a crush on Lance Rogers, the husband of the couple who rents the bungalow, which is an in-law suite of the larger house, to LuLing. Ruth can’t understand what Lance sees in his wife, Dottie, who is bossy and loud. She often hears Dottie nagging and accusing Lance of vague indiscretions. LuLing thinks the couple is crazy, but Ruth sympathizes with getting yelled at all the time and sees herself and Lance as blameless victims of LuLing’s and Dottie’s respective reigns of terror.
Ruth’s longing for privacy is common among teenage and pre-teenage children, but it also shows how, from a young age, Ruth grew accustomed to keeping things from LuLing. Ruth’s dislike of Dottie is a projection of her dislike of LuLing: she sees herself and Lance as victims of unreasonably domineering women. Whether or not Ruth’s projection is warranted remains to be seen.
Themes
That October, LuLing orders Ruth to drop off the rent check at the Rogers’ house. The couple is unpacking a color TV—something Ruth has only seen in stores—to watch The Wizard of Oz. Lance invites Ruth to watch the movie with them and tells her she can ask LuLing, too. When Ruth tells LuLing about the invitation, LuLing scoffs, insisting the couple is only being polite. Suddenly, an idea strikes Ruth, who pulls down the tea tray. At first, Ruth is too afraid to trick her mother and can only sit motionlessly with the chopstick in her hand. She usually writes in the sand to appease her mother, trying to scribble the things she thinks LuLing wants to hear. Sometimes, she even manages to write something that turns out to be accurate, such as tips for stock market investments.
Apparently, Ruth’s tea-tray-writing has persisted for the past five years. As was the case with the pearl necklace Ruth gave LuLing for her birthday, Ruth tells a small fib to make life momentarily easier for herself, only to watch it grow into a complicated web of deception from which she cannot escape.
Themes
Ruth begins to write, attempting to spell out the word “Good.” After she writes G-O-O, LuLing becomes excited. Goo means “bone” in Chinese, and she thinks “Precious Auntie” is trying to talk about the bone-doctor family. This appeases LuLing, and Ruth is delighted that her guesswork has miraculously paid off.
Using her tea tray to pretend to be Precious Auntie communicating from beyond the grave began as a harmless misunderstanding Ruth used to comfort LuLing and ensure her Precious Auntie has forgiven her for whatever wrongs LuLing imposed on her. Now, though, Ruth exploits her mother’s superstitiousness to use the tea tray for personal gain, using “Precious Auntie” to manipulate LuLing into letting her watch a movie with Lance.
Themes
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Ruth returns to Lance and Dottie’s at 7:00 to watch the movie. When she knocks on the door, she hears Lance grumble, “God damn it.” Ruth is mortified as she realizes that LuLing was right—they didn’t actually want her there. But before she can run away, Lance opens the door and greets her with a friendly smile. Ruth comes inside to watch the movie but is too humiliated to feel comfortable and pay attention. She’s also uncomfortable because Lance and Dottie are drinking alcohol and being overly affectionate with each other on the couch.
Lance’s initial annoyance shows Ruth that LuLing was right about Ruth being a nuisance to Lance and Dottie. A lot of Ruth’s humiliation stems from the fact that her miscalculation about Lance makes her feel young, stupid, and in over her head. She shouldn’t be hanging out with these adults who are drinking alcohol, she thinks—she’s a young girl who should have listened to her mother.
Themes
Dottie, who is now drunk, gets up to make popcorn in the kitchen during a commercial break. Alone with Lance, Ruth feels like she’s on a date. Dottie returns with popcorn, and Ruth realizes she desperately needs to pee. After using the toilet, Ruth realizes the seat of her pants is wet—Lance hadn’t lifted the seat before he used it. Her disgust turns to happiness as she reasons it’s “romantic” to be covered in her crush’s germs.
Accidentally sitting in Lance’s pee is decidedly unromantic, but Ruth is so starved for affection—which she’s not receiving from LuLing—that she’s willing to find intimacy and human connection anywhere.
Themes
In school, a few days later, Ruth watches a movie about the reproductive system. All the girls squeal in embarrassment, thinking about eggs floating around inside their bodies. When the movie ends, Wendy asks the teacher how the supposed “miracle of life” begins in the first place. The teacher scowls at Wendy and tells her they have to be married, but Ruth knows all it takes is love and “the right chemistry.” Before class ends, the teacher passes out sanitary pad belts for the girls to use during their periods, which are due to start soon.
Ruth is in her 40s in the novel’s present action, which takes place in the late 1990s. This places this childhood memory sometime during the 1950s or 1960s, which explains the remarkably uninformative quality of the reproductive health documentary Ruth watches in school. The air of secrecy society assumes when forced to talk about subjects it considers taboo (human sexuality, sexually intimate relationships out of wedlock, etc.) leaves Ruth and her classmates ill-equipped to understand anything about sex or their changing bodies.
Themes
Walking home from school that day, Wendy, who is more worldly than Ruth, fills Ruth in on all the graphic details the teacher left out of the presentation that day. When Wendy explains to Ruth how babies are actually made (she claims that a boy pees in a girl), Ruth screams runs and away. Wendy’s words haunt Ruth, who now fears she’ll get pregnant from accidentally sitting in the pee of the man she loves.
Society’s decision to withhold information about sex leaves Wendy and Ruth woefully ignorant about human sexuality. Wendy’s mistaken belief about how pregnancy works harms Ruth by convincing her that she is pregnant from sitting on the toilet at Lance and Dottie’s house the other day.
Themes
When Ruth fails to start her period, she becomes convinced she’s pregnant. She doesn’t tell LuLing, knowing that this unwelcome news could be what finally inspires her mother to go through with her threats of suicide. Seeing Lance makes her seize with anxiety, and she starts to wish she’d die. She tries to slash her wrist with a dinner knife one night, though she doesn’t draw any blood. Ruth finally confides in Wendy, who tells her she has to tell Lance—or Wendy will tell him herself. Ruth begins to cry, fearing that Lance and Dottie will kick them out of the bungalow. Wendy ensures Ruth that Lance will love her once she tells him about the baby. After fantasizing about a romantic future with her crush, Ruth agrees to let Wendy tell Lance.
LuLing’s combative behavior leaves Ruth unwilling to confide in her about her supposed “pregnancy,” so she remains ignorant to the fact that she’s not really pregnant, thus unnecessarily perpetuating her anxiety. LuLing’s depressive episodes and erratic behavior has also taught Ruth that suicide is a reasonable response to despair, which is why Ruth is so quick to consider suicide as an appropriate way to solve the problem of her unwanted pregnancy.
Themes
That afternoon, Wendy accompanies Ruth to the bungalow. LuLing is still at work. Wendy enters the Rogers’ cottage and exits five minutes later, followed by Dottie, who approaches Ruth with a stunned look on her face. Ruth breaks down, and Dottie mumbles “that dirty, filthy bastard” under her breath. Ruth is shocked to realize that Dottie is mad at Lance, not her. Dottie offers to help Ruth take care of the situation, confiding in Ruth that she was in the same situation several years ago.
Dottie acts in solidarity with Ruth by believing Ruth rather than defending Lance. This would be admirable if Ruth were really pregnant, but Ruth and Wendy’s ignorance about human sexuality creates a misunderstanding that could have dire consequences for Lance, who is innocent of the crime the girls’ claims have led Dottie to believe he has committed.
Themes
Later that night, Ruth takes the garbage out hears Dottie screaming at Lance for taking advantage of defenseless young girls. Later that night, the shouting stops suddenly. Ruth looks outside and sees Lance throw a large duffel bag into his trunk and drive off. The following day, Ruth feels sick and barely touches her breakfast. After LuLing leaves for the Laundromat, Ruth creeps outside to investigate. She runs into Dottie, who greets her happily and tells her Lance will go to jail for what he did to her. Ruth tries to explain that it was an accident and that she should’ve been more careful, but Dottie insists that Ruth talk to the police about the rape.
Dottie further demonstrates her commitment to protecting Ruth by kicking Lance out of the house and insisting they report him to the police. The possibility that Lance could go to jail horrifies Ruth, who now has yet another reason to associate being truthful with punishment. Had Ruth kept her supposed "pregnancy" to herself, she could have avoided this colossal misunderstanding and the grave consequences it might present for Lance.
Themes
Dottie is horrified when Ruth explains what really happened and accuses Ruth of framing an innocent man for rape. She storms inside, leaving Ruth alone to cry. Lance returns home sometime later. Ruth is too frightened and ashamed to go to school, and LuLing suspects that Precious Auntie’s ghost is trying to kill her daughter.
Dottie's angry response to Ruth's side of the story further shows Ruth that the world doesn't reward honesty and emotional vulnerability. Returning home to LuLing provides Ruth with little comfort. LuLing's fixation with curses and superstition renders her willing to accept that Ruth's subdued demeanor is caused by Precious Auntie's curse rather than something or someone in Ruth's life. Furthermore, LuLing's superstitious beliefs prevent her from communicating with her daughter to find out what's bothering her and giving her the comfort she needs.
Themes
Unable to bear LuLing’s constant fussing, Ruth finally tells her mother she’s well enough to go to school. Before she can leave, Lance intercepts her and demands that they talk. Ruth nervously follows him inside the cottage. The room goes dim. Lance tells her he kicked Dottie out of the house after realizing she’d been cheating on him. Lance is friendly to Ruth at first but grows irritated when she won’t smile at him. Ruth looks at Lance and realizes she was never actually in love with him.
Ruth’s realization about Lance shows that she now sees him in a different light. His irritation when Ruth won’t smile at him shows her that he’s another adult who expects her to perform emotional labor for which she will receive nothing in return. On a certain level, she sees her crush on him for what it was: an attempt to seek out love and attention to replace the love she wasn’t receiving at home—though she doesn’t necessarily have the language to fully articulate this to herself.
Themes
Lance jokes with Ruth about how silly it was for her to believe babies are made with pee. She giggles, and he begins to tickle her. The tickling makes Ruth’s body spasms instinctively, and she falls to the floor. Lance asks Ruth if she thought it was funny that she almost sent an innocent man to jail. Ruth tries to protest, but she can’t escape Lance’s grasp. He begins to touch her inappropriately. Ruth screams and breaks free just in time. Lance insists he wasn’t doing anything wrong, since Ruth was laughing only minutes before. Ruth runs out of the cottage.
Ruth’s misguided belief that she was pregnant by Lance ends up almost becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy when he touches her inappropriately. The entire experience further teaches her that there are hazards that come along with being honest and emotionally vulnerable, as her childish crush on Lance elicits violence and trauma rather than emotional fulfillment.
Themes
Later that night, Ruth tries to tell LuLing about what happened with Lance, but LuLing doesn’t understand what her daughter is saying and insists that Lance is only mad at Ruth because she often bothers him. Out of options, Ruth uses the tea tray to convince her mother that Precious Auntie wants them to move to Land’s End.
This is a heartbreaking moment for Ruth. She risks opening up to LuLing about her incredibly traumatic experience and receives nothing but LuLing’s usual criticism in return. When Ruth uses the tea tray to convince LuLing that they should move, it shows how Ruth has learned that deception and trickery are the only way she can actually get through to LuLing. It also indicates that Ruth understands that LuLing is more open to listening to Ruth’s needs when they come from “Precious Auntie” rather than Ruth herself, which shows how even at a young age, Ruth knows that LuLing is too fixated on the past to be there for her.
Themes
Back in the present, Ruth recalls the first time she’d walked along the beach at Land’s End. Thirty-five years after the sexual assault, she wonders why she chose to live. When Ruth was 11, she had looked at the sand and realized it was like a giant tea tray for her to write in. The thought had made her know she didn’t have to imagine made-up answers for LuLing any longer: she could ask the questions for herself. Today, Ruth scrawls “Help” into the sand.
As a child, Ruth associated the move to San Francisco with freedom and empowerment, since the move came about when she used her voice (through the tea tray) to instruct LuLing to move. Using her voice allowed Ruth to escape a traumatic situation and offered her the opportunity to start anew. In the present day, she tries to recapture the sense of hope and self-assurance she had as a child but has since lost. Ruth's renewed realization that she has the power to ask her own questions perhaps alludes to the power she has to communicate with LuLing as herself, Ruth, rather than using Precious Auntie as an intermediary. Ruth writes the word "help" in the sand to symbolize the reversal of roles she will undertake to learn about LuLing: she will ask questions about Precious Auntie now instead of pretending to be her to appease LuLing. She will take it upon herself to get to know her mother while there is still time.
Themes
