Lady Tan's Circle of Women

The image of bound feet and footbinding work throughout the novel to symbolize The Subordinate Status of Women. A woman’s sole function is to serve the family and, to do so, she must please the man who is her protector. The goal of footbinding is to shape the feet in the form of tiny “golden lilies” (12) that will fascinate her husband and make a woman appear dainty and graceful. To achieve this, the bones of a growing child’s feet are crushed and reshaped by bindings that, ideally, will bend the toes beneath the sole of the foot. Bound feet make it difficult to walk and impossible to run, and in time the young woman’s legs become emaciated. The crushed feet require rigorous care: Every four days they are to be unbound and washed, toenails trimmed, and then the feet are bound again and encased in embroidered slippers.

Aside from the agony that this procedure causes to women, not just during binding but lifelong, there is a risk of infection leading to death if bones break the skin and infection results. Yunxian reflects that around one in 10 girls dies during the binding process. Furthermore, this is a ritual elite women undergo in part to separate them from working women who have “big feet.” The magistrate at the inquest for Spinster Aunt acknowledges the pain of this process, saying, “As men, we admire the sacrifice and pain our women endure to give us this beauty to enjoy” (144). Throughout the novel, bound feet serve as an indicator of status and also as a symbol of the distortions women undertake to please fathers, husbands, masters, and sons so they might preserve their place in the home and, thus, have economic security.