Tradition vs. Change

This is the book’s primary theme. It is the foundation for the sub-themes listed below, and plays out on a number of levels. The most apparent of these is in the personal lives (emotional, intellectual, spiritual) of the central characters, and most particularly in the life of the novel’s central character, Madame Wu.

As the novel begins, Madame Wu lives her life in ways strictly defined by tradition – ways of being a parent, ways of being a wife, ways of being a landowner, ways of being a citizen, ways of being a friend … all, narration suggests, are defined by the way things have been in the past. This is, the novel suggests lightly, similar to the situation as a whole in the country of China where Madame Wu and her family live.

Over the course of the narrative, Madame Wu is confronted...