Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress Essay

As the band the Rascal Flatts once sang, “Life is a highway.” This suggests that life is a long, winding journey that is fairly smooth. However, in life, one faces critical turning points and events which act as pivotal moments that shape the future. This idea of a pivotal moment is reflected in the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, which follows the journey of three youths during the repressive chinese cultural revolution. In particular, the main love interest and major character, the Little Chinese Seamstress, faces a pivotal moment in the very last chapter of the book when she decides to run away to the city in order to live a more modern lifestyle. This moment is significant because it shows the Seamstress’s new found independence and self-respect,
When Lou goes on his one month leave he asks the narrator “...’would you guard the Little Seamstress for me?’...’You mustn’t forget,’ he admonished, ‘that she’s the Number One beauty on the Pheonix of the Sky’”(Sijie 147). Here, the author creates a mood of veneration through the describing how Lou prizes her and wants to protect her. However, rather than stemming from genuine love, Lou’s protectiveness is one of a boy who does not want to share a toy. This is due to the fact that he only mentions her outside beauty and from the creation of a mood of objectification tone by the author through the word “guard” and making the phrase “number one” proper. Overall, this quote shows the Seamstress’s original lack of independence. Coincidingly, this objectifying nature causes the Seamstress to debase herself as simple. When describing her relationship with Lou, she says “ I ‘m a mountain girl. I just love pleasing Luo…”(144). Despite the lack of any clear negative attitude, the simple sentence structure and use of the word “just” mirrors how the Seamstress does not value herself or her values as anything to take note