Chapters 21-24

    In Chapter 23, Winnie is arrested and put on trial for leaving wen fu and taking Danru with her. Winnie's trial is extremely fast and very one sided. The judge made his decision to side with wen fu so easily, that it didn't seem like he gave any thought that Winnie may have had a reason to want for run way or that everyone but the husband was telling the truth. The judge only seems to see one man, a "war hero", and a bunch of women arguing against him. He convicts Winnie and she is sentenced to jail for 2 years, a harsh sentence for a woman who had fled from her husband with her now-dead son.

    The judge's actions in this court case fits the mold of Chinese patriarchal society perfectly. Nothing was ever the man or the husband's fault in this culture.  Women and wives were subservient and considered a lesser form of people in this culture. The wife was supposed to take the blame for everything and the husband was supposed to forgive as well as lead the family. This sort of culture still exists in some countries today. Countries like Saudi Arabia and other some Middle Eastern nations, treat women today in a similar fashion to the way that women were treated in China almost 70 years ago. Trials like Winnie's in these places today would probably have ended in the same result because of the way the cultures are formed and societies have been built around the culture. The parallels between 1940s China and these nations are very striking. Women have a very hard time finding education and being independent in both cultures. Also, women can't really help themselves rise in socio-economic status without a man in these misogynistic and patriarchal cultures.  However, women like Winnie do fight against the limits of these cultures. Winnie successfully fights back against her abusive husband and leaves him for good. There are women in places like Saudi Arabia who open schools for girls, teach girls, and try to participate in politics. Women in both cultures face extreme adversity in their attempts to make a better world for themselves and others around them, but they never give up, and as Winnie discovered not playing into the game that controls you can be the most freeing thing,even if you end up someplace unpleasant (like jail). 

Chapters 17-18

   In Chapter 18, Winnie is put through the worse night of abuse this far. It was because she danced with an America. soldier named Jimmy Louie. That night Wen Fu divorces her at the point of a gun, then does other horrible things to her, including raping her, all while still pointing a gun at her head and threatening to kill her and everyone in their house if she doesn't do what he says. The next morning Winnie tries to leave because she is now divorced, but Helen and Auntie Du try to stop her. The point out that her divorce isn't valid because it wasn't witnessed. Winnie begs them to be her witnesses, butt hey won't do it because they don't understand how bad Winnie's marriage actually is. Helen agrees to help her escape, but she makes a terrible mistake by telling Wen Fu where Winnie went.
   My main questions are: how does Winnie ever forgive Helen for what she did that day? Winnie will eventually help Helen get out of China and come to the United States, but why does she do it when Helen betrayed her when Winnie was trying to do the same thing? It is possible that Winnie feels some sort of obligation to Helen for helping her many desperate circumstances, like Yiku's death and the day the Japanese dropped the propaganda papers. Another reason could be the promises that Winnie made when the bombs were falling over their city and she didn't know where her son was. One of those promises was to be a loyal friend to Helen. This promise of loyalty could have made Winnie see that she has to forgive Helen in order to keep this promise that she believes helped her find Danru safe and sound after the bombings in Chapter 17. All of the reasons I have listed so far are possible answers to my questions, the most probable answer is what Winnie says when she is begging Auntie Du and Helen to sign her divorce paper as witnesses. In the midst of her begging she says, "If you do this, I am in your debt forever"(ebook 351). Even though they don't help her in the exact way that she wanted, they do hide Winnie and Danru for a night; which could make Winnie still feel like she has to uphold her promise despite the torret of misfortune their actions caused her.

Chapters 15-16

    In Chapter 15, Winnie's first living child is born. It is a girl, whom Winnie names Yiku. Yiku clearly loves her mother more than her father. This draws Wen Fu's wrath to baby Yiku as well as Winnie. When Yiku was about 6 months old, a servant girl left the family because she had been raped multiple times by Wen Fu and eventually committed suicide because she was pregnant. Winnie is outraged that this poor girl is dead because of her husgand's actions, and for the first time ever, she stands up to Wen Fu and confronts him about his actions. This doesn't go as well as Winnie had hoped. Wen Fu explodes, not just at Winnie, but also at their sobbing six month old baby. The abuses that Wen Fu inflicts upon his family are no longer just verbal or emotional; they are physical. He hits baby Yiku until she stops crying. Less than one year later, Winnie and Wen Fu are again childless.
    Yiku was never the same, happy baby after that first night of abuse. Since Wen Fu hit her over and over again on the head, it is possible that she expierenced some sort of brain damage. When babies are born, their brains are still developing and growing as they rapidly grow during the early stages of their lives. I'm not sure when this brain growth starts to slow down, but it could be that Yiku's brain was still developing when it expierenced the severe trauma of Wen Fu's repeated beatings. The could have led to Yiku developing something that would be classified today as part of the autistic spectrum. This would help to try and explain some of Yiku's unusual behaviors. She is practically mute, she walks very quietly on her toes, and she seems to have a seizure the night that she died. These first two things, as well as her lack of crying, could be because she is terrified of doing anything that would draw her father's anger and abuse by making any noise of her own. It is possible that Yiku was born with some sort of disability that caused her death, but from the story that Winnie tells us, it is more probable that Wen Fu's abuse caused his daughter's death both that night when Winnie confronted him about the servant and the night Yiku died.

Chapters 13-14

    In Chapter 14, Wen Fu gets in a car crash in the mountains outside of the city that he, Winnie, Helen, and her husband are living in. He is badly injured and the other person who was in the car with him was killed. After a long stint of time in the hospital, Wen Fu finally comes home. However, he isn't the same.  He is more violent,more irritable, and more lustful. Last week in class, Darius brought up an interesting idea that Wen Fu could be suffering from bipolar disorder. If this is true, the the medicines that Wen Fu was given during his time at the hospital could have made his bipolar exponentially worse. Certain kinds of medicine can have this effect on people who have this disease. These medicines can make the person have severe symptoms of the disorder that can resemble what is happening to Wen Fu. People who have their bipolar unmasked or otherwise effected by medicines can become severely manic, depressed, or mainic depressed. This can create the extreme feelings of anger and desire that Wen Fu displays.
     In the time that Wen Fu lives in, there wouldn't be any medical relief for his disorder, which could explain his smoking and drinking. If he is struggling with his bipolar, there isn't anything he can do to help balance out his emotions. Today, there are medicines that people who suffer from this disorder can take to balance their emotions to create an emotionally-stable middle ground between mania and depression. If someone does become depressed or manic, then they can take stronger medicines to help balance things out; and if the medicines do not work and the person cannot balance themselves out, they can be admitted to special hospitals that will assist them with balancing the two extremes. If Wen Fu lived in today's world with today's medicines, I think that Winnie and Wen Fu may have had a slightly better marital relationship that the one that they had.