If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries”
Throughout all the years Lindo had stayed with the Huangs, she had always been stuck in her dilemma of hating to serve them, to have no freedom and to feel the creeping dread of to have to marry Tyan-Yu one day: “After a while, I hurt so much I didn’t feel any difference”, “I stayed up all night crying about my marriage”. However, since Lindo was true to her promise, she obediently served the Huangs indisputably:
“But I was so determined to honor my parents’ words, so Huang Taitai could never accuse my mother of losing face.”
Similar to Mary, Lindo had sacrificed her freedom for something that held significance to her, in Lindo’s case it was her promise. However, An-Mei’s situation of separation was forced upon her unlike the other two characters. In contrast to Lindo, Mary and An-mei both had a content life.
Clearly, Mary took the course of anger taking over her and even killed the one whom she had loved for so long: “all the old love and longing for him welled up inside her”. The fact that she killed someone she loved so much and so suddenly, shows how much vehemence had suddenly exploded from her as a result of her isolation. The rash action of murdering her loved one, illustrates how she felt her devotion was betrayed, turning her love quickly into hate. The evidence is shown when she suffers the dreaded feeling of her husband’s betrayal; she’d even imagined that
“It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing.”
She also had the “desire to vomit”, an indication that she felt so horrific about her husband breaking their marriage to which she had dedicated to. When Mary insists of providing supper for Patrick, it proves her fondness for him and their marriage, as well as her desire to please him:
“”Darling” she said. “would you like me to get you some cheese?””, “”But you MUST have supper””, “”But, darling you MUST eat!””.
An explanation to why she only felt so terrible is because she realizes she had been confined for her husband for so long that the breaking of her attachment would have caused a portion of her life to be futile. At this point, Mary only needed a spark to ignite her fury as a result of confinement at Patrick:
“”For god’s sake,” he said, hearing her, but not turning round. “Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.”” No doubt, although she had also felt sadness over the fact that her husband was going leave her, the spark made her give in to anger. The result was that Mary erupts with anger and uses violence when
“At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head”
An-mei lived with suffering through her entire life. While suffering could lead to anger, it also leads to sadness. An-mei’s separation from her mother was reluctant in her part. No doubt she felt sad when she had to be divided from her mother: “”Ma,” I had cried, rushing off my chair” An-Mei shows her determination to be with her mother again when she “came hurrying back from the other world to find my mother” By taking into account that An-Mei’s mother had committed suicide, it could be said that An-Mei was separated from her mother forever, the permanent separation caused An-Mei great anguish: “I fainted with all this grief”. An-Mei knew that all her mother’s suffering was because the life caste upon her by the plot carried out by Second Wife and Wu Tsing. She takes out her anger upon the guilty Wu Tsing and Second Wife for separating herself and her mother:
“And on that day, I showed Second Wife the fake pearl necklace she had given me and crushed it under my foot”, “And on that day, I learned how to shout”
During Lindo’s confinement within the Huang family, she also experienced anger: “So that’s how I knew what my husband had said to avoid his mother’s anger. I was also boiling with anger”
However, unlike Mary and An-Mei, she held her anger in and controlled herself to do what she hated, to serve the Huangs as a wife and daughter in law. Instead, Lindo experienced more sadness than anger; she kept genuinely to her promise to her family and therefore served the Huangs to the best of her ability. In such a hopeless life for Lindo, she frequently shed tears of sadness for she had to stick to her promise and continue to serve the Huangs. After her marriage Lindo, “stayed up all night crying about my marriage” When her family had left and she was sent to the Huangs household again “I was crying”. Clearly through her sadness and anger, her determination to live up to her promise won: “but I said nothing, remembering my promise to my parents to be an obedient wife”
Similar to Mary, she had also devoted a portion of her life to something that meant important to her, her promise. However, Mary had turned her sadness of her devotion in vain into anger, whereas Lindo controlled her anger through sheer determination to her promise. Clearly, all three characters held their share of sadness and anger.
Mary reacts quickly when she has killed her husband. Her mind is set into motion, as she thinks through the possibilities of the outcome if she were to be found guilty. Although it seems she has given up the will to live when she thought “That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief”. However, evidence shows that she feels responsible for her child and is resolute to let her child survive: “what were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill the both - mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do? Mary Maloney didn’t know. And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance.”
She then faces the dilemma to save herself as well as her unborn from the discovery of her guilt. With her given situation, she reacts calmly, carefully and quickly. She first rids of the murder weapon “she carried the meat into the kitchen, placed it in a pan, turned the over on high, and shoved it inside.” and cunningly decides to go to the grocery shop as she would have done to prepare supper and rehearses her lines as to sound perfectly normal to the grocery counter-man: “She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar. She tried again. “Hullo, Sam” she said brightly, aloud. The voice sounded peculiar too. “I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas.””
This is evidence of Mary thinking ahead of her plan. Subtly, she does everything as if everything was normal and talks to Sam typically as she would have done. She continues slyly:
“That’s the way, she told herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely and there will be no need for acting at all”
Mary faces her dilemma with much cunning and craftiness by displacing the weapon and acting naturally. As her plan unfolded, she calls the police. During the investigations of the detectives, Mary continues to act naturally as if she was a depressed wife of a murdered husband and when they first enter then house “she fell right into Jack Noonan’s arms, weeping hysterically”. Using deceit, Mary carries on with her performance by crying, telling her edited story and pulling on an appearance of despair:
“”Is he dead?””, “when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven-“It’s there now, cooking”- and how she’d had slipped out to the grocer for vegetables and come back to find him lying on the floor”
All of her actions pulled together are part of her plan to escape from being caught. Clearly, Mary uses her skills of cunning and deception in reaction to her dilemma. Further use of cunning is put to use by Mary when she offers the detectives a drink of whisky, “One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whisky”. By giving the detectives a dose of alcohol, as a pretense gift of gratitude to their efforts; she not only clouds their concentration, but lets herself be portrayed determined to help find the murderer by rewarding the detectives. Mary’s final act in the play includes her most brilliant scheme, by offering the detectives supper, Mary lets the murder weapon be devoured and therefore destroying the evidence. Cleverly, she approaches the situation by improvising, only when the subject has been brought up arousing no distrust:
“”Look, Mrs. Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside” “Oh dear me!... Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven? It’ll be cooked just right by now.””
An-Mei was faced with several stages of dilemma in her stories. One of these could be taken as to choose between which part of her family to stay with. When An-Mei was offered the chance to stay with her mother, she quickly seized it before her auntie or uncle could stop her: “And hearing this made me even more determined to leave”. She still showed reason to stay with her uncle and auntie, although her loved Popo was dead, An-Mei still showed pity for her brother: “After I saw my brother this way, I could not keep my head lifted”. However, An-Mei took a practical approach and left with her mother for she no longer wanted to stay with in her uncle’s house “full of dark riddles and suffering. When An-Mei stayed with her mother in Tientsin, she faced her mother’s death in front of her. Again, An-Mei takes a practical approach to the situation by clearly understanding that her mother’s sacrifice was to give her a better life: “I can see the truth, too. I am strong, too” Although the story does not describe the demands she asks from Wu Tsing and Second Wife, we can assume she faces Wu Tsing and Second Wife from the enough evidence:
“And on that day, I showed Second Wife the fake pearl necklace we had given me and crushed it under my foot… And on that day, I learned to shout”
When Lindo is locked in her room by her mother in law, she grows jealous of those that have the freedom to move, she “envied this girl, the way she could walk out the door” On the other hand, Mary nor An-Mei ever experienced jealousy during their confinement, whereas Lindo did when she was locked in a room, which Lindo describes as “worse than a prison”. Eventually, Lindo reacts to her dilemma and confinement to such an extent that she attempts a course of escape. One day, Lindo started to think how she “would escape this marriage without breaking my promise to my family”. Lindo plans for many days, she “observed everyone around” and when she had laid out her plot, she cleverly chose a superstitious day, the “Festival of Pure Brightness” to arouse more belief. Although she was escaping her marriage, Lindo stays unwavering from her decision to not “breaking my promise to my family”. Where Mary and An-Mei improvises or at most thinks a little ahead of their plans, Lindo can effectively create a well thought out plot with patience: “I thought about my plan for many days”. When Lindo puts her plan into action, she acts very well to be seen as in pain and desolation. She is also firm to wail for the attention of Huang taitai as long as it was needed:
“I woke up Tyan-yu and the entire house with my wailing. It took Huang Taitai a long time to come into my room. “What’s wrong with her now,” she cried from her room. “Go make her be quiet.” But finally, after my wailing didn’t stop, she rushed into my room”
All three characters make firm decisions that they stick to, once Lindo decided to try to escape the marriage, she did so and once she decided to stick to her promise since she was twelve, she did so. Lindo is also similar to Mary as they act well to deceive people to their benefit in facing their dilemmas, the evidence is shown for Lindo: “My body was writhing as if I were seized by a terrible pain. I was quite convincing, because Huang Taitai drew back and grew small like a scared animal”
As Lindo continues with her plan, she utilizes her knowledge of those around her that she gathered previously:
“I observed everyone around me, the thoughts they shows in their faces, and then I was ready”
By understanding that the Huangs were a superstitious family like many others, Lindo puts herself at a great lead by taking advantage of their beliefs. By claiming that the ancestors of the family have decided to kill the couple if they were to continue the marriage and then declaring the signs:
““He said there are three signs… this spot will grow and eat away Tyan-Yu’s flesh… my teeth would fall out one by one, until I could no longer protest leaving this marriage…the servant girl is Tyan-Yu’s spiritual wife.””
The Huangs fall for the trick and release Lindo from her marriage when they find the pregnant servant girl and “extracted her terrible confession”. Through wit, determination and cunning, Lindo manages to escape her marriage without breaking her promise. Where An-Mei takes the most practical approach, in the face of dilemma, it can be said that Mary and Lindo use cunning as their greatest weapon.
The characters Lindo Jong, Mary Maloney and An-Mei Hsu all have similarities and differences in the way they approach their confinement and dilemma. An-Mei, Mary and Lindo are all faithful and devoted. Mary is faithful to her husband and devoted to their marriage, Lindo is faithful to her promise and devoted to stick to it no matter what and An-Mei keeps faith in her mother by trusting her even when the rest of the family curse her. During confinement, Lindo felt sadness and jealousy where Mary were content to sacrifice her freedom for the love of her husband. On the other hand, when An-Mei’s mother died, one could say that they were permanently confined from one another, in this case An-Mei releases her anger upon Wu Tsing and Second Wife.
Once Mary had learned that her devotion to her husband was in vain, she also felt sadness and gave in to anger by killing her husband. Lindo on the other hand, was nearly provoked to give in to anger, yet she controlled herself and remembered her promise. An-Mei in fact used her anger as her weapon to control Wu Tsing and Second Wife to lead herself a better life that her mother wanted. Where Mary was angered to give in to rash violence, Lindo was disciplined enough to control herself and remember her devotion to her promise. An-Mei could be somewhere in the middle between the two, as she didn’t fall for violence but wielded her anger in a practical way.
In the face of dilemma, a clear distinctive resemblance is within Mary and Lindo, the use of cunning and deceit. Moreover, they are also both great actresses as well as being clever in the way they approach their dilemma. An-Mei on the other hand never had the need to act or deceive, instead she took the direct advance to solve her own problems. Where Mary and An-Mei improvised much of their plans, Lindo took her time to think about what she was going to do, proof of her organizational skills over the other tow characters. The last connection I could concur is the firmness of all characters, whom stuck to whatever decisions they had made without hesitation. Throughout this comparative analysis, I describe Lindo Jong and Mary Maloney are on two ends of the same line. The two share their abilities and skills yet all wield them in a different manner in the face of confinement and dilemma. Conversely, An-Mei doesn’t seem to fall exactly into Lindo’s and Mary’s category; as she has different traits used when encountering her confinement and dilemma, yet she still remains similar just not as distinct between Mary and Lindo.
One could say these three characters are very much alike, although they are in such diverse themes.