Peony is a young girl from a privileged family who leads a relatively sheltered life. Born in seventeenth-century China, Peony has no choice but to follow the dictations of her family and live the life of a cherished young maiden. But it is one story, The Peony Pavilion that has captured the imagination of generations of young women and enraptured their sensibilities, causing deaths, losses, and starvation. Peony is no exception. When Peony’s father decides to stage a rendition of The Peony Pavilion in their villa on the shores of Hangzhou’s West Lake, Peony’s mother refuses to allow her only daughter to see the play. But Peony’s passion for the opera withheld her mother’s disallowances. On the night of the staged drama, she peers through the screen door where she catches a glimpse of a handsome young scholar. She is immediately overcome with emotion for the young man.
Enmeshed in History and Tradition
With tradition and family dictating her life, she knows that this young man is not for her, but inspired by the passions and desires displayed in the play, Peony decides to take her life into her own hands. Refusing any type of nourishment, Peony forages on a life filled with poetry and words. She gradually succumbs to her mother’s unrelenting power over her, but is unable to forget her poet.
Destined from birth to be someone’s wife, Peony’s family trains her in the arts of womanhood even while she lavishes in heart-sickness. She gradually learns how to play the zither gracefully, cook, clean, and sew beautifully. But once Peony is fully ready to board the red palanquin which would’ve brought her into her husband’s home, Peony’s last breath leaves her. Like in the play, Peony has died at a young age of lovesickness.
Fine Line – Life and Fiction
From there, the parallel’s between life and fiction gets blurred. Peony now a hungry ghost, is forced to wander the streets of her hometown as she searches for scraps of food to feed her hungry soul. But never has she forgotten her poet.
Breaching three generations of women, in this tragic tale of love, loss, and sorrow, Peony in Love gives a voice to the generations of woman who were silenced by duty, propriety, and tradition. Like the play mentioned in this artfully wrought book, Peony in Love, reminds us that life does imitate art. Peony undergoes a drastic change due to the trials and tribulations she has endured. Here, dreams are realized and fears are vanished because of a heroine who has foregone all obstacles in order to be heard even beyond death.
A Voice Unheard of Until Now
In this artfully done book, Lisa See brings us on a journey that surpasses all belief systems and challenges tradition in order to bring us a book that also contradicts the world we live in. Like Alice Sebald’s Lovely Bones, here, See brings us a protagonist that narrates even beyond death. Told in a voice enriched in history and plagued with tragedy, Peony in Love is a great novel that brings to us a China that is enmeshed in its own dreams and desires.
See, Lisa
Peony In Love
Random House
2008
978-0-8129-7522-2
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