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The Role Of Women In The Good Earth

1395 Words6 Pages

The Role of Women The Good Earth throws much light into the treatment and condition of Chinese women in and around those days when the story takes place. It is important in the context of the ecocritical treatment of this novel as woman characters not only help the author develop the plot, but also act as strong chain in fixing the nature-human bond.
Foot binding was a practice mentioned numerous times throughout the novel. Small, bound feet were considered beautiful and desirable female characteristics. Thus, when Wang Lung discovers that O-lan 's feet are not bound, he is disappointed. O-lan lacks such artificiality just like the unpolished stone. She was unable to attract any, hiding the true worth which even her husband at first fails to understand.
O-lan had been a slave in the great house and she is not beautiful at all. The land lady remarks while handing her over her to Wang Lung “she has the strong body and the square cheeks of her kind. She will work for you in the field and drawing water and all else that you wish” (13), gives a picture of O-lan. Again it is O-lan’s natural unbound feet that enable her to work with her husband. Her defects only contributed to becoming a perfect partner for Wang Lung and a hard working soul who worked willingly from dawn until midnight. At the end of each day, Wang Lung found his wife’s face “wet and brown as the very soil itself.”(23) O-lan stood by her husband both at the times of prosperity and adversity. It is her act of

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