The Joy Luck Club acclaiming for highly praise, mostly concentrated on the analysis of the themes and content. It is the main attitude of Chinese and foreign academics. In 1989, many brilliant reviews began to appear in Time, Newsweek, New York, New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times,Washington Post and other major U.S. media. This fully shows that many white American critics impressed by the obscure, bizarre, mysterious of China and the Chinese people describing in The Joy Luck Club, the novel has gained the American mainstream white society's concern and acceptance.
After the 1990s, Amy Ling (1990), Marina Heung ( 1993), Walter Shear ( 1993), Ben Xu ( 1994), Stephen Souris (1994), Zenobin Mistri ( 1998), Patricia L. Hamilton ( 1999), Alison Gee ( 2001) and Zeng Li ( 2002) , Cui Wansheng ( 1997), Xiaohong ( 1998), Lu Wei ( 2000), Tingting Chen (2006), and many United States commentators have yet approvingly comment The Joy Luck Club. They considered that Amy Tan inheritance and carry forward the Chinese-American literary tradition about the ancient, family relationships and cultural conflict, at the same time, she also rejected the old stereotypes about the image of Chinese women, developing the blend of Chinese and western thought.
The domestic research focused on text-based analysis of conflict and identity issues, tending to the works of cultural and political criticism instead of aesthetic criticism .Chinese academic community began to study The Joy Luck Club in 1994. Research paper of cultural exploration can be divided into two types: traditional Chinese culture, such as Reading Amy Tan ( The Joy Luck Club) in the Chinese mahjong\Ruihua Zhang, 2001), and discussion about cultural conflict, cultural integration, such as Sino-US Conflict and Fusion: ( The Joy Luck Club) Cultural Interpretation ( Aimin Cheng , Ruihua Zhang , 2001); political criticism of the research can be divided into post-colonial cultural identity criticism such as Edge of the Culture and the The Joy Luck Club ( Ke Ke, 1999) and the perspective of feminist consciousness, such as From the post-colonial and feminist literary criticism perspective with Amy Tan ( The Joy Luck Club) ( Sun Gang, 2008).
This thesis is based on the original study of feminist perspective, combining with the theme of cultural conflict and integration. Study the conflict and fusion of the feminism in The Joy Luck Club under different cultural background, focusing on struggle of women, feminist awakening, analysing the tireless efforts and struggle of the two generations in order to change their fate. Though the feminist interpretation of The Joy Luck Club , I hope readers can get a insight into the difficulties and setbacks of women, especially for Chinese-American women in the process of integration into mainstream American society. Above all, arouse awareness on women issues, so that women no longer be silent, having the courage to fight for their rights, their voices can be heard by more people.
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2. Female Struggling experience in The Joy Luck Club
2.1 Introduction of Feminism
Feminism refers to movements aimed at establishing and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights. Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. However, there are many different kinds of feminism. Feminists disagree about what sexism consists in, and what exactly ought to be done about it; they disagree about what it means to be a woman or a man and what social and political implications gender has or should have. In other words, Feminism can be considered as a spirit that woman fight for their life and struggle against fatality.
2.2 Mothers experience 2.2.1 Suyuan Woo's story
Suyuan Woo is a strong and restive woman who refuses to focus on her hardships. Indeed, she struggles to create happiness and manage to success what she finds it lacking. As she used to explain to Jing-mei about the original Joy Luck Club:
It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much can you wish for a favorite warm coat that hangs in the closet of a house that burned down with your mother and father inside of it? How long can you see in your mind arms and legs hanging from telephone wires and starving dogs running down the streets with half-chewed hands dangling from their jaws? What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?( Tan, 1989: 24)
It is with this mentality that she found the original Joy Luck Club while awaiting the Japanese invasion of China in Kweilin. Suyuan creates the Joy Luck Club in Kweilin because she wanted to have, or create, a sense of gladness, belonging, and order, even in the midst of complete uncertainty and turmoil. In America, the club has served a similar purpose, and also helps Suyuan and the other members feel a sense of continuity between their old and new cultures. For Suyuan, the club is a symbol of hope and of strength, and a means of holding her own during the change.
2.2.2 An-mei Hsu's story
At an early age, An-mei Hsu learns lessons in stoic from her grandmother, Popo, and from her mother. Her mother also teaches her to swallow her tears, to conceal her pain, and to distrust others. An-mei's mother was forced to marry as the fourth concubine. She wanted to use her
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physical beauty to spend the rest of her life. Otherwise, she had to commit suicide in the eve of the Lunar New Year. However, the mother of An-mei did not want to make her own destiny in the same to her daughter, she wanted to give the strength to her daughter using her death. After that, An-mei is aware of her identity crisis, she begin to shout in order to protest against the fate. An-mei's mother planning her own suicide to express the yearning for freedom and the right. Sober analysis of her daughter’s future, she committed suicide to protect her. Finally, the brave mother and heroic acts of despair of their own weakness completely negate the old system, the fate of contempt and openly protest injustice, but also set fire to protect her daughter's spirit, so that her daughter learns to speak against the injustice. On that day, An-mei shows second wife the fake pearl necklace she has given her and crushes it under her foot. \life like a dream. To listen and watch, to wake up and try to understand what has already happened.\
2.2.3 Lindo's story
Lindo feels conflicted about her marriage: desperately, she dose not want to be submissive she knows the wedding will bring, yet she cannot go against the promises her parents made to her husband's family. In order to free herself from the dilemma, she secretly blows out her husband's end of the candle. A servant relights it, but Lindo later reveals to he mother-in-law that the flame goes out, implying that it does so without human intervention. The candle's original symbolism as a sign of tradition and culture, for it is by playing upon the traditional beliefs and superstitions that Lindo convinces her mother-in-law to annul the marriage. By blowing out the flame, Lindo takes control of her own fate, eventually extricating herself from an unhappy marriage. She controls over her own life. Before her wedding, Lindo made a second promise, a promise to herself:
I wiped my eyes and looked in the mirror. I was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. I threw my head back and smiled proudly to myself. And then I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts up. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents' wishes, but I would never forget myself. ( Tan, 1989: 58)
Finally, she did. Lindo escapes a situation of misery without suffering punishment.
2.2.4 Ying-ying's story
Ying-ying's profound belief in fate and her personal destiny leads to a policy of passivity and
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even listlessness at an early age. Always listening to omens and signs, she never pays attention to her inner feelings. Because she believes that she is \do nothing to seriously prevent the marriage, and even come to love her husband, as if against her will. In order to revenge her husband's betray, she drowns her own son, with it she hates herself all of her whole life. When her husband died, she allows the American Clifford St. Clair to marry her because she senses that he is her destiny as well. However, after Ying-ying realizes that she has passed on her passivity and fatalism to her daughter Lena, she takes any initiative to change. Seeing her daughter in an unhappy marriage, she urges her to take control. She tells Lena her story for the first time, hoping that she might learn from her own failure to take initiative. Ying-ying hopes that her daughter can live up to their common horoscope in a way that she herself failed to do. As she tells herself:
So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.( Tan, 1989: 252)
2.3 Daughters experience 2.3.1 Jing-mei Woo
Jing-mei is a representative person in The Joy Luck Club. Jing-mei's perspective echoes those of her peers, the other daughters of the Joy Luck Club members.They have always identified with Americans. But when she travels to China, she discovers the Chinese essence within herself, thus realizing a deep connection to her mother that she has always ignored. She also brings Suyuan's story to her long-lost twin daughters, and, once reunites with her half-sisters, gains an even more profound understanding of who her mother is. At first, She believes that her mother's constant criticism shows a lack of affection, when in fact her mother's severity and high expectations are expressions of love and faith in her daughter.
2.3.2 Rose Hsu Jordan
Rose Hsu Jordan finds herself unable to assert her opinion, to stand up for herself, or to make decisions. Although she once displayed a certain strength, being illustrated by her insistence on marrying her husband, Ted, despite her mother's objections and her mother-in-law's poorly concealed racism,she has became the \of Ted's \letting him make all of the decisions in their life together. When she finding divorce papers and a ten-thousand-dollar check from her husband in her mail-box, paralysed with shock and pain, she refuses to face all of this.
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