Chinese Cinderella

Aunt Baba is Adeline’s most cherished ally within the family and the only other character whose voice narrates part of the story; the final chapter consists of a letter that Aunt Baba has written to Adeline after her departure for college in England. Unmarried in a time with very little social mobility for women, she is relegated to living in her brother’s (Adeline’s father) household and is beholden to him financially. As such, her allyship to Adeline, though vital, is very limited. She is unable, for example, to prevent Niang and Father from taking Adeline away to the orphanage school in Tianjin.

Though she is a primarily static secondary character, small details about Aunt Baba offer brief glimmers of dynamism. Her covert rebellions against her brother’s restrictive policies—providing Adeline with money for her tram fare, for example—speak to her ingenuity and strategic mindset. More blatantly, her decision to maintain her career at the women’s bank in Shanghai provides Adeline with a model for what female success can look like outside of marriage. Her parting words to Adeline, “Your future is limitless, and I shall always be proud of you” (197), place her firmly as a figure of the past and Adeline as a figure of the future.

Adeline’s parents are the primary antagonists of the story since their rules and behavior set the tone of neglect and abuse that come to define Adeline’s childhood. Father’s marriage to Niang is a key inciting incident in the story, enabling Niang’s tyranny and the abusive culture that she brings to the Yen family. When questioned about why her father acquiesced to Niang’s ways, Yen Mah has asserted, “I think he felt that the French were superior” (Family Ties: The Story of Adeline Yen Mah. Produced by Eleanor Morris, BBC, 1997). Eurocentricity, internalized white supremacy, and self-hatred are thus important character traits that define the parents and therefore the function of the whole household.

Niang’s utter villainy remains static throughout Chinese Cinderella, making her the primary antagonist in Adeline’s life. In scenes like Ye Ye’s funeral, during which Niang “announce[s] in a loud voice that [Adeline is] looking uglier and uglier as [she grows] older and taller” (187), her unbridled cruelty is on full display. Furthermore, her stronghold over the family defies Confucian standards of patriarchal hierarchy, characterizing her as an equally domineering and subversive figure. Adeline’s resentment over this particular fault, however, complicates the feminist underpinnings of Chinese Cinderella.

Father is a more dynamic character than Niang since there are brief moments when he appears to have some degree of affection for Adeline. However, these instances are conditional—both his pride at the dinner table and over her playwriting competition depend on the optics of Adeline’s academic success—and so they should not be read as redemptive. His casual neglect of Adeline is evident in episodes such as the one in which he forgets her name and birthday on the way to Tianjin. In this sense, Father is a central source of conflict for Adeline at the same time that he holds the keys to her ultimate triumph; only he can give her the permission and resources to study in England.

Adeline has six siblings, and because there are so many. the memoir does not delve into the character development of all of them. Two siblings in particular, however, play major roles in Chinese Cinderella, namely Big Sister and Third Brother. Both siblings are complex figures, alternating between having antagonistic and sympathetic relationships with Adeline throughout the memoir. In the end, however, Third Brother turns out to have the most mutually supportive sibling relationship with Adeline overall.

From the start, Big Sister is intent on bullying Adeline and does so with more notable relish than the other siblings. She is also indirectly characterized by what other family members think of her, with one of the brothers asserting, “She is an expert in feigning affection. Don’t trust her or tell her anything! Otherwise you’ll get hurt” (51). Big Sister’s manipulative tendencies culminate at her wedding when she lies to both Niang and Aunt Baba to pit the two women against each other while maintaining favor with each of them herself. Coming at the expense of others, this survival tactic proves to be successful for her, and she leaves the household for her marriage relatively unscathed.

Third Brother is the closest sibling to Adeline (both in terms of age and friendliness), but his tendency toward self-preservation and obliviousness to Adeline’s struggles as a girl mean that he cannot always be the ally for which she hopes. One of his most hurtful betrayals is his selection of PLT for Father’s dog-training exercise, which results in the beloved duckling’s death. When Adeline confronts him about it, Third Brother says, “I only took yours because you’re the one least likely to give me trouble afterwards” (84). This apology recenters the other siblings as victims of the parents’ abuse alongside Adeline, whose survival tactics reinforce the familial hierarchy with Adeline at the bottom.