63 pages • 2 hours read
Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton)Mrs Spring Fragrance
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1912A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Story Summaries & Analyses
“Mrs. Spring Fragrance”
“The Inferior Woman”
“The Wisdom of the New”
“Its Wavering Image”
“The Gift of Little Me”
“The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese”
“Her Chinese Husband”
“The Americanizing of Pau Tsu”
“In the Land of the Free”
“The Chinese Lily”
“The Smuggling of Tie Co”
“The God of Restoration”
“The Three Souls of Ah So Nan”
“The Prize China Baby”
“Lin John”
“Tian Shan’s Kindred Spirit”
“The Sing Song Woman”
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
Beta“The Prize China Baby”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story Summary: "The Prize China Baby"
Fin Fan had been born into slavery, and her mistress sold her at a young age to Chung Kee, who made her his wife. Fin Fan spends all day in a dark room behind Chung Kee’s factory winding tobacco leaves. Her only joy in life is her baby daughter, Jessamine Flower. Chung Kee resents the baby because he thinks it slows down Fin Fan in her work. Fin Fan tries hard to keep up so that Chung Kee does not make good on his threat to give her child away to another woman.
One day a Mission lady sees Jessamine Flower and tells Fin Fan that she should enter her beautiful baby in a “Chinese baby show” (123) at the Presbyterian Mission. Fin Fan cannot wait for the pageant. She thinks that if Jessamine Flower wins a prize, then Chung Kee will value the baby more and be less likely to take her away from Fin Fan.
On Christmas Eve day, Fin Fan sneaks away from the dark little room in order to enter her child into the pageant, leaving behind a large bundle of tobacco leaves that need to be wound. Jessamine Flower does get a prize, and Fin Fan heads home with the baby “delighted and excited” (124).
When Chung Kee discovers that Fin Fan has left without doing her work, he arranges for the baby to be given to the infertile doctor’s wife, as a “Christmas present, according to American custom” (124). Just then, two men enter the store carrying a stretcher. When they remove the cover, Chung Kee sees that it is his wife and daughter. Fin Fan had been hurrying home carrying Jessamine Flower when a butcher’s cart hit them. A crowd starts to form in Chung Kee’s store and a doctor steps forward telling everyone to give the mother and daughter some space. Fin Fan regains consciousness for a moment and tells her husband: “Chung Kee’s baby got first prize. Chung Kee let Fin Fan keep baby always” (124). Fin Fan dies, not knowing that her child had been killed in the accident.
"The Prize China Baby" Analysis
Fin Fan has been given little joy in her life, but instead of being bitter and resentful, she concentrates her attention on the one joy she has been given—her daughter Jessamine Flower. Even this pleasure is in danger of being taken away from her, as Chung Kee considers the child to be a nuisance that distracts Fin Fan from her work.
Not only is Fin Fan exploited by her husband who extracts her labor and threatens to steal her child from her, but Fin Fan is exploited by the ladies from the Mission who seem to think of the Chinese babies as something exotic that should be put on display. Chung Kee values work and productivity over the devotion Fin Fan displays for his only child. In disregarding his wife's value as a mother, Chung Kee essentially treats the two most important women in his life as disposable. Fin Fan internalizes her husband's consistent admonishments and comes to believe he will eventually value their daughter as she does, if the child gains recognition from the Mission's pageant. Although the baby, and Fin Fan, achieve this approval, both die before Chung Kee. In watching his wife die, Chung Kee must reconcile his mistreatment of his family, which he has now permanently lost.
