The Valley of Amazement

“No matter what I did, I feared the stranger-father within my blood. Would his character also emerge and make me even more Chinese? […] Would anyone love a half-hated girl?” 

This quote reveals Violet’s ambivalence toward her mixed-race parentage. While that condition is problematic enough, her mother hates her father, and Violet’s Asian features offer a constant reminder. Violet has already begun to believe she is innately unlovable. 

“To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.” 

Violet overhears Lu Shing make this confession to her mother. Later events in the story indicate this statement isn’t entirely true. Lu Shing destroyed himself through weakness long before his betrayal of Lulu occurred. 

“You are never satisfied with the amount or kind of love you have. You want more and you suffer from never being able to have enough. And even though more may be in front of you, you don’t see it.” 

Golden Dove makes this prophetic observation to Violet when she is still a child. Violet’s tendency to pine for ideal love poisons her entire life until she is willing to put the past behind her. This doesn’t happen until the very end of the story. 

“As a courtesan, you must work toward the Four Necessities: jewelry, furniture, a seasonal contract with a stipend, and a comfortable retirement. Forget about love.”

Magic Gourd gives Violet this advice when the girl begins her career as a courtesan. Rather than the romantic view male patrons take of their courtesans, the women themselves focus on practical necessities even though they are purveyors of fantasy. 

“Accept love when it’s offered, Violet. Return love and not suspicion. Then you’ll receive more.” 

Loyalty makes this comment after one of his many arguments with Violet. She demands limitless, unconditional love from her mother and from her lovers. Learning to follow Loyalty’s advice becomes her life lesson throughout the novel. 

“I was reminded of my standing as a momentary diversion, a pastime for now and not necessarily the future. To many men, I was a woman who existed only in a particular place, like a singing sparrow in a cage.” 

Violet makes this observation after learning Edward is married. Her male patrons have lives entirely separate from the courtesan house. In contrast, Violet is expected to have no life beyond the moments she spends with them. 

“I could finally see what had always been there. She had been more than an attendant, more than a friend, more than a sister. She had been a mother to me.”

This is the first point in the novel when Violet realizes someone has cared about her. In recognizing Magic Gourd’s motherly concern, Violet shifts her attention slightly from her fixation on what she didn’t receive from her birth mother. Sadly, this is only a minor epiphany since Violet goes back to obsessing about love soon afterward.

“I knew now the nature of two people whom I had reviled for so many years. They were simply weak, selfish, and careless of others. I wished to push them out of my mind.” 

Violet makes this comment after Lu Shing’s letter convinces her that Lulu didn’t abandon her. Despite knowing of her parents’ remorse, Violet is still unwilling to forgive them for being less than perfect. Her rage has diminished to the point of indifference, but this doesn’t represent much of an improvement in her attitude toward them.

“I was traveling three hundred miles to pretend to be someone I was not, to live with a man I had had to convince myself to love. I was chasing after happiness, that false salvation, all the way to a desolate place.” 

In marrying Perpetual, Violet is still motivated by the desire to undo her past. Rather than waiting to find happiness, she chases it like a predator. The results of that strategy are predictably disappointing. 

“It made me fearful that people could change parts of me, without my knowledge and permission. And thus began my quest to know which of my many attributes I needed to protect, the whole of which I named scientifically ‘My Pure Self-Being.’” 

Lulu explains her strategy to protect the inner core of her being from contamination. She idealizes her inner self in much the same way Violet idealizes Lulu as a mother. Both are delusional in their assumption that any perfect state can be maintained in a world of flux. 

“I chose violets, many species of them, purple and yellow, white and purple, pink and purple. The violets were unmanageable and invaded any bare spot under a tree or bush. My mother called them Johnny-jump-up weeds.” 

Lulu discusses her initial liking for violets. The plants are unruly and refuse to be confined. They describe Lulu’s own nature as well as that of her daughter. Neither woman is willing to stand for being controlled by others. 

“‘The moment is altered as soon as I try to capture it, so for me, it’s impossible.’ How true, I thought. Moments are gone as soon as you think about them.” 

Lu Shing talks about the impossibility of capturing a single moment on canvas. While Lulu pays lip service to his observation, she fails to realize how it applies to her life. Her pursuit of Lu Shing is nothing more than an attempt to freeze time and capture a moment. 

“I felt its atmosphere as real and present, the touch of its cool air, and I had a complete understanding that this was my home, and the solitude was not loneliness but the clarity of who I was.” 

Lulu is describing her reaction the first time she sees Lu Shing’s painting. She sees the work as expressing the depths of her Pure Self-Being. She doesn’t yet realize the painting and its artist are both fake. She also doesn’t realize that what she sees in the picture is a projection of her own illusions.

“I know now it was not an ecstatic vision. There is no valley, no vale. What I felt was not even my soul. I saw a painting and I wanted to see and feel more than anyone else in the room. I wanted the novelty of a Chinese man and to fool myself into thinking he possessed Oriental Wisdom and could whisk me away from unhappiness.” 

From her adult perspective, Lulu looks back on her first reaction to the painting and Lu Shing. She admits to pursuing the same fantasy as Violet. Both want someone to deliver them from the burden of living in a less than ideal world. 

“My mother had told me she had once seen a fata morgana […] How strange that this had occurred right when I was thinking of going to China. This was a warning that I had seen an illusion of love. It was false and could change into many disguises.” 

Lulu sees a mirage that she interprets as an omen. She is correct in assuming she is following a false vision by pursuing Lu Shing to Shanghai. Despite this cosmic hint and her own better judgment, she chases her illusion anyway. 

“You cannot change thousands of years of Chinese custom about shame in the family […] There is no law you can use to disallow their philosophical outlook. Shame, honor, and obligation cannot be cast off.” 

Danner gives Lulu this advice when she arrives in Shanghai. Because she has chased an illusion across an ocean, she fails to recognize the hard realities awaiting her on the other side of the world. Shame and honor are also illusions, but they are illusions shared by an entire culture. 

“Teddy once told me that it’s natural that we feel alone, and that’s because our hearts are different from others and we don’t even know how […] If love remains despite the pain of those differences, it must be guarded as rare.” 

Danner imparts this wisdom to Lulu about the nature of true love. Both Lulu and Violet yearn for love yet reject the people who offer it because they aren’t perfect enough. Both women eventually learn to accept the love that’s offered instead of the ideal they’ve constructed in their minds. 

“While it was well executed, I did not want to be that girl with those blank eyes, unable to see anything but the painter, as if he would always be my entire world. This was not my spirit but what remained after losing it. Lu Shing did not know me. And what frightened me more: I did not know myself.” 

Lulu regards the portrait of her that Lu Shing has painted. Ironically, she is only able to grasp the reality of her relationship with him by looking at an illusion. She finally understands that she has lost herself in her infatuation with Lu Shing. 

“Two years later, we opened a place that combined the two sides of our business: a social club for Westerners, a courtesan house for men. We named it The House of Lulu Mimi in Chinese and Hidden Jade Path in English. The path was where both sides met in the middle.”

Lulu is talking about the business she started with Golden Dove. However, this quote applies to much more than a business partnership. It describes the compromise between Eastern and Western values. It could also suggest that compromise is necessary between inner ideals and outer reality. 

“I did not forgive Perpetual. But I knew that feeling of being betrayed by lies you had believed in. It was like a crack in the wall behind you that widened without your knowing it until the entire house collapsed on top of you.”

In this quote, Violet is acknowledging her part in being duped by Perpetual. She fell victim to her own fantasies of ideal love and allowed herself to walk into a trap. This is the same mistake Lulu made by following Lu Shing to Shanghai. 

“I am haunted that she might believe that I did not love her. I fear she will become like me: a girl who felt betrayed by love, who later refused love, and could not recognize it or trust it.” 

Violet writes these words in a letter to her mother. She wants to reconnect with Flora primarily because she doesn’t want her daughter to feel abandoned in the same way she did. The quote also reveals that Violet is aware of the damage she did to herself by refusing to get beyond that experience of abandonment. 

“My mother, the one I had grown up with in Shanghai, no longer existed either. She had been replaced with a new person, both a stranger and a familiar. I could start afresh in deciding whether I could trust her.” 

Violet makes this comment after reading one of Lulu’s letters regarding forgiveness toward her own parents. Both women have come to understand the frailties of human nature and aren't holding their parents accountable for being less than perfect. This newfound maturity allows them both to move forward in their relationship with one another. 

“What happened to Violet was terrible, and I’m not saying fate happens without blame. But when fate turns out well, everyone should forget the bad road that got us here.” 

Magic Gourd is telling Lulu about Violet’s life after Fairweather abandoned her. Like Golden Dove, Magic Gourd is a wise observer of the people around her. She counsels everyone in the story to stop obsessing about past wrongs and live happily in the present.