Language, Storytelling, and Communication Theme Analysis

As women, Lily and Snow Flower are forbidden from learning "men's writing" and instead learn nu shu, a form of writing created by and for women to communicate secretly with each other. Nu shu, however, isn't just writing in the conventional sense; it encompasses an entire cultural system that is specifically female, comprised of songs and stories meant to be performed for other women, embroidery and other textile work, and more conventional correspondence, like written prayers, stories, and autobiographies. While men's writing is logographic (each character represents a whole or part of a word), nu shu is a phonetic script, making the understanding of its written form dependent entirely on context. This idea that language can be slippery and confusing drives many of the conflicts of the novel, but the fact that language, and women's language in particular, is powerful also offers a sense of purpose to women who otherwise are considered useless.

Lily as the narrator peppers her story with asides that explain some of the intricacies of how her region's dialect informs certain cultural ideals, such as the words for "shoe" and "child" being the same, and the word for "wife" being the same as the word for "guest." Through these asides, the reader is reminded that language doesn't just describe something; through its very structure it can actually create and reinforce meaning. Lily states that as the language implies, a wife is merely a guest in her husband's home, and a guest in terms of an alien foreigner rather than someone to be respected. This builds on the idea that language is powerful and can be used to exert control, as so many of the women in the novel are treated as aliens in their husbands' homes.

In an opposite way, this concept extends to the practice of nu shu, as the language is constructed and described as one of the only ways women are able to express themselves and obtain some degree of control and power over their own lives. It allows women to communicate secretly with each other and express thoughts and desires not considered appropriate to express in any other format. Most importantly, Lily comes to realize that while nu shu is supposed to be secret from men, men certainly know of its existence and can likely read it. She realizes then that the power of nu shu comes from the fact that the female lives and struggles the script is intended to express are deemed worthless, and therefore not worth a man's time to censor.

While language at times works to control and assert power, the novel also places a great deal of emphasis on instances where language is ambiguous or misunderstood. While language is used by Lily and Snow Flower to build their relationship, it also works to tear it apart when Lily misunderstands, for example, Madame Gao's use of the word "pipe" (mistakenly understanding that Snow Flower's father uses the pipe for tobacco, rather than opium) or misreads nu shu and believes that Snow Flower has violated their laotong relationship. At Snow Flower's death, then, Lily must come to terms with the fact that she spent much of her life misunderstanding the language that was supposed to provide her with both power and emotional intimacy. This recalls the idea that language contains multiple levels of meaning and requires a great deal of nuance to understand. As Lily accepts her lack of knowledge in that realm, she learns too late that the nuance required to understand nu shu is something she should have applied to all aspects of her life.

Lily ends her life as a powerful woman, and spends her final years transcribing the stories of women who cannot read or write nu shu. During these last years especially, her lifelong education in language is completed, as she finally has the freedom and power to turn her own life into nu shu songs and stories to teach Snow Flower's granddaughter, thereby giving value to her own life and experiences through language.