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Part Three: Chapter Three
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Secrecy and Misunderstanding
Memory, Culture, and the Past
Storytelling
Women’s Solidarity
Summary
Analysis
It’s August 12. Ruth sits in her cubbyhole and listens to foghorns blow outside. Though she sits silently, she has her voice, since “her ability to speak is not governed by curses or shooting stars or illness.” Ruth knows this now and decides to be silent by choice. Instead, she chooses to speak through her writing. Ruth gazes at the photograph of Precious Auntie and wonders if she could ever have imagined having a granddaughter with a loving husband, two girls, a house, and a happy, good life.
August 12 is normally when Ruth loses her ability to speak. This year, Ruth keeps her voice. Her remark that “her ability to speak is not governed by curses or shooting stars or illness” reflects her decision to cleanse herself of the inherited traumas that have kept her (and LuLing and Precious Auntie before her) stunted and beholden to fear, anxiety, and shame. Ruth's newfound confidence teaches her that she alone holds the power to author her life and use her voice.
Themes
LuLing had always been obsessed with dying, curses, and the past. Although Luling still remembers the past, she doesn’t focus on the sad parts anymore. Now, she remembers the love Precious Auntie had for her, too.
LuLing’s recovery mirrors Ruth’s. Both women have chosen to forgive themselves for the hurt they have caused their mothers, and also to forgive their mothers for the hurt they have caused them in return. The love their mothers had for them rises above the dull memory of pain. They revise the past to resemble something they can live with in the present.
Themes
LuLing called Ruth the other day to apologize for the bad things she’d put her through in childhood. She expressed her wish that they both could forgive, forget, and move on together. Ruth cried after hanging up with her mother, but they were tears of happiness. As she stares at the photo of her Precious Auntie, Ruth thinks about all the women who have made her the woman she is today. She thinks about how “they wanted her to get rid of the curses.” Ruth returns to her desk, which has “become[] her sand tray,” and writes her life story: for her grandmother, her mother, and herself.
LuLing’s apology is bittersweet for Ruth. On the one hand, it’s what she’s wanted to hear for years. On the other hand, it’s coming years too late, and LuLing’s dementia will likely prevent her from remembering the exchange. But Ruth somehow knows the apology is genuine, if fleeting. She accepts her mothers’ efforts as enough, which is something she had been unwilling to do for much of her life. When Ruth observes how Precious Auntie and LuLing had “wanted her to get rid of the curses,” she alludes to the sacrifices these women endured so their daughters might enjoy life on their own terms rather than remain beholden to the past. Seeing herself as a descendent of these resilient women gives Ruth the confidence to write her own book rather than revise the words of others. In committing her family’s story to paper, she celebrates and makes peace with the women who gave her life, and she ensures that history remembers their voices, names, and stories.
Themes
