Gish Jen’s The Love Wife: Blondie v.s. Lan

In Part One of Gish Jen’s The Love Wife, the difference between Lan and Blondie is quite subtle. Blondie, who is the white as well as the Carnegie’s wife, is earnestly about getting involved in the Chinese family. Blondie knows some of Chinese. Besides, as Blondie mentions the two types of visitors, forks and chopsticks, she used to be a fork but now attempts to prove that she will finally and truly be the chopsticks (Jen 112). Blondie considers that she had undergone the process from the Western culture to the Chinese culture after getting married in the Wong’s family by bravely making a great effort to try such as eating snake, eel or rabbit’s ears that the eating habit mostly seen in Chinese culture. When Mama Wong is needed to be looked after in the nursing home, Blondie constantly ripples as to Mama Wong’s capricious temper with her Alzheimer’s disease. As Mama Wong nods for having some wontons, Blondie feels surprisingly elated (Jen 170). But, as Mama Wong is kept reminding Carnegie who takes a day off for not coming to see her, she becomes wildly mad, which frightens Blondie. However, Lan, who is from China, acts much as being a servant. Lan seems to keep shaping more than the role as a servant by using Chinese nature, which renders her a ground in performing Chinese characteristics. When Lan is told to be in charge of the goat, she would do it herself as a way to distance herself from Blondie’s manner (139). Although Lan regards her role as a slave who can be the goat’s oppressed workers, Lan, as a Chinese, doesn’t think it fair that a goat should have an easy life since everyday Chinese people eat bitter and every day real people thereby suffer.

Lan, the servant called by Carnegie’s mother, appears to take her role as a pleasure strongly connected to her Chinese nature. In Chapter Three, Lan acts like as if she were like the one who does not need anything. What American needs something becomes what Lan does not need anything, which makes her feel “proud she does not” (Jen 48). Such a tendency to need nothing intensifies how Lan attempts to show her perspective on sides in extreme. Lan insists on identification of truth or non-truth by differentiating the viewpoints between American and Chinese. For instance, by discussing how the Chinese see things regarding the Chinese slang, she listens to Wendy’s response but acts as if she understood Wendy’s point of view on Chinese slang by asserting that Wendy is “one hundred percent American” (Jen 49). Lan later replies with a question: “What real Chinese would ever ask that question?” (49). Not only does the Chinese slang is judged, but the cricket also is considered to be either the real Chinese or typical American ones (Jen 90-91). Compared with Blondie, who tries to engage in the norm under the Chinese family, Lan attempts to take advantage of being a Chinese as a sort of sense of superiority in that she is able to enlarge or lessen the characteristics of Chinese habits or styles.