Ning Lao T'AI-T'AI Analysis

    Poverty has a huge impact on Ning’s path of life. She and her husband are beggars and go out each day begging for money. They need to be able to feed themselves as well as their two young children. As she said, “One day, when the ground was wet with melting snow, I found that even with three pairs of shoes on my feet were not covered. The bare flesh showed through” (p.631). This cold wet day was the day that led her life spiraling down. Due to the limited amount of coverage, she could get on her feet she let her husband go out with the baby on his own to beg for money. He returned late that night without the baby saying to his wife, “I have sold her” (p. 632). She did not have a lot of control over her life. The poverty she dealt with every day had taken a lot of that control away from her. Especially when her daughter was sold the second time, she was not able to get her back. Ning was guilted into the fact that she would not have been able to provide the best life for the child being so poor and having a terrible husband that constantly wanted more money no matter what it took.

    As written in a passage from A Daughter of Han, “Old people tell us that her husband is more important to a woman than her parents. A woman is with her parents only part of her life, they say, but she is with her husband forever” (p.634). I believe this quote explains exactly why the mother, Ning, believed and helped her husband get away with so much. She doesn’t believe the talk about her husband wanting to sell her child, then when her child does get sold, she helps him get away from the people wanting their money back. Ning mistakenly continues to trust her husband not to sell her baby again and yet he does. She doesn’t leave him until the second time it happens because as the quote explains she hold on to her husband because that’s who is supposed to be with her forever. Ning does not want to believe that somehow this could not be true anymore. She chooses to not give up on her husband knowing that in the back of her mind that he is not a good husband or father. 


Word Count: 404

Comments

  1. livvcastroJanuary 31, 2021 at 3:15 PM

    Emmy,
    I like the point you made where you said that the poverty she faced had taken a lot of control away from her life. I found it interesting that at the end of the excerpt she mentions how beggars have freedom because they don't have to rely on anybody but themselves. I also agree with the way you interpreted the quote about how a husband is more important to a woman than her parents. In Ning’s society she is expected to put her husband first, which is why she lets him get away with so much before she leaves him. She believes that she is supposed to be with her husband forever even though everybody tells her that he is no good.

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