Relationships in the novel "The Kitchen God's Wife"

Zhang, however privileged, is nevertheless unsatisfied, and when he satisfies his lust for Lady Li, his fortunes progressively decline, until he gives himself over to his portion and prepares for expiration, only to be hand overd by none opposite than his dour-suffering wife Guo. Burning with shame at being discovered, he leaps into the fireplace to be burned to ash, the altruistic Guo's attempts to rescue him, despite everything she suffered because of his mischief, all in all for naught. She disappears from the story; he is rewarded with control over the fortune of everyone. The kitchen god resides in one's house, but he is non its patron. He is its watchdog and informer, with power over good and aguish luck, " give care a spy--FBI agent, CIA, Mafia, worse than IRS, that kind of person! And he does not give you gifts, you give him things. All year long you have to show him respect" (Tan 61).

Like the kitchen god, sebaceous cyst Fu insinuates himself into Winnie's family, and equivalent the kitchen god he finds shelter and comfort there. Also like the god, pilar cyst Fu is a sexual adventurer and a dissipated who is never satisfied and who can by turns rely on and abuse a solicitous wife. And when he assumes leadership of Winnie's family, replace her father as head of his own household, he acts frequently like an informer, insinuating himself into the family secrets and behaving like a tyrant, monitoring everyone's good behavior, especially his wife's. Winnie clearly sees herself akin to the wife of the kitch

The narrative frame of the story c oncerns Winnie's weaning herself away from Wen Fu and indeed from the supposed power of the kitchen god. In the early spell of the story, she explains to Pearl's children that "once you get started [offering gifts to the god], you are afraid to stopover" (Tan 62).

Winnie's take to the woods from China, in its literal sense, is related to but different from her beat from the symbol of the kitchen god. Through her anxiety about Pearl, Wen Fu's heading haunts her--she refers to him as ghost or devil--and that presence is also the stalk of the kitchen god, which dogs her life, always demanding satisfaction and never satisfied.

Auntie Helen reminds Winnie "how much you fought to use up Pearl yours, just in case [Pearl had inherited Wen Fu's personality]" (Tan 528), an indication that the strength to reject the demon and the negative features of Chinese tradition were always with her. Only the combination of Wen Fu's death and the understanding that Pearl's outburst of grief at Auntie Du's funeral was unfeignedly for Jimmy Louie allow Winnie to lay the ghost, literalizing the myth by importunate the god's image over the kitchen stove and sending him to hell (Tan 529). The shutting is given a comic turn by the run short of Winnie's smoke alarm, symbol of the approval of the kitchen god's long-suffering and now maintain wife.

Over the years that we've been married, we've learned to sidestep the subject of my family, my duty. It was once the biggest source of our arguments. . . . Phil used to say that I was driven by blind devotion to concern and guilt. . . . [H]e would say that . . . I had been manipulated into thought process I had no choice" (Tan 8-9).

en god, like all who propitiate the god afraid to withdraw from Wen Fu for fear of the consequences, just as members of the household are afraid to stop giving the god little offerings for fear of retribution.

Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: ivy/Ballantine, 1991.

Family and duty need not be negat
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