44 pages • 1 hour read
Amy TanThe Valley of Amazement
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Memory of Desire”
In August of 1912, Violet attends her first dinner party. It’s meant to attract potential bidders for her defloration six months later. Li instructs her to remain a pretty ornament and not call attention to herself. Despite this warning, Loyalty Fang, the party host, singles Violet out for attention. He asks her to sing a song, which she mangles badly, much to the delight of the other guests. Loyalty asks her to sit beside him and confesses that he knows her real identity. As a boy, Violet’s cat scratched him severely. Violet always assumed he died from infection as a result.
Loyalty’s father brought him to Lulu’s house when he was 17 to get a taste of the good life. He tells her:
He said that when I became a success, I would be able to visit however often I wanted. Just being there caused excruciating yearning for romance, and I was angry my father had shown me the delights and then denied them to me (288).
Loyalty vowed to become richer and more successful than his father and succeeded. He’s since grown complacent and needs a spark of yearning to restore his drive. He believes that Violet can bring that inspiration back into his life.
Violet is strongly attracted to Loyalty and thrilled when he offers the winning bid for her defloration. The two become lovers afterward, and Loyalty makes a contract for a year as Violet’s patron. Their relationship grows stormy when Violet’s jealousy clouds their romance. At the end of 10 months, Loyalty fails to visit anymore, though he honors the terms of their agreement through the end of the year. He tells Violet, “I was enchanted with your free spirit, and jealousy has killed that in you. You live in a prison of fear and suspicion” (319).
Although still in love with Loyalty, Violet accepts a new contract when his expires. For the next three years, her reputation as a popular courtesan grows. She is no longer self-conscious about her mixed-race parentage since Eurasian mistresses are now fashionable. By 1915, Violet is surprised to see Loyalty return. He wants to be her patron for a season. Even though she knows she will be heartbroken at the end of their affair, she accepts. When their season ends, Loyalty pledges a lifetime of friendship to Violet.
As Violet moves forward with her life, she recaptures some measure of happiness by relinquishing any expectations that she and Loyalty might have a future together. She says, “I left behind my yearnings, and I continued on with a sharper mind and clearer eyes, ready to take what was in front of me” (335).
Chapter 6 Summary: “A Singing Sparrow”
In March of 1918, many of the first-class courtesan houses have begun to accept Westerners as patrons. Loyalty prevails on Violet to meet an American friend of his named Bosson Edward Ivory III. The man prefers to be called Edward. After a short visit with Violet and a few other courtesans, he offers her a small sum of money to sleep with her. Thoroughly insulted, Violet sends Edward away. He is mortified that he didn’t understand the difference between a brothel and a courtesan house. He begs Violet to forgive him and sends her several expensive pieces of jewelry as peace offerings.
Violet consents to become Edward’s friend. They spend time getting to know one another as companions without engaging in sex. Edward says that he comes from a wealthy merchant family and married a girl who tricked him into believing she was pregnant. They lead separate lives now, and Edward has formed no definite plans regarding his direction in life. He gives Violet a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Violet finds the poems strangely compelling.
Eventually, the two become lovers, and Violet is convinced that she’s finally found the unconditional love she’s been seeking all her life. Her bliss is short-lived because Edward confesses the guilty secret that has haunted him since childhood. As a youth, he accidentally caused another boy to fall off a cliff and was never punished for the crime. Violet feels he has violated her trust in him. She says, “I would always feel betrayed. Edward would always carry guilt, and that was how it should be. We understood that, as victim, as culprit” (382).
Eventually, they talk through their feelings and decide to remain together. Shortly after this, Violet discovers she’s pregnant, and she is sure the baby belongs to Edward. He immediately wants her to leave the courtesan life and live with him as his wife. When a Chinese friend offers Edward the use of his mansion, Violet agrees to move in. She invites Magic Gourd to come along, and the two eagerly prepare for their short journey. Despite the prospect of a new life, Violet feels a sense of foreboding when she sees several bad omens: “Whenever I had tried hard to avoid bad luck, it came anyway. And whenever I had ignored the signs, the result was the same” (404).
As Edward shows her around the mansion, Violet recognizes a painting identical to one her father gave to her mother. Edward says it was painted by the owner of the house, Lu Shing. Violet is shocked when she realizes that the house belongs to her father. She explains the situation to Edward, and they agree to leave immediately, but Magic Gourd is stricken with Spanish influenza before they can make their escape.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
This segment continues the focus on sexual exploitation but also delves into Violet’s obsessive quest with finding perfect love. During Violet’s debut party, she encounters Loyalty Fang for the first time. His own sense of nostalgia causes him to associate Violet with his earliest experience at Lulu Mimi’s. For her part, Violet finds him genuinely attractive and breaks the principal rule of the professional courtesan when she falls in love with Loyalty. Her own sexual exploitation has become so ingrained that she looks forward to her defloration with no fear or disgust. In fact, she secretly cheers when Loyalty wins the bidding war for her virginity.
After they become lovers, Violet’s deep insecurities about love come to the fore. She grows jealous when Loyalty is inattentive or stays away for too many days. Her emotional neediness requires constant proofs of devotion that alienate him so that he stays away for the final two months of their sexual contract. When he takes a new contract for a season, Violet realizes that he will always be a casual admirer. With her hopes for true love dashed, she is prepared to take him at face value.
When Loyalty introduces Violet to Edward, she seems to find what she’s been seeking all her life. Edward wants to know her as a person instead of an entertaining courtesan there to satisfy his need for romance and sex. The two become lovers, but once again, Violet’s suspicions nearly wreck the relationship. When Edward confesses the dark secret that he accidentally caused another boy’s death, he destroys Violet’s illusion that he is perfect. She sees his confession as a betrayal of trust rather than the full disclosure that he intended it to be. She is also upset with another man she perceives as a traitor. Her biological father offers her the use of his mansion, but she rejects the idea. At this stage of her life, Violet seems incapable of rising above her past grievances.
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By Amy Tan
