Dragon

The dragon motif in Paper Wife is present throughout the novel, with author Laila Ibrahim slowly altering the way she describes her protagonist’s attitude towards her inner ‘Dragon’ in order to demonstrate growth and a personality shift. Mei Ling goes from fearing the power of her Dragon to truly harnessing it in order to achieve her goals and fight for her own and her family’s survival.

At the beginning of the book, Mei Ling attempts to hide her Dragon, constantly repressing the passionate caring nature that is authentic to her in favor of a false, much meeker personality. She ponders, early on in the book, “that female Dragons were challenging wives” and that she would “need to keep her fire contained if she wanted a harmonious marriage” (11). This sentence is typical of Mei Ling’s attitude toward her unique zodiac sign throughout the first...