Gender Inequality

Zhu’s entire story begins due to the drastic disparity between men and women within the world of the novel. However, her time as a monk and the other characters she interacts with show how this gender inequality can be overcome if women stand up for themselves.

The very beginning of the novel displays the full devastation of gender inequality and its impact on women. At first, Zhu is not even given a name, only being referred to as “The Zhu family’s second daughter” (12) or simply “the girl” (12). Her very life is an anomaly in the midst of the famine, something she is gravely aware of. She thinks, “At some point, though the girl couldn’t remember exactly when, she had become the only girl in the village… If a family had a son and a daughter and two bites of food, who would...