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 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Blue Disease”
After Magic Gourd is stricken with influenza, she receives treatment from both a Chinese and a Western doctor. Just as she recovers, Violet comes down with the same illness. As Violet begins to recover, Edward also succumbs to a mild case of the flu.
Violet writes an angry letter to her father, accusing him of cowardice and abandonment. He writes back, offering an apology without any excuses for his behavior. He intends to give Violet the mansion in his will. At first, she’s inclined to reject the bequest, but Edward convinces her to accept the property. Violet says, “My rage toward my mother and him used to consume me. They could never sufficiently compensate me. How could they return the life I should have had? But now I had the life I always would have wanted” (419-20). Although her anger toward Lu Shing abates, she tells Edward to hide any future letters from her father until she asks to read them.
By the summer of 1918, the epidemic subsides, and peace is declared in Europe. In January of the following year, Violet’s baby girl is born. Edward decides to call her Flora. The little family lives happily for a brief time until Edward falls sick again. He has contracted a much more virulent form of influenza and then develops pneumonia. As Violet watches helplessly, he dies.
When police arrive to return a piece of stolen jewelry, they ask about Edward’s funeral arrangements. With the quarantine in effect, his body cannot be returned to America. Violet boldly claims she is his wife, Minerva, and that she will notify the family in the States herself. Violet says she has lost her passport, and the police innocently volunteer to get her a replacement. After the police leave, Violet and her servants bury Edward in the backyard under his favorite tree. Violet says, “After they left, I dug up the violets that lined the pathway to the house, and I replanted them so that they covered his grave” (440). She rereads the first Walt Whitman poem that Edward showed her: “Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel if by yourself” (440).
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Two Mrs. Ivorys”
In March of 1919, a lawyer and two women visit Violet. These are Edward’s mother-in-law and his real wife. They’ve discovered Violet’s real identity and have claimed both Flora and the inheritance that Edward left for her. Violet has no legal grounds to help her daughter. She wants to contact her father, but his business has gone bankrupt, and he has returned to America.
While sorting through Edward’s papers, Violet comes across an unread letter from Lu Shing. He explains that Lulu was duped into returning to America and believing Violet was dead. She never reunited with Lu Shing or her son. She wrote to tell Lu Shing that she had only one child and grieved the loss of her every day. The letter gives Violet a sense of closure about her parents. She concludes, “I knew now the nature of two people whom I had reviled for so many years. They were simply weak, selfish, and careless of others. I wished to push them out of my mind” (476).
Violet and Magic Gourd are once again homeless and penniless. They consider starting a teahouse but don’t have enough money to purchase one. Violet swallows her pride and contacts Loyalty for help. He suggests she return to the House of Vermillion with Loyalty as her patron. He would only require her to give him English lessons because he now needs that skill in his business. Once Violet is re-established as a courtesan, she and Loyalty go back to their old routine of making love and arguing. Violet realizes she will never find lasting love with Loyalty because she can now compare their relationship to the genuine love she shared with Edward. Violet thinks, “To finally understand that was a victory over my own self” (485).
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
This set of chapters details the period in Violet’s life when she finds true love and some measure of understanding of her parents’ motives. Because of the influenza epidemic, the family is forced to stay in Lu Shing’s house. Written correspondence becomes prominent in Chapter 7 when Violet finally writes to her father to accuse him of abandonment. This offers a certain amount of catharsis, but his response to her is even more significant. In his letter, Lu Shing offers the vital information that Lulu never meant to leave Violet behind. Both parents are clearly remorseful and express that sentiment in their correspondence to one another and to Violet. While she isn’t ready to forgive either one, their letters give her the opportunity to examine their frailties at a distance. The physical distance separating them gives her a more detached perspective on the entire situation and allows her to view their actions in a less vindictive light.
In an ironic twist, Chapter 8 shows Violet making the same mistake for which she condemns her parents. She allows Flora to be taken from her just as Teddy was taken from Lu Shing, and Violet was taken from Lulu. East meets West in a confrontation between the real Mrs. Ivory and Violet, the false Mrs. Ivory. Minerva has tracked Violet all the way to Shanghai to exert her rights over the baby. The ambiguous names in Flora’s legal papers allow Minerva to capitalize on a legal loophole and claim the child and her substantial inheritance.
The motif of flowers appears briefly in this segment when Violet transplants the flowers of the same name and places them on Edward’s grave. Shortly after this, she goes back to her life of a wayward flower by returning to the House of Vermillion as a courtesan.
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By Amy Tan
