... that her aunt decides to kill herself and her baby together in order to spare the child a life without family or purpose. Kingston also notes that the baby was probably a girl, and as such would already have been considered practically useless to society "a theme that reappears throughout ... sets up a number of dichotomies and conflicts: between private and public, frivolity and necessity, the individual's need for expression and society's need for control. As she imagines what old world China was like, she paints a picture of a repressive, strictly ordered society in which people wer...

• Word Count: 6134
• Approx Pages: 25