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Little Chinese Seamstress

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Little Chinese Seamstress
Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong’s implemented the Cultural Revolution and spread perpetual fear of death during his rule in China. Educated citizens faced humiliation, exile, beatings, and millions of youths had no choice, but to relocate to the countryside for their “re-education.” He classified books as propaganda and the owners as traitors who should suffer severe consequences. In Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the narrator and Luo risk getting caught with novels in their possession so that they can continue to escape the harsh reality of their life through them. Dai Sijie chooses to specify the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Ursule Mirouët to emphasize the main theme of love, supported …show more content…
Ursule Mirouët stars Ursule and her uncle Dr. Denis Minoret who decides that Ursule should inherit all of his savings while his nephews and cousins should receive the remainder, which totals up to about half of the total fortune. This angers them into plotting to take all of the fortune for themselves. Over the course of the novel, the nephews and cousins fail to discover where Minoret hid the fortune while Ursule happily marries her love Viscount Savinien de Portenduère and lives a modest life. The importance in mentioning this novel lies in the courage found in Savinien and eventual confidence that Ursule discovered towards the end of the novel. This relates to Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, mostly through the narrator’s wish to be more courageous and the self-assuredness that the little Chinese Seamstress shows in her final act of leaving the boys.

Dai Sijie includes the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Ursule Mirouët, in order to strengthen the themes evident in his novel surrounding the narrator, the little Chinese seamstress and Luo. Each novel seals the overarching theme of the power through influence that literature has on its readers, altering a reader’s perception of the world and even introducing topics previously unknown to the
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