Genre: Autobiography presenting reflection and information about her early life.
Voice: 1st person, reflective and emphasising her emotional response. Highly descriptive vocabulary choice helps to convey her sensations.
Purpose: To convey the entrapment of a female childhood in a patriarchal society such as Hong Kong in the 1950s.
Structure:
1: Setting: school, claustrophobic with an impending typhoon suggesting trouble on the way. Yen Mah is an outsider, not interested in Monopoly and therefore, by extension with business.
2: The summons. She is ‘full of foreboding’ and does not recognise (know about?) the new family home – the chauffeur’s careless disdain serves to emphasise her lowly position in this family. Father has remarried and she is regarded as surplus.
3: The home: no one but a servant to greet her, she approaches the ‘Holy of Holies’ suggesting father’s God-like status within the home.
4: The meeting. She is terrified and suspects father’s bonhomie as a ‘ruse’. There seems to be little trust here. He is thrilled since she has given him ‘face’ with C.Y. Tung. She is careful in the interview to remain modest and demure.
5; Father sees a chance to be rid of her and offers her to go to university in the UK. SHe opts for Literature, but he has other plans, based solely on her gender: ‘obstetrics’. She agrees and thus begins her escape. The patriarch has the final say. Perhaps the female writer has the last laugh?