Lily, one of the main characters of the novel, was born into a low-class peasant family, which left her and her sisters only allowed to marry a man of the same social condition. However, to Lily's advantage, she has extremely small feet with high arches, giving her the potential to marry an upper class man and increase her family's social status. She achieves perfect feet through the harrowing process of food binding, which allows her to be matched with a high-class family, where she continues to follow the culture and tradition she is accustomed to by abstaining from food during certain holidays, creating gifts. to offer to her new family and dress in appropriate clothing for her wedding ceremony. It is not long before a laotong relationship is established by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and everlasting fidelity” (See 43). Laotong is a relationship that unites two girls for the rest of their lives as extremely similar and close sisters. This special bond between Snowflower and Lily allows them to feel what each other feels, share stories with each other, confide in each other, and give them both the opportunity to gather and share knowledge through each other that the other may not have. Her husband took his anger out on her by beating her and kept this secret from Lily, who later witnessed it as she spent several months in mountainous villages while a rebellion occurred. As was their custom, Snowflower knew that she should respect and care for her husband, even if he would not do the same for her in return. She bit her tongue when she had to talk about him, speaking only kind words and never spoke of the difficult times he had put her through. Snowflower demonstrates this by explaining to Lily, "No listen, you think my husband has evil in his heart, but he's not an evil man" (See 209). Snowflower knows that she should not accept this harsh treatment from her spouse, however she makes the final decision to accept it now that she has regained her high social status. She proves herself to be a respectable woman, as a nineteenth-century Chinese woman should. As she ages, she is wiser, becomes more soft-spoken, and has a true understanding of the difficult life she is living, although it is not under her control. With a man who beats her and an unpleasant mother-in-law, Snowflower really suffers both physically and emotionally, but she is sensible in knowing where to express her feelings, in “nu shu”. See explains: “They used nu shu to write letters, stories and poems. It was “hidden” in embroidery, weaving and fan paintings. The women wrote