The Binding Chair - Kathryn Harrison

This novel follows the life of May, a Chinese woman whose feet were bound against her will at the age of five. Her grandmother, Yu-ying, tells her to be quiet so that they can tell potential suitors "She never cried out" and never made a fuss. May is forced to be the fourth wife of a rich merchant and is very unhappy, so she hatches a plan to run away - taking revenge on Yu-ying as she makes her way to bustling Shanghai. In time, May marries into a Jewish family and develops a close relationship with her niece, Alice. The novel opens with the two of them in Nice, where May is beginning to take swimming lessons. The novel is told through a series of ...

The Binding Chair is written by K. Harrison and is an enthralling book that will keep you hooked from the beginning. The storyline focuses on the life of a chinese girl, May, who after escaping her family who make her uphold painful chinese traditions (including the crunching experience of foot binding) she finds that her new husband is not who he seems to be - having various wives and not consummating their marriage - due to her unhappiness May runs away on the back of the gardner and ends up in Shanghai, where she turns to prostitution. It is here that May learns French and English, to better her chances in the future - when one of her customers becomes a suitor and ...

The Binding Chair sounds rather nasty and it is, not the book, the chair. Females in China had it hard in the nineteenth century; if you have read White Swans you will know what I mean. You haven't? Well the tradition was that young Chinese girls had their feet bound, but bound doubled back, toes to sole of the foot, so the foot broke and it formed into a tiny petite doll like shape as it tried to grow in this bound form. The chair, well for May, this is where here feet were bound, by her grandmother in the family Binding Chair. Not pleasant you say, no I agree. The Binding Chair, by Kathryn Harrison is a fictional account of May's life following ...