Pearl Buck’s 1931 novel, The Good Earth, illustrates the great value that the farmer, Wang Lung, places on women’s outward beauty, particularly on the appearance of youth. The novel relates Wang Lung’s opinions and treatment of his wife, O-lan, and his mistresses, Lotus and Pear Blossom. Unlike O-lan, Lotus and Pear Blossom have hair, skin, and other features that Wang Lung considers youthful. Wang Lung values Lotus and Pear Blossom for their youthful beauty, and treats them with more kindness.

O-lan

Wang Lung first sees O-lan, the bride his father chooses for him, and thinks she is not at all beautiful. After many years of marriage, his wife’s appearance pleases him even less. He sees:

…a dull and common creature, who plodded in silence without thought of how she appeared to others. [Wang Lung] saw for the first time that [O-lan’s] hair was rough and brown and unoiled and that her face was large and flat and coarse-skinned, and her features too large altogether and without any sort of beauty or light. Her eyebrows were scattered and the hairs too few, and her lips were too wide, and her hands and feet were large and spreading. (p. 99)

The rough, dry texture of O-lan’s skin and hair, and her large size, displease Wang Lung because they are not youthful qualities. Wang Lung allows his judgment of O-lan’s appearance to dictate how he treats her. When O-lan is heavily pregnant with their first child, Wang Lung expects her to work in his fields as normal. On the day she gives birth, she “began to cut more and more slowly as noon wore on to afternoon and evening, and he turned to look at her with impatience” (p. 22). Even O-lan’s pregnancy does not persuade Wang Lung to demand less work from her. Wang Lung also speaks to O-lan harshly. He tells her how plain she looks and, “Although in his heart he was ashamed that he reproached this creature who through all the years had followed him faithfully as a dog…he could not stem the irritation in his breast and he went on ruthlessly…” (pp. 99-100). Despite O-lan’s hard work and devotion to their family, Wang Lung finds her so unattractive that he shows her no mercy.

Lotus

While O-lan does not impress him, Wang Lung feels differently about Lotus. Wang Lung visits a brothel, and when he sees Lotus, her beauty amazes him:

If one had told him there were small hands like these he would not have believed it, hands so small and bones so fine and fingers so pointed with long nails stained the color of lotus buds, deep and rosy. And if one had told him that there could be feet like these, little feet thrust into pink satin shoes no longer than a man’s middle finger, and swinging childishly over the bed’s edge - if anyone had told him he would not have believed it. (pp. 105-106)

Lotus’s fine bones, and small hands and feet, fit Wang Lung’s understanding of meek, feminine beauty. Wang Lung brings Lotus to live with him as his mistress, but before she comes, Wang Lung promises Lotus that “she shall do no work of any kind in [his] house but she shall wear only silken garments and eat shark’s fins if she will every day” (p. 113). Lotus’s beauty satisfies Wang Lung, and not only does he spares her from any labor, he also happily provides her with expensive luxuries. When food becomes limited one year, “Only to Lotus he gave secretly sugar and oil, because she was not accustomed to hardship” (p. 161). Lotus enjoys privileges in the house, even above Wang Lung’s children. Lotus’s delicate appearance inspires Wang Lung to favor her and treat her delicately.

Pear Blossom

As Lotus grows older, Wang Lung turns to a younger woman. When Wang Lung is almost seventy, and his slave, Pear Blossom, not yet eighteen, Wang Lung takes Pear Blossom as another mistress:

…He was ashamed, and yet half proud too, as one feels himself who is still lusty and a man when others hold him to be only grandfather…Pear Blossom sat silently on the other side of the table from him, and her hands were folded and quiet in her lap. Sometimes she looked at Wang Lung, fully and without coquetry as a child does, and he watched her and was proud of what he had done. (pp. 202-203)

Pear Blossom’s girlishness attracts Wang Lung, and he appreciates how innocently she defers to him. Her youthful beauty, he feels, reflects well on him, and is a source of pride. Pear Blossom’s appearance exempts her from any hard work: “…because she was delicate always they had petted her and allowed her only…to do the lesser things…” (pp. 191-192). When she becomes a teenager, Wang Lung “watched the maid incessantly as she came and went and without his knowing it the thought of her filled his mind and he doted on her” (p. 119). Wang Lung naturally affords Pear Blossom attention and generosity because her features endear her to him.

Wang Lung considers Pear Blossom and Lotus youthful, beautiful, and thus worthy of gentle treatment. As Wang Lung’s mistresses, Pear Blossom and Lotus are able to live restful days and receive gifts such as special foods and clothes. In contrast, Wang Lung sees only ugliness when he looks at his wife O-lan. According to Wang Lung, O-lan’s appearance warrants fieldwork and unpleasant words. In The Good Earth, Wang Lung allows his opinions of beauty, and his preference for youth, to determine the quality of the three women’s lives.

Questions

Why do people find beauty valuable?

Do you think a person’s appearance affects how you treat the person?

Based on more physical descriptions of O-lan, Lotus, and Pear Blossom in the chart below, do you see any other qualities, besides youth, that Wang Lung considers beautiful?

Physical Descriptions of O-lan, Lotus, and Pear Blossom
O-lan	Lotus	Pear Blossom
“She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color...” (p. 13).	“...one most beautiful, a small, slender thing, a body light as a bamboo and a little face as pointed as a kitten’s face...hand as delicate as the tendril of a fern uncurled” (p. 103).	“Now this pale slave was called Pear Blossom and the one Wang Lung had bought in a famine year when she was small and piteous and half-starved...” (p. 192).
“He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face - a brown, common, patient face.” (p. 13).	“That little one - that one with the pointed chin and the little small face, a face like a quince blossom for white and pink...” (p. 105).	“Then Wang Lung raised the maid gently and she stood before him, drooping and pale, and he saw that she had a little, soft, oval face, egg-shaped, exceedingly delicate and pale…” (p. 193).
“She was as brown as the very soil itself” (p. 19).	“...her hand was...curling and fine and white as milk” (p. 106).	“...it was true that the girl was very pretty and pale as a pear blossom, and seeing this, something stirred in his old blood that had been quiet these ten years and more” (p. 196).
“It seemed to him that she was altogether hideous, but the most hideous of all were her big feet…” (p. 100).	“...[Wang Lung] saw [Lotus’s] round eyes, the shape of apricots, so that now at last he understood what the story-tellers meant when they sang of the apricot eyes of the beauties of old” (p. 106).	“...he was satisfied to feel her light youth against his heavy old flesh...” (p. 201).
“...her breasts had grown flabby and pendulous with many children and had no beauty…” (p. 100).	“She swayed upon her little feet and to Wang Lung there was nothing so wonderful for beauty in the world as her pointed little feet and her curling helpless hands” (p. 117).	“...her delicate pale face was rosy as a peach and she hung her head and crept about on her little silent feet…” (p.202).

References

Buck, P.S. (2012). The Good Earth. Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. (Original work published 1931).