The Binding Chair by Kathryn Harrison (4th Estate)
Foot binding: An ancient Chinese custom of tightly binding the feet of young girls to make their feet as small as possible. The practice continued well into the beginning of the 20th century. Bound feet were considered a status symbol and also as a mark of beauty. They were also known as lotus feet.
Kathryn Harrison, the writer who shocked the world with her semi-autobiographical novel The Kiss, describing her incestuous but consenting affair with her father, has written a story set in turn of the century China. The Binding Chair opens with eleven people answering an ad placed by one Mrs. Arthur Cohen. “Whatever the name Mrs. Cohen might suggest to someone answering an ad, May would not have been it. To begin with, wasn’t Cohan a Jewish name? And there she was unmistakably Chinese.”
How does a Chinese woman end up living in France while married to an Englishman? The story flashes back to when May was five years old and she was still known as Chao-tsing. This is the year that her grandmother took charge of May’s feet. May’s mother who remembered the pain of having her own foot bound could not find the courage to do the same to her daughter. The matriarchal grandmother tells May’s mother, “The choice is this, either Chao-tsing will grow up to be the bride of a prosperous merchant, or she will be as large-footed as a barbarian and find no husband at all!”.
As May gets older, May’s traditional grandmother sets about looking for a perfect match to marry off her granddaughter. She is soon married to a rich merchant and looks forward to a bright future. Unfortunately, May discovers that she is the youngest and also the fourth wife of the man. She is also resented by the other wives and is virtually ignored by her new husband for weeks on end. When he does show up, he treats her brutally often using her as nothing more than a sex-toy.
Chao-tsing manages to escape the house with the help of one of the servants. She reaches the bright lights of Shanghai where she finds a job in a brothel. She tells the proprietress that she’s will to work and do anything for various clients under one condition - no Chinese! It is at the brothel where she meets Arthur for the first time. Their initial encounter is not quite friendly but when Arthur sees her bound foot, he becomes obsessed with them.
I have never given any thought to feet-binding and as with May’s husband Arthur, assumed it was a foot whose growth was somehow prevented. Arthur learns that this is not so. “A bound foot is a foot broken: a foot folded in the middle, toes forced down toward the heel.” I cannot make any judgments on why small feet were considered beautiful in China. American standards of beauty are suggested by the images of women we see in magazine ads or on television. In other cultures, it may be face tattoos, henna, or lip plates. In China, it was bound feet.
The relationship between May and her family sets you on an emotional rollercoaster that will at times pull at your heartstrings. The suffering women had to go through to please their families and husband is still relevant today as it was during May’s time. Fortunately, the practice of foot-binding has long been outlawed. No women should have to endure pain and suffering just to find happiness. ~Ernie Hoyt