Pavilion of Women [Hardcover]

Pearl S Buck (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: JOHN DAY CO INC (1956)
• ASIN: B000UTMR8E
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,445,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries, most often stationed in China, and from childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese. She returned to China shortly after graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1914, and the following year, she met a young agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck. They married in 1917, and immediately moved to Nanhsuchou in rural Anhwei province. In this impoverished community, Pearl Buck gathered the material that she would later use in The Good Earth and other stories of China.
Pearl began to publish stories and essays in the 1920s, in magazines such as The Nation, The Chinese Recorder, Asia, and The Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by the John Day Company in 1930. John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Pearl's second husband, in 1935, after both received divorces.

In 1931, John Day published Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth. This became the bestselling book of both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and would be adapted as a major MGM film in 1937. Other novels and books of nonfiction quickly followed. In 1938, less than a decade after her first book had appeared, Pearl won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. By the time of her death in 1973, Pearl had published more than seventy books: novels, collections of stories, biography and autobiography, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translations from the Chinese. She is buried at Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story about family, duty, and personal growth, June 11, 2004

By 

S. Becker "sminismoni" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pavilion of Women (Paperback)

Pearl S. Buck's novel tells the story of the Wu family in pre-communist China. Nobel and respected, they have lived for generations in the same tradition. Madame Wu is the mistress of this household, her whole life spent fulfilling the duties of her sex - ministering to her husband, bearing sons, dealing with servants, maintaining a smooth order in the house. But she is intelligent and deeply emotional, and has felt caged by an existence where everyone else come first.

So on her fortieth birthday, Madame Wu decides to "retire" from her duties, to find time for herself. She arranges matters in the house like pieces on a chess board - procuring a concubine for her husband, and marrying off her children, hoping they will no longer demand her attention. But her retreat brings only emptiness, until a foreign priest enters the house to tutor her son.

What follows is not a typical "forbidden love" story. Instead, "Pavillion of Women" uses the plot to explore themes of identity, self-love and what our connections with other people really mean. Madame Wu finds that freedom doesn't mean running away from duty. It involves learning to love herself first, setting her spirit free. It is then that she is able to return to her duties with a new sense of content.

The conflict between responsibility to the group and personal freedom is played out in the family, as a microcosm of China as a whole at the time. But the issues here transcend time and culture - most of us will be able to relate to them. The book is beautifully written, and I recommend it if you want a story that makes you think.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensational!, June 24, 2003

By 

Marion "[e-mail]" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Pavilion of Women (Paperback)

I love and treasure this book immeasurably. Every time I find a copy at a used book sale, I buy it and send it to my one of my women friends. Women everywhere should read this spectacular, beautifully written story of the independent, sassy Madame Wu. I thought Ms. Buck could never top "The Good Earth" but this one did it for me. I won't give a book report, just my humble opinion that this book should be on the reading list of every woman on earth....even my 20-something daughters loved the story.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A strange love story set in pre-Revolutionary China, October 8, 2001

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pavilion of Women (Paperback)

This is a strange love story. The setting is the time of Chinese nationalization, just before the Communist revolution. The main character is Madame Wu, an accomplished lady and wife of a wealthy landower. She is agelessly beautiful, she rules her household with its extended family of sons, wives and grandchildren with the cool control and wisdom learned from Chinese Tao. Her intelligence soars above everyone elses. She has has a dear friend Madam Wang, but no peer or equal. That is, until she meets Brother Andre, who seems to be a Christian monk, but is something else entirely.

Madam Wu hires the unusual Brother Andre to teach English to her son, but ends up being Andre's best student. What Andre teaches Madam Wu turns out to change her life forever.

This is a touching novel and the love story that unfolds is unusual and unforgettable. A very enjoyable, emotional book.