Customer Reviews

Pavilion Of Women

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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.

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.

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.

After reading and thoroughly enjoying her novel, "Pavilion of Women" (written in 1948), it was not difficult for me to understand why Pearl S. Buck earned the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1938. As a natural storyteller, Buck allows one to enter the heart and mind of her main character, the beautiful and accomplished Madame Wu, so fully and painlessly by using simple explanations that seem so effortlessly illumined that they transcend the cultural differences of a mid 20th century China and allow this magnificent multi-dimensional creation to speak as a fully flesh and blood universal woman.

As the title suggests, the plot revolves around the day to day happenstances of the oppressed `pavilion of women' that provides a wealthy Chinese gentleman's `happiness' in the form of siring future generations and keeping him pleasured as befits his rank as lord and master. Madame Wu, the one and only wife, on the day of her fortieth birthday decides quite calculatingly to acquire a concubine for this husband whom she has never loved, allowing her to rid herself within the complicated etiquette of the Chinese upper class of the burden of servicing her husband conjugally. As the mother of four sons, in her eyes and in the eyes of society, she fulfilled her duty as a wife. Fully knowing that she will continue to oversee the management of all who live under her domain, she nevertheless anticipates her retirement with relish, planning to read and self-educate herself within the confines of her father-in-law's well-stocked library. As a mother and mother-in-law, she must tactfully and eloquently steer her sons and daughters-in-law towards a rich and satisfying future in a newer less understood world while still buttressing the Chinese family infrastructure to continue what she herself withholds as traditionally correct.

As China plummets towards modern thinking and communism, Madame Wu discovers that she must make concessions. Thinking to arrange the marriage of her broader-minded third son, she hires an unconventional Italian priest, Brother Andre, to teach languages and the known sciences to better endow her Fengmo with the intellectual assets he now needs to captivate a more progressive bride.

Instead, the self-disciplined Madame Wu finds that she is mesmerized by the foreigner's gentle persuasiveness. With him she explores the idea of the soul and its ever pressing quest for freedom and realizes that throughout her life thus far she played the role of a wise albeit voyeuristic manipulator rather than that of thinking and feeling woman. Her gentle yet intense spiritual love for Andre reinforces Madame Wu's innate strength and enables her to make free, wise and joyous decisions that bring a warm happiness to the inhabitants under her domain.

Bottom line: While the storyline moves along nicely, what makes "Pavilion of Women" an absolute pleasure to read is the clarity of Madame Wu's portrait that Buck allows us to form first from the inner workings of Madame Wu's mind and then from the soaring aspirations of her soul as it communes with that of Brother Andre. Buck's language flows from one `pavilion' event to the next; her style is relaxed and easy to read, the development of Madame Wu's identity both believable and beautiful. Highly recommended for its ability to entertain and depict an alien culture.

Diana F. Von Behren
"reneofc"

The Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck is a true gem of literature. It follows the story of Madame Wu, a respectable and beautiful Chinese noble, who, on her fortieth birthday, decides that she has fufilled her physical needs to her husband. Her decision causes an uproar in the household, making everyone, including herself, restless. When she hires a foreign priest, Brother Andre, to come teach her son, he introduces a new world to her through his thought-provoking preaching and words of wisdom. Through him, Madame Wu learns to make peace with herself by helping others. This book really made me think about my morals and outlook on life. That is very rare in a book. It is simply wonderful.

"Pavilion of Women" was Pearl S. Buck's first novel about an upper-class Chinese family. It's the story of Madame Wu, beautiful and intelligent, who decides on her 40th birthday that her physical duty to her husband is over and, against his will, finds him a concubine. She is as deep as he is shallow, a good wife and mother, who prides herself on having raised four sons and married off the three oldest, but she doesn't realize she has never loved her husband, until she meets her real soulmate in the person of Brother Andre, a renegade Catholic priest whom she engages to teach her son foreign languages. Madame Wu also becomes Brother Andre's pupil and learns more from him than he ever set out to teach; what Brother Andre gives Madame Wu is the priceless gift of self-knowledge. Madame Wu has been the heart and soul of her large household, totally in control in her quiet way, but she realizes that running her large household is one thing; running her family's lives is something else again, and the best thing she can do for them is help them be who they were meant to be. In Madame Wu, Pearl Buck created a remarkable character who after 40 years finally learns what it is to love.

This is my 2nd favourite Pearl Buck novel-the first being "The Good Earth".It describes in detail the everyday lives of the women of a wealthy household in the 1930's,before and during WW2 and before the rise of communism.They are pampered,waited upon and their only real duties are to satisfy the needs of their husbands and to produce sons.Despite their lives of ease, they are totally cloistered women who rarely leave the confines of the huge,multi-generational home and are ,for the most part,uneducated and completely ignorant od anything except events which happen to their immediate families. The true head of this family is a rare person of this class-an educated woman who hires a Christian priest to tutor her sons and who begins to absorb his teachings herself.I loved the rich details of their lives-the food,clothing,furnishings and all the things which made up their world. It was a wonderful read.

If you plan to read this book and do not wish to have it spoiled for you, do not read the review by "Manuela Bonfanti from Geneva".

This book is wonderful--a captivating read, and Madame Wu is possibly the most dynamic, interesting, surprising and lovable character I've ever read. The story goes much deeper than you expect it to, and is ultimately an investigation into freedom, the spirit, and the nature of love and knowledge.

I would have never picked this book up if it weren't for my book club. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down till I was finished with this book. It is a very moving and thoughtful book ~~ opening my eyes to something else that I would have never thought of reading.

This book is about Madame Wu, who decided to retire from married life at the age of 40. She suggested a concubine for her husband as she believes very strongly that his needs need to be met ~~ just not by her. Her excuse is that she didn't want to bear any more children, but that is just a public excuse, one she offered to everyone who asked. The truth is, she didn't love her husband and wanted to retire from that part of her marriage. Needless to say, it unsettled the entire family ~~ even the concubine was unsettled. It reverberated throughout the entire book till the very end, when everyone seems to have moved onto their own problems.

This is a book on a busy wealthy Chinese family. It is about traditions and ideas, non-traditions, love and finding purpose in life. It is about family relationships between father, son, mother, son, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, friendships, and even between mistress and servant.

Madame Wu never thought she'd find peace and happiness till one of her sons' instructors came along. He was a Jesuit priest and they struck up a friendship based on conversations (which she remembered after his death). He literally changed her life and thought process. From being a woman who always did what she was told, she was liberated to being a free-thinking woman who strove to find peace in her soul.

It is a book that I would recommend to all readers ~~ and it is definitely a book for a book club to discuss! It is a timeless classic novel ~~ and definitely a great introduction to an author that I have heard about but never have read. I can't wait to read her other books!

3-30-07