1469, China. Little Tan Yunxian has just had her feet bound and is receiving instruction from her mother on how to be the perfect wife and mother when she leaves her Milk Days and enters her Hair-Pinning Days, and never, ever to bring shame upon her husband or her family.

And then her mother dies of an infection caused by her bound feet. Interesting juxtaposition of events, and not the last of this narrative.

Yunxian’s friends includes Meiling, Midwife Shi’s daughter; Grandmother Ru, a doctor, who trains Yunxian to become one; Mizz Zhao, her father’s concubine and the mother of his only son; Poppy her servant; the ship’s female captain whose affliction Yunxian cures; even her jealous, manipulative, obstructionist mother-in-law, Lady Kuo, who Yunxian cures of tapeworm (seriously yucky scene) form the circle of women who occupy the circle of Yunxian’s life.

It is a life made all the more difficult because of the status of women as mere property, but Yunxian and her circle of women will find a way around the rules, made by men of course, not the least of which keep a midwife from any sight or touch of blood so that they cannot even be in the room with the mother delivering her child. Grandmother Ru says

When I look for patterns in the human body…I focus on that most common of feelings, which–“
“Anger,” I finish for her. “Often when I get to the root of a woman’s ailments, anger is the spark, the fuel, and the creator of ash.”

And no wonder. One of Yunxian’s duties is to bind the feet of her three daughters, and she knows how painful and dangerous it will be for them and how they will never be able to walk normally, always be at risk of falling and breaking a bone, as happens to White Jade, one of her grandfather’s concubines. White Jade is no longer deemed beautiful enough to keep and is summarily shown the door. Meiling is nearly killed when she, first, takes drugs meant for Yunxian, and then delivers her stillborn child in front of the Empress, for which the Emperor punishes her almost unto death for subjecting the Empress to such a sight. Later, Yunxian engineers an inquest presided over by her own father into a murder and an attempted murder, in which justice is minimally done. Anger, yes, a lot of it, and, as Grandmother Ru says, sadness, too.

But Yunxian and her circle live on, nurturing, supporting, comforting each other, and conspiring behind the men’s backs to foil the patriarchy and survive.

I’ve been lucky to have been cared for and loved since childhood by a circle of women. Now it’s time for me to create a wider circle, so I can do for my daughters and other women in the household what Grandmother, Miss Zhao, Meiling, and even Poppy have done for me.

Eventually, she writes a book about her cases.

I want to write about those problems that stem solely from being a woman. Oh, our feet may take different shapes and mark us by class, but we share breasts and the travails of the child palace. We are connected through blood and Blood. We also share the same emotions. When suffering, how can a woman not feel despair, frustration, or anger–whether rich or poor, educated or illiterate, childless or a mother?…we are all trapped to some extend by our physical and emotional selves, but each woman is trapped in a different way.

Which becomes Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor, which is a real book, a copy of which was found still in print (in English!) by Lisa See, and which was written by the real Lady Tan, a real midwife in China in that time, and which inspired this novel.

See also The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, about a midwife 300 years later and half a world away, published also this year. Yet another interesting juxtaposition of events, and all to the benefit of the reader.

Book Review Monday Chatter Lady Tan's Circle of Women Lisa See