In the Red Candle chapter of the book, we see that one of the mothers, Lindo Jong had to get married to a boy when she was 12 years old. She married him not out of love and not because she wanted to, but her family forced her after their house had been destroyed in China. He automatically was a bad husband and form then on, she knew she had entered an unwanted bad marriage. Not only that, but the husband's mother also did not like Lindo Jong so she too wanted to make her life as miserable as possible.
“I knew what kind of husband he would be, because he made special efforts to make me cry. He complained the soup was not hot enough and then spiller the bowl as if it were an accident. He waited until I had sat down to eat and then would demand another bowl of rice,” (pg. 55).Lindo Jong had to live out part of her life attending to her horrible husband to please her family. It was unfair that it had to happen to her and that she was being treated so badly.
The trend of bad marriages also followed the daughters throughout their lifetime. Most of all the four daughters also had married bad men or were about to enter a bad marriage. For example, in Rice Husband, Lena St Clair felt as if she did not marry the right man and that he was too fair with her.
"Why do you have to be so goddamn fair!" I shouted,” (pg 164)Lena had started an argument over nothing that apparently set off fight between her and her husband. This was also not a good marriage of they couldn't settle their differences.
Another example is that one of the daughters, Rose Jordan Hsu had mentioned that she would be getting divorced with her husband because it just was not a good marriage.
Throughout the entire Joy Luck Club, we can see that marriages are not often chosen wisely and end up being horrible, and if we think about it closely, the mistakes that mothers made will be the same mistakes their daughters can make in their future.
