Duty vs. Self-Fulfillment: Tan Yunxian's Struggle to Heal and Obey

The Thematic Claim

In Lady Tan's Circle of Women, Lisa See explores a contradiction at the heart of fifteenth-century Chinese womanhood: a woman's duty to family—filial piety, marriage, bearing sons—is meant to erase the self, yet true self-fulfillment arises not from rebellion but from repurposing those very duties. Yunxian does not choose between being a wife and being a healer; she redefines each role so that healing becomes an expression of duty and duty becomes the vessel for her calling. The novel argues that for women in a rigid patriarchal system, self-fulfillment can only be achieved through the performance of duty, not in opposition to it.

The Conflict Established: Milk Days and the Mother's Death

The opening chapter introduces the tension. Eight-year-old Yunxian learns the four phases of a woman's life from her mother, Respectful Lady, while enduring the aftereffects of footbinding. The lesson is interrupted when Respectful Lady collapses from a foot infection. Yunxian becomes the go-between for the male doctor, yet despite her efforts, her mother dies at twenty-eight, uttering "To live is to suffer." This event plants two competing seeds: Yunxian must fulfill her duty as a daughter and future wife, but she also witnesses the lethal consequence of a woman's body being sacrificed to male expectations. Her helplessness fuels a hidden desire to heal—a desire that initially seems incompatible with the quiet obedience her mother preached.

In later years, when Yunxian moves to her husband's home, the conflict deepens. In the chapter "A Container for the Universe," she struggles to please Lady Kuo, who pressures her to produce a son. Yunxian feels the weight of her duty: she rises before dawn, serves tea, and performs wifely chores, yet she is consumed by loneliness. She recalls her grandmother's teaching that it is not enough to be quiet—a woman must hide her feelings and wait for the right moment to "leap, swim, or fly." This philosophy becomes the bridge between duty and self-fulfillment: obedience is not submission but a form of strategic patience.

Rice-and-Salt Days: Healing as a Hidden Duty

During her rice-and-salt days, Yunxian practices medicine in secret, treating the women and children of the Garden of Fragrant Delights. She records cases in her notebook, never including names to protect privacy. This work is not a rejection of her wifely role; rather, she frames it as an extension of her duty. When she treats a scullery maid's scrofula with moxibustion, she does so because a good wife maintains the health of the household. Yet the act of healing also nourishes her own spirit. The notebook becomes a private space where her intellect and compassion can flourish. Here, duty and self-fulfillment are not opposites but layers: outward compliance conceals inner purpose.

The complexity deepens when Yunxian must confront her husband Maoren's concubines. According to Confucian norms, she must tolerate them and even facilitate their presence to produce heirs. However, when a concubine is wronged—as in the case of Miss Chen, who becomes pregnant by coercion—Yunxian intervenes. She writes to her father, exposing the injustice. Maoren later scolds her, saying she should have consulted him first. Her father also reprimands her for upsetting the household power balance. Yet Yunxian feels a deeper duty: not just to the family's reputation but to the truth and to the vulnerable woman. This moment reveals that duty can be interpreted in multiple ways. The family's version of duty demands silence; Yunxian's version demands action. She chooses action, and in doing so, she fulfills her own moral code while technically still performing the duty of a matriarch who maintains order—only her order includes justice.

The Turning Point: Grandmother Ru's Death and Recovery

The clearest intersection of duty and self-fulfillment occurs after Grandmother Ru's death from a breast lump. Grandmother bequeaths her medical books to Yunxian. Devastated, Yunxian falls into a depression and fever. Meiling cares for her, but she worsens. On the brink of death, Yunxian has a vision of Grandmother scolding her and instructing her to follow a formula on page fifty-eight. She does so and recovers. Then she confronts Lady Kuo about the concubine and Doctor Wong, extracting a confession and permission to practice medicine openly. She then extracts a parasitic worm from Lady Kuo and treats Meiling's infertility, helping her conceive.

This sequence is pivotal because Yunxian's healing of herself is the prerequisite for her public healing of others. She must first save herself from despair—a despair caused by the loss of her mentor and the suppression of her calling. By following the vision, she honors both her grandmother's literal instructions and the spirit of medical duty. The confrontation with Lady Kuo is not a rebellion but a negotiation within the existing power structure. Yunxian does not demand freedom; she asks for permission to do what she has always done, now in the open. She uses her skills as a healer to serve her mother-in-law's health, thereby fulfilling her duty as a daughter-in-law while simultaneously claiming her identity as a doctor.

Sitting Quietly: The Matriarch Who Breaks Rules

Nineteen years after the smallpox outbreak, Yunxian has entered the "sitting quietly" stage but remains the active matriarch. She breaks tradition by taking wives and daughters to the Dragon Boat Festival while keeping concubines home. This decision flips the old custom: previously, concubines accompanied the men; now wives and daughters get the privilege. Her justification is a desire for harmony: "let the wives tantalize their husbands and make the husbands woo their wives." She frames the change as improving reproduction and domestic peace—an argument rooted in duty to the family's survival. Yet the unspoken truth is that she is exercising her own preference for justice and enjoyment. She also brings the elderly women, including her mother-in-law, who has always wanted to attend. Lady Kuo's hidden desire can now be achieved because Yunxian, as the head woman, has the authority to grant it.

In this stage, Yunxian is both the embodiment of duty—she manages the budget, oversees construction, supervises servants, arranges weddings and funerals—and the agent of her own vision. She does not sit and wait for death; she "presides over a four-generation household." Her self-fulfillment is not a private pleasure but the public exercise of her capabilities. When Meiling urges her to write a medical book, she initially resists, citing the impropriety of a woman publishing. Eventually she compiles thirty-one cases and publishes Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor. This act is the ultimate synthesis: writing a book fulfills her duty to share knowledge for the benefit of future women, and it fulfills her own need to leave a legacy. The book is an act of service that also secures her individual voice.

Symbols and Supporting Characters

The lotus-plant symbology in Lotus: No Mud, No Lotus mirrors Yunxian's journey: beauty and purity grow from the mud of constraint. The bound feet symbolize duty that becomes pain and, paradoxically, a mark of status. Yunxian's own feet bind her to women's expected roles, yet she turns that confinement into a vantage point, treating women whose feet cause similar suffering. The snake shedding its skin represents her repeated transformations: from daughter to wife, from hidden healer to published doctor.

Supporting characters illustrate different resolutions to the duty vs. self-fulfillment dilemma. Meiling becomes a midwife, a role that allows her independence but requires her to live in a separate household from her husband. She achieves fulfillment but at the cost of marital intimacy. Grandmother Ru modeled the integration: she was a healer within her home, yet she never challenged the boundaries of her gender. Miss Zhao finds self-fulfillment through loyalty and teaching, but she remains a concubine with limited agency. Lady Kuo embodies duty so completely that she suppresses her own desires until old age. Maoren Yang represents the male perspective: he values duty to family lineage but also admires Yunxian's abilities, giving her space to practice.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not present a simple victory of self over duty. Yunxian's fulfillment comes at a cost. Her son Lian dies young; her grandson is beheaded in a political purge, ending the male line. The book itself—Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor—disappears from circulation for decades, only to be reprinted by her great-nephew. This ending undercuts any triumphal narrative. Yunxian's life of balancing duty and self-fulfillment cannot guarantee the family's survival or the permanence of her work. The postscript notes that her later cures were never written down, and her notebooks may have been destroyed by servants. The implication is that the struggle is ongoing and fragile. A woman must constantly renegotiate the terms of duty, and self-fulfillment is never a final state but a series of small victories within an unyielding system.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Yunxian's response to her mother's death shape her understanding of duty versus self-fulfillment?
Yunxian feels guilt and helplessness when her mother dies from a foot infection. This event teaches her that the duty of obedience to male doctors—who could not treat women directly—leads to preventable deaths. She internalizes a duty to become knowledgeable enough to save others, which becomes the seed of her self-fulfillment as a healer.

2. Why does Yunxian choose to write her medical book despite cultural restrictions against women publishing?
Meiling urges her to write so that her knowledge can benefit future generations. Yunxian initially hesitates because it violates norms for a woman. She ultimately writes because she sees it as a duty to share her thirty-one cases, but the act also fulfills her personal need to leave a legacy and assert her authority as a doctor.

3. How does the Dragon Boat Festival episode illustrate Yunxian's balance of duty and personal desire?
Yunxian breaks custom by taking wives and daughters to the festival while keeping concubines home. She justifies it as a way to improve marital harmony and fertility, which serves the family's duty. But the decision also fulfills her own desire for fairness and enjoyment, as well as Lady Kuo's hidden wish to attend.

4. In what way does the symbol of the lotus relate to the theme of duty and self-fulfillment?
The lotus grows from mud, just as Yunxian's self-fulfillment grows from the mud of Confucian duty. She does not transcend the system; she uses its constraints as fertile ground for her healing practice. The beauty of the lotus is inseparable from the mud, just as her identity as a doctor is inseparable from her roles as wife and mother.

5. What is the novel's final judgment on whether duty and self-fulfillment can be reconciled?
The ending is ambiguous. Yunxian lives to ninety-six and publishes her book, but her son dies young and her grandson is executed, ending the male line. Her book disappears temporarily. This suggests that reconciliation is possible but precarious. Self-fulfillment does not guarantee lasting success; duty to family can be thwarted by forces beyond control. The novel values the effort to balance both pursuits even when outcomes are uncertain.