“How She Made Comfort for Them All”: Reflections on Caregiving in the Works of Pearl S. Buck

Introduction

I was introduced to the works of Pearl S. Buck by my grandmother, Dorothy. Like Pearl Buck, my grandmother was a writer. In the workplace, she authored department newsletters as an Equal Opportunity Employment Officer with the federal government . At home, she annotated her trusty encyclopedia with copious notes that she would often reference when completing her daily crossword puzzle. One year, she committed her most precious childhood memories to paper and distributed copies of her self-published autobiography as Christmas gifts.

Like Pearl Buck, Dorothy was a mother. The births of her 10 children spanned the years of the baby boom: 1946 to 1964. In 1974, Dorothy became a caregiver in a different capacity when her oldest daughter sustained a traumatic brain injury that required her constant care. Loving and supporting a child with a disability was another experience my grandmother shared with her favorite author.

I grew up next door to my grandmother. When I was young, she helped care for me and my siblings. And when she grew old, my siblings and I helped our mother care for her. We changed her socks and laid warm washcloths on her tired eyes. We served her meals. And when she stopped eating, we moistened her lips with water. In 2018, my grandmother died at home in the loving embrace of her family at the age of 95.

Just two years later, as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the United States and the rest of the world, we caregivers watched as the rest of the country seemed to catch on to what we already knew: first, that the effectiveness of our American system of government, our economy, and industry all depend upon a massive care infrastructure for our children, our elders, and those with disabilities, and second, that, for generations, women have disproportionately borne the physical, emotional, and financial burden of caregiving, which, for the purposes of this paper, I will define as being directly responsible for meeting another’s corporal needs – including feeding, clothing, and comforting during illness (Boyd et al. 2022, 406-13; Lewis 2021, 1–12; McGowan 2024).

In the midst of this new-found societal awareness, caregivers and their allies seized the moment, taking to social media to offer both encouragement and advice to their peers. Writers, filmmakers, and artists have since contributed to the conversation by sharing stories centered around caregiving. Together, these stakeholders have raised our collective consciousness of a deeply important yet oft-overlooked issue – one that has impacted or will impact most American families.^[1]

During this time of fear and uncertainty, when I was missing my grandmother terribly, I picked up my copy of The Good Earth, knowing that re-reading one of her favorite books would make me feel closer to her. It occurred to me that, like Wang Lung’s wife, O-lan, my grandmother and countless women of her generation carried out their caregiving duties through times of chaos and personal hardship.

Pearl Buck understood firsthand the sacrifices and compromises all caregivers make in times of crisis. While providing end-of-life care for her mother, Carie, Buck herself became a mother. She navigated her new life as a parent to a disabled child while grieving Carie’s death, all while the threat of war loomed over her beloved China (Conn 1996, 72–76). It is no wonder, then, that the women in her novels endure significant hardships, from famine to war to personal loss, all while conducting the ceaseless work of caring for others. It can be no coincidence that these portrayals resonated with American readers – especially women.

In 1931, the same year Pearl Buck published The Good Earth, American writer and historian James Truslow Adams popularized the national ethos of the American Dream, which he defined as the promise of “a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Wills 2015). Later, Peter J. Conn, in his 1996 biography of Pearl Buck, placed her work within the context of a larger literary movement in which writers challenged the mythology of the American Dream amidst the turbulence and disillusionment of the Great Depression (Conn 1996, 180). Since then, scholars have discussed how, by introducing us to the culture and values of her beloved China, Pearl Buck invites us to contemplate and critique our own culture and values. But what does the American Dream mean to caregivers, particularly women? And how can Pearl Buck’s works help us identify and deconstruct the particular American mythology within which caregivers perform their labor?

I contend that the caregivers in Pearl Buck’s novels work under a different mythology – one that is adjacent to, but just as potent as, the American Dream. Unlike the American Dream, this mythology promises neither wealth nor upward mobility. Rather, it promises honor, security, and fulfillment to those who devote their time and energies to meet the needs of others. While these ideals are deeply rooted in Chinese family values, they are also familiar to American audiences. Unfortunately, without the social infrastructure to back them, these promises often present as superficial platitudes in Mother’s Day cards and as condescending comments from well-meaning acquaintances. (Aren’t you glad he works so you can stay home with the kids? A saint like you will get your reward in Heaven! I don’t know how you do it!) Together, these abstract ideals make up a social contract reinforced by a gendered division of labor that still places work performed outside the home as more valuable than that performed in the home.

Now, as we continue to grapple with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our systems of care, it behooves us to reread the stories our mothers and grandmothers read and to ask ourselves if we still recognize in them the same unrealistic expectations. In this paper, I will do just that by examining portrayals of caregiving in three Pearl Buck novels: The Good Earth, The Mother, and Pavilion of Women. I will demonstrate how the women in each story provide or withhold their care within a social mythology that promises honor, security, and fulfillment yet rarely delivers on those promises (Spurling 2010, 79–81, 118–21).^[2] In so doing, I will place caregiving at the heart of Buck’s legacy – a legacy that speaks to the universal experience of caregiving with the empathy, honesty, and urgency we need to address the current American care crisis.

This is my contribution to a conversation already in progress. In her Literary Book Prize–winning book, Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction, Talia Schaffer utilizes the ethics of care to reimagine character and narrative. As she observes, “Reading for care is empowering. For literary critics, ethics of care can expand what we notice. If ethics of care is a lens, it is a fisheye lens, capturing the edges of the scene; if it is a microphone, it is one that picks up heretofore ambient noise” (Shaffer 2021, 22). This is an apt lens through which to view the works of Pearl Buck, whose greatest skill as a writer was her ability to notice, to shift the composition of the scene so that the characters often relegated to the edges take center stage. Their actions, even the most routine or seemingly mundane – tending a field in the hot sun, sewing a garment for an elderly relative, preparing a bowl of rice for a hungry child – heighten the drama of her stories in an understated yet deeply palpable way. Through these carefully curated vignettes, Buck forces us to notice the constant work of caregiving, thereby inviting us to consider how we might create a new care infrastructure based on tangible support rather than hollow promises.

1 O-lan: Honor

The Good Earth begins with a marriage, a symbol of promise and new beginnings for both bride and groom. When O-lan gives birth to their first son, Wang Lung, bursting with pride, purchases red sugar to stir into boiling water for his wife to drink. This small gesture represents O-lan’s complete transformation from a lowly slave to an honored wife and mother. She has fulfilled her duty and kept up her end of a literal contract (agreed upon by Wang Lung and the House of Hwang) and a social contract that compels women to become wives and mothers.

Selfless, humble, and steadfast, O-lan cares for her children, her father-in-law, and her husband without question or complaint. Prized by Wang Lung early on for her skill in the kitchen, her industriousness in the fields, and for her fertility, O-lan enjoys his approval and affection before a series of hardships befall the already impoverished couple. She bears these hardships in silence and makes unfathomable choices to ensure her family’s survival, even committing infanticide to rid herself of yet another mouth to feed. But as the family’s luck changes, and as Wang Lung accumulates more wealth, O-lan becomes less and less visible to her husband, despite her best efforts. The tangible gestures and expressions of honor to which she is entitled as the wife of a prominent man are cruelly denied and bestowed upon others.

This denial of honor is most vividly symbolized in O-lan’s pearls, which she had stolen, along with other jewels, from the great house in the city and kept close to her with the intention of giving them to her daughter. Wang Lung, disinterested in O-lan when he is not disdainful of her, demands that his wife give up her pearls and present them to the woman who would become his second wife, one who assumes no obligation to care for the children, for Wang Lung, or for his aging father (Buck 1931, 185–86).

It is only when O-lan becomes too ill to care for her family that she becomes visible to her husband once again.

All through the long months of winter she lay dying and upon her bed, and for the first time Wang Lung and his children knew what she had been in the house, and how she made comfort for them all and they had not known it. It seemed now that none knew how to light the grass and keep it burning in the oven, and none knew how to turn a fish in the cauldron without breaking it or burning one side black before the other side was cooked, and none knew whether sesame oil or bean were right for frying this vegetable or that. (254)

Making up for lost time, Wang Lung holds vigil at his wife’s bedside. He orders the best meals prepared for her. He purchases a coffin befitting her status as the first wife. But these gestures, however touching, come with the sting of honor misplaced and promise unfulfilled.

This pain is all too familiar to the countless caregivers who carry out their daily routines silently and without the kind of recognition that comes with actual support. How many American caregivers have been told that their job is the most important in the world only to be overlooked for future opportunities due to employment gaps? How many caregivers have had to return to work too soon after giving birth due to a lack of paid parental leave? Why are those who care for children, aging adults, and disabled individuals chronically underpaid in schools, nursing homes, and home healthcare settings? What is honor without real support?

2 The Mother: Security

Published in 1934, The Mother is an ideal companion piece to The Good Earth. Unlike many literary works, films, and other pieces of media that depict caregiving at the critical moment – when an elderly parent approaches death, when a child becomes disabled, or when a spouse becomes ill – both The Good Earth and The Mother follow their protagonists from the early days of their marriages and parenthood into old age, providing a sweeping perspective on the full spectrum of life’s stages and the types of care given and received in each season.

However, while O-lan’s deepest thoughts and feelings are largely hidden in The Good Earth, Buck shifts the perspective in The Mother to expose her female protagonist’s joys and sorrows, her pain and her most secret desires. Like The Good Earth, the story centers on a poor couple. The wife is known to the reader simply as “the mother” or sometimes “the woman.” Her spouse is known as “the man.” From the beginning, it is apparent that the mother is acutely aware of the gendered division of labor within the household. Frustrated by her husband’s lack of interest in the children they share, the mother admits to herself with resignation that the children seem “ever hers and hers alone, since he did nothing for them” (Buck 1934, 43). The man’s emotional distance extends to his own elderly mother, whose “constant chatter” wearies him beyond tolerance (48). And yet the mother loves her partner in spite of his shortcomings and remains steadfast in her role as his wife, knowing that the two must work together as a team to survive. She understands that, while she may never achieve comfort or prosperity, her labors afford her and her children a level of security – food, shelter, and the respect of her neighbors.

But that security dissipates when the man leaves, never to return. From that point on, the mother must conceal her shame by keeping up the pretense among her neighbors and kin that her husband has simply found gainful employment elsewhere and still sends yearly correspondence, along with enough silver to support his family. Forced to assume her absentee spouse’s responsibilities in addition to her own, the mother has neither the time nor the energy to tend to her children like she did before. Exhausted and alone, she is seduced by the landlord’s agent, who also abandons her. Riddled with guilt, she blames herself for her family’s hardships – her daughter’s blindness, her sons’ animosity toward each other, and her own unplanned pregnancy. At the end of her life, she is totally reliant on her eldest son and his wife for support.

We see how the promise of security looms over the mother in a particularly painful scene in which she agonizes over what will become of her daughter, known as “the blind maid.” Due to her disability, the girl is not a desirable candidate for marriage. Yet “wed she must be somehow, lest after the mother died there be not one to care for the maid nor one to whom she truly could belong, since a woman belongs first to the husband’s house and not to that house where she was born” (191). The mother understands that, because her daughter is limited in her ability to care for others, she is not afforded the promise of security in her old age.

Buck’s decision to exclude names for her characters in this particular novel highlights the universality of the caregiving experience, as exemplified by this passage:

First her tears came slow and bitter but freely after a while and then she laid her head against the grave and wept in the way that women do when their hearts are too full with sorrow of their life and spilled and running over and they care no more except they must be eased somehow because all life is too heavy for them. (170)

How many women understand the mother’s desperate sorrow? How many enter relationships with the understanding or expectation that they will forgo a salary in order to provide the vital work of caregiving in the home? How many are abused or abandoned by their partners? How many women are urged to have children, among other reasons, so that they will have someone to care for them in old age? And how many have had to take on the unexpected responsibility of caring for a loved one in a society that has yet to construct a viable care infrastructure?

3 Madame Wu: Fulfillment

In Pearl Buck’s works of fiction, as in reality, poverty exacerbates the already significant hardships of caregiving. However, even wealthy women in her stories are bound by the unrealistic expectations set upon caregivers of all economic classes. In Pavilion of Women, Buck explores the complex dynamics of class and caregiving, highlighting how women of various economic and social circumstances relate to the promise of fulfillment.

The novel’s central conflict unfolds when Madame Wu, the privileged and highly esteemed wife of a great house, announces upon her fortieth birthday her decision to retire from her role as wife and mother to pursue her own intellectual and spiritual growth. In an effort to keep peace within her vast household, she secures a concubine for her husband and a wife for her youngest son before turning her attention to philosophy, theology, and astronomy under the tutelage of a warm yet enigmatic Christian priest.

Unlike O-lan, Madame Wu enjoys a place of honor in her household; she is revered and respected by her sons, daughters-in-law, servants, and even her husband. And unlike the mother, she enjoys economic security. She manages her maternal responsibilities with the help of servants – maids, cooks, and wet nurses. And yet, she does not possess the inner peace that the other women in her immediate social circle appear to find in their roles as mothers and grandmothers.

Brother André, her tutor and spiritual confidant, declares plainly that Madame Wu has committed a sin in thinking she is “unique and above all women” (Buck 1946, 200). And as the plot unfolds, she must come to terms with how she has forced upon others the very constraints from which she has endeavored to free herself, all based on the assumption that they would find fulfillment in their socially prescribed roles. Her miscalculation comes to a head when Ch’iuming, the young wife she has found for Mr. Wu, attempts to take her own life for fear that she will give birth to a girl and place an additional burden on the house. Madame Wu realizes that, in removing the heartache of caregiving from her own life, she has simply transferred it to another woman – one who has neither the power nor the status to change her situation and pursue her own interests and desires.

From the perspective of a caregiver, the premise of Pavilion of Women feels somewhat provocative and eerily relevant. How many caregivers, physically and emotionally exhausted by the weight of their responsibilities, would relish the opportunity to walk away, even for a day? But beyond this story of privilege and passion there lies a more pressing, albeit theoretical, question: what would we as a society do if our unpaid and underpaid caregivers were removed from the equation? What social systems would be disrupted if they withheld their knowledge and expertise, passed down through the generations and gleaned from personal experience? What would the economic consequences be? And further, what could be gained if we allow our caregivers the time, space, and means to seek fulfillment beyond their caregiving responsibilities?

4 Conclusions

Pearl Buck understood the power of representation. In her groundbreaking 1950 memoir, The Child Who Never Grew, she writes candidly about how her experience as the mother of a disabled daughter did not live up to her preconceived ideas about parenthood. She asserts that only those who have gone through what she describes as “inescapable sorrow” could truly understand her meaning (Buck 1992, 53). And yet, she returns time and time again to the theme of caregiving in her novels, each time adding a layer of complexity and nuance to the caregiver’s vocation, imploring the reader to notice the work caregivers perform in their own lives and how that work is supported or complicated by social norms. When examined alongside The Child Who Never Grew, Buck’s novels read as one lengthy examination of conscience – the author’s attempt to rectify the dissonance between her personal feelings of confusion, sorrow, and resentment and society’s promises of honor, security, and fulfillment.

As my reflections on this particular part of Pearl Buck’s legacy come to a close, I am reminded again of my grandmother. While she was a voracious reader, there are only a few authors she mentioned regularly by name. First among them was Pearl Buck. When I was young, I did not fully understand what drew my grandmother to Buck’s novels, but I read them because of her. Now, having been a caregiver myself, these stories keep her memory fresh in my mind; I see her quiet resilience, wisdom, and stubbornness reflected back to me through O-lan, the mother, and Madame Wu.

Buck’s portrayals of caregiving are among the most honest I have encountered. They have helped me accept that I am not weak; caregiving is hard. They have compelled me to research systems of care in other countries so I might be a better advocate for care in the United States. They have inspired me to document my own experiences as a caregiver. And in an American society that still expects women to sacrifice in silence, revisiting and amplifying these stories is, in itself, an act of care in furtherance of a future that will ensure moral and material support, fair compensation, and basic human dignity to all who give and receive care.