Stanza 8
In the final stanza, the husband continues to
frown, as he continues to pretend to believe
that his daughter has no value, that he is doing
the right thing. The mother expresses her wish
for the child to be cleaned, then also asks that the
girl be dressed in sooty ashes. The mother per-
haps wants to honor the child by washing her
even though she will be smothered in ashes after-
ward. The line could also be understood to mean
that the mother considers the act of dressing the
girl in ashes to be an act of final cleansing, in that
the daughter will be cleansed of her life. The poet
next repeats the line from the previous stanza
that refers to the lost milk and the death of the
newborn as a waste. The mother’s milk has gone
unused, a reminder that no child will be nursing
at the mother’s breast. As is customary for the
pantoun format, the final line of the poem
repeats the opening line. A female child is use-
less; she is just an extra mouth to feed. As was the
case before, the blame is placed on traditions, or
on some traditional persons, that hold that girls
have no value in this society. When this line
opened the poem, it was a statement of history,
culture, and tradition. When it reappears as the
final line, it reads more as a lament for what this
family has had to do—for the daughter who is no
more—and for what cannot be changed.
Themes
Cultural Traditions
The sentence that opens ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese
Women’’ is a vague reference to the traditions
that govern this new mother’s life. The very first
word is a subjective personal pronoun that refers
to a collective group of people. These unnamed
people, whose values have determined that a
girl’s life has no meaning, are the people who
are responsible for the family’s choice to murder
the child. The reader learns from the mother of
her own acceptance of the family’s choice. She
mentions that she knew ahead of time that if the
baby were to be a girl, she would have to be
killed. The narrator uses the possessive pronoun
weto include herself in this planning. Thus, she is
helping to continue the traditions of a culture
that places so little value on girls that the killing
of female babies is routinely practiced and even
planned for during pregnancy.
The Role of the Father
The one demonstrably unsympathetic person in
this poem is the narrator’s husband. The narra-
tor relates that he is not there with her, even
though she has just given birth to his child.TOPICS FOR
FURTHER
STUDY Choose a brief sentence from a newspaper and
use it as the basis for a poem, just as Lim has
done with ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese Women.’’ In
writing your poem, try to mimic the pantoun
style, with its specific repetitions of sentences.
When you have completed your poem, write a
brief evaluation of your work, comparing it to
Lim’s poem. In your written critique of your
poem, consider what you learned about the
difficulty of writing a poem in the pantounStyle
Research infanticide in China and in India,
two countries where the birth of a girl is
traditionally not valued. After you have
gathered enough information, create a
poster that compares these two countries’
female infanticide rates as well as any efforts
that are being made to halt the practice.
Poetry should create images and pictures in
the reader’s mind. Draw or illustrate one of
the images from Lim’s poem. You can also
use photography if you choose. Then write
an essay that explains how you chose and
produced your image and what you think
your image adds to your understanding of
Lim’s poem.
The epigraph that Lim uses to begin her
poem tells readers about the murder of
female infants. It does not tell readers any-
thing about the mothers of those infants.
Research the lives of women in China and
write an essay in which you discuss your
findings. While focusing on motherhood,
also research what is known about marriage
in China and how marriage changes wom-
en’s lives.Pantoun for Chinese Women