Raising the Red Lantern

This film is a story of something greater than the actual story itself. Set in the 1920s in Northern China, a young girl finds herself involved in something that was not what she had imagined for herself. The main character is Songlian, a 19-year-old Chinese girl, who marries into the Chen Clan only to find herself as one of the four mistresses within a home of tradition and strict order. The geographical setting is appropriate …

…objects of status without choices or hopes of some kind of personal happiness only sacrifice. This is reinforced by the conversations about the importance of having a son and how having a daughter was considered a wasted birth. This film is a testament for women living in a feudal society who find themselves powerless over long-standing traditions of their society forcing them to forfeit their hopes of happiness for a life term sentence of reality.