BATLCS+During+and+After+Reading

1. When the narrator first reads Ursule Mirouet, even though he's heard "nothing but revolutionary blather about patriotism, Communism, ideology and propaganda all his life," he is transformed by Balzac's story of "awakening desire, passion, impulsive action. . . . In spite of my complete ignorance of that distant land called France . . . Ursule's story rang as true as if it had been about my neighbours" [p. 57]. What is it that enables him to identify so strongly with characters and situations he has never experienced? What does his experience suggest about the power of literature? In what ways does **Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress** exert a similar power on its readers?

2. In what ways does China under Chairman Mao, as represented in **Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress**, resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban, or other cultures that strive to keep the modern world from undermining traditional or religious values?

3. Throughout the novel, the repression of Western literature, and by extension Western cultural values, is presented as a terrible deprivation. And yet, at the end, when the Little Seamstress sets off for the city, she tells Luo that "she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price" [p. 184]. How does this ending complicate the novel's apparent endorsement of cosmopolitan Western culture and literature over rural Chinese culture? How is the Little Seamstress planning to use her beauty?

Questions from: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/balzac_and_the_seamstress1.asp