Talk:Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the General Project Discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
Tasks you can do: Novels WikiProject • (Novels, Novellas, Novelettes & Short stories) Announcements and open tasks (watch • edit • discuss) → Please help with tagging articles! Critique (Featured Article): A_Series_of_Unfortunate_Events - "10 achieved" Wikipedia wide peer reviews: no reviews currently Novels WikiProject Peer reviews : Master and Commander Improve: The Body in the Library • Furies of Calderon • Wolf Brother • The Monk • The English Patient • Bones of the Moon • More... Create: Dover Beach • Black Cocktail • Blackthorn Winter • London, 1850 • More... Novel without Infobox (auto list): many novel articles do not have an infobox - and need one (auto generated list) - may need expansion of article too Our Collaboration Department is continuing with one more title Adam Bede for the current month. Get collaborating on the article and also look at nominating other titles to be considered. The new article Fictional locations now exists - as a companion article to Fictional characters - but it is still a stub and could do with plenty more imput to improve it. Another new article A Taste for Death (P.D. James novel)‎ now exists - but it is also still a stub and could do with plenty more imput to improve it. A new Infobox exists to support the growing number of "Short Story" articles that are tagged as part of the project - take a look at it and comment on it's talk page. I would suggest we use it for "Short Stories and "Novelettes" and leave the main "Book infobox" for "Novels" and "Novellas". New hitlists added to the main worklist. List of literary works with eponymous heroes List of literary works with eponymous heroines Pages that only exist as redirects: Men at Arms changes

[edit] NPOV

There are a few phrases in this article that advocate the book in a biased way. These phrases should be changed or removed. MaxVeers 01:20, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, part of the Synopsis is blatently plaigerized (spelling?) from the back cover of the novel itself. --TimD 23:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Granddaughter or daughter?

If I remember well, the Little Seamstress is tailor's DAUGHTER, not GRANDDAUGHTER...

[edit] father or grandfather?

according to some officail film analysis, it shows that the old tailor is actually the Chinese Little Seamstress' grandfather - search on bbc website.

That is interesting, but I think it contradicts the book a bit. The tailor is described by the narrator as "elderly" (on p126 of the paperback copy) and as "old" throughout the book, but I think that is the author showing us how the man appeared to the youthful, urban Narrator's POV rather than an attempt to show that the tailor is really a grandparent. When first met by Luo and the Narrator he is described as "middle-aged" (on p23) and is distinctly called the seamstress' father (on p21 and throughout the text.) The terms used consistently through the book "father" and "daughter" might be more figurative than literal, but "middle-aged" is pretty hard to get past. If he really is middle aged it’s possible that he'd have a granddaughter in her late teens, but it does push the math a bit. Also, the Seamstress says "My mother died far too young. Ever since her passing he has done exactly as he pleases" (p25.) If that comment is about the woman who would be the Tailor's daughter why would her death be more meaningful than that of a wife? If it is a daughter he's talking about wouldn't the granddaughter have much the same role in the house? The Seamstress is a pretty strong character, so if a daughter can keep the Tailor in check so might a granddaughter. Geeman 19:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)