The Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve Comparisons

The Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve were two very

different novels. One was about a family in India under

Hindu beliefs. The other was about a family in China that

followed Buddhist beliefs. Both books share similar ideas.

Although this is the case, the books have some unlike ideas.

In Nectar in a Sieve and The Good Earth, three things

are compared: weddings, duties of wives,

and treatment of children.

Weddings in a Hindu society are very different

than those of a Buddhist society. In Nectar in a Sieve,

the marriage of Rukmani and Nathan's daughter Irawaddy,

the family was poor and she had a plain wedding.

At her wedding, she had a small party and food set aside

for the guests to eat. Nathan paid a dowry to her husband

of one-hundred rupees. Wang Lung and O-lan, the parents

in The Good Earth, had a more exuberant wedding.

Their first son's bride had many things given to her,

such as oils, her fingernails were painted, and she

received new clothes. A dowry was paid but the amount

was not revealed. While finding a suitable wife is

important to both, how the wives are treated and

expected to do is different.

Women are expected to do different things in Hindu

and Buddhist religions. In The Good Earth, O-lan is

expected to bear sons and take care of them. She also had

to cook, clean, and help in the growing of their crops.

By the time she had many children, she had stopped working

in the fields. Ruku in Nectar in a Sieve, was expected

to do more. She had to bear children, preferably boys,

work in the fields, cook, clean, sew, sell produce,

wash and several other things. Having children, they

were treated depending on the sex that they were.

Children in the book The Good Earth were

handled in a different way of that in Nectar in a

Sieve. In The Good Earth, male children were

respected and their futures were thought of in advance.

On the other hand, females were not as highly respected

and usually sold as slaves around the age of ten or twelve.

Otherwise they are kept and given away as brides. Ruku and

Nathan's boys in Nectar in a Sieve were supposed to be

farmers, but they all turned away from farming and became

things like doctors and servants. Their only girl was

only to help her mother and to be wed. The treatments of

both sexes of children are different everywhere.

The three things that are similar yet different in

Nectar in a Sieve and The Good Earth are weddings, duties

of wives, and treatment of children. Weddings are altered

depending on the culture. While Chinese women have little

to no respect, Indian women have little respect but not

none at all. Boys and girls have very different

management. In the novels, the three examples of the

differences are shown intensely. The Hindu and Buddhist

cultures are very different, yet they are similar in some

ways.