“The Ginger Tree” by Oswald Wynd

Introduction

This novel narrates the tale of a young, sheltered, very proper Scottish girl who has been reared by a rigid, self-righteous, reticent widow in South Edinburgh. The girl is sensitive, compassionate, and by nature drawn to people. She finds the restrictions and repressions imposed upon her life intolerable when she moves to Peking and marries a very proper and sexually repressed man. The confinement of the life of the embassy personnel in the period following the Boxer Rebellion, plus the discomforts of the change of lifestyle, and the strangeness of the foreign land and customs, all combine to make her feel lonely and depressed. The lack of communication with her husband and her ultimate realization that there is really no love between them increases her sense of isolation, which is intensified by the spectacle of the warmth and affection so openly shared between Marie and Armand when she accompanies them on a holiday to the Western Hills near Peking while her husband is away on duty.

Discussion

Mary's impulsive love affair with Count Kurihama which occurs at this point is delicately narrated, and seems, strangely enough, quite a natural thing for this lonely, frustrated, generous young woman to do. The event is decisive in determining Mary's future. She is henceforth bound to the Orient both by her affection for her lover and by her blood ties to their son, Tomo. At first she feels totally alien in Japan, where she has no friends, no relatives, no knowledge of the language, and no control over her own destiny. Later, when she takes charge of her own life and moves to make a career, a home, and a set of friends for herself, she adapts herself increasingly to Japanese ways and adopts the attitude that Japan is now her home, despite her British citizenship. (Wynd 125)

In the final section of the book, Mary sees herself as akin to the ginger tree, the alien plant which has taken root and flourished in the Japanese garden, but which the gardener dislikes, calling it a foreign thing which can never be a suitable plant for an authentic Japanese garden. She acknowledges that she will never be accepted truly by the Japanese, despite her love of Japanese culture and her attempts to conform and to preserve their traditional culture and heritage against the inroads of Western concrete, electricity, and industry. She regards her deportation from Japan as exile from her home, rather than as a return to her home. The poignant final scene is deeply moving in its warmth, tenderness, and utter finality. (Baugh 130)

The author has told the entire tale as a series of journal entries and letters from Mary to her mother and to her friend Marie. This method of narration is difficult to handle, but the author has done so very capably. The sense of immediacy and intimacy is heightened by the device of the journal-letter format. The limited point of view of the girl, her speculations, ...