In what ways does the author make use of these images?

There is both joy and sorrow that colour this narrative. As in everyone's life, there is a balance between darkness and light: especially in our relationships. Especially in their marriages in China, it is a social necessity that they must secretly undermine in order to be happy. For the daughters, marriage is supposed to be the arena where they can be their true selves. However, like their mothers, they are hard-pressed to find true love or themselves in their marriages; rather, they must break up their marriages to find themselves. The one love that remains constant in the novel is that between mothers and daughters. No matter how strained it is by cultural and generational differences, it is indestructible. Love, like heritage, goes forward and backward through generations of females.