Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, in 1892. ... After she left school In 1917, the future writer married John Lossing Buck, and then moved to rural Nanhsuchou, the setting of The Good Earth. ... Buck with Carol.
After her split with her husband, Buck chose to devote herself totally to her writing, over seventy novels, and to her many campaigns, such as her Welcome House, which helped millions of Korean- and Vietnamese- American orphan children. During Buck’s lifetime China had removed its emperor and replaced him with a republic. ... Watching, listening, and even living out this drama helped Pearl Buck truly grasp the basis of Chinese politics and was often reflected in her writings. The Good Earth was a reflection of Pearl Buck’s own life, and the political and religious aspects of The Good Earth are accuratley presented.
One element portrayed accurately in the novel was the political and religious status of religion in early China. As Buck
writes, women are seen as very little, as slave, chattel or useless beings taking life out of other possible siblings, especially boys. ... Buck was extremely appalled by a common practice called female infanticide. ... During a famine in The Good Earth, O-lan gives birth to a girl-child, which became “…a wisp of bone and skin…a girl…two small bruises at the base of her throat…He had barley put the burden [the dead child] down before a famished wolfish dog hovered almost at once behind him”( Buck 82-83). ... As O-lan puts it in The Good Earth, “It [labor] is over once more. ... ” (Buck 65). ... In The Good Earth the wife O-lan is a fine example of Confucian principles, “In the afternoon… there she picked droppings… carried them home…she did not rest until the ox had been fed…” (Buck 28). Thus, during this early Chinese era of history, and Pearl Buck successfully displayed the political and religious position of women. ... In The Good
Earth, when Ching has financial problems, Wang Lung reaches out his hand saying, “ ‘Sell me that little parcel of land… help me with my land. ... Yet, in The Good Earth, when the uncle uses custom to blackmail Wang Lung, Wang does what his culture demands and gives him the money, saying, “ It is cutting out the flesh of my flesh to give to him and for nothing except that we are of blood.
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