Footbinding are practiced, of course, for correctly so it need: while making females poor. By simply making girls individually unstable, males managed to curtail the course and you will thereby prevent its sisters, spouses, and girl away from stepping into one pre-and/or additional-relationship sexual activity. Since the Laura Betzig implies, “intimate 
modesty certainly one of female, including such as strict organizations because veiling, footbinding, and claustration, you are going to function to boost the brand new paternal trust of their consorts” (8; see including Dickemann). “Women are just like silver, instance treasures,” states good Chinese interviewee so you’re able to Giles from the change of your century. “They ought to stay static in their own domestic. In the event that their foot are not likely they’re going right here plus they go indeed there having unfitting couples; he’s no good identity. They are such as for example defective treasures that will be refused” (79). A lady whoever legs were likely could not walking really far and a sustained time frame, together with becoming transported off spot to set through palanquin. “Chinese ladies perhaps not walk overseas such as for instance Us americans,” states a great Chinese woman interviewed from the an american journalist for the 1914. “Inside streets each goes from inside the sedan chairs, always having chaperone.” So it exact same lady been able to stroll by yourself just with brand new assistance from dining tables and seating (Headland, 288). For this reason a leg-likely woman is nearly a home-sure woman; for everyone important objectives, she is actually cloistered.
For it isn’t ladies course by itself but rather female sex that people regarding text are making an effort to handle
Remarkably, the women regarding Mango Road was cloistered as well. The area are populated because of the female tilting away from windows, women who cannot started exterior, women who try actually otherwise figuratively generated inmates inside their property. Marin can’t emerge from their household because the she’s to babysit all the time-“but she stands regarding the home a great deal” (23-24). Rafaela, who’s “bringing old off tilting the actual window so much, will get secured indoors as the the lady spouse try scared Rafaela is going to run out while the this woman is as well breathtaking to take on” (79). Sally should wade upright family once university, to a beneficial “house [she] can not come-out of” (82). Minerva “has some issues, but the larger a person is the girl husband who left and has leaving” (85)-confining their towards the house in essence by making their so you can raise one or two college students simply by herself. Simply speaking, the latest guys in the tale control girls because of the managing the feet-which is, by perhaps not letting them walking overseas. Given that Julian Olivares notes, toward ladies out-of Mango Path, the house means “perhaps not the room off delight but regarding sadness, and you can an effective dialectic from into the/additional. Your ex put is among the most domestic confinement, not one out of liberation and choice” (stress added, 163).
The fresh subconscious mind reason behind eg confinement goes without saying in one of the new euphemisms having prostitute, streetwalker. A great prostitute are an unchaste woman just who roams brand new roadways more or less easily. The confinement away from a female with the domestic is visible once the a make an effort to continue this lady chaste.
The fresh association out-of boots and you may/otherwise foot with people sex is not without precedent
Inside an article titled “Psychoanalysis and you can Folklore,” Ernest Jones talks about the brand new obsolete personalized out-of organizing a vintage footwear after departing newly wedded couples, that he says is actually “a symbol into (fruitful) female body organ itself, an interpretation and this can be supported by estimating new distinctly large stating that accustomed praise they-‘May you match the woman together with my personal feet suits that it ole shoe'” (96). Inside an article towards “Cinderella within the China,” R. D. Jameson notices your “utilization of the shoe inside marriages, the newest sanctification of your shoe in the areas of China whether or not it try delivered to the newest forehead for the a service to track down students, the praise off a shoe since a characteristic symbol away from a good lifeless bride from the a great mourning bridegroom, the brand new gift from sneakers because of the a bride-to-be so you’re able to the woman spouse in the signification of their subordination to your and also the current out-of boots certainly one of Manchus because of the a bride-to-be to the lady partner’s brothers exactly who share the woman on spouse most of the resulted in idea that individuals try here speaing frankly about a highly intimate and you can strong icon” (88).