The series of incidents leading up to Wang Lung's courtship of Lotus Flower in Chapters 18 and 19 is presented by Pearl Buck as totally coincidental happenings. In Chapter 18, she tells us that his boredom with his family and home during the floods "might have been nothing if Wang Lung were still a poor man or if the water were not spread over his fields. But he had money." Later in the chapter, Pearl Buck tells us that he visited the tea house only for diversion and because of his boredom at home, and "so he might have continued for many days on end" had he not met Cuckoo at the tea house.
Chapter 19 begins with a similar statement of chance: "Now if the waters had at that time receded from Wang Lung's land . . . Wang Lung might never have gone again to the great tea shop. Or if a child had fallen ill or the old man had reached suddenly to the end of his days, Wang Lung might have been caught up in the new thing and so forgotten the painted face upon the scroll and the body and the woman slender as a bamboo." Even when Wang Lung had decided to go and meet this beautiful girl, he "hesitated upon the threshold and he stood in the bright light which streamed from the open doors. And he might have stood there and gone away," but out of the shadows came Cuckoo, who said, "Ah, it is only the farmer!"
It was, then, a series of coincidences and Wang Lung's injured pride that made him feel the need to show Cuckoo that he was lordly and rich enough to meet the woman. And it was the silver in his girdle that carried him past the insults of the other girls who disdained his garlicky smell. Throughout this section, Wang Lung is often ashamed of being a country bumpkin, much like his initial visit to town in Chapter 1.
When he is with Lotus Flower, Wang Lung admires her small hands, her long nails, and her delicate feet. All of these things O-lan lacks, but the reader recalls that had O-lan possessed these things, she could not have helped Wang Lung in the fields during the lean years. Nevertheless, Lotus Flower teaches Wang Lung a new kind of love — "a sickness which is greater than any a man can have." Though he constantly desires her, and though "he went in to her and he had his will of her again and again . . . he came away unsatisfied."
