Throughout the the book the literature has made an impact on the characters in the novel, but it has a surprising effect on the little Chinese seamstress. In the book the Little Seamstress was being taught how to be an educated girl and how to get along in the city. But she has been struggling to find herself throughout the text. Through Balzac her eyes have been opened and she has found out more about what a lady is and developed a woman's attitude. The quote above describes that attitude very well: "a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price".
In this last section Luo leaves for a month to visit his mother, and entrusts his love the Little Seamstress to his best friend the narrator. The narrator sees this as an opportunity for him to try to win the heart of the Little Seamstress himself. He assumes Luo's task of taking the bamboo hod with the forbidden literature across the dangerous ridge every day to the Little Seamstress's house. He soon becomes a familiar face and does many of the household chores. There are many males interested in the Little Seamstress, and they are jealous of him. One night they come out after he leaves her home and start to harass him until a book is accidentally revealed, and then he makes a run for it. One of their thrown rocks manages to clip him in the ear and he is kept awake at night by its pain. He replays the events of the day in his mind, but his imagination makes them surreal. He finally has a fantasy about the Little Seamstress and loses himself to a release of his long pent-up sexual urges.
The next day the Little Seamstress asks him for help because she finds out that she has missed two periods and is pregnant with Luo's child. The narrator journeys off to Yong Jing to find her medical aid in an abortion. He scouts out the gynecologist and also happens upon the final hours of the old preacher who was forced to sweep the streets for the rest of his life because of his forbidden religion. The gynecologist appears when the old preacher dies and the narrator manages to persuade him to give the Little Seamstress, "his girlfriend" an abortion when the narrator promises him Ursule Mirouet in exchange for his services.
When Luo returns the Little Seamstress develops an obsession to be like a city girl. She changes her clothing style to mimic city sophistication, and gets her father to buy her stark white tennis shoes. She becomes what Luo and the narrator have dreamed of making her into- a cultured individual worthy of life in the city. Unexpectedly, she leaves them to go to the city and they are left heartbroken and disillusioned. They unceremoniously burn their books of western literature and get drunk over her departure. Despite their efforts to get her to stay with them, she runs away after informing Luo that he has helped her to understand that "a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price" (184).
