Due by class time, Tuesday, September 25
I'm leaving this response open-ended: I'd like for you to think about what you think is important about the story. Ask yourself what the specific ideas are that the story seems to be communicating, choose one of those ideas, and then show what the story says about that idea, illustrating your argument with specific examples from the text.
Whatever you choose, make an argument about that idea: For example, if you choose to write about family history, instead of "Family history seems to be an important idea in the story," make an argument that tells us more specifically what the story says about family history. In order to get to that argument, ask yourself questions like, Does one's family history determine certain things about a person's life? Does a person have to know her family history to understand herself? What are the benefits, according to the story, of knowing or not knowing things about one's past? What role does one's family's past play in how a person lives her life?
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Mary Strecker
9/25/07
Kingston’s Criticism of China’s Social Structure
In “No Name Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston critiques the two most prominent features of China’s social structure: patriarchy and ancestor worship. Through the story she writes for her nameless aunt, she exposes the rigidity and injuriousness of these cultural constructions in such way as to distance herself from them. Kingston’s disconnect from tradition is illustrated in the sympathetic way she imagines her aunt’s struggle resulting from her extramarital pregnancy.
The patriarchal aspects of Chinese society are revealed when Kingston’s mother tells her about the raid that occurred on their home the night of the illegitimate child’s birth. The fact that the villagers destroyed the house of the female adulterer while ignoring the role of the male makes the extent of the town’s gender stratification clear. Kingston goes on to note the probability that the man who impregnated her aunt was part of the offending mob (6). She goes so far as to suppose that he may have even orchestrated the attack (7).
In one of Kingston’s imagined stories, the father of her aunt’s baby is a rapist who forces himself onto her and threatens violence and even death if she resists. As Kingston explains, “no one talked sex,” so her aunt would have had nowhere to turn for help (7). The disgrace her aunt’s pregnancy brings upon the family leads to her own suicide and the simultaneous murder/mercy killing of her newborn baby (5).
Marriage customs also reveal the patriarchal features of Chinese society. When Chinese women are married, they move into the house of their husband’s parents and become the property of his family. Her in-laws have life-and-death control over her; as Kingston writes, they could have “sold her, mortgaged her, stoned her” (8). The men to whom they are betrothed are often strangers, and the woman has no choice in husbands, as marriages are arranged by their parents (12). “Women,” Kingston states, “did not choose” (6). Nevertheless, her mother assures her that she is lucky; if she had been born in earlier years, she would have had her feet painfully bound and thus permanently disfigured (9). The sole responsibility of the female in cases of infidelity and the patrilineal family structure of China are criticized throughout the story.
Kingston is also critical of the Chinese tradition of ancestor worship, although less directly. Her issue lies in the persistence of familial shame after the death of the transgressor that acts as a kind of eternal punishment. Kingston describes this as “reverse ancestor worship” (16). Her mother forbids her to even mention her aunt’s existence, as though she is fearful of the family’s shame reemerging (5). Kingston’s main reason for writing this tale is to end the punishment she has been inflicting on her dead aunt by breaking her silence in hopes that she will cease to feel haunted by her ghost. In effect, she is rebelling against the tradition of ancestor veneration (and its other extreme) in writing this narrative. The reader participates in Kingston’s release at the end of the story when she dedicates the pages she wrote to her aunt, as a metaphor for the origami representations of necessities that the Chinese create for their deceased relatives (16). Kingston’s disapproval of the Chinese traditions of patriarchy and ancestor worship is thus revealed in the story she creates for her unnamed aunt.
“Chinese culture: women vs. men”
From “No Name Woman” we learn a lot about the Chinese culture, and how it looks at women vs. men. Through the aunt’s story we find many examples that point towards the contrasting treatment of men and women. Kingston paints a picture of a society and culture that holds men to a higher standard, expecting more of them and respecting them to a much higher extent in return. This leads to the idea of how Kingston in turn views men in modern day America, and how she inversely gets treated by them. The many different anecdotes, whether imagined or real, shape Kingston’s eventual outlook on her family and everyone else she comes in contact with.
In the very beginning, when Kingston’s mother tells her about her aunt, she mentions something about the men. She says, “ …our village celebrated seventeen hurry-up weddings-to make sure that every young man who went ‘out on the road’ would responsibly come home-your father and his brothers and your grandfather and his brothers and your aunt’s new husband sailed for America, the Gold Mountain….All of them sent money home”. This shows how the Chinese culture depends so ardently on the success of the men. So much responsibility and pressure is placed on the men to keep the society going that it is almost impossible not to give them proper respect. The women are supposed to be extremely obedient in return, and if this does not happen the society or “village” is almost certain that everything will fall apart. “…But one human being flaring up into violence could open up a black hole, a maelstrom that pulled in the sky. The frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the “roundness”.” Her aunt did something unspeakable in a time of need, and it made the community outraged. Women were not supposed to do anything but assist the men in maintaining a working community, and she did nothing but disrupt it in their eyes. The village took it as a personal blow, especially because it was something against their providers. To the village, while the men were away providing against there own wants and desires, she ignored that fact all together and took it upon herself to fulfill her wants and desires without any respect to the community or her husband. It seems that the men were so respected, that even upon her death she did not reveal who was responsible for getting her pregnant. Perhaps she did not reveal this so as not to bring any more shame or anger to the community, but also maybe because the man may not have even suffered any consequences. The village might not have wanted to lose any men in their current state, so she saw no other way out in being the sole person to blame.
Had the times been different, and the sustenance abundant, the community may have forgiven her aunt had she given birth to a boy. It seems as though her aunt felt as if she had no choice but to kill herself and the baby, because there would have been no chance at redemption with a baby girl. The community saw women and girls as useless and more unnecessary mouths to feed. The primary existence of women was to reproduce, hopefully more boys who could contribute to the sustenance of the village. The women did not really even get a say so in whom they would marry. One idea brought up is that her aunt may have been a romantic, and perhaps wanted more than an arranged marriage to someone she did not love.
These anecdotes lead to Kingston’s view of relationships in America. Growing up knowing the women in her family were most likely not in love with their husbands, but just placed with them out of necessity shapes how she views her families’ culture against her own new Chinese-American culture. Growing up listening to the customs of her family, Kingston viewed boys as intimidating and superior. In order to make them more approachable she would, “…add ‘brother’ silently to [their names]”. She gets treated in return the way she treats them, like a sister. Kingston does not understand how to act “American” and interact with the opposite sex; this is because it is completely different than how her mother acted towards the opposite sex. She has no real model to mimic when is comes to how she should be treated as a woman, and how she should go about getting the respect she deserves. It seems as though she is not even sure of what kind of respect she deserves as an American woman. She is conflicted in whether or not to think highly of her aunt or to follow her family loyally and disown the thought of her; this conflict in itself shows that she does differ from the women in her family somewhat, but she is not yet sure if she is comfortable with that.
Second Response to “No name Woman”
The most important and main focus of this story to me, is to know your Family history and use it wisely. We all come from different parts of the world, and end up here in the United States; and that is what makes us all unique and live as individuals. Although, your family heritage does not always make you the person you are today, it is still a good thing to come to know and understand where you came from. In the story, I feel the mother makes a simplistic attempt of telling her daughter the most important thing that happened in her fathers past that could have possibly shaped and molded the characteristic traits he possesses. When you understand the lives your parents had before they got together, and also before you were born; it helps you get a better understanding of them as a whole. We all go through hardships and scenarios that make us the adults we become in the future. I feel that with the young girls father regretting and believing that he never had a sister influenced his way of raising his daughter as a person. He wanted what was best for her in every way possible, and if keeping that big of a secret away from her was the way to do it; it sure did work. Her father knew what his family history was like, and he obviously grew from that experience, not ever wanting his own children to have to live with terrible mistakes that he saw with his own eyes and experienced himself.
The most important factor of this reading to me, as I said before is that her mother feels, she needs to tell her about her fathers past. Important key components to the conversations she has with her daughter such as “ I remember . . .” (Pg. 26), “Don’t tell anyone . . .” (Pg. 32), are essential in the way she tells the story. I feel that her mother knows and sees that the daughter has a lot of her fathers qualities and traits; and this is why she lets her know this deep dark secret of her fathers. Passing down stories from generation to generation makes it special because we can see where everyone was coming from. In this instance, her father was obviously a stern, motivated individual that did not want to let others define him with his family heritage, and that is why he estranged his sister. To completely erase someone such as a sibling from your memory is a very hard thing to do. This, I am sure was a huge thing for her father to do. This discovery might make her question herself about her whole life. I feel that with her mother telling her this, it could possibly make her understand many of her own traits. She might be the type of person to hold grudges to this day, because of her father making such a big deal of his sister. Sympathetic ways could quite possibly never have been in her vocabulary because she could have inherited a characteristic like that from her father. No matter what the reason was for her mother to pass on this classified information to her, it is an important, essential piece in truly being able to understand her father as I said before. Her father is probably a closed person when it comes to what he is feeling inside. Like most men, it is hard for them to let out their emotional anger and talk about their feelings, so that could possibly be one of the major reasons her mother told her of this story. Having a tight knit connection with your family is important in every way, so as long as she got to know the truth somehow, it makes them that much stronger as a family; even without her father ever knowing that she knew of this incidence. In conclusion, I believe this story is going to help her think twice about ever dishonoring her family, if she so happens to steer in that direction.
In “No Name Woman”, it seems to really show the differences in the way that different generations and cultures handle disgrace and humiliation. Kingston imagines many stories of what could have possibly happened to her aunt, but each story has the same tone of shame and disgrace. Even though Kingston has been brought up in a different country and time than her parents, she is still forced to “participate in her aunt’s punishment.” I think that she would never have “devoted pages of paper to her” if she did not feel guilty and believe that none of this ever should have taken place.
Even fifty years after her aunt committed suicide, Kingston’s parents still do not acknowledge that the woman even existed. The only reason that Kingston even knows about her is because her mother used the story as a warning to her. She threatens her daughter with disownment and hate, an idea that most American’s today would believe to be barbaric, if she ever does anything like this to dishonor their family. Even though her family is in a new country, they do not ever want to mention the incident because they think that it will cause their new neighbors to badly of them.
Woman held very little power in America just a few decades ago, and in countries like China they had even fewer rights. In one of Kingston’s imagined stories she says, “Women in old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil,” and, “She told the man, ‘I then I’m pregnant.’ He organized a raid against her.” Men were considered the only people in a community worth anything because they were the providers and the protectors, so they were never wrong. If she were being raped, she could not point a finger at him and expect to be believed. She was the only one that was attacked by the village people (which he most likely would have been a part of), and she was the one that brought humiliation and disgrace to her family. She, knowing that she had no where to go for the love and protection of a family and rather than make her child face the humiliation of living as a child born to a banished woman, kills herself while he continues to live as though nothing ever happened. To this day in Turkey, woman who disgrace their families by having a child out of wedlock or something of that nature are still told by members of their families to kill themselves than remain a part of their families.
In today’s American culture, it is almost like having a child out of wedlock is no longer considered immoral. It happens so often to young people that the thought of disowning a daughter and acting like she never existed is unimaginable. In Kingston’s parents’ lives, this was obviously the way that a situation of this caliber was expected to be handled. They degraded her and tortured her by telling her that she had brought death to them and that she had never been born that it is not surprising that she thought that suicide was the only way out of the terrible existence that she had ahead of her. “Carrying the baby to the well shows loving. Otherwise abandon it. Turn its face to the mud. Mothers who have their children take them along. It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for a boy.” The innocent child is not even a day old, and the woman already feels that it is better for it to die than have to live through the life of being a child born out disgrace. It makes no sense that people could have so little compassion for an innocent child that the mother feels she needs to kill it for it’s own good.
It could be that in modern America morals and values have just been lost over time. It could also be that families have realized that there is nothing that should separate them. Different societies may see it in different ways, but because of the way that I have been raised, I know that there is nothing that someone in my family could do to make me stop loving him.
Kingston reveals to us in her excerpt from The Woman Warrior the extreme roll tradition plays in Chinese society, and the oppressiveness it creates against the women of that society. The excerpt, “No Name Woman” serves as a window into the disciplined world of Chinese culture, and as a testament to the nameless woman whose actions defied the social paradigms and traditions of the time. Ultimately, it is a sad tale of a life without escape or alternatives, and the ultimate will of a male-dominated society upon the women without a voice.
From the first sentences of the story, the harshness of Chinese society is apparent, as the narrator’s mother demands an oath of secrecy of the story of her aunt (28). She states that her father considers her a disgrace, and is better off keeping the illusion of a family of all sons (33). The horror of this thought stems from two controversial issues in Chinese culture. First, society gave much honor to the males in the family, and tended to look down upon female members. To a Chinese woman, the only way she could beckon respect and honor was to marry a man and bear his sons—not daughters. As Kingston points out, female children were often drowned by their own mothers, society stating this was a loving act from the mother. Secondly, the aunt was raped and had a child out of wedlock. Such an act deemed her an outcast from the village, and brought dishonor to her entire family. However, no judgment was brought upon the male. Even the aunt refused to reveal the perpetrator. She could take no other action—society deemed the fault her own, without even considering the man’s actions (32). Left with no honor or help from the village, she found her redemption in suicide, bringing her baby to her death as well. In her eyes, it would have been better for the child to never have lived the life of disgrace society would have condemned it to live.
Ultimately, it was society that killed the aunt and her child. Society deprived her of her own individuality, and dictated what was honorable from dishonorable. This same society refused to acknowledge the man’s guilt in the event. Perhaps during these times, men were in short supply, having either gone to war or out far away to work. To look at it this way implies that justice is governed by societal needs and morals. Yet even this is dictated by personal gain—in this case, from the whims of men. It was the man who decided that the aunt and her family should suffer, not society (38). Even her own family decided to adhere to this standard. Not once did they offer to console her, or help her situation. Rather, they simply picked up the pieces of their lives and moved on. With no family, and deemed an outcast, what other choice did the aunt have?
The fear of society’s judgment is instilled in each individual in this culture. The mother warns the narrator to not become like the aunt and bring disgrace to the family. Even in America, the fear of society and its oppression is prevalent in the family. The narrator, however, has a different opinion. Rather deny the aunt her very existence, she chooses to tell her story. Perhaps it is the hope that one day, someone will read it and remember that justice was not done to the family or her. It is this hope that the narrator writes with, that she can challenge the seemingly unshakable pillars of society and the grip it holds over the actions of both men and women.
Tradition plays a role in how people understand themselves. Customs within a heritage affect the way children interpret things that are happening around them. Tradition plays a huge role, where you grew up, what cultural background you have; all affect how you view the world. Kingston in her work “No Name Woman,” is struggling to understand these old traditions and customs in her own Chinese culture, especially the strict role placed upon women. She wants to know in particular “What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?”
She tries to discern the “why” behind certain customs in her culture. She especially struggles with this because she can’t talk about certain things in her family’s past with anyone, not even members of her own family. The first line of the story is her mother instructing her that “you must not tell anyone.” The thing that is forbidden to be discussed is the tale of her “no named” aunt that disgraced the family by having an illegitimate child. She says if she wanted to learn what clothes her aunt wore she would have to ask ‘“Remember Father’s drowned-in-the-well sister?” I cannot ask that.” Her aunt, to her family, isn’t even a blemish on the family’s history. They act as if she never lived. “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her.” The thing that’s unsettling is that no one really seems to mind that they erased a person from existence. “My aunt haunts me-her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her…” Kingston is the only one that bothers to remember her in her attempt to make sense of these traditions passed down from her mother.
Partially the reason they can dismiss her aunt’s existence without anyone’s objection is that she is a woman. Being a woman was looked upon as seemingly useless. “To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough.” Women had to fit the role they were placed in. “Women looked like great sea snails-the corded wood, babies, and laundry were the whorls on their backs.” The men gave orders and the women were expected to be submissive. It didn’t even matter if the man giving the orders was the woman’s husband or not. “The other man was not, after all, much different form her husband. They both gave orders; she followed.” Her aunt stepped outside of the mold she was placed in by tradition, and her family’s house was destroyed by the villagers and she was driven to commit suicide. She stepped outside the role Chinese society and traditions proscribed for her and suffered for it.
Being an individual as a woman in the old Chinese society was not an option. This is illustrated in the title of the story “No Name Woman.” It specifically refers to her “nonexistent” aunt, but also applies to all Chinese women of that time, who were not given a voice of their own. “Women in the old China did not choose.” Women could not speak for themselves, and subsequently could not make a name for themselves.
Support of the Family
I believe one main point this story tries to get across is the importance of family encouragement. The narrator’s aunt made a mistake, and the villagers began to gossip about her. All the villagers believed that she was an embarrassment to all of them and their village. Kingston touches on this idea, but doesn’t dwell on it very much. I believe that Kingston only mentioned the fact that the villagers were gossiping so that the raid on the narrator’s aunt’s house wouldn’t come as such a surprise. I believe that another reason Kingston touched only lightly on the subject was to show that the narrator’s aunt wasn’t overly hurt by their gossiping. She was embarrassed, of course, but she was dealing with it quite well. As long as her family didn’t curse her, she could move on.
The story says something very important about her family’s behavior during the pregnancy. On page 31, last paragraph, Kingston writes, “After the villagers left, their lanterns now scattering in various directions toward home, the family broke their silence and cursed her.” Kingston is referring to the moment after the villagers raided the house and were leaving. By saying that the family “broke their silence and cursed her,” she is also saying that during the pregnancy, they kept their silence even though the villagers were talking about her. I believe that this silence within the family shows family support and encouragement. In order to make themselves look better, they could have thrown her out of the house as soon as the villagers started talking. Instead of throwing her out, however, they allowed themselves to look bad by keeping her during the pregnancy. Again, I believe the reason that Kingston did not put much emphasis on the gossiping of the villagers was to show that the narrator’s aunt didn’t mind it too much. When the family finally did break their silence and curse her after the raid, however, the real pain began.
On page 32, last paragraph, Kingston writes, “Don’t tell anyone you had an aunt. Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born.” On page 33, first full paragraph, third sentence, she writes, “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her.” The narrator’s father never speaks about his own sister, because he viewed her as a disgrace and a disease among his family. The only reason the narrator’s mother tells the narrator this story is to warn her to not make the same mistake. After the villagers’ raid of the house, the family forgot about the narrator’s aunt and never mentioned her again. After her family cursed her, the narrator’s aunt felt like she had lost her last friends in the world. Her only slight source of support and comfort came from her family, whose support was actually the absence of cursing.
The family’s curse is what ultimately drove the narrator’s aunt to her suicide. Kingston doesn’t focus on the narrator’s aunt’s pain until after the family’s curse. After her family curses her, she runs from the house and goes into labor. Kingston then writes about the many kinds of pain she is experiencing, including the pain that her family cursed her at last, and the pain of giving childbirth alone. As long as her family still loved her, she could move on. When she lost the support and love from her family, however, she lost all will to live, and drowned herself.
In “No Name Woman,” a person’s place in a Chinese society and culture, and the financial hardship are important ideas that the story addressed. The narrator explained that her aunt and other women had a role in their village, but not to the same degree of importance as a man. Men were the sole bread-winners, and that seemed to dictate the level of respect that was expected of others. What was the purpose of women in this culture? Well according to the narrator, women are to do what they’re told, submit to marriage without a choice, preserve their culture, be common, and to procreate. In other words, it means that women are supposed to be plain, mindless, fertile, and at a man’s disposal. I believed it might have pained the narrator to write this story about her aunt, as much as it pained me to read it. Nevertheless, it was a great read.
The story never clarified whether the aunt’s infidelity was by choice or by a man’s imposing will. It could be interpreted either way from the reader’s point of view, but the outcome, nonetheless, would have been the same. The narrator didn’t want to believe her aunt committed adultery at her own will. She knew her aunt was aware of the consequences of having an illegitimate child, and she couldn’t fathom why anyone, in those times, would cause so many misfortunes to the village. The narrator stated, “The frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she made in the roundness.” The villagers felt that the aunt’s infidelity would cause some sort of disruption of wholeness, causing some kind of imbalance. Consequently, she had to be punished for “a private life, secret and apart from them,” and be made an example.
The narrator also explained how money could have played a factor in determining the judgment of her aunt. “If my aunt had betrayed the family at a time of large grain yields and peace…..perhaps she might have escaped severe punishment.” It’s apparent that more wealth could put her aunt’s crime in a potentially, more positive light. But due to fact that the village was under extreme poverty and disease, her crime was amplified among the community. When many of the men went west to America for income, the emotional state of village heightened. No one in the village ever questioned who the father might be, or ever tried to justify the consequences of her actions, not even the aunt herself. There seemed to be a degree of understanding and acceptance for the way everything worked out.
Considering the terms, what was a woman to do in that village, in that time? There was absolutely nothing. Her own family said, “You’ve killed us. Ghost! Dead Ghost! You’ve never been born.” The aunt destroyed her family’s reputation, which was the worst thing imaginable at that time. It wouldn’t have mattered if the aunt would’ve told the village who was the father of the child, and she didn’t feel like it was her place to disclose that fact. There wasn’t any justification for pregnancy, outside of her marriage, in the eyes of the villagers. It was a bitter understanding that the aunt came to terms with. At last, for a brief time, she was on her own and delivered her child by herself, with no one to care for her. Kingston wrote, “She may have gone to the pigsty as a last act of responsibility: she would protect this child as she has protected the father.” In the end, since the child would have no one to look after it, the aunt knew they’d shared the same fate individually. But maybe she thought that the both of them could enjoy each other in the afterlife; hence, the jump into the water well with her child. Neither the aunt, nor the child, would have to feel the feeling of being unwanted and not loved.
No Title Response
Maxine Hong Kingston is not even supposed to be writing about her Aunt.
Once we get past the oxymoronic meanings of that statement and read her short story “No Name Woman” about her Aunt’s suicide and Chinese culture, we begin to understand that secrecy is a very dichotomous staple of Chinese culture and something that Kingston gets snagged on throughout her writing. Secrecy plays a role in many facets of Chinese life, according to Kingston, from its use in personal relationships and its apparent absence in the village life to its role in beauty and love and its impact on women. The dynamic of the story is derived form Kingston searching through her own life and revealing the parts of it that have been impacted by this peculiar aspect of Chinese culture.
After the short vignette from the narrator’s mother, we immediately see the influence of culture on the young Kingston. “Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful.” There are many important ideals contained within this statement that her mother makes to her. Your mistakes not only affect yourself; they tarnish the family as a whole. There is punishment worse than death. The whole is worth more than the individual.
Chinese culture is introduced through each of Kingston’s ruminations about the nature of her aunt’s life, from her search for beauty with the depilatory string and bound feet (ouch, don’t search “Chinese Feet Binding” on google if you don’t want to see some very disturbing stuff). Its implications into her own life play a big role on Kingston’s perspective.
A major example of this is her writing. Kingston is forced to begin a memoir with a demand for silence, and the story that follows is wrought with much ambiguity due to the fact that she can’t ask her mother about the “drowned-in-the-well aunt” that it isn’t much of a “memoir” at all. The only way Kingston can write about her Aunt is if she likens her to herself or uses her imagination; in essence, she writes about what she would have done in the situation. She says, “The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one’s gust not be turned into action.” She describes her aunt as “my forerunner,” or someone who “let dreams grow.” In a time where men crossed physical boundaries to new lands, her aunt went where women were not permitted to go, to a place where their desires and thoughts are fulfilled.
The biggest similarity between the aunt and the writer lies in their “secret voice, a separate attentiveness.” In a culture where the village forbade privacy, the aunt must have lived in her diverging thoughts, just as Kingston writes her many, expansive theories about her aunt’s life. Her aunt never reveals the name of her secret lover, or rapist, what have you, just as Kingston cannot reveal even the name of her aunt, or the specifics of her life or past few months alive.
The ramifications of these secrecies lead to the ultimate punishment that the aunt receives from her family (not the raiding villagers), which is to be forgotten, as if she were never alive. The narrator confesses that she has spent her life since she heard the story taking part in this punishment, never asking her mother for more, never mentioning it to her father. Does Kingston succeed in redeeming herself? Is this a tribute to her aunt? Does breaking twenty years of silence finally give rest and substance to a malnourished ghost that is her aunt?
Unfair Discrimination of Women in Chinese Culture
Kingston rewrites No Name Woman’s story based on her own understanding of the patriarchal nature of traditional Chinese society, in which women were conditioned to do as they were told, without question. Because No Name Woman was conditioned to do everything that she was ordered to do, she was not able to gather the personal strength necessary to resist her rapist’s sexual desires. This inability shows what Kingston says is the great difference between how women and men were supposed to act: “Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. . . . She obeyed him; she always did as she was told” (Kingston 8). I also find it interesting when Kingston says, “The other man was not, after all, much different from her husband. They both gave orders: she followed” (Kingston 8). Both of these quotes show how women were in a sense “robots” and did whatever was commanded to them. They didn’t have the time to think to themselves, “Is this right or wrong?”- They just followed their orders as a natural instinct in fear of being punished.
At the time, women were faced with many harsh traditions that were important to a woman’s appearance in Chinese society. A woman’s hair and face must go together hand in hand and look neat. Kingston mentions that many women would go through the pain of plucking pieces of hair in order to have their hair structured to their faces. The author’s mother reminds her daughter that she is lucky she doesn’t have to go through the tradition of having her feet “bound.” The mother states, “Sisters used to sit on their beds and cry together, as their mothers of their slaves removed the bandages for a few minutes each night and let the blood gush back into their veins” (Kingston 9). It’s hard to believe that they participated in this culture practice just to prevent their foot from forming an arch in hopes of obtaining the ideal flat feet. Like most Chinese women of the time, her aunt spent attention to her looks in order to please and attract a male- again, always about what the men wanted, not the women.
Kingston also exposes the unfair discrimination against women in traditional Chinese society when she discusses how sons are celebrated more than daughters. She imagines that her aunt’s illegitimate child must have been a girl: “It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys” (Kingston 15). Only a mad person, as her grandfather is described to have been, would prefer a female child over a male. Sons were respected because they could pass on the family name, thereby ensuring a family’s name. On the other hand, daughters, who were given away by their parents at marriage, primarily functioned only as bearers of sons for their husbands’ families. This was the tradition of a patriarchal society that enforced its beliefs by putting restrictions on women’s positions and conduct. Improper actions, such as No Name Woman’s act of adultery, were considered to be against the code and could lead to severe consequences, including death. Because Kingston’s aunt had both committed adultery and had a female child with another man other than he husband, she gave her family and community a bad name.
As a woman today, I am fortunate to live in a society where women’s rights and values are respected. Sadly, many patriarchal societies are still present in the world. For example, women in Japan, who endure the world’s most successful patriarchy today, have one tenth the change of getting divorced, one fifth the chance of being raped, and one fourth the change or being murdered. One must wonder, what has made some patriarchal societies survive and made others disappear? Is it the passing down of traditions or simply the way people believe things should be done?
In Kingston’s “No Name Woman”, one of the most prominent themes would clearly be that of cultural, more namely Chinese, tradition. However, what I found to be a more interesting subject of discussion is the role that younger generations play in the remembrance of their ancestors and how this changes with time, as tradition will inevitably begin to shift if not just a small amount. In the short story, Kingston calls the specific situation that is portrayed a kind of “reverse ancestor worship”. She drives her points with a much removed tone and harsh imagery.
“The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her”. Tradition is what ultimately drives the narrator’s aunt to suicide. Adultery was not culturally accepted, period. She was persecuted by family, close friends, and neighbors who had themselves watched this young girl grow into a woman. It didn’t matter who she was, only what she did. The gods didn’t agree with it and neither did those that surrounded her. Nonetheless, the narrator believes that it is not a case of what the villagers inflicted upon her, but the way the family kept her in their memory. Why is this? Why is that such a crime compared to driving someone to suicide? The narrator states that even if she wanted to know what her aunt dressed like or looked like she never can. Why is it that the mother is not willing to share such a simple and important part of the girl’s Chinese culture with her? I believe this is where the generation gap comes into play, the transforming of tradition. It isn’t intentional. The mother isn’t trying to keep it from her children; she simply doesn’t find it pertinent. All she wants to do is drive her point. Adultery is not accepted in our culture, this is an example of your own aunt, your own blood. See what happened to her. However, the narrator is more Americanized than her mother. She is interested in her aunt as a woman connected to her past, not as an adulteress. The narrator feels it is an extreme injustice for her aunt to be a “no name woman”. Why must her aunt suffer after death? Hasn’t she been through enough? The narrator feels that her existence shouldn’t be a secret. It is her past, and she is proud of it. “In an attempt to make the Chinese care for people outside the family, Chairman Mao encourages us now to give paper replicas to the spirits of outstanding soldiers and workers, no matter whose ancestors they may be”. I believe this line is an excellent summary of the narrator’s feelings. She wants to remember her own ancestors, not random ones belonging to others. She wants to know her aunt’s name, the flow of her hair, and her outlook on life. Tradition is holding this information far from her reach because that is not what her mother feels should encompass these stories of her ancestors. As the narrator grows older and begins to share stories with children of her own, I believe what she includes in them will be vastly different from what she received as a child.
The tone of this story also adds greatly to its effectiveness. I feel it has sort of an apathetic tone. There is a lack of feeling there for such intense events, and I believe that aids in showing the reader that the narrator isn’t interested in the negative parts of her aunt’s life. She hears stories such as this one all the time. Also, the harsh and graphic imagery takes the reader aback while driving Kingston’s point simultaneously. “No Name Woman” is a story of the lack of fulfillment a child receives from her past. Ironically, tradition is what is holding this from her. The narrator yearns to know more of her traditional culture and ancestors, just not the part with which she is being presented with.
It is a well known fact, that individuals can be influenced by a number of things. Some people find that they are influenced most by their upbringing and their families. Others are more impacted by the society they grew up in. Some people are influenced by a combination of things. “The Woman Warrior”, by Maxine Hong Kingston, illustrates a Chinese family’s cultural and individual influences. It is illustrated through a story told by a girl who grew up in America, but has a Chinese background. Being raised in America has drawn the narrator to question her dark family secret and to try and discover her own feelings about the situation. In the end, the influence of her Chinese background outweighed any other aspect in her life.
The narrator is speaking of her family when she says, “they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have. . . People can chase after [the dead] and hurt them further” (33). She is referring to the dreadful story her mother told her. This statement informs the reader about the family’s impression of the aunt who committed adultery. The family felt that her punishment was entirely necessary. The narrator’s mother said that under different circumstances the aunt may have been forgiven, so the punishment occurred because of the current situation of the town. The aunt’s actions in addition to the lack of material possessions led to an extreme outrage of the town people. The fact that the aunt was family did not seem important. This is such a powerful message about the Chinese culture. Their culture was no doubt the reason for the raid. There had been raids before and I’m sure there were some after. The individuals of the town raided the aunt’s home, murdered her animals, and humiliated her because of the influence not only from their culture, but from the leader of the raid and by others involved in the raid. It seems as though the raiders did not even feel shameful of their actions. The Chinese are extremely strict compared to other cultures. They have harsh punishments. If the condition of material things in the town over powered the love of people and the love of a family to drive a woman to commit suicide, influence, to me, is the best explanation.
The town people were not the only influential elements of this short story. The family influenced the narrator’s views. The narrator, who was not even around during the time of the aunt’s suicide, and who only knew of the story through the mother’s telling of it, was very affected by it. She felt as though “the real punishment was not the raid, but the family’s deliberately forgetting [the aunt].” (33) The daughter feels as though her family wants her to forget about the aunt as they did, so that even after her death, the aunt would still be punished for her wrongdoing. The Chinese people punished the aunt severely, to the point of wanting their next generation to punish her just as badly. Although it seems like the main influence the narrator has is from her family, she leaves the reader in the end thinking about whether, growing up in America influenced her as well. Does she feel badly for her aunt? Even though she wasn’t one of the family members to directly harm her aunt, she is the only one who “devote[d] pages of paper to her” (33). On the other hand, it is possible that the narrator is just frightened of the drowned one, “whose weeping ghost waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.” (33) The narrator may have been slightly influenced by the American society and felt terrible for her aunt, but it seems as though, in the end, her Chinese influence wins out; she is scared of her aunt, and she wants her aunt to stop haunting her. The narrator’s burden of this secret says a lot about her character. She, unlike any other family members, has been influenced by something other than her Chinese heritage. She at least for a moment stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong what her family was doing to her. This proves that she was influenced by an outside source; her American upbringing influenced her as well.
Chinese society is definitely an interesting one. The reason things are done a certain way in China may be tradition or culture, but in this story, I felt as though it wasn’t only these aspects that were, but also the influence of individuals. The families of China did what they did and acted the way they acted because that was how others felt they should be. To me, influence of their cultural backgrounds and the influence of individuals or a group of individuals around them drives the Chinese to their actions.
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