By Caroline Donnelly
Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” is a novel that depicts the stories and tragedies that Kingston grew up hearing. In the first chapter the No Name Woman , the readers are told the story of her Aunt that her Family refuses to remember. There are many fascinating aspects to the story but two major details come to mind. The first being that Kingston choose to believe that her Aunt had been raped rather than have sex for enjoyment. First off, I agree that her forgotten Aunt was most likely raped and forced to suffer in silence. Kingston wrote, “Women in old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. I wonder whether he makes himself when he joined the raid on her family (6)”. Kingston’s reasoning for the fact that her Aunt was most likely raped was because women back then most likely did not even consider doing anything ‘frivolous’ such as having sex. But I do not even think that was it either, women were constantly watched and judged by everyone around them. They took appearances and the way people acted very seriously. I do not believe that her Aunt would be willing to risk her life, the reputation of her family and then her families hate for meaningless sex. As soon as her Aunt realized that she was pregnant she had to have realized that her life was going to end. Which given the fact that she gave birth in a pigsty said a lot about her character. “She got to her feet to fight better and remembered that old-fashioned women gave birth in their pigsties to fool the jealous, pain-dealing gods, who do not snatch pigs (Kingston 14)”. It was clear from the fact that she wanted to protect her child from evil gods that she was not an evil woman but an unfortunate one. Even when she hated the child that she carried, she could not do any harm to it. Which seems like a crazy sentence due to the fact that she killed the child. It must be remembered that in her mind she was not harming the infant but saving it from a vicious, hard life ; to her, killing the child was also saving it.
The second fascinating aspect of the first chapter in Kingston’s “The Women Warrior” would have to be the response that her family gave after raid on their house. They denounced her, “Aiaa, we’re going to die. Death is coming. Look what you’ve done. You’ve killed us. Ghost! Dead Ghost! Ghost! You’ve never been born (Kingston 14)”. Not only did they denounce her but she became someone who was never born. She became someone who they never loved or had happy memories with. She became a ghost in the moment, it did not matter that she was still alive when they rejected her. She became a ghost when she no longer had a life to live or a family to live it with. “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but her family’s deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death (Kingston 16)”. The horrible part is the fact that her family was most likely not made up with bad people. Kingston’s family rejected their daughter, her Aunt, because that was what was expected and the cultural norm. They did not send her to her death with cruelty and hate in their hearts but with fear of the unknown and the culture that made them do this. That is not to say that these people are kind nor are they good but it needs to be remembered that this is all part of their culture. To ignore and forgo their culture would have placed them side by side with Kingston’s Aunt. It is very clear that they were unable to ignore their cultures even for their only daughter. This chapter is an entire tragedy in the making and they all knew it and chose to ignore it. Other chapters of this novel have happier stories that allow the readers some peace but this is not one of them.
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think that they chose to ignore the Aunts pregnancy until it was too late?
- What reason does the author have for not asking for more information about her forgotten Aunt?
- Do you think that the family was in anyway justified for their treatment of the No Name Woman?
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage International, 1976.
Hey there Caroline great post, one part of your discussion that I really liked was where you said that the Aunt at the end of their life did not kill the child out of spite, but instead to spare the child from living a difficult life that she brought upon it. In response to your question of why the author has not asked for more information about her forgotten Aunt, it is caused by the culture of China. Towards the end of the story the author conveys that, “I have believed that that sex was unspeakable and words so strong and fathers so frail that “aunt” would do my father mysterious harm (Kingston 15). In China’s culture, sex is a taboo subject and the forgotten aunt on top of that subject makes the author feel that bringing up the topic to her father would not be worth the harm caused to him.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage International, 1976.
Hey Caroline, I really liked how you went into detail about the aunt’s story and how you even included your own opinions on what you think happened. I think that the reason the author does not want to ask for more information about her forgotten aunt is because she knew that it will upset her father. At the end of the chapter the mother says “’Don’t tell anyone you had an aunt. Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born’”( Kingston 15). The author was told this story when she was younger and since her mom told her not to say anything about the aunt, she wanted to obey her mom. As a child all you know is to listen to your parents and that’s why she didn’t want to ask more about her aunt. I think now that she is older, she is able to make her own decisions and wants to know more about her aunt.
Hey Caroline, I really enjoyed your post! I like how you said that the aunt believed that killing her child was the only way to save it. This was a good point to make. To answer your second question, I believe that the author doesn’t ask for more information about her forgotten aunt because she realizes it is a sensitive topic. The narrator knows the whole family is ashamed of her aunt. The mother says “don’t let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born (Kingston 5). The only reason the mother told the narrator about her forgotten aunt is because she doesn’t want her making the same mistakes. We can see that the aunt was seen as the disappointment of the family and that is why they act like she never existed. The narrator doesn’t want to bring up this sore subject to her father.
Hi Caroline! You did a great job job on your post. I liked how well you analyzed the situation with the Maxine Hong Kingston’s Aunt. It’s really crazy how they could forget a family member like that after they die. You would think that because she was the only daughter that they wouldn’t just forget about her like that. I feel like they chose to ignore the Aunts pregnancy until it was too late because they were ashamed of her being pregnant. The authors reason for not asking for more information about her forgotten Aunt is because she knew it would make her parents upset since she was told not to say anything. The family was not justified for their treatment of the No Name Woman because yes, it is part of the Chinese culture, but they need to understand that mistakes happen. I don’t think it’s fair that women have to live with that fear. According to Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” it states, “Don’t let your father know I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born.” (Kingston 5). I don’t think it’s fair that in the Chinese culture women have to constantly live-in fear. I also don’t think it’s fair that when things, like what happened to her Aunt, happen women are just forgotten like that. It’s so sad.
Hey Caroline, I really enjoyed reading your blog post and thought you made some great points! I think that they chose to ignore the Aunt’s pregnancy until it was too late for a few reasons. The culture would not accept the pregnancy so if it was ignored there wouldn’t be that problem yet. Kingston wrote, “‘I think I’m pregnant.’ He organized the raid against her” (7). Once the aunt announced she was pregnant to the man, he turned everyone against her. This is a good reason why she would not want to come out about the pregnancy. In regards to your last question, I think what the family did was very cruel, but in some ways justified. The family had grown up under this strict culture and knew nothing better to do. They had to look out for themselves in situations as well, not just the forgotten woman. They did what was best for themselves in their culture.
Hey Caroline! I really enjoyed reading your discussion post and thought you included a lot of great quotes and asked some great questions! Something that stood out to me while reading the ‘No Name Woman’ was how Kingston kept referring back to Chinese-feminine and Chinese-American identity. In my opinion I don’t think Kingston asks many questions about her forgotten aunt because she too doesn’t want to disappoint her family members, so all she can do is learn from her aunt’s mistakes through her mother’s stories. Kingston writes, “Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family… from what is Chinese?” (Kingston 5-6). This quote made me wonder if Kingston was trying to separate the not as wonderful part of her Chinese heritage from her Chinese-American lifestyle.
Hi Caroline, I liked that you talked about how the family made the Aunt feel like she was nothing after the house raid. In response to your first question, I felt like the family chose to ignore the pregnancy because the Aunt wasn’t the perfect daughter in their eyes because of how she would act. I feel like this shows up when they talk about “I hope the man she loved appreciated a smooth brow…” (Kingston 9). Here Maxine’s mother says that her Aunt went above and beyond what was supposed to be done to impress her lover and that might have been against cultural norms. This could be shown when the book says “She dreamed of a lover for the fifteen days of New Year’s…” (Kingston 10). So here the Aunt didn’t want to be in a relationship only to have sex she wanted a long-lasting relationship and that seems to be against the cultural norms.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage International, 1976.
Hey Caroline!! I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I felt that you mentioned a lot of important details about the beginning of the book such as the aunt’s story. For instance, while reading the first few pages of the book this quote stood out to me “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born” (Kingston 1). I feel that this quote was very effective as it was detailed and developed the major effect of the families loss and coping skills. Since Kingston was young at the time she didn’t ask to many questions about the tragedy because she didn’t want to upset anybody in her family. I personally feel she was curious to learn more but was to afraid to ask since her mother made sure to get her a point across by saying to never talk about the tragedy with anyone.
Hi Caroline! I’m like that you talked about her Aunt. It seems that whatever happened to her Aunt, whether she was raped or not, her family found her Aunt to be a disgrace for having a child. The No Name Woman gave birth by herself, first in a field but then their “pigsty of a home”. I think that the family shouldn’t have treated the No Name Woman this way because it may not have been her fault that she was pregnant and gave birth. Even though it was expected to have children in wedlock, I think the family didn’t like that she broke that expected tradition, despite how the No Name Woman got pregnant. The quote that stands out to me is when the No Named Woman is giving birth and Kingston says, “she reached down to touch the hot, wet, moving mass, surely smaller than anything human, an could feel that it was human after all- fingers, toes, nails, nose” (Kingston 15). It seems that the way that the baby was described, it seemed that the No Name Woman didn’t believe that she was giving birth to a child until she saw the child. I think the woman wanted to believe that she wasn’t having the child and that she could go back to her normal life until she saw the child. After the child is born, the No Name Woman knew what she had to do so she did it.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage International, 1976.
Hi Caroline! I really enjoyed your focus and perspective of the aunt so far. Something that I enjoyed was that you took it further than a character analysis, there were two points that you made clear that stood out to you about the aunt/ treatment of the aunt. I think it was important to focus on the aunt because this story is told by narrators about her forgotten family. I also think that it was important because you gave two sides to the situation. You gave the ideas everyone perceives the aunt to be and then the side of the aunt’s thoughts. This is shown when the text states, “don’t let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (Kingston 5). This shows the hatred and disassociation that the family has with the aunt. This quote made me feel bad for the aunt that no one respects her and pushes her away as if she is not there.