Woman Warrior, a Book by Maxine Hong Kingston

Marine Kingston’s memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memories ofa GirlhoodAmong Ghosts, integrates Kingston‘s life experiences in cahoots with spoken stories that entail Chinese history, myths, and beliefs. The feminist autobiography, more specifically the “No Name Woman” chapter, underlies the issues of sexism in early Chinese culture. Sexism is defined as “attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual rolesi” Through the dichotomy of myth and reality, Kingston reveals the Chinese tradition of male dominance and female oppression. Kingston‘s use of symbols and the social context of the “talk stories” her mother told her bolster the identity of the role of women in traditional Chinese society Kingston uses silence and bounded feet as symbols for the intangible restrictions of the woman in the traditional Chinese culture.

The symbol of silence is introduced when Brave Orchid tells Maxine, “ ‘You must not tell anyone,‘ my mother said, ‘what I am about to tell you’,” The preceding quote articulates the idea that women were required to be silent and had no voice in society, and they had to forget their aunt.

Maxine is not allowed to talk about her aunt, however, she ironically ends up telling the world by writing a book, Maxine further learns that speaking out and rebelling against society always had a punishment. This idea is demonstrated when No Name Woman rebels against the traditional Chinese culture and bears a child through adultery. Moreover, Kingston introduces another oppressive symbol when she says, “We didn’t have to have our feet bound when we were seven.

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” A foot binding was a common in traditional Chinese culture. The feet binding symbolized the restrictions placed upon women in traditional Chinese society.

The foot bindings were degrading as well as harmful to the bodies, however, the woman needed to listen to the males no matter what. Furthermore, the social context of the “talk stories” also demonstrated the inferior status of females. Kingston revises No Name Woman’s story based on her knowledge of the patriarchal nature of traditional Chinese society, in which women were obedient, without question. Due to the small community in which No Name Woman lived, Kingston claims that her aunt’s sexual partner ”was not a stranger because the village housed no strangers.” Ironically, Kingston alleges, the same men who were oppressive towards the Chinese woman hold responsibility for No Name Woman’s adultery. Because No Name Woman was conditioned to complete obedience, she was unable to gather the personal strength necessary to repel the man’s sexual advances.

The inability to gather personal strength shows what Kingston argues is the great juxtaposition between how women and men were expected to behave: “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.” Even more damning of this double standard in “Old China” is Kingston’s belief that this man who practically raped No Name Woman was the crook who arranged the attack on No Named Woman‘s family Kingston’s interpretation of her mother’s original talk-story exemplifies how a dutifully docile woman is exploited by a man’s abusive manipulation of a gender-based social code. Kingston also exposes the unfair oppression against women in traditional Chinese society when she discusses how sons are blatantly praised more than daughters.

She fantasizes that her aunt’s illegitimate child must have been a girl: “It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys.” It was out of the ordinary to prefer a female child over a male. Sons were exalted because they were able to keep the family name in continuation, thereby securing a family’s longevity; in contrast, daughters, primarily functioned only as a way to bear a child for another family. This was the traditional motive and operation of a patrilineal society that enforced its rules by imposing restrictions on women’s positions and conduct, Inappropriate actions, such as No Name Woman’s, were deemed as a breach of the code and were punished Because Kingston’s aunt had an adulterous affair and, even worse, possibly produced a female child from the fornication, she threatened what Kingston terms the “roundness”, or the harmony and the wholeness, of her family and the society.

The circularity was so intertwined everyday symbolically, in “the round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of graduated sizes that fit one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls” that the smallest menace, to social normality’s was thought of as an attack on a way of life and had to be terminated. Women portrayed in The Woman Warrior are classified as oppressed and restricted through the use of literary symbols and the reinterpretations Kingston makes of the “talk stories” her mother tells her. Although Kingston was silent in her earlier days, she finds her own identity and voice by writing a story and speaking out about the women that were almost forgotten, Kingston provided a voice for the forgotten women.