First two chapters of The Woman Warrior shows two sides of a Chinese woman's life.
First chapter "No-Name Woman" illustrates the struggle of Kingston's aunt. Because Kingston's mother refused to give her any details about the No Name Woman, Kingston makes several conjectures about her aunt, and it's impossible to know which version is real. Was her aunt raped? Did she fall prey to her sexual needs? We will never know. The rape argument has its merits in Chinese women's submissive nature: "Women in the old China did not choose" (6). However, why did "[her aunt] keep the man's name to herself throughout her labor and dying" (11).
On a side note, I thought it was amazing how important conformity and respect are in China. To avoid gossip, "[Aunt] dug [a freckle] out with a hot needle and washed the wound with peroxide" (10) and to regain respect, her family disowns her aunt (It's scary to think that one's family can "erase" one's existence so easily). If her aunt really was raped, she would need the support of her family to carry on. Instead, her family neglects her because she brought shame to the family and the village. Strangely, the villagers never make the effort to find the child's father and punish him.
Isn't the man also responsible?
It was disturbing to read that the inseminator could have been a family member: "He may have been somebody in her own household, but intercourse with a man outside the family would have been no less abhorrent" (11). It's just ridiculous to think that adultery is just as bad as incest!
How is incest at the same level of adultery?
Kingston never blames her aunt for her actions. Rather, she depicts her as a victim of famine. She says "if [her] aunt had betrayed the family at a time of large grain yields and peace, when many boys were born, and wings were being built on many houses, perhaps she might have escaped such severe punishment" (13). Unfortunately for her aunt, "adultery, perhaps only a mistake during good times, became a crime when the village needed food" (13). Due to famine, the villagers have grown restless and needed a scapegoat for their misfortune.
Kingston says that it is hard for her to imagine the conservative customs and traditions of old China because she lives in a permissive society in America. As a Chinese American, Kingston also struggled to implement Chinese traditions and customs in America: "Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America" (5).
The "White Tigers" and the story of Fa Mu Lan provide an alternative to the traditional beliefs on women's role in the society. Inspired by the story, Kingston believes that "[she] would have to grow up a warrior woman" (20). Glories of Fa Mu Lan serves to contrast Kingston's aunt who was crushed and abandoned by the village.
Woman Warrior
However, reality is not so pleasant: "[Her] American life has been such a disappointment" (45). Her parents did not appreciate her because she was not a boy. Thus, she decided to be a "bad girl," which is--she believes--"almost a boy" (47). She also finds that she does not have special abilities like Fa Mu Lan.
At the end of the chapter, Kingston has a revelation that "the swordswoman and [she] are not so dissimilar" (53). She realizes that she has power of words. She has the power to command language to spread her ideas. She can unite people with her writing and become a female avenger.
Power of writing is amazing
Story of her mother, Brave Orchid, serves as a contemporary example of a woman who breaks tradition. Her mother led an amazing life in China. She had a job of her own as a doctor and supported herself. She was respected by the villagers "like the ancient magicians who came down from the mountains" (76).Through education, she earned respect in China that she even got to keep her maiden name: "Professional women have the right to use their maiden names if the like" (77).
Some of her stories also reinforces negative stereotypes about Chinese women being worthless. Brave Orchid makes it seem as if a slave girl was more valuable than Kingston: "During the war, though, when you were born, many people gave older girls away for free. And here I was in the United States paying two hundred dollars for you" (83).
Cheap Chinese slaves who are (for Brave Orchid) more valuable than Kingston
Even though I've heard of Asians upholding this custom in times of famine and such, it was still disturbing to read the descriptions. One child without an anus was left outside to die. Kingston "pictured a naked child sitting on a modern toilet desperately trying to perform until it died of congestion" (86), which for some reason makes the situation seem a whole lot more horrid. Some of the traditions described in this book are quite disturbing.
First few seconds show that modern kids are left out in dumps to die
