The short story we are going to discuss today is a short story, of course, but it is also a chapter of a novel, Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese-American writer from California. 
There are some sites you can consult to learn more about this author:
- Voices;
- Time Magazine: 60 Years of Asian Heroes;
- Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire.
You are free to make your comments!!!
Oh, my God, how terrible story!
In this SS the author writes about what happened to her aunt from what she has listened from her mother. The author’s purpose is to reconcile both her Chinese and American identities and mold her own identity.
Her aunt had become pregnant by a man whose identity was unknown. Brave Orchid also relates that at the time (1924) the aunt’s husband was working in America. Due to failing crops and a poor domestic economy, many of the men from the ancestral village in China were forced to leave their farms to look for work, traveling to America.
Brave Orchid’s story about Kingston’s aunt is a cautionary tale meant to discourage the young Kingston to have sex before marriage. Brave Orchid explains to her daughter about her aunt, “’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. The villagers are watchful.’” (p.2339). She wants to pass values and shows a proper conduct to her daughter. And also her mother wants giving her a sense of who she is and where she came from.
Kingston rewrites the tale from her own American perspective. Doing this it can be said that she established a tie between her (a Chinese American) and her mother (who represents the cultural traditions of China).
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. This shows 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.”
Kingston’s version of Brave Orchid’s original story emphasizes how a submissive woman is victimized by a man’s abusive manipulation of a gender social code.
Although Kingston writes about her aunt’s story opposing what her mother asked her in the beginning of the story: “You must not tell anyone” (p.2337) she blames herself for having kept silent about this woman for more than twenty years. She writes, “But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have.” (p.2347)
But ‘antes tarde do que nunca’. She was very courageous exposing her family’s story and I admire her.
I liked this SS very much because it exposes some historical issues but I became a little bit shocked with some elements of the Chinese tradition.
I knew that they were very strict especially with women but the author portays some scenes that I could make the images inside my mind and I felt pitty all the time: for the women situation, for the men that had to leave their houses to a distant country, for all the people that were starved and also for the “aunt” that was forgotten by her family and suffered a lot when she was alive.
The scene that the villagers invade the house and kill the animals is really realistic and horrible, I almost could hear the people yelling and the animals dying… I don’t know but I think that because of all that realistic way of writing it caught my attention; I couldn’t wait to read the final part, so I read that before finishing the whole story and I felt disapointed because I had a hope that in the end the aunt could be at least remembered as a member of the family, but it did not happen and she continue being a ghost at the history of that family.
I was going to comment about the Chinese education that women received but I think that Catia did it so well and I agree with her in all her points about gender hole, patriarchal society, women submission and also about the auto-biographical thing. When I’ve noticed that the author is Chinese-American I realized that she know everything that she told from a different perspective, she was not inside that situation but she identify herself maybe because her relatives told her their experiences as had happened to the narrator of the SS.
Another thing that I want to comment is about women as a “product”, they could not have any desire and they even can be “comercialized” as they were objects: “(…) a synonym for marriage in Chinese is “taking a daughter-in-law”. Her husband’s parents could have sold her, mortgaged her, stoned her.”
I know that it still occurs nowadays but it horrible anyway…
I agree with Katia when she says that this SS is about the author’s
aunt who had been forgoten for her family. As she said, this ss is
autobiographical. Telling her daughter what
happened with the author’s aunt, the mother trys to pass values,
saying what her daughter couldn’t do. The mother represents the
traditional culture of China, as Katia mentioned.
I also agree with Katia and Verônica when they talk about
women education, patriarchal society and women submission.
This SS is narrated in first person, by the daughter’s perspective. An
important characteristic is the polifonia – I don’t know this word in
English -, because we can notice more than one voice in the SS. The
mother’s, the author’s and the villagers’s.
I also agree with Verônica when she says that women were treated like
objects. This way, they had – and still have – any desires and can’t
control their lifes.
I felt pity when I read this SS. Pity for the woman “acused” of adultery, for her tragic fate. =/
Family certainly plays an important role in our lives, and being treated as if we weren’t ever born is something really painful. There is nothing worse than being condemned to oblivion, being treated with indifference. And we can see that this belief is shared by Kingston as she realizes that the real punishment for her aunt was to be forgotten, since the support of the family is necessary not only in life but in death as well.
Again, women are opressed and have to face hard and tragic fates. Verônica also pointed something good: the fact of women being treated as “products”. Somewhat, I think we can relate this with the way that women are portrayed in Bernard Malamud’s “The Magic Barell”…
Well, I think minding the title is a good way to start analysing this short story… A woman with no name is a woman with no importance, a woman that everybody wants to forget about. And questions like “why is she a no name woman?” and “why should we forget her” is what Maxine asks herself in retelling this story, I assume.
The conflict between the traditional Chinese society and the supposed “modern” society existent in America is an evident aspect. I guess what we should really question is not the plot itself, but perhaps the reasons the author had in mind in telling us this. Maxine takes an alternative way – which is telling a story – to criticise the role women play in society and also what she represents. The fact that Maxine’s aunt was not supported by her family and not even by the villagers makes it clear that not accepting that pregnancy was a common and expected position in that particular society. And it is under this aspect that American and Chinese cultures are compared.
When Maxine’s aunt dies, she sort of becomes a “lost soul”. Since she “had no name” and since she did not have a family to support her, she became an ancestor with no strict relations with her relatives that were alive, that is what makes her a ghost I think.
Another interesting point to be observed is that Maxine sort of compares herself to her aunt in telling this story. I think she sees herself in her aunt’s shoes all the time
One last thing to consider is that this story became a sort of a burden that family will have to carry, but, also, it became an example of what NOT to do. One of those stories generations of mothers should tell their respective daughters in order to educate them and maintain the good reputation of the family.
Cheers.
This short story has very strong, chocking imagery. The riot, the descriptions of her aunt giving birth like an animal, alone in the middle of nowhere. It comes back to “a family supper”, in terms of how honor has a different meaning for Japanese and for Chinese now as well. The narrator, a Chinese-American modern woman still doesn’t know how to deal with her aunt’s tragic tale; it is her personal legend and works as a puzzle she tries to put together. She is both intrigued by it, afraid of it, curious about the details and there is a sense of admiration as well. That mixes with her identity, with her idea of herself and her place in the American society as a Chinese descendant.
The image of her aunt as a renegade ghost is also presented as a feature. She was the narrator’s ancestor but it is a secret since after her death nobody talked about her and pretended she hadn’t existed. At the same time the narrator had all these emotions regarding her aunt’s story, she is supposed to pretend she didn’t exist, which is what she actually did during her whole life. “’Don’t tell anyone you had an aunt. Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born.’ (…) But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have.” There is a sense of divided identity in the narrator. Although she is American and has all of those modern concepts of life and freedom – something her aunt didn’t have -, she still keeps a conservative attitude towards the family’s old traditions, probably because she knows they still apply and would inflict her as well. It is a complex place to live in, not knowing exactly to which culture you belong to and trying to fit in both but feeling an outcast at the same time. There is a concern on which kind of ghost she was going to become and she was trying to make peace with her aunt. “My aunt haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, though not origamied into houses and clothes. I do not think she always means me well.”
“The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.” The narrator places herself in this group. And the new ideas of moral values she absorbed from the American culture make her situation even more delicate than her father’s, for instance, who only ignored and pretended he only had brothers since her sister’s conduct was simply unacceptable and will always be. The narrator might not be so sure of that. It always comes back to Said’s concepts of fluid borders, which are only imaginary lines that separate peoples and ideals and do not establish a unity of thinking. She was not Chinese and she was not American. She acknowledged her Chinese rules and understood them to a certain extend and tried to rationalize them through her now occidental judgment and didn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Very heavy story…
Firstly I will agree with Jean… Families and culture are pretty responsible for the creation of one’s identity.
And why not horror threatening stories?… “Boi Boi Boi …boi da cara preta..pega essa menina que tem medo de careta”…” Nana neném que a Cuca vem pegar!… Better nanar real quick then!
My first impression was that one that Lucas said so well… that American and Chinese cultures are pretty alike under the moralist aspect of those societies. Or can’t we relate this story to our old friend Hester- Letter A? Luckily Hester became from Adultery to Able…
And what happens to no name woman? She doesn’t really have a name to have a nickname …she was grabbed from existence, so no other future except death she could have.
And about the existence – it could be only an ‘educational’ story and not really real – so the mother, very worried about her daughter’s ‘integrity’ and survival in a tough, new, competitive non-familiar environment would make up to scary out any possibility of ’sin’, scandal in their community. The mother would have created this Myth or Legend by the necessity of establishing a wall of protection… The uncertainty of being true or not only makes Kingston free to “continue the process of recreating the Myth”- Malini Schueller.
The sense of community is pretty strong – more like a duty to tradition – to survive the brutality of changes and to resist invisibly to such extravagances as being an individual or extravagancies of desire, of transgression or even of a mistake.
No chance was given to the no name woman. No chance to regret. No chance for forgiveness… Not even to the child (if it was a girl…”there is some hope of forgiveness for boys”- so here we see the patriarchal characteristic of that society) Only burden was left.
Punishment (as in the Scarlet Letter) had to be placed among audience with community participation – and the silence is the scaffold of this story. ” There is more than silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have.”
Well, skipping to the last paragraph real quick I got one more a little scared. Im not a good strong person to watch those Japanese-style movies with black hair and water…drawnings… Creepy…
So, I may finish my comment tomorrow and hurry to bed now or a Cuca pode vir me pegar!
Good night.
Good Morning…
No nightmare last night…Thank God.
I might go on on my comment then…
Just to correct my mistake above… when I mentioned Kingston – I actually wanted to say ‘the narrator’.
The story works as a mixture of narratives… narrative whitin a narrative and goes being developed by the adding of the narrator’s new perspectives, hypothesis and wonderings to the original story told/invented by her mom many years before. The narrator is now retelling it – and she had collected 20 years at least of speculations.
It is a very natural fate to oral tellings, isnt it? To add more of our impressions each time…
But what really caught my attention was: In a society in which people would not talk much…where silence about certain subjects was immaculate…where talking would only be lead by Necessity – wasnt also this SS for the narrator already a very cartactical moment of liberation, a therapeutical moment of freeing herself from the haunting/the fears of her thraumatical threatenings of her past? To liberate herself from the responsability of carrying her family’s solid though invisible reputation on her back?
The text gives us a hint on how the narrator’s mom was raised too… And she had exactely the responsability of perpectuating the roots of their tradition. Mom’s parents “expected her alone to keep the traditional ways … among the barbarians”…not letting any emotions change the path. “The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one’s guts not to be turned to action”.
But wasn’t this story that the narrator writes on paper already an homenage to her aunt. Isnt it already a reaction to her own need to change?
She had broken the rules by thinking critically about her culture. By not being loud – she had broken the rules so to become American-like. To suffer/regreting by not having any dates in her life- not being able to ask for love – never avoided her from wanting it. “But of course, I hexed myself also- no dates. I should have stood up, both arms waving, and shouted out across libraries. “Hey you, Love me back”.
All this hints just made me feel as if this narrator’s writing was a moment of surrendering to the fate of being different from what her culture, parents, tradition expected her to be. She was the mirror image of her transgressive aunt…a specular image… that always lead her to tend to be generous to the aunt by creating in her brain opportunities to understand the adultery, the suicide and murder of the child. Her aunt was the ghost that silently pulled the narrator down to be the substitute!!!!
Another thing I’d like to add is about the first scenes… the violent images of the community assaulting the house and burning, killing the dogs…
The mixture of the coler red and white on that scenes were pretty shocking to me.The contrast of these colors… the white color only makes the red more repreentative to life/death… to sin… to duty (showing the red sheets in the culture of gypsis)…So, this contrast and the pasticiry of the colors only made me think on the mess and terriblenes of the scene.
Now…a great symbol of the story… The community was wearing a white mask while they were putting fire on everything… “As the villagers closed in, we could see that some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks…. Some had tied white bangs around their forheads, arms and legs”.
Isnt it so similar to the KKK ghostly-like way of dressing up?! The white represented also purity of race, beliefs in their dogma.
Well, I don
Pessoal, desconsiderem o comment 10…considerem o comment 12!!!
Carla, Vc poderia por favor apagar esse último comment 10? Eu ainda não tinha terminado, nem dado uma olhada para corrigir erros… Meu pc piscou e o comment foi submetido sem querer…
Obrigada!
Good Morning…
No nightmare last night…Thank God.
I might go on my comment then…
Just to correct my mistake above… when I mentioned Kingston – I actually wanted to say ‘the narrator’.
The story works as a mixture of narratives… narrative within a narrative and goes being developed by the adding of the narrator’s new perspectives, hypothesis and wonderings to the original story told/invented by her mom many years before. The narrator is now retelling it – and she had collected 20 years at least of speculations.
It is a very natural fate to oral telling, isn’t it? To add more of our impressions each time…
But what really caught my attention was: In a society in which people would not talk much…where silence about certain subjects was immaculate…where talking would only be lead by Necessity – wasn’t also this SS for the narrator already a very cathartically moment of liberation, a therapeutically moment of freeing herself from the haunting/the fears of her traumatically threatening of her past? To liberate herself from the responsibility of carrying her family’s solid though invisible reputation on her back?
The text gives us a hint on how the narrator’s mom was raised too… And she had exactly the responsibility of perpetuating the roots of their tradition. Mom’s parents “expected her alone to keep the traditional ways … among the barbarians”…not letting any emotions change the path. “The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one’s guts not to be turned to action”.
But wasn’t this story that the narrator writes on paper already an homenage to her aunt. Isn’t it already a reaction to her own need to change?
She had broken the rules by thinking critically about her culture. By not being loud – she had broken the rules so to become American-like. To suffer/regretting by not having any dates in her life- not being able to ask for love – never avoided her from wanting it. “But of course, I hexed myself also- no dates. I should have stood up, both arms waving, and shouted out across libraries. “Hey you, Love me back”.
All this hints just made me feel as if this narrator’s writing was a moment of surrendering to the fate of being different from what her culture, parents, tradition expected her to be. She was the mirror image of her transgressive aunt…a specular image… that always lead her to tend to be generous to the aunt by creating in her brain opportunities to understand the adultery, the suicide and murder of the child. Her aunt was the ghost that silently pulled the narrator down to be the substitute!!!!
Another thing I’d like to add is about the first scenes… the violent images of the community assaulting the house and burning, killing the dogs…
The mixture of the color red and white on that scenes were pretty shocking to me. The contrast of these colors… the white color only makes the red more representative to life/death… to sin… to duty (showing the red sheets in the culture of gypsies)…So, this contrast and the plasticity of the colors only made me think on the mess and terribleness of the scene.
Now…a great symbol of the story… The community was wearing a white mask while they were putting fire on everything… “As the villagers closed in, we could see that some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks…. Some had tied white bands around their foreheads, arms and legs”.
Isn’t it so similar to the KKK ghostly-like way of dressing up?! The white represented also purity of race, beliefs in their dogma.
Well, I don’t think it was brought without any purpose.
Beijos
I agree with Carol when she said that there is a sense of admiration of the narrator… that is what I meant by the generosity that she had on trying to understand the ‘no name woman’s reasons and circumstances. And, yes, the narrator definitely struggles with a conflict of identity.
It was fantastic all the description of Chinese culture,we could really see what those women had to suffer…
Whwn I was thinking in what I was going to talk,The first thing that came to my mind was the connection between the aunt=Chinese women=no name woman as Lucas has already talked.
Narrator’s aunt is the symbol of all Chinese women.I don’t know if we can call that a symbol. I think the best name is representation because the symbol is between lines and this connection is very clear because at the same time she describes her aunt, she describes Chinese culture and Women situation.
you people are insanily commenting here…there’s just abolutelly nothing left for me! how could you? hehehehehehe
kidding. you’ve said it all about women’s role, men’s roles in ancien chinese society… I also felt sorry for women while reading it, and also felt happy that the narrator is finnaly “botando a boca no trombone” for all this situation! aucth, what is it to be treated like if you never existed? umbelievable!
this SS reminded me so mush of “girl”, by Jamaica Whatever-her-name-is… It seems that BRave Orchird’s mother could be the mother voice in that short story!
In a atittude like the narrator’s that we see that things can no longer be the same, people should stand such treatment anymore. It is a public statement to the “watchful villagers” that “from now on, quit it!” Fear no more, no more no-name people.
I’m sorry. When I said the author in my comment it was the narrator and not the author what I meant.
The SS is autobiographical, but the narrator – and not the author -, as I said – tells it.
As I began the reading of this SS I started to think of one friend of mine. Yeah, it really reminded me of Daniela. Maybe most of you have already heard me talking about a friend that I have who lives in Canada. You may not be interested in this story but anyway I think that it has so much to do with the SS we have just read… Sorry if I bother you all…
Dani is the youngest of four brothers and sisters. The two oldest are girls. They were born in China. The third is a MAN who was born in China as well!!! Finally, Dani was born. She was conceived in Brazil. If I am not wrong, the difference from the oldest girl to Dani is about 15 years… Imagine… Well, Dani´s parents are Chinese and when her mother discovered that she would have a third baby (the boy!), her father had already left China to try a better life in Brazil. Once he managed to settle his life here, he brought all his family. That was when he could know his little son, already been born. Only after that Dani was born. Dani was born in Brazil. Dani went to Brazilian schools, so her literacy happened in Portuguese. She experienced our culture from “her beginning”. Though she was raised in a Chinese family. A family which seem to be, up to a certain extent, very attached to their traditions and values. Then her father decided to try again better life conditions. He went to Canada. This time he took his family. Dani was still studying. As far as I can remember, she did part of elementary school and all high school there in Canada. That is why I consider Dani a Chinese-Brazilian-Canadian GIRL. And this last fact tells so much: a GIRL! Not only once have I heard Dani complaining about her parents, most her mother. I think that it is because her mother spent more of her lifetime in China, most at home…taking care of her children. Dani´s father “experienced” the world. In fact, Dani does not seem to have a good relationship with her mother. When she needs a helping hand, or a shoulder, she seeks for her father. What a paradox, isn’t it? But that is true! Well, the last trouble she reported me happened when she was on her parents house. (Dani has her own flat!!! Another “problem”…). Her mother turned to her, looked at her, and then said “you are too fat, and you eat too much. You have to go on a diet. If you stay like this, you are going to have problems in your life.” How come? That is not true. She is not fat! Her mother is always putting her down. She is always reproaching Dani no matter what Dani does.
Therefore, I think Dani is in the middle of her struggle with her “ghosts”. She is in search for an identity that can mingle all her shattered selves. It really generates so many “ghosts”, as it happened with Hong´s protagonist. Just similar “ghosts”. “Ghosts” related to the cultural clash. Clashes that are quite stronger for being a woman. As Maxine Hong clearly states in the SS, life is quite easier for “Chinese” men. It was clear when the protagonist was trying to guess her aunt´s baby sex: “It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys”.
I was just trying to provide us with something “new”, an experience, as many people commented or will properly comment on the intricacy of this SS.
Sorry for its length and mistakes . . .
In this tragic story, the narrator’s paternal aunt drowned herself and her newborn baby in the family’s well after the villagers savaged the house, as a punishment for her illegitimate pregnancy. The scene of the raiding is described in great details and the most impressive part is the noise: the shouts of the villagers and the scream of the animals, but what is contrastively opposite to this noisy spectacle was the aunt’s silence. From the beginning of the raiding to the very end of it, facing the villagers’ oath and the family’s censure, the aunt kept silent all the way. There was no cry, no words, and even no sound. She suffered all this silently. She ran to the wild alone to give birth to a baby and then drowned the baby in the family’s well. The process from birth to death also happened in desperate silence. But silence never meant obedience. The aunt’s silence was not her submission. On the contrary, the aunt used the voicelessness to protest the male-dominated society.
After the daughter heard the story from her mother, she kept silent for twenty years seemingly. However,
behind her silence, her mind never stopped thinking. The mother attempted to suppress this story by forbidding the daughter to repeat it but this suppression evoked the daughter’s endless imagination. The daughter contrived different reasons for her aunt’s pregnancy: the aunt could have been a victim of rape and patriarchy; she could also have been a passionate seductress and an individualist. The daughter’s imagination moved from her sympathy toward the aunt to her approval of the aunt. The process of the imagination was the daughter’s process of maturing.
This story shocked me… the Chinese values that are shown by the author are very shocking!
The story reflects the author’s personal life and it is interesting to notice how it is built. The stories the author heard had been told by her mother.
Whenever her mother wants to pass a value or warn her children, as the own author mentions: “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities.” So, the mother’s author used to tell stories of their relatives to warn her children and these stories, so strong, had been never forgotten by the author as it was an important part of her childhood.
Maxine Kingston/the author was in search of her identity. There is a passage that illustrates it well: “I have not been able to stop my mother’s screams in public libraries or over telephones. Walking erect (knees straight, toes pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine.” So, we can say that she was involved with both cultures: Chinese and American. And she was trying to find out her identity between these two cultures in which she had been grown up; the American culture was the one she lived in and the Chinese culture was the one that her mother always refers to when she wanted to make her learn about something. and also she lived surrounded by some Chinese habits such as her mother’s loud voice.
And also: “If I made myself American-pretty so that the five or six Chinese boys in the class fell in love with me, everyone else- the Caucasian, Negro, and Japanese boys- would too. Sisterliness, dignified and honorable, made much more sense.” In this passage we can see that the author was so influenced by her mother’s stories, that she was always careful with her attitudes.
wow, intense story! the thing that sparked my interest was the fact that in that community there was no ‘private life’, anything that happened was everybody’s business, not in a ‘fofoqueiro’ type way but in the sense that this way of life was necessary for their survival, as they were all sort of a ‘big family’. life was all about working and survival….
It’s interesting how the worst punishment is facing ultimate death; not only a physical death, but a spiritual one, in which you are forgotten for ever, no descendents will pray for you, because they don’t know you….you don’t even have a name! It’s much worse than having to wear a scarlet letter…
I guess the narrator is trying to come to terms with both cultures, american, in which the sin is ‘exposed’ (of course she’s not trying to expose her aunt in a bad way, but just telling others what happened) and the Chinese, in which the sins and sinners are deliberately condemned to silence and obscurity….
Yes, Veronica and Carol, the word is shock! What terrible things was inflicted to those women…
The SS was a really interesting way for us tu know more about the Chinese culture according to our point of view.
So much useless moralism and so much hypocrisy…
But I thought the narrative very confused, because I coulnd’t tell what was really true in the story and what was guessed by the narrator.
I totally agree with Jean when he says that indifference is the worst punishment one can have, especially when it comes from one`s own family. There is nothing so painful as being left aside, forgotten.
Lucas called our attention to somethinh which is very important in this SS, its title. As he mentioned, A “no name woman” represents someone who has no identity, i.e., who doesn`t exist. Someone who has nothing remarkable, not even a name, to be remebered by people.
The Chinese values portrayed in the SS, as everybody has already described, also shocked me!
This SS is very interesting and everybody said it shocked me too. To know about other culture is very important and improves our knowledge.
“The aunt’s narrative leads readers to understand the traditional view at a personal level. After being told the story of her aunt, Maxine realizes that there was a point to why her mother had told her about her aunt. The No Name Woman became a ghost to her family when she became pregnant.”source:sparknotes
The aunt and mother’s traditional point of view allow us to understand better the Americanized view of the daughter, and the oposite too.
Fisrt of all seemed to me that being an Chinese immigrant daughther the author clearly describes her experiences living within two cultures: Chinese and American. The story is based on her own understanding of the patriarchal nature of traditional Chinese society, with very high stards, in which women were conditioned to do as they were told, without question, she 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.”
I agree with the girls when they talk about about gender hole, patriarchal society, women submission and also about the auto-biographical thing. The indifference is no doubtly the worst punishment one can have, especially when it comes from one`s own family. There is nothing so painful as being left aside, forgotten.
Even nowadays Chinese women suffer with such patriarchal tradition. I dare to go further and remembering all oppressed female characters inth SS We have read and quotate Roberto Pompeo de Toledo when he said that to measure the levels of prejudice and delay of a society is to research over female roles inside it and how the are treated.
If we stop to consider how many times we have discussed about gender roles, patriarchical values, sexism, we will notice this subject is apparently endless. We read about it so much this course that our minds seem to become numb. We tend get every new story with this subject and only throw it in the same “basket” of gender role stories and over; no more deep thinking.
However, by reading another gender role story from a new perspective, we are freshly invited to rethink everything we read and the numbness is temporarily decreased. What was already beginning to appear common – even when we didn’t agree – jumps in front of us clad in new suit, with new face screaming so that we don’t forget how things still are.
Nice SS.
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