“No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston (1975) Chapter from the book: The Woman Warrior
As a Chinese-American woman, the narrator is trying to make sense of her aunt story in order to draw up a comparison between her own life as a first generation American and her aunt’s life in a poverty stricken Chinese village in order to form her own identity.
Moment: When the narrator explains traditional Chinese views about Necessity and Adultery/Extravagance, “My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothing unless powered by Necessity, a riverbank that guides her life…Adultery is extravagance… –Could such people engender a prodigal aunt? To be a women, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough. ” Pg. 6 (141 of Course Packet)
This moment is key in understanding the critique that the narrator is making about traditional Chinese culture and race. Her mother telling her the useful parts means that her mother has only revealed enough of the story to teach her a lesson about the values of her culture. The mother’s life is guided by necessity with a capital N and it becomes an important reoccurring theme in the narrator’s understanding of her race and why members of her family chose to immigrate to California. The “useful parts” are what the narrator associates with being the traditional Chinese views. The story of her aunt with no name, whether true or not, makes the narrator aware of at least three maxims that must guide her actions. She must not be extravagant. She must not be adulterous. And she must not be wasteful. The narrator describes the “wastefulness” of being a woman in “old China” as originating from poverty. She later attributes the perceived severity of adultery as also stemming from the poverty of the village. The phrase “prodigal aunt” is an interesting word choice because prodigal means wasteful or recklessly extravagant and relates back to the offenses, which her mother warns her against. There is plot holes in the aunt’s story which the narrator fills with the aforementioned maxims inculcated in her by her mother while at the same time attempting to compromise these views with her own anxieties regarding rape or being “American pretty/feminine” in order to attract boys her age in America without losing the values of her race.
Question:
Particularly in immigrant cultures, is it possible to fully acculturate into a country that propagates values that directly contradict those of your Race?
I think this quote exemplifies how important a meek attitude is to Chinese culture. Occupying such a vast rural land implies to the people that inhabit it that they must always be an asset to their families and never a hindrance. In questioning whether or not her family could "engender a prodigal aunt," the narrator isn't so much entertaining the possibility of a Chinese female abandoning her frugality for an extravagant lifestyle as much as she is contending that such a reality is out of the question. GIven their dependent disposition, women at the time could never hope to live freely enough to pursue their carnal desires. What the narrator refers to as the "useful parts" of the story are the details that shed light on why the family harbors such vengeful feelings towards the nameless aunt and why she must remain nameless. They don't represent traditional Chinese views but rather illustrate how the family's relationship with traditionalism problematizes both the aunt's affair with the strange man and her role in the family.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Are there potential benefits to being the ideal Chinese female or is such a pursuit hopeless given the implied useless state of most women in this culture?