Throughout the years poverty has played an important role in changing traditions and cultures. Poverty has changed the role of women and their ways of thinking. In “No Name Woman”, Maxine Hong Kingston showed an example of how poverty changed the responsibilities of women in a small village in China. According to the narrator’s mother, the women in this Chinese village, during the twentieth century, were to get married for one night and then all the men leave to America, to work there and send money home. The need for money gave women no choice but to obey. They did not choose whether they want their men to leave them or not. They were not asked if they wanted to get married or not. Because women could not go through the pain of hunger, coldness or traveling to a new country, they were viewed as weak creatures, which did nothing in life but following orders. No Name Woman tried to change how women are being viewed, but in fact she was not strong enough to change the village’s traditions. No Name Woman’s fear from the people paralyzed her thoughts and made her believe that she will never get a second chance. No Name Woman was irresponsible she ran away from her duty towards her family and her child. No Name Woman thought that by killing herself she is punishing the villagers and her family for treating her badly, but in fact she was punishing herself.
No Name Woman’s fear destroyed her life and proved her weak nature. No Name Woman’s suicide proved her inability to handle the accusations and the punishment from her society; she was desperate, scared and she could not face the villagers or her family “She ran out into the fields, far enough from the house so that she could no longer hear their voices” (Kingston 31). No Name Woman ...
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...amily’s deliberately forgetting her” (33). She let her family punish her for something that she might have not done.
No Name Woman might have the strength to change her life, but she could not use this strength. Her fear of people, future, and commitment drove her to run away from everything. She did not give herself a second chance, which she deserved. She let the people decide what they wanted to do for her, but she did not choose what she wanted to do to herself. She forgot that she had a duty towards her child and her family and decided to run away from all her problems. Killing herself seemed to her as a better option that facing everyone and defending herself. All of that proved her that she could not fight back because of her weak personality.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: No Name Woman. Vintage books, 1975.
Women were auctioned off as “merchandise” to the best suitor they could get in town. Beauty, though important, was not as important as the dowry the woman possessed, because it was the dowry the family provided that could exalt a man’s societal status to all new heights. Once married, women were expected to have son’s for their husbands in order to take over the family business. A barren woman was not an option and could have easily been rushed to the nearest convent to take her vows of a nun, for no honor could be brought otherwise. No woman could run from the societal and legal pressures placed upon them. Rather than run, some chose to accept their place, but, like Lusanna, some chose to fight the status quo for rights they believed they
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Imagination is a quality that everyone has, but only some are capable of using. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote “No Name Woman” using a great deal of her imagination. She uses this imagination to give a story to a person whose name has been forgotten. A person whose entire life was erased from the family’s history. Her story was not written to amuse or entertain, but rather to share her aunts’ story, a story that no one else would ever share. The use of imagination in Kingston’s creative nonfiction is the foundation of the story. It fills the gaps of reality while creating a perfect path to show respect to Kingston’s aunt, and simultaneously explains her disagreement with the women in her culture.
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In China if you were a "different kind of girl" your family would completely disown you. That 's what happened in Maxine Hong Kingston 's essay "No name Woman". Her aunt, whose name shall never be named violated the norm for women. The aunt 's husband was gone and when he was gone the aunt winded up pregnant and everyone in the village knew it wasn 't her husband 's child. The author believes that her aunt was forced to commit adultery because she writes, "My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex.Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. I wonder whether he masked himself when he joined the raid on her family"(386). Women can be forced to have sex with a man but the women are still at fault. The women get the worse treatment in situations like this while men 's treatment subsides. Maxine Kingston quotes her mother, " 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. The villagers are watchful"(385). It sees as that the women are the only ones who have to carry this stress of "don’t humiliate the father by going against the standards for women" while men are free to do what they so choose and if they do anything wrong they are soon
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Woman." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 227-39. Print.
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