Woman Warrior

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The Woman Warrior Argumentative Essay

Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel The Woman Warrior is a series of narrations, vividly recalling stories she has heard throughout her life. These stories clearly depict the oppression of woman in Chinese society. Even though women in Chinese Society traditionally might be considered subservient to men, Kingston viewed them in a different light. She sees women as being equivalent to men, both strong and courageous.

In a few stark story, depressing in their own unique way, attempts to disprove the traditional Chinese saying “it’s better to have geese than girls”.

The first talk-story told to Kingston by her mother deals with the suicide of one of her aunts, who remains nameless throughout the tale. After becoming pregnant from a man other than her husband, Kingston’s aunt is forced to conceive the illegitimate child in a pigsty, while the villagers raid and destroy her home. The next morning the disgraced woman plunges down a well while holding her newborn child, resulting in both their deaths.

Kingston’s mother told her this story as a warning; to avoid being a disgraceful and disloyal woman like her aunt. Kingston, however, does not view her aunt as a promiscuous woman, but rather a victim or a martyr. “Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit”, she claimed. Kingston imagines her aunt as a woman who abandoned the traditions set forth by China’s extremely patriarchal society. She saw her and someone who did what so many Chinese women shou...

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