No name woman
Encyclopedia
No Name Woman is a short story by Chinese-American author Maxine Hong Kingston
, who is also Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley
. The story was originally published in 1975 as the first of five stories included in a book by Kingston called The Woman Warrior
.
Kingston's mother tells her the story as a cautionary tale, in the years Kingston begins to menstruate. Her mother warns her to be careful lest the same fate fall upon her. Kingston, looking back on the story later, thinks about the world in which she was raised, an "invisible world" of ghosts transposed from Chinese rural life into the emigrants' new homes in America.
Because Kingston cannot ask about her unnamed aunt—who is referred to only as "No-Name Woman"—she invents her own fantasies about why her aunt gave in to her forbidden passions. In one such scenario, her aunt is a timid woman ordered into submission by a rapist. In another, her aunt harbors a slowly blossoming passion, attempting to attract a man's attention by carefully tending to her appearance. Kingston's fantasies must have direct bearing on her own life: she rejects, for example, the idea that her aunt was a wild woman of loose morals. Instead, her aunt's greatest crime—one with which Kingston identifies—was acting on her private interests, stepping out of the role Chinese society and traditions had proscribed for her. Such traditions, Kingston says, were thought of as necessary to ensure village stability, especially when the
villagers were all related in some way. Any sexual passion could lead to adultery or incest and therefore threatened the social order.
In a particularly vivid section of the chapter, Kingston imagines the time when her aunt's family casts her aunt out. Alone, her aunt is lost in the wilderness, and when the baby comes, she resorts to giving birth in a pigsty. Kingston believes that her aunt decides to kill herself and her baby together in order to spare the child a life without family or purpose. Kingston also notes that the baby was probably a girl, and as such would already have been considered practically useless to society—a theme that reappears throughout The Woman Warrior. At the end of the chapter, Kingston imagines her aunt as a lonely, wandering ghost, begging for scraps from the gifts given other ghosts by their loving relatives.
Maxine (narrator): Maxine is still a young girl, still coming to terms with adolescence and the transition into womanhood, in terms of not only the physical and emotional changes brought on by puberty, but also of the societal expectations placed on Chinese girls and the discrepancy between Chinese and American ideas of womanhood. She is terror-stricken by her mother's story and keeps silent about it for years, but at the same time fantasizes about what her nameless aunt must have feeling, noticing problems with the story that suggest a more complicated picture than what her mother is telling her. Over the years, she wonders if the aunt had fallen in love with the other man, if she was forced into a sexual relationship, or if she was just a woman who enjoyed and wanted sex.
Maxine’s Mother: Maxine's mother tells her the story of her father's alleged sister, claiming that her father and his family won't even acknowledge her existence. The mother uses the story to instill in Maxine a fear of breaking societal norms and of bringing shame to her family. But Maxine realizes that her mother may not be telling the full story: she speaks as though she had seen the events, but she never explains why the Aunt was still living with her own family when custom dictated that she stay with her husband's family. Was her mother really there, was she simply repeating a story she had heard, or was she making up the entire story as a cautionary tale?
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
, who is also Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. The story was originally published in 1975 as the first of five stories included in a book by Kingston called The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage Books in 1975. Although there are many scholarly debates surrounding the official genre classification of the book, it can best be described as a work of creative non-fiction.Throughout...
.
Plot summary
Kingston learns from her mother that she once had an aunt who killed herself and her newborn baby by jumping into the family well in China. The woman's husband had left the country years before, so the villagers knew that the child was illegitimate. The night that the baby was born, the villagers raided and destroyed the family house, and the woman gave birth in a pigsty. The next morning the mother found her sister-in-law and the baby plugging up the well. The woman had brought such disgrace upon her family that they decided to pretend that she had never been born.Kingston's mother tells her the story as a cautionary tale, in the years Kingston begins to menstruate. Her mother warns her to be careful lest the same fate fall upon her. Kingston, looking back on the story later, thinks about the world in which she was raised, an "invisible world" of ghosts transposed from Chinese rural life into the emigrants' new homes in America.
Because Kingston cannot ask about her unnamed aunt—who is referred to only as "No-Name Woman"—she invents her own fantasies about why her aunt gave in to her forbidden passions. In one such scenario, her aunt is a timid woman ordered into submission by a rapist. In another, her aunt harbors a slowly blossoming passion, attempting to attract a man's attention by carefully tending to her appearance. Kingston's fantasies must have direct bearing on her own life: she rejects, for example, the idea that her aunt was a wild woman of loose morals. Instead, her aunt's greatest crime—one with which Kingston identifies—was acting on her private interests, stepping out of the role Chinese society and traditions had proscribed for her. Such traditions, Kingston says, were thought of as necessary to ensure village stability, especially when the
villagers were all related in some way. Any sexual passion could lead to adultery or incest and therefore threatened the social order.
In a particularly vivid section of the chapter, Kingston imagines the time when her aunt's family casts her aunt out. Alone, her aunt is lost in the wilderness, and when the baby comes, she resorts to giving birth in a pigsty. Kingston believes that her aunt decides to kill herself and her baby together in order to spare the child a life without family or purpose. Kingston also notes that the baby was probably a girl, and as such would already have been considered practically useless to society—a theme that reappears throughout The Woman Warrior. At the end of the chapter, Kingston imagines her aunt as a lonely, wandering ghost, begging for scraps from the gifts given other ghosts by their loving relatives.
Character list
Maxine's Aunt (the "no-name woman"): A young woman in China who is married off just before her husband and his brothers leave for America. When she becomes pregnant long after her husband has left, the townspeople ransack her family's home, humiliating the entire family. When it is time for her to give birth, she must do so alone in the barn. Although the baby is born healthy, it is a girl; realizing how limited the infant's prospects are, the Aunt takes the baby and jumps in the well, drowning them both. Her family now pretends she never existed.Maxine (narrator): Maxine is still a young girl, still coming to terms with adolescence and the transition into womanhood, in terms of not only the physical and emotional changes brought on by puberty, but also of the societal expectations placed on Chinese girls and the discrepancy between Chinese and American ideas of womanhood. She is terror-stricken by her mother's story and keeps silent about it for years, but at the same time fantasizes about what her nameless aunt must have feeling, noticing problems with the story that suggest a more complicated picture than what her mother is telling her. Over the years, she wonders if the aunt had fallen in love with the other man, if she was forced into a sexual relationship, or if she was just a woman who enjoyed and wanted sex.
Maxine’s Mother: Maxine's mother tells her the story of her father's alleged sister, claiming that her father and his family won't even acknowledge her existence. The mother uses the story to instill in Maxine a fear of breaking societal norms and of bringing shame to her family. But Maxine realizes that her mother may not be telling the full story: she speaks as though she had seen the events, but she never explains why the Aunt was still living with her own family when custom dictated that she stay with her husband's family. Was her mother really there, was she simply repeating a story she had heard, or was she making up the entire story as a cautionary tale?
See also
- The Woman WarriorThe Woman WarriorThe Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage Books in 1975. Although there are many scholarly debates surrounding the official genre classification of the book, it can best be described as a work of creative non-fiction.Throughout...
- Asian American literatureAsian American literatureAlthough immigrants from Asia and Americans of Asian descent have been writing in the United States since the 19th century, Asian American literature as a category of writing only came into existence in the early 1970s...
- Chinese American literatureChinese American literatureChinese American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of Chinese descent. The genre began in the 19th century and flowered in the 20th with such authors as Sui Sin Far, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan....