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Violence against Women in the Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Society

Presented in Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman

Maxine Hong Kingston mentioned how cruelly women in “the old China”
were treated in No Name Woman. She uses her aunt as an example of the violence
against Chinese women in the 1920’s. Her aunt, whom her mother forbade her to
mention “as if she had never been born,” committed adultery, consequently provoking
outrage among the neighbors. She finally drowned herself and her newly born baby
girl in the well. In this story, Kingston mentions how Chinese women were treated in
the old days since they were born until even after their death. If a woman violated the
tradition, which was very strict, she would be severely punished either physically,
emotionally, or spiritually, or all.
The key sentence that sums up almost everything that Kingston mentions in
this story is that “women in the old China did not choose.” Since their birth, women
were considered inferior to men in the Chinese society. Parents preferred sons over
daughters. When Chinese girls turned seven, they had to have their feet bound, and
that caused a tremendous amount of pain. When they came to an age when they
needed to get married, they did not have the liberty to choose their life partners. Their
parents would choose their husbands for them. After they got married, they
automatically became their husbands’ families’ possessions. Kingston states that after
her aunt got married, “her husband’s parents could have sold her, mortgaged her,
stoned her.” Also, during the 1920’s, many Chinese men went away from China to the
United States to work and send home some money since the domestic economic
condition was bad. During this time, women were expected to keep the traditional
way of life while men were free to adapt to the western cultures without being
punished. Additionally, society played a vital role in Chinese people’s lives.
Everybody had to belong in the community. Those who tried to have private lives,
especially women, would be punished by other members of the community. In the old
China, women were not treated as much as human beings as sheer possessions of
men.
In No Name Woman, Kingston uses her aunt, who owned the title of “no name
woman,” as an example of Chinese women who violated the Chinese tradition by
committing adultery and the consequences she had to face until after the death. The
tragic part was that Kingston does not believe that it was her aunt’s intention to
commit adultery. She believes that her aunt must have been somehow commanded by
the man who got her pregnant since, again, “women in the old China did not choose.”
Once the villagers found out about her pregnancy, they were outraged and attacked
her in every possible way they could. They raided her house and destroyed her
family’s possessions without considering the title of “a nation of siblings” that China
got from its tradition. They did not consider her a part of their family anymore since
she had shown a sign that she could have a private life that separated her from the rest
of the villagers by “choosing” her own destiny instead of being directed by her
parents and her husband. The villagers were not the only people who punished
Kingston’s aunt for her wrongdoings, even her own family turned against her. They
treated her as if she was an “outcast” by making her sit alone at the “outcast table” in
commensal traditions and making her eat leftovers as if she were an animal. Also,
when the family’s house was being raided by the villagers, instead of staying together
and supporting one another, her own family cursed her and claimed that she had
“killed” them and that she had “never been born.” After Kingston’s aunt had delivered
her baby in the pigsty, she considered the option of bringing her baby back to her
family. Then she came to think that, since her baby was a girl, she would only be
another shame of the family. She might have had a chance to be forgiven by her
community if she had had delivered a boy. Her baby girl would only be a “ghost”
since she would not have a name or a place in the community because her mother had
been “cast out” from the society. This eventually led to her decision to drown herself
and her child in the well. Even after her death, the cruelty continued to haunt her. She
became “No Name Woman” who was unspeakable. Kingston, as a child, was not
allowed to mention her or ask about her. She was used as example by Kingston’s
mother, when Kingston had begun to menstruate, taught her not to humiliate her
family. Apart from the physical and emotional consequences, Kingston’s aunt also
suffered from the spiritual consequences, according to the Chinese’s beliefs. Her
family did not burn paper replicas or send food to her, forcing her to beg food from
other ghosts.
Throughout the story, Maxine Hong Kingston expresses cruelty against
women in the “old China” and the consequences they had to deal with, although they
might not even be the ones who were guilty. They had to take the blame for what they
did not commit. For Kingston, her aunt’s story startled her and haunted her since it
was unbelievably cruel and inhumane.