Character Analysis: The Woman Warrior

Culture is embedded in the identity of every individual person. Although varying in values and customs, culture contributes to the basic understanding of one’s self and the moral conduct in which they guide their lives. In the memoir, The Women Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, she depicts the struggle between culture and the discovery of individual beliefs and character through the stories and memories of her childhood. Influenced heavily by her mother Brave Orchid, Kingston is exposed to her Chinese heritage and taught the strict moral values their culture possesses. Maxine’s cultural and social understandings impact her identity, however she is able to create a balance between the talk-story of her mother and her individual growth. Maxine
uses the influence of her mother's stories and cultural values to develop her own sense of self by breaking the traditions of silence, creating her own voice, and finding her place as a Chinese-American women.
In Chinese culture, a prominent sense of silence and submissivity is expected among women, as they are valued and respected much less than men. Maxine accredits much of her perception of self-worth and behavior as a child to the inferiority and oppression she feels being a girl in the Chinese community. When Kingston recalls, “I’m not a bad girl, I would scream ‘I’m not a bad girl’. I might as well have said ‘I’m not a girl’ “, she is portraying the shame she felt being treated unequally due to her gender. In many of the early aspects of her life, Kingston struggled to develop her sense of worth and gain the acceptance of her parents, however as she matures she is able to break away from these ideas and reject the silence she is condemned to. “It was said, “ There is an outward tendency in females”, which meant that I was getting straight A’s for the good of my future husband’s family, not my own. I did not plan ever to have a husband. I would show my mother and father the nosey emigrant villagers that girls have no outward tendency. I stopped getting straight A’s”. Maxine fights to create her own individuality by rebelling against the expectations of her family. This small act contributes to her overall rejection of silence by portraying her frustration and determination to prove her true worth and the worth of other Chinese American girls.
Kingston continues to develop her identity as she exposes the stories of her family’s past.
Brave Orchid (Kingstons mother) talks story of an aunt of Maxine’s that commits suicide after giving birth to a child born from adultery. This “No Name Women” tale highlights Maxine’s enforced sense of silence when her mother insists Maxine not discuss her existence. “Don't let your father know that I told you [about your forgotten aunt]... Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you has never been born. The villagers are watchful” (1.9). Although Brave Orchid's story to Maxine is meant to keep her from premarital sex, she is highlighting the oppression and silence that Maxine embodies growing up. When Maxine breaks the silence and tells the tale of her aunt, she also breaks her internal silence which she has lived by since childhood. When Kingston expresses, “ My aunt haunts me- her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, though not origamied into houses and clothes”(1.16), she is exposing her family as well as creating the individuality of her unspoken aunt. She creates an identity for her aunt by re-writing her tale in a way that portrays her more as a victim rather than a nuisance. By creating this sense of individuality for her aunt, Maxine is able to create her own individuality and reject the oppression of silence that her culture
entails.