Leslie Silko's Yellow Woman

Seducing Seduction In the story Yellow Woman, the narrator awakens on the sand of a river bank with a man she does not know. She was from the pueblo that was located across from the river where she found herself, importantly on the other side from where she was. Author Leslie Silko was told about this fictional spirit “ka’tsina”, who seduced the yellow woman, from her grandfather. In Yellow Woman author Silko tells the ancient story through the eyes of a contemporary woman. The myth allows the reader to emotionally step across a border into a world where a mythological figure can become real in a modern day setting. The reader, like the narrator, both find themselves on the other side of the river, or perhaps an alternate reality. Yellow woman is the figure of the pueblo Indian myth, but in todays’ time.
As the narrator awakens on the river bank and sees the man she comes to know as Silva lying beside her, she is not afraid.
“My thighs clung to his with dampness,” instinctually shows that she and this man, who is a stranger to her, had sex the night before (Silko, 256). After she awakens him to let him know that she is leaving, he replies to her “You are coming with me, remember?” (Silko, 256). She is not really thinking about her actions as she willingly goes with him. It is as if he has not only sexually seduced her but has emotionally seduced her as well. He refers to her as “yellow woman,” which entices her as she was told “the old stories about
the ka’tsina spirit and yellow woman” from her grandpa (Silko, 257). As he sexually engages her again on the river bank she gives in, as if it is something she too is craving and desiring. She reflects back at some point about her family at home and “wondered what they were doing” (Silko, 257). She presumes that her husband will go to the police and make a report that she was “kidnapped” (Silko, 257). Still she does not fear Silva. He takes her back to his house in the mountains where they eat and she again brings up the ancient stories. He seems to calmly assure her that one day it will be them that people are telling stories about. This is all part of how the traditional stories go, a woman is seduced and spends a great deal of time with this mountain spirit and then one day returns home, but cares deeply for the man she spent her time with. Author Silko uses her traditions and brings them to life through the eyes of the modern day woman. According to Bernard A. Hirsch, “this multigeneric work lovingly maps the fertile story telling ground from which [Silko’s] art evolves and to which it is here returned-an offering to the oral tradition which nurtured it” (Your Dictionary Biography). Although the narrator at this point has only been with Silva for one day, she is completely devoured in him. The next morning she makes a plan to eat something and find her way back home. She notices there are no belongings in the home that proved to her that he was real, as she realizes “only the blankets and cardboard box remained” (Silko, 257). Walking through the woods she thinks about Silva and the fact that she willingly would have gone anywhere he wanted. “I did not decide to go. I just went,” as if it were a force stronger than her dealing all the cards. As she approaches the house where she and Silva had spent the previous night, she remembered that she had initially been trying to go home. She was no longer concerned with that once she spotted Silva. It were if she had been there all day, or supposed to have been there all along. They saddled up onto horses to travel to Marquez to sell the beef meat that he had cut and portioned into bags. Along the trail she thought she had seen houses off in the distance, but Silva told her there were not houses and that she was “looking in the wrong places” (Silko, 261). After he told her that, she no longer looked for them, she somehow believed that he would not lie to her or harm her. They ran into a white man that believed Silva was the cattle thief they had been searching for. Silva, with a smile, said “Go back up the mountain, Yellow Woman” (Silko, 261). She took off on her horse, even when she heard gunshots behind her, she continued on. She took the horse downhill away from the direction she had come from and away from where the house was. After jumping off the horse and sending it on its way, she walked toward the river as she knew it would lead her back home. She walked to the place where she had first been with Silva, “I saw the leaves and I wanted to go back to him-to kiss him and to touch him,” and even then she had this uncontrollable bond to him (Silko, 262). “I told myself, because I believe it, he will come back sometime and be waiting again by the river” (Silko, 262). The true telling of time was once she got home and “my mother was telling my grandmother how to fix the Jell-O” (Silko, 262). She had spent the last two days in a world that seemed ancient, where people traveled by horse and lived in mud houses, but in reality it was modern day times. She would tell her family a story of her being kidnapped by a “Navajo” but would be sad that her grandpa would not hear the story because “it was the Yellow Woman stories he liked to tell the best” (Silko, 262). She had experienced being the figure of the mythical Yellow Woman. Seduced initially but caring for the man, the mountain spirit, was all very real to her. Just as she believes he will be back again at the river bank, myth requires belief. Silko’s reflection upon her own identity and native traditions is portrayed through the story Yellow Woman. Silko “blends western literary forms with the oral traditions of her Laguna Puebla heritage” in a fascinating and almost fantasy like manner (Your Dictionary Biography). The narrator in this story is embodied by the figure of the Yellow Woman, the myth, and is seduced by the mountain spirit man. Just as the myth says, she is seduced and cares for this man, but inevitably returns home to her family. This modern day woman has just lived the myth and the story passed down through her family for generations.