No Name Woman Rhetorical Analysis

In ancient China, the culture was based on a patriarchal model and men were allowed to have three or four wives. This was not the case for women. Supported by a deep historical bias, women, especially the unfaithful ones, were treated poorly and viewed worthless compared to men. Those that committed adultery were tortured and persecuted publicly, just like Maxine Hong Kingston’s aunt in her story “No Name Woman.” The aunt was pregnant, had her house raided by angry villagers, birthed her baby in a muddy pigsty, and then committed suicide by jumping into the family well with her newborn. In the essay, Kingston incorporated three different genres that worked together to describe the way she felt about her aunt. The first is nonfiction, written at the beginning of the essay, to provide information about Kingston’s family history and show her opinion toward it. Kingston’s mother started the true story of her sister-in-law by saying, “You must not tell anyone what I’m about to tell you” (221). She used this as the first sentence of her piece to show that this secret was big, surprising and something that the family never wanted her to know about. She also wanted the audience to feel the curiosity that she felt when her mother started to tell the story. Another example was about Kingston’s father’s family. She said, “they expected her alone to keep the traditional ways, which her brothers, now among the barbarians, could fumble without detection” (225). Kingston was addressing the issue of the high standards that the Chinese culture put upon their women versus their men. She felt that her aunt may have been under too much pressure which caused her to rebel and bring dishonor to the family. The final example was about her crazy grandfather. She told the many stories she had heard, including the day he brought home a baby girl and “traded one of his sons, probably (her) father, the youngest, for (the aunt)” (228). Kingston included this because she came to a conclusion