No Name Women

1) After her mother told her the story of her aunt, which served as a warning to not dishonor the family, Kingston decides not to mention her aunt’s name because it would hurt his father. According to the narrator, the fact that the entire family chose to forget her and erase every trace or sign of her from their memory was worse than the raid the villagers inflicted. Her family must have been in agreement with the village to some extent when they attacked their house because they did not try to protect the author’s forgotten aunt. The author feels as if she had participated in the punishment of her aunt because she has not ever mentioned her aunt’s name in front of anyone but her mother. The author did not want to, but she felt she was forced to do it in order to clean the name of her family. At the end of the story, the author says that the ghost of her aunt still haunts her because she has devoted pages of paper to her. By writing and dedicating pages of paper to her aunt she reminds the world and herself that her aunt existed and that she will not take part in her punishment. 2) Chinese society before the prerevolutionary era puts the honor of the family above anything. Kingston’s “No Name Women” reflects the dominant role of the male in this culture; women were scared of men and obeyed everything they said. In the story, Kingston mentioned that if the baby would have been a boy the family might have forgiven him, this shows that men were more respected and valued than women in Chinese society. The author also infers that her aunt might have been forced by the father of the baby to meet him every time he ordered her to do so. Women maintained a low position in during the era of the prerevolutionary Chinese society. The author and her mother can be seen as an example of how the dominant man is still present in society. They both have participated in the punishment of the author’s aunt because the author’s father is trying to clean the name of his family.