No Name Women

Maxine Hong Kngston told a story about her father’s sister that her mom used to tell her when she was trying to teach her about life lessons. Her mom would use these stories because they were real and actually happened and she wanted her children to learn from what happened. I think that she is actually scaring her children into being good. Her mom would tell them these stories and worn her children against what they did. “Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you” (392). I think the mom is scaring the children into doing what is right and they are not actually learning what the right thing is they just know that is what they have to do. Her mom would say, “Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (393). That is a lot of pressure for someone to have to grow up with. I think that having this fear really affected her. Then she was saying that her aunt was probably forced to have sex with the man that got her pregnant and then she had to lie. The women I China didn’t have very many rights. They were second to men. Women in China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be secret evil” (393). Her aunt had lived in fear and there was nothing she could do about the situation because the man had all the power. “If you tell your family, I’ll beat you. I’ll kill you. Be here again nest week” (394). She also talks about how her aunt would try to change her appearance constantly because, “She wanted him to look back” (394). What her aunt totally shamed the family so they wanted to just forget about her. “Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw it that she would suffer forever, even after death” (400).