With
an opening line, “You must not tell anyone…what I am about to tell you” in “No
Name Woman”, the author introduces us that women’s lives are surrounded by silence
and secrecy. A women getting pregnant without a husband certainly challenges
the social and moral values in eastern culture, although the social punishment
ranges from mild to severe one, as found in the first section of The Woman
Warrior. Very often the society puts so many burdens to a woman committing
such a “crime” that the “no name” aunt chose never to reveal the man’s name and
decided to kill the baby and herself. In this society, silence can serve as a
safety valve for women, because no better choice will be offered both to her
and the baby, especially if it is a baby girl.
Silence
is also symbolized by the talk-stories of ghosts. It may be argued that
talk-stories represent speech, but the topic of ghosts suggests the invisible
world. Since the mother is always the one to tell stories, it is clear that
women’s world is the one of invisible.
In the third section, “Shaman”, the mother’s name, Brave Orchid, can be
revealed by her friends in the medical school only when she is in danger of
losing the battle with the Sitting Ghost.
A
woman even needs to keep her pregnancy into her private side, as what happens
to Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior in the second section, “White Tigers”. Being a
woman is her private life, and standing as the general is “her” public life.
Nobody should ever find out about her being a woman and later getting pregnant,
because women will be executed for “(disguising) themselves as soldiers or
students, no matter how bravely they fought or how high they scored on
examinations.” (39).
The
fourth section, “At the Western Palace” also suggests the idea of silence.
Unfolded through humorous scenes about claiming Moon Orchid’s husband, this
section shows how Moon Orchid tends to keep quiet, avoid conflict to save her
face rather than walking bravely to see her husband, whom she has not seen for
thirty years, and asks for her rights back. That Moon Orchid is not welcomed by
her Americanized husband and eventually has to stay in an asylum suggests the
burden she has to bear alone for not fitting into the new culture.
The
last section, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, continues the treatment of
silence. The narrator recalls her memory when her mother cuts her tongue so
that she “would not be tongue-tied”, so that she could speak languages (164).
Her mother is certainly the central figure in the whole stories, one who has
modern thoughts and has plans for her children’s future in the ghost country.
She wants to leave behind the Chinese value which says “a ready tongue is an
evil” (164).
The
world of silence may take several generations to evolve to the world of speech.
At some extent, Brave Orchid’s children who have been raised in two cultures
are trapped in the middle. They behave like other Americans, but have a hard
time making themselves visible and audible at school. We may have to wait until
the later generations, those of Brave Orchid’s grandchildren and
greatgrandchildren could fit better into the world of speech without
necessarily losing their origins.
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