In both Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman and Richard Rodriguez’s Mr. Secrets, the two authors describe the clash between their American upbringing and their ancestral culture, heightened by their struggle between the private and the public, thus secrecy/discretion versus openness. Their internal conflicts with cultural hybridity and their shame at the secrecy of their family, prompts Kingston and Rodriguez to use writing as means of reaching a catharsis. The first lines of Maxine Hong Kingston’s story begin with "You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself.
Tess could salvage herself from proletariat status through conniving actions. This type of finesse seems to be the only way in the modern era to rise from the ashes of the underprivileged so that they may make something out of themselves and scheme to make their own version of the American
Gilman intentionally tried to make Jane a typical woman of the time period. She is economically dependent on her husband, as she does not work out of the house. She is not allowed to make her own decisions, John will not let her out of bed, even though she wishes to do so; and she is often treated like a child, John gives her a dirty look when she expresses that she is still not well when he believes that she is getting
In the tale "No Name Woman," Kingston talks about common cultural practices in China. An aunt, in the story, also referred to as the "No Name Woman" committed adultery and was ostracized because of it. She was to bear the torture of humiliation, even by the aunt 's friends or family. The man who also committed adultery with her is not punished at all, thus, portraying major considerable inequality. Kingston does a wonderful job explaining his disgust of this rude, sexist behavior and believes that it does not receive the scorn it deserves.
As seen by the mothers’ and daughters’ behavior towards each other in The Joy Luck Club, it is difficult to preserve one’s culture when one is exposed to a new environment or country. With a difference of two distinct generations between them, the four main pairs often come across cultural collisions. Other than facing the age gap, these mothers and daughters also have to deal with a language and communication barrier. Already, at the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei Woo is able to understand how the mothers of the “Joy Luck Club” are displeased with their daughter’s rejection of their Chinese culture. She speaks to herself, admitting that “they are frightened.
It completely disgusts me that people would rather choose to end a innocent life which just so happens to be their fault for bringing into this world, rather than accepting the consequences for their actions. It is also very wrong to persecute someone for conceiving a child solely based on their marital status, for example, if a woman was sexually assaulted in China, and becomes pregnant, this said woman is shunned by her entire family line and is then forced to kill or give away the child. As said before, most women would rather choose to end the fetus 's life than to save them from any more embarrassment and to try to save their reputation. Upon reading this my emotions were offset because it is just utterly upsetting to learn that some people care more about their reputation than the life of their
For that reason, vivid compares herself to a poor women to demonstrate that, “Everybody has some choice, mother” (Shaw 1804). Vivie wants the choice to seek out a job to benefit herself instead her mother. Thus, Vivie challenges the female role through her behaviour when she tells her mother “I don 't want to be worthless” (Shaw 1827). She ultimately wants to have a purpose in society instead of others seeing her an object through her appearance. Similar to Monica, Vivie does not want her position in society to have a duty as a woman.
Elizabeth Bennet is also stereotyped by society because of her family, although she is nothing like her parents or sisters. This causes problems for her as she grows older and is expected to begin courting. When Elizabeth catches the eye of Mr. Darcy, a “****”, he avoided her for a very long time as his admission to himself that he is in love with
This was definitely not expected in the upper class households during that time seeing as how that is every woman’s dream lifestyle. A fancy house, kids growing up in a well nurtured, sheltered home and a successful husband. A critic known as Amalie Skram, a journalist who wrote in the 1800’s described A Doll’s House as a “warning.” Amalie described this play as a warning because although Nora had the courage and strength to leave her home, it was not a wise decision at the time. Skram also believed that Nora leaving was a bad influence to society because it will teach women to be “irresponsible” and “will forget all her duties.”
Single people usually commit suicide because they often face social stigma of not being married and not having children. In other words, they are seen as “non-persons”, who lack social status and value (Wu 2009). This leads to high level of societal and peer pressure, high levels of mental stress and shame, and, consequently, suicide attempts. In regards to the married people, as mentioned previously, marriage in the rural China and more traditional areas, most often negatively affects women. They tend to have a lower status in the family, where patriarchal beliefs, mainly arising from the Confucian traditions, are intact.
Dolls typically socialize young girls to be women and to be mothers, which alludes to the irony of Pecola who gives birth to her father’s child. Just like how everyone else around her treats her, Pecola is despised within her own home. Her parents suffer from the belief that they themselves are unworthy of love and as a result, their children have to bear with that self-hatred, especially Pecola. Pauline, Pecolas’s mother, is a domestic servant who believes in the superiority of white people including her employer and their children. But failing to love herself and who she is, Pauline fails to love her own child Pecola.
In this book, “The Woman Warrior”, by Maxine Hong Kingston, wrote about her life as Chinese-American. She focuses on strong female warriors, idolising qualities like taking control of your life without anyone controlling you. Kingston saw examples of how to make your own life, yours. Kingston explains that there were many actions about what it takes to be brave and being an experienced fighter that she explains what it really takes to be one.
In The Woman Warrior, Kingston describes the everyday ghosts she sees as a symbolic reference to the unknown people who she cannot identify with in order to illustrate to the reader how isolated she felt around the ghosts. As Kingston and her family continue to live in America, they perceive everyone as unknown because they are very different by culture, race, and way of living. Kingston feels isolated because she is not able to speak English very well, everyone around her thinks she is "strange" because she does not look "normal" in an American society. In addition, her parents do not pay as much attention to her as they do with her brothers because they cherish them over her. She does not care about her grades because her parents would only
A society can change an individual’s point of view on a certain group of people or things. In the books, The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is a pungent fiction novel that is about destiny and struggles of living as a Chinese female, and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is a fiction novel about a poignant love story between a couple. These books clearly show that society and an individual are closely related. Society can change an individual’s destiny through a community. In The Woman Warrior, society relates to the Chinese traditions and some stereotypes about Chinese people’s behaviors, and the individuals are Kingston, her aunt and Brave Orchid.
Ruisha Yang The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston “I refused to cook. When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two. ‘Bad girl,’ my mother yelled, and sometimes that made me gloat rather than cry. Isn’t a bad girl almost a boy?”(Kingston 47). By simply isolating the quote from the content, it seems to be describing a lazy teenage girl who’s in denial of doing chores and feeling proud of doing so.