Silence in The Woman Warrior

In Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, the concept of silence plays a significant role in illustrating concepts of gender, culture, and prejudice. Above all, silence is used as a symbolic representation of the muting of individuality and individual expression due to gender, culture, and prejudice. These forces of gender, culture, and prejudice that undermine individuality and stifle expression manifest themselves both within the culture of the individual and the mainstream culture. Kingston's semi-autobiographical novel demonstrates the struggle of Maxine to form her own identity in relation to her Chinese and American cultures and the demands placed on her by them both tending toward silence of expression. As Richard Teleky maintains, "Kingston's own solution to the conflicts of a dual ethnic perspective and cultural allegiance is to become a writer. Her choice is language as a way out of silence" (214). This analysis will demonstrate how gender, culture, and prejudice tend to silence individual expression.

In The Woman Warrior we see silence taken to its figurative and literal height. In the story we are witness to a girl whose own culture is so oppressive that it chops off part of her tongue to prevent her from saying anything inappropriate. Forms of expression and occupations that tend to enhance them, like writing and learning, are not fostered in this society. In order to t

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eyed him; she always did what she was told" (Kingston 6). Chinese women who did not do what they were told often had their tongues chopped off, were subjected to physical abuse, or were ostracized by their families and communities. The silencing of women transmits from one generation to the other. The sharing of stories like the one about her aunt, tend to silence expression from Chinese women. They do so through passing on fear and obedience as the means of existing in an oppressed culture that devalues women and their contributions. Women's bodies are little more than vehicles for men to use to acquire new sons. Women have no control over their own destiny and can be discarded or killed at whim if they disobey the orders of men. One can see the effective manner of control used by Chinese males over women to keep them silent. The narrator recognizes this when she fears for her own future. We also see that topics that are considered forbidden, inappropriate, or unpleasant are never discussed. Quite the contrary, such news is often subjected to destruction or silence so that it cannot be expressed. We see this when bad news comes from China in the form of letters, "The news from China has been confusing. It also has some

Category: Literature - S