Anyone and everyone has one fear or another. For me, the simple thought of a spider can send my heart rate through the roof and make me running faster the fastest person on the planet. Others fear falling, reptiles, war, enclosed spaces, and so on. What is it about these thoughts that have the capability of driving someone into madness and paranoia? Fear is a product of the mind that takes into account all of the experiences you have had and attempts to deter you from each respective thing or object. Fear is a complex idea that can be defined in a million different ways, however, it manifests itself in times of warning and danger.
The No Name Woman, written by Maxine Kingston, is about injecting fear into the narrator. The mother of the narrator is fearful that her daughter, the narrator, may be heading down the same path as her aunt. The aunt was written out of the family's history due to her being accused of adultery, and bearing a child as the result. The story makes it a point to illustrate that cheating will not be tolerated in the Chinese culture. The narrator recognizes this and is attempting to make sense of everything the story means and why her mother chose to tell her it. At the end of the story, the narrator is essentially having a battle within herself to determine whether she accepts the aunt, or denies her like the rest of her family. This is when the idea of fear comes into play.
The narrator believes that "The real punishment was not the raid swiftly indicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberately forgetting her." In the statement, the narrator seems bitter trying to understand why someone could possibly forget a family member. However, now the narrator's aunt "haunts" her and she believes that the ghost doesn't "always mean well." The narrator treks back and forth in between whether this haunting is going to turn into a fear or if she is going to honor her aunt by remembering her although she was specifically told not to utter a word by her mother.
At the very end of the story, the narrator states that "the Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute." From this concluding sentence, I believe that the narrator has developed a new fear. That is, she now fears that if she travels along the same path as her aunt that she will too be ostracized by her community and family. From an American point of view, it is hard for me to understand how a culture can threaten others with the fear of being written out of the communities history.
What do you think? Do your fears deter you from doing things?
Brandon Rominger
Brandon, your discussion of fear within “No-Named Woman” is really interesting because there was an element of fear throughout the story. I do have to say, though, when you say that cheating is the aspect within Chinese culture, I have to disagree. But of course, cheating is not acceptable in most cultures, but the idea that was being shown within the story is that adultery will not be tolerated. Now whether or not the aunt was consensually with someone or not is debatable, but because of the aspect of fear, no one dares to question it. Fear is a driving factor within this story to teach a moral lesson to the narrator.
ReplyDeleteThe argument that you bring up about deliberately forgetting the aunt is also an interesting one because it shows that the narrator is going along with the Chinese culture, although it is hesitantly. Her mother tells her the story when she starts going through puberty, so that also might be why the mother told her that no one speaks of her, as it might be a coming of age story, though we are supposed to no question that it is true. The deliberate forgetting, though, is a clear warning to her from her mother that the same might happen to her if she commits the same sins as her aunt and gets pregnant out of wedlock. The story that the narrator is told is supposed to insight fear into the narrator to make sure she does not do the same or she will face the same consequences, which is scary enough for anyone to listen considering the way that the aunt ended up.
I like how you incorporated fear into “No-Name Woman”, that it could potentially haunt someone and cause paranoia instead of just following one through a period in life. To answer your question about fears deterring one from doing things, I think fear can go both ways. For some, one would avoid spiders out of fear, but for others, fear may be used as a driving force to study spiders. The classic saying, “you fear only what you do not understand” holds true in “No-Name Woman”. Because Maxine is (I’m assuming) an American, she doesn’t quite understand why her Aunt was “written out of a community's history”, to quote you, and pushes her to look into her Aunt’s story and break that silence. A sort of creed that I follow: If I want to better myself, I have to launch myself into uncomfortable situations and learn from what it is that I am uncomfortable about. I think this creed is based upon fear, that if I, let’s say, don’t want to be judged because of my promiscuity, then I should learn about the consequences and explore multiple perspectives.
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