“The Woman Warrior ” by Maxine Hong Kingston is an intense memoir that blends elements of myth, fiction, and autobiography to explore the differences in the Chinese-American experience. Chapter 2, “White Tigers,” Is the main section of the book that explores issues of identity, femininity, and cultural expectation. At the start of this book, it is very confusing and seems to be misleading in many different directions with no real meaning. At the end of the first two chapters, it begins to resolve itself and you begin to see the bigger picture. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at this chapter and examine some of its most significant symbols and figure out what they mean.
The chapter opens with a retelling of the legend of the woman warrior Fa Mu Lan, a figure who disguises herself as a man to create her own army and take back everything her village has lost. Kingston uses this legend as a starting point to explore the idea of gender roles in Chinese culture, particularly as they relate to women. Throughout the chapter there is a repetitive quote “there is no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls” (pg 46). The repetition in this starts to point you in a direction where women are treated like nothing other than a disgrace to their family and culture if they aren’t slaves or housewives. The story continues when the character follows a bird up a mountain to find an old couple living there. The couple tells her that if she stays they will turn her into a warrior woman who can defeat entire armies. When she is told this she begins her journey of training. After years of being taught how to be a warrior she then starts her journey by faking herself to be a man and beginning to create her own army. This is the start of the revenge for her family. While she starts to defeat everyone in her path she reunites with her husband. She becomes pregnant and has a baby while on the journey to take back everything. She has to change her appearance and hide the baby under her armor so that nobody can notice that she is a woman. If the people found out they would no longer respect her and it would be a disgrace to China. Once she defeated the emperor and began to return home she remembered she only had one more task left and that was to defeat the baron who drafted her brother. Once she finds him the last thing that he says to her is “It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters” (pg 42). Once again that saying is brought up in this chapter. Another person says that women are no good for anything. This is the perfect reason why she wanted to become a warrior woman to show that gender doesn’t limit you to being able to do the same things that men do. Throughout the chapter, you get a sense that the Chinese culture frowns upon women doing basically anything and that they aren’t treated anywhere equal to men.
At the end of the chapter the story is related to her and how she is treated in America by her parents. The warrior woman is a reference to modern day women. Instead of battling in a war she had to get straight A’s. “Which meant I was getting straight A’s for the future of my husband’s family, not my own.” (pg 47) Everything that she was doing was never for her own good but for the reputation of her husband and his family to look good. The memoir that Maxine Kingston was writing about was referring to her own life as she related her childhood stories to what she experienced as a citizen in America. Through this discussion of “White Tigers,” Kingston reveals how women in Chinese society are often defined solely by their relationship to men. This creates a kind of cultural pressure that can lead women to prioritize their male relationships over their own families.
As we reflect on “White Tigers,” two significant questions emerge:
- Why was Chinese culture against women being able to be treated equal to men?
- If women were able to prove that they could do things men can do, why were they so frowned upon for it and not respected?
Works Cited:
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York :Vintage Books, 1989.
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Hi Logan, I think your post did a good job of discussing the oppression of women in Chinese culture. Throughout Chapter 2 we can see many examples of this happening, even in the current day of Maxine Hong Kingston’s life. When she starts talking about her American life she says “I refused to cook. When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two. ‘Bad girl,’ my mother yelled” (47). This quote shows that even when Kingston’s family moved to America, there were many traditional expectations from their culture that women and girls were supposed to follow. Since Kingston refused to fit into the stereotypical girl that her parents wanted her to be, there were many instances where her mother referred to her as a bad girl. Kingston even says “we were lucky we didn’t have to have our feet bound when we were seven. Sisters used to sit on their beds and cry together” (9). This is just another example of how girls were treated throughout Chinese culture and although Kingston did not have to go through all of these things since her parents emigrated to America, there were still some remnants of the oppression of women that stayed through family values.
Hi Logan, this blog post was so interesting to read about, especially since the book talks about all of the different situations that are going on in the young woman’s life. I found it very interesting to me how you mentioned how the main character wanted to have revenge on her own family and to have a child with her husband that she had to reconnect with. As you continued on with your blog, you say how she now has to hide the child and also hide that she is a woman which really spoke out to be due to the fact of how life was for her back then. “The communists gave axes to the old ladies and said “ Go and kill yourself. You’re useless”(page 50). When reading this part of the book I was in total shock and was not expecting for it to go in that direction. This really shows the outside readers how life was for women in China and how the communist would be treating them.
Hi Logan!
The first chapter was such a small moment that was stretched into an extreme and It was hard to follow at times. With that being said, you executed the analysis of it very well. Adding that there are fictional instances in the book is crucial towards understanding the background of the story and how that can affect the growth of “The Women Warrior”. We will be dealing with culture and ways of life in which people live. Thoroughly, you went through some of the staple attributes, such as the start of the story when the villagers are raiding the houses. If we didn’t acknowledge the chaos we can’t make the connection that Mamma wanted the narrator to assimilate and be in tune with the past for his future way of life. Feminism is a common theme in the story we learn about why and how it has gotten this way. By starting the story off with this unsettling stereotype that women are smaller than men, it can create a story that reveals how “The woman warrior” was created. I chose your second question to answer because you’re right, it doesn’t make sense that we group people based on the way they choose to live their life. In a way, this book is mirroring some of the hardships Chinese Americans have faced and how they persevere through that. If I were to ask a follow up question I would ask, If Chinese Americans are already struggling, why do they isolate their people to make matters worse? There is no real reason for this answer. In reality we live in a world where there are stereotypes, those stereotypes are then implemented. All we can do is ask questions, understand and respect the way someone chooses to live their life. You never know the weight people are carrying. A conversation between the mother and Kingston, Kingston listens as mamma reiterates, “don’t humiliate us, you wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you never had been born” (Kingston 5) The reason for the mother saying this is to protect her daughter from the people in the village. This was one of the first time we get a hint of the family not living a simple life.
Hello Logan, I enjoyed your blog post and learned from it as well. The first chapter of The Woman Warrior was a bit confusing and I personally had difficulty grasping what was going on in the second chapter but your clarification gave me a clear perception of the plot. I agree that the introduction of the character Fa mu Lan was significant as her actions go against all Chinese morals during this time of women being seen as useless and largely disrespected. While reading, I inferred that she was describing some sort of dream, “I could not fly like the bird that led me here, except in large, free dreams” (24). The description sounds like a fantasy or extremely metaphorical. Being that the chinese culture at this time was very against women (which is made clear within this chapter as you mentioned the repetition of a certain degrading quote) following any sort of dream, her decision to train to be a woman warrior and disguise herself as a man in order to take back everything her village has lost is empowering. This chapter as well as your analysis brings to the idea of this novel being an empowering story about the strength of females and a slightly feminist tone. Women can fight too and go through hard, tortuous journeys to stand up for what they believe in.
Hi Logan, I really enjoyed your post and I feel it did an amazing job at capturing the oppression women go through in not only China but also the United States. In China it is a false idea that man are better or superior to women. The novel very well captures that. In the novel by Maxine Hong Kingston, the baron said “Oh, come on now. Everyone takes the girls when he can. The families are glad to be rid of them. ‘Girls are maggots in the rice.” (43). Even when he is saying his last words, he still tries to belittle women and take away their value. He claims that any man in his position would act as he had, stating “I haven’t done anything other men—even you—wouldn’t have done in my place.” (43). The oppression women experienced and still experience today is unjustified and cruel. The novel and your post did a fantastic job at showing the difficulties of being a woman in China and the United States, not only back then but even today.
Hi logan, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I do relate a lot to the first chapter being very confusing and it was hard to follow the different perspectives. I find the point you made very interesting regarding how in Chinese culture the women tend to have to be successful and not even for themselves but for their husband to look good and for their family to respect them. Even before having a family and a husband she has to be preparing for the future and doing good in every aspect of life like getting straight A’s for the sole purpose of being liked and up to the standards of her husband’s family and being accepted by them and him. It was never done for herself or her own goals or wants but instead in an effort to do what had to be done in order to remain successful in society. Chinese culture was against women being able to be treated equally to men because in the past, China was a solidly patriarchal society, a community in which men made all decisions. This has laid the foundation for the theory positing women as inferior to men.
Hi logan, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I do relate a lot to the first chapter being very confusing and it was hard to follow the different perspectives. I find the point you made very interesting regarding how in Chinese culture the women tend to have to be successful and not even for themselves but for their husband to look good and for their family to respect them. Even before having a family and a husband she has to be preparing for the future and doing good in every aspect of life like getting straight A’s for the sole purpose of being liked and up to the standards of her husband’s family and being accepted by them and him. It was never done for herself or her own goals or wants but instead in an effort to do what had to be done in order to remain successful in society. In the text it states, “you can’t eat straight A’s”(32) Chinese culture was against women being able to be treated equally to men because in the past, China was a solidly patriarchal society, a community in which men made all decisions. This has laid the foundation for the theory positing women as inferior to men.
Hi Logan, I truly enjoyed your blog post and its critical analysis of feminism and oppression of this group throughout as it is one of the largest consistent problems throughout the reading. In this Kingston has been battling with her Chinese-American identity and understanding the circumstances that might hold her back so her struggle with this depicts any typical identity struggle and brings a true sense of sympathy with others. In “White Tigers” feminine struggles in China are retold in form of a woman warrior who like discussed above did her best to cripple these female expectations all while hiding her identity. Chinese culture is against woman being treated like men because there is an established hierarchy with woman playing the maternal family role and brought down by expectations that their only wish in life should be marriage along with characteristics of humility and submission. The male role was so well established in this society and with a culture promoting that women were slaves, even down the the Chinese character for woman, little chance of rising above could have been expected due to instilled fear. As Logan discussed, Kingston relates that back to her Chinese-American experience where she herself is bound by her family’s cultural ties although they have immigrated. Kingston does not want to be held back by the realization that her role is expected to conform to male counterparts as less rather than an equal. With that realization, she recognizes that “even now China wraps double-binds around [her] feet” which symbolizes the ancient practice of binding female feet to symbolize beauty and increase the value of the woman as well as the way that these cultural values restrain her and her identity itself (48). However, like the woman warrior who was able to hide her identity, break barriers and strive Kingston realizes that this story can truly occur in the same way for her as she continues to analyze and balance her identity.
Hi Logan! I really loved your blog post and how you explored the oppression of women in Chinese culture. To answer your second question, I think that although there are some women who want to go against traditional belief, ultimately in Chinese culture there will always be a majority who support the traditional gender role views. In this chapter, the author recounts the story of Fa Mu Lan and how she completely went against traditional gender roles. She became a soldier and fought for her people, even after she had a child. The story flashes to the narrator’s life and how she is still living with a family who believes in these traditional gender roles. The narrator says “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). The author is trying to show how when the narrator was not correctly doing a woman’s job, she was reprimanded. The narrator is living in a household that still practices these traditional gender roles. Additionally, the narrator says that being a bad girl is almost a boy. I thought that was important too because if a man had cracked the dishes, it likely would have been brushed off because men should not be doing dishes in the first place.
Hi Logan, I really liked your blog post. I agree that the first chapter was very confusing especially knowing who was speaking. I also agree that one of the themes for chapter two is feminism. I agree with this because they introduce a women warrior who is meant to go against the standards and stereotypes for Chinese women. I also see how women were told they had to be perfect or else no one would want to court them. They always had to do what they were told and could never mess up. When Kingston talks about her life in America she says “I refused to cook. When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two. ‘Bad girl,’ my mother yelled” (47). This quote shows how when she is in america she is trying to push those boundaries but her mother won’t let her. We are all the time how when people from other cultures grow up in America they tend to lean more towards American cultures because it’s all they’ve known. We see how Kingston tried to do that but her mother wouldn’t let her because she was seen as a bad women and no one would want to court her. Chapter two is all about Kingston finding her identity and I ant wait to see more of who she is.
Hey Logan, I think you did a great job in this project. It really is unfortunate to see how little respect women get in ancient and modern times. Women were only meant to be caretakers, they were meant to be soft, weak and submissive to their husbands. This story actually reminds me of Spartan women in that their society allowed them to be strong and fit. They encouraged women to exercise and compete in sports in the belief that they would produce stronger children; they also had more rights than many other traditional women. Even still women in society have always been treated as less, especially in many traditional families. To answer your question, Chinese culture was very against women being treated equal to men because men wanted to be in power. Every man, poor, rich, weak, strong would always have the ability of being more than a woman because in that society women were second class and property. “Feeding girls is feeding cowbirds” (p.46) Even in the modern day we see our protagonist still being a second class citizen from both her mother or father.