No name women.
Pervine Veliyeva
Hi everyone.
This story is also about women and their sufferings. (I m going crazy! In each of the stories we have read there is a woman and plus a problem, like they are synonyms.)
This story particularly focuses on the place of women in Chinese culture.The traditions we see in the story tell us about the influence of Chinese culture and traditions on women.
The title of the story - "No name women"-refers to the narrator's aunt. Her name was not mentioned in the story, but it is all about her.
It is a narrative story where the mother tells her daughter (the narrator) their family secret and the girl speaks about it to the readers. The story of her aunt is supposed to be a secret. We see it from the very first sentence of the story: "You must not tell anyone" my mother said "what I am going to tell you." I think she tells her daughter the story of her aunt to "warn" her daughter not to repeat the same mistakes. Her mother was afraid that, now, when her daughter grew up, she can make the same mistake that the family can erase her name forever, as it was in her aunt's case. To protect her daughter mother told her the secret of the family. And I think that if this girl has a daughter in future she will tell her the "secret",too.
I want to write about the women's life in China based on this story. As it is written "women in China didn't choose" .They are afraid of men and obeyed their wills in everything: " she obeyed; she always did as she was told".
We know that she made a mistake becoming pregnant from the man who is not her husband. But she is not happy with it, too. For me most of the guilt lays on the man's shoulders. There was such a huge male dominance over women that women had no another choise, but to do what they were ordered, even if the order is from the man who is not her husband; " don't tell your family. I'll beat you. I'll kill you. Be here again next week." -used to say the men.
There was a fear of being second wife inside all women in China.. It s a very unrespectful act towards women, no matter which culture she belongs to.
A synonym for marriage in Chinese is "taking a daughter -in-law." Her husband's parents could have sold her, mortgaged her, stoned her.
I think that nothing can cost a life of a person, no matter how deep her/his mistake is. There is a will of God and everyone must obey only to it. But in the story the people of the village and the family of the aunt blamed and refused her so deeply that she decided to suicide. The thing that hurts me is to see her giving birth to a child in a "pigsty", alone, hopeless+for me being a mother is a holy thing. And such an attitude towards the aunt in the story is too bad.
I am sure that women loved her baby -"her fingers, toes, nails nose"-and wanted to keep it alive. Even if she took her baby to the well with her, it doesn't mean that she didn't love her. She imagined her future-how the people will point her out - and decided to take her to the well with her. The society would never accept that child because of mother .Even her own family blamed and refused her. Her male relatives left the house not only because powerty, but also for the "never said" reason. The suicide on its own expresses her love towards her baby.
I think every family has its own secret. It's the society that makes them "secret". On its own maybe they are all right. But people are afraid that it may seem strange in the eyes of the other people, so they keep their experiences in secret. And it grows to become a family secret passing from generation to generation.