Ghosts in The Woman Warrior
The subtitle of The Woman Warrior is Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, stories about Maxine Hong Kingston’s memory in her girlhood. I finds many ghosts appears and with different meanings in different chapters of this novel. There are many dimensions on ghosts in this book including the spirit ghost and Kingston uses the ghost as a metaphor to criticize the American life and its civilization in some chapter. I would like to cite examples about ghosts from the fiction and refers the following focal points: meanings of ghosts, purports of ghosts which related to the woman warrior, and the importance of ghosts in this novel in following paragraph.
The first chapter, No Name Woman is a true story about Kingston’s paternal aunt who was not recognized by her family for the immoral adultery. Although Kingston’s mother forbidden her daughter tells to other people, Kingston still insists on writing this story and uses her imagination to make up the detail and consider the condition about her aunt after she is abandoned by her family which her mother doesn’t tell to her. Ghosts refer to her paternal aunt including three dimensions: the status of her aunt in her family after the immoral adultery, the spirit of her aunt after she die, and the haunting power to Kingston. Firstly, “Kingston’s aunt’s family curses Kingston’s aunt and condemns she is a ghost” after the immoral adultery. And Kingston’s aunt is not recognized as their daughter or sister by her family. In my own interpretation, Kingston’s aunt is regarded as a ghost because people consider that she is an invisible instead. Kingston never gives a name to her aunt but she chooses to use “No Name Woman” as the title of this story instead. In the second place, Kingston’s aunt drowns herself in the drinking water and die. In the Chinese folk custom, they will become a water-ghost if people were dying in the water. The water-ghost will find the best opportunity to find substitute to replace them as a ghost to reincarnate. So the villager is scared because they are afraid of Kingston’s aunt would like to find another substitute to replace her suffering in the water. What’s more, Kingston considers her aunts haunts her and hope Kingston voiced for her unfair treatment and tragic experience, so Kingston devotes herself to write the story about her aunts, who her family were unwilling to accept she as one of their family member. I recall the tragedy Hamlet was written by Shakespeare when I read the line “ My aunts hunts me─her ghost drawn to me....” In the beginning of the play, Hamlet’s father’s ghost tells Hamlet that he is trapped by his younger brother, Claudius and die. Hamlet’s father hopes Hamlet can avenge for his death.
The subtitle of The Woman Warrior is Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, stories about Maxine Hong Kingston’s memory in her girlhood. I finds many ghosts appears and with different meanings in different chapters of this novel. There are many dimensions on ghosts in this book including the spirit ghost and Kingston uses the ghost as a metaphor to criticize the American life and its civilization in some chapter. I would like to cite examples about ghosts from the fiction and refers the following focal points: meanings of ghosts, purports of ghosts which related to the woman warrior, and the importance of ghosts in this novel in following paragraph.
The first chapter, No Name Woman is a true story about Kingston’s paternal aunt who was not recognized by her family for the immoral adultery. Although Kingston’s mother forbidden her daughter tells to other people, Kingston still insists on writing this story and uses her imagination to make up the detail and consider the condition about her aunt after she is abandoned by her family which her mother doesn’t tell to her. Ghosts refer to her paternal aunt including three dimensions: the status of her aunt in her family after the immoral adultery, the spirit of her aunt after she die, and the haunting power to Kingston. Firstly, “Kingston’s aunt’s family curses Kingston’s aunt and condemns she is a ghost” after the immoral adultery. And Kingston’s aunt is not recognized as their daughter or sister by her family. In my own interpretation, Kingston’s aunt is regarded as a ghost because people consider that she is an invisible instead. Kingston never gives a name to her aunt but she chooses to use “No Name Woman” as the title of this story instead. In the second place, Kingston’s aunt drowns herself in the drinking water and die. In the Chinese folk custom, they will become a water-ghost if people were dying in the water. The water-ghost will find the best opportunity to find substitute to replace them as a ghost to reincarnate. So the villager is scared because they are afraid of Kingston’s aunt would like to find another substitute to replace her suffering in the water. What’s more, Kingston considers her aunts haunts her and hope Kingston voiced for her unfair treatment and tragic experience, so Kingston devotes herself to write the story about her aunts, who her family were unwilling to accept she as one of their family member. I recall the tragedy Hamlet was written by Shakespeare when I read the line “ My aunts hunts me─her ghost drawn to me....” In the beginning of the play, Hamlet’s father’s ghost tells Hamlet that he is trapped by his younger brother, Claudius and die. Hamlet’s father hopes Hamlet can avenge for his death.
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