The Woman Warrior
Sorry this has gone up late this time. Here are some questions for you to consider for tomorrow's class discussion on The Woman Warrior:
How would you describe the narrator’s feelings toward the aunt? (Consider: The aunt “haunts” and “waits silently for a substitute.” “I do not think she means me well.”)
How is drowning in the family’s drinking water a spiteful act? Should we think of the aunt as a victim?
Are there similarities in the narrator’s and the aunt’s actions? How do they both cross forbidden boundaries?
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posted by Erin @ 1:49 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
I think the narrator is confused or torn about her feelings towards her aunt. She doesn't know her aunt for real, she only knows the story her mother tells her. The mother tells the story in an objective way and I think the narrator realizes this. Which is why she is uncertain about how to feel about her aunt's situation. The aunt is a victim in a way. She is a victim of her culture. It was said that she only met her husband for one night and than he left. She was deffinately not in love with him. However she still was married and did commit adultery which is wrong, but in her situation I could see how some people would be simpithatic. Overall I think how we, the reader should feel about the aunt, is left up to us. Different people will have different opinons about this and I think that was done on purpose.
The reason the aunts drowning in the narrators families well is seen as a spiteful action is that she is running the families water. It is similar to someone pouring poison it a town war supply. Since over time the body will start to decompose which is like poisoning the family’s water supply. Furthermore, this is a spiteful and dishonorable act since she is causing her family even more trouble. It is almost like spitting in their faces before killing herself. To the second part of the question, I do see the aunt in away as the victim. Even though she committed adultery, it was not the villages business to get involved in the aunt’s problems. This was one of the key reasons to why the aunt committed suicide.
Im confused, didn't we do this reading already? we were supose to read white tigers right?
Feelings toward aunt:
I think the author feels guilty and embarased that her family has ingored a member of their own family because of such reasons as being pregnant by another man and feels the need to do right by "defending" her aunt and telling all the posible scenerios she could have gone through that lead to her extreme actions. The author also wanted to get her aunts story out there in the air, exposed, in the light after haunting her in the dark for so long.
Drowning:
I agree with Edward in the sense that since she used the source of the towns water to die in thus poisining it- shows that she was thiking selfeshly or not thiking at all. She kills herself because of her peoples pressure and seemingly goes out without a fight but then drowns in the common well were her body will rot and make the water undrinkable- her subttle punch back to the way her family was treating her.
Victim:
This is a confusing topic. We will never know the real aunts story but considering the authors hypothesis the aunt is seen as both the victim ( of a strict culture) and an ofender ( she could have desired to cheat) but nonthe less I think whatever the case she is in fact an ofender before a victim because she kills her child! ok, she commits suicide because of her own mental issues and takes her new born child with her becase she "loves it", I don't buy into it. No matter how messed up the babies life could be no one has the right to take another persons life.
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correction:
family's water not towns water
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I think that the narrator has confused and curious feelings towards her aunt. One day she didn't have an aunt and the next day she not only has one but one with a juicy story. I honestly think she is very perplexed on what to think about her aunt. The only knowledge she has of her is from what her mother told her.
I believe that the aunt drowning in the families well is a act of revenge. I think that the aunt feels that women are mistreated and misjudged. They are supposed to get married and there husbands just leave the next day, leaving no time to spend with there brides. The women are expected to just hang around and wait for them to come back. That is unfair. Ido believe that the aunt had an affiar because she was not in love with her husband. I do think of her as a victim because even though she did commit adultery, the villagers should not have bombarded and destroyed her house and family the way they did. It is because of them that she committed suicide.
I feel that the narrator is torn between two people. She is unsure weather or not to take everything her mother says as true fact and therefore uses it against her aunt. On the other hand she wants her aunt to be remembered and she imagines what the true story was like. I feel that what the narrator’s aunt did was wrong. She should have never committed adultery. I feel that the aunt is the offender. She killed herself, yet even more so she killed her child. She brought the whole situation upon herself. She poisoned the water with her horrible acts against the town.
I think Kingston views her aunt as somthing/someone to be fearful of and not to repeat her actions, but at the same time she draws upon her aunt's story for support. I think that Kingston views her aunt's actions as an act of defiance. No doubt a spiteful act, the presense of a dead body always serves as a sort of pollution to its sorroundings in every culture, and i think the aunt intended it to be that way. Just as the aunt defies the accepted norms of society, Kingston defies her mother by telling us of her aunts story.
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