No Name Woman Analysis

In a woman’s lifetime, she is subjected to shaming, considered subclass, oppressed, evil, and her rights as a human being are completely disregarded. The No Name Woman, written by Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, she tells the story of her Aunt that she never knew that had a baby out of wedlock, and then how she was terrorized by her fellow villagers. Similar to the Islamic women in the story Love and Sex in the Life of an Arab told by Nawal El Saadawi an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist. The only use for a woman is procreation, taking care of their men, children, and home. The Arabic culture treats women much the same way that Maxine’s

Throughout El-Saadawi’s text, she explains, “women are a menace to men and society, and the only way to avoid the harm she could do was to isolate her in her home” (520). Women were thought of as nothing but a seductress that could lead a man to impure thoughts, which would lead him away from Allah. The only way to change the thoughts that the men had was to cover the woman’s body completely. In the story of the No Name Woman, Kingston describes the same sort of a situation, as she discusses her Aunt who drowned in a well, “she worked at herself in the mirror”, where “all the married women blunt-cut their hair in flaps about their ears of pulled it back in tight buns” (328). What she is explaining here is that her Aunt, made sure to make she had taken care of herself, which was untypical of a married woman. The typical married woman did not need to put the extra effort into making herself pretty as she had already landed a husband. Her Aunt should have spent her time taking care of the home her husband’s family had provided. All of the blame is placed on the women, none towards the men, as if a man has no control over his sexual desires. The Islamic women and Kingston’s aunt were told that their bodies were not their own, they belonged to their husband or the men of the village and they had to do what they were told. They did not have the right to do what they wanted with their own