No Name Woman By Maxine Hong Kingston

In the story, No Name Woman, the theme of adultery being a bad thing is seen throughout the text. No Name Woman, by Maxine Hong Kingston, is a story about a mother telling the daughter about an aunt that was disowned by the family. The mother tells that when the aunt was close to having the baby the villagers raided the house the family was in. Afterwards the family disowns her and she leaves the house to give birth by herself outside in one of the pigsties. Then after a while she goes and kills herself and the baby by drowning in the well. First, at the beginning of the story Kingston said, “In early summer she was ready to have the child, long after the time when it could have been possible. The village had also been counting. On the night the baby was to be born the villagers raided our house.” This shows that adultery is bad because the villagers raided the house and they knew that she was pregnant because the husband was gone for a long time.

Could people who hatch their own chicks and eat the embryos and the heads for delicacies and boil the feet in vinegar for party food, leaving only the gravel, eating even the gizzard lining-could such people engender a prodigal aunt? To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough. My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex.” During this part of the story the mother was telling the daughter how or why she got pregnant, anyway this part of the text is confusing, but it says the adultery is a luxury, then comes the chicken example and then to make it simpler,then it says eating even the gizzard lining could such people produce a wasteful aunt. This shows that the mother thinks that the aunt is not one for just going around having sex. But she still got pregnant somehow and not by here husband so she is forgotten by the mother till