The Woman Warrior Quotes With Page Numbers

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In The Woman Warrior, it states that “Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil” (6). This quote shows the interpersonal relationships that enforce the ideology of women being inferior to men. Women in China didn’t get to choose their paths. They were forced into adultery if a man wanted them, which could even be along the lines of rape. The quote states that a man commanded a woman to lie with him, which is how the man, part of the dominant group, is oppressing the woman, part of the oppressed group. The man would think that he is allowed to control the woman, because of the way institutions were structured to make men think that acting that way is okay. He understands …show more content…

This quote is institutional in the case that the village is considered the institution. If adultery is committed in the village, then it is normally the woman who is found out and therefore treated horribly. In the good times, she may be treated fairly, considering it a mistake, but the time of the narrator’s aunt was a time that the village needed food. Therefore, when her aunt committed adultery, she was treated unfairly, with a raid ordered against her. This quote shows how the institution reserves the right to control the women. They control the extent of how adultery is treated, but the women are treated even more unfairly than men. When the villagers found out about the narrator’s aunt, they organize a raid. This raid ties into adultery being a crime and to how the oppression of women is institutionalized. The aunt then ends up killing herself, even though she had no choice in what the dominant group (the man) was asking her to do. She was still unfairly treated for it, in both the interpersonal relation and institutional. This quote shows how the village, the institution, creates laws that end up mistreating the women of the society much more often than men, furthering the ideology that women are inferior to