The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston And Ed Lin

As the society paved from matriarchal to patriarchal, the status of women decreased as time goes. In the Woman Warrior and Waylaid, Maxine Hong Kingston and Ed Lin both agree that women in China have been treated badly, because they are an inferior gender and have to be obedient, but authors have drastically different views on the status of women in the American society. Maxine Hong Kingston argues that after coming to the United States, Chinese women have lowered their statuses, because the isolations from the mainstream society prevent them from adapting feminist concepts; Lin argues that women from a lower socioeconomic class in the United States have not been treated very nicely regardless of race, because they have been seen as sexual objects. I would like to add that in modern society, Chinese women have achieved higher social statuses, due to China’s rapid development, and Chinese Americans in the United States are able to enhance their statuses, because they can acculturate better into the mainstream society.
In Kingston’s book, the Woman Warrior, sayings like “it is more profitable to raise geese than daughters”, and the idea that women are “slaves” shows up repeatedly in the book (51). The repetition emphasizes this idea is ingrained in people’s minds. Even more, women are limited by stringent social rules. Brave Orchid tells a story about her sister in-law who is pregnant with an illegitimate child, and villagers destroy her home for her infidelity. She eventually kills herself and the child in the well, and her name is never allowed to be mention again in the family. The right of being commemorated is deprived from this woman because she makes a bad decision. The Chinese society has established strict rules and governance mechanisms to restrict women behaviors, and women lose their rights and freedom under these