The Silencing of Women

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the lives of Hong Kingston and Woolf provide a dramatic contrast to the suppression of women as depicted in their works and that the success of Hong Kingston and other women writers represents the fulfillment of Woolf's dream for Shakespeare's ?sister?. The author points out that, in both "No Name Woman" and "Shakespeare's Sister", women are silenced not by society as a whole, but by the actions of their family and loved ones. The paper states that Judith in "Shakespeare's Sister" is resoundingly stifled by the Elizabethan society of Shakespeare's time; she is held firmly within her roles of a woman as child bearer, wife, and property; any attempt at creative talent is stifled.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Woolf's Essay "Shakespeare's Sister"
"No Name Woman" by Maxine Hong Kingston
Resurrection by the Female Author
Hong Kingston, Woolf, and Women in Literature
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Within "No Name Woman", Maxine Hong Kingston also depicts the resurrection of the "disappeared" woman. The narrator, a young Chinese-American woman, tells the story of her aunt, who was ostracized by her family for the crime of giving birth to an illegitimate child. Ling notes, "The author . . . breaks the family silence by writing about this rebel whom she calls 'my forebear'". In Kingston's story, the narrator has participated in the silencing of her aunt, causing her aunt to "disappear". Kingston writes, "there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have. In the twenty years since I heard this story I have not asked for details nor said my aunt's name; 1 do not know it." Yet the narrator breaks this silence, and causes the story of the "disappeared" aunt to once again be told. Writes Hong Kingston, "My aunt haunts me-her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her"."

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