No Name Woman......

So my first thought as I read this story is RAGE! Unbelieving, anger at the ignorance, the waste, the ridiculousness of such a thing. How can this happen, then, so, so sad. I think as I imagine a woman giving birth alone, so desperate, terrified with no hope, so little hope that she can kill her child as well as herself. I feel as though the author feels rage, at her Mother maybe, for telling her this story. It s a threat, a story like that for a young girl, its a way of control. Societies way of controlling women. Women's way of controlling other woman into behaving in ways that are unthreatening. She threatened them, the woman of the village. Because they know one of their men did it, and they don;t know who. This angers them, but they blame her. THE WOMAN. Nobody was running around destroying the house of the man, no one even tried to find out who it was, if it was rape, abuse, whatever. Then I'm angry because why wouldn't she just leave her village, go away, anywhere, away from these people that cut her off, shut her out. But I do think the author felt rage, for herself, on behalf of her ancestor, at her mother for perpetuating this myth, her father as well, maybe just for their very old world "Chinese-ness" I feel it in how her writing spirals, first one way, then another, searching, looking for an outlet, a reason, an imagining for some way to understand a culture she is part of yet can never understand, never identify with. She is conflicted between understanding and loving her parents yet being completely unable to understand a culture that could perpetuate such horrors. But I keep coming back to control, this is a way for people to manipulate and control other people and I sense the authors need to understand and come to terms with her own history.

last post for wench

So I finished this book over a month ago so its been hard to keep going back to it and over it to re-think what I read in January. Had I been "close reading" consciously at that point it may have been easier but I was really still doing it unconsciously and am still working on trying to do it period. Anyway, so I keep trying to rethink what really was the theme of the book. It wasn't slavery really, that would be too trite, too easily summed up because the conflicts were about slavery but yet were so similar to the conflicts of woman today that I don't think that was the real theme. Lizzies real conflict was whether or not to stay in a relationship with an unequal power structure where she is very much the "other woman". Very similar to many modern relationships that are not formed in "real slavery" but are mimicking it none the less. I think the theme is relationships, with men and with other women. When to stay and when to go, trying to figure out what you want from your life and your relationships and what you will accept in order to get it. For a book dealing with a dark subject matter the tone is fairly light. Lizzie, the narrator, is a slave but doesn't project the same despair in her station as the other woman because she loves her master. I don;t think she really feels like a slave. The only dissatisfaction you really sense from Lizzie is that she wants to make sure her children are free in case something happens to her. On the other hand, Drayles wife, Fran has gone through bouts of making Lizzies children her "pets" when she feels the need to fulfill her maternal urges. All in all Lizzie is not a dark character. She exudes a lightness not expected in such a character, a naivety bordering on simpleness. An unquestioning character, and for all that she is the most educated slave in the book she is oddly innocent compared to most of them. She accepts the fate of slavery, rape, abuse mental and physical as just part of her lot in life, in such a way that although she should be jaded from, she really isn't; and that in the end, is why she stayed, because I don;t think she really thinks of herself as a slave. She would I believe be more easily identified with the mistress of a married man today. Always being pacified, insecure in love but too in love to leave, waiting forchance to be number one.