No Named Woman

The story of “No Name Woman” by Maxine Kingston is one full of ambiguity from beginning to end. The narrator tells the story with different scenarios and possible situations for the purpose of getting the audience to question the facts given. When I first read this shorts story I couldn’t quite understand why the narrator was telling the story about her aunt, especially when the first line in directly states that she “Must not tell anyone what [her mother was] about to tell [her]” (Kingston 3). It wasn’t until our class discussion that I realized the narrator was trying to put the pieces together and determine what kind of person her aunt really was, despite the rumors of her throughout the village.

The first scenario somewhat plays the aunt as the victim. We are led to believe that a man in the village repeatedly rapes her. As the beginning of the story progresses we are immediately introduced to the raid that took place destroying everything in the house of the “No Name Woman.” Later we are told that the man who is said to rape her also threatens to kill her if she tells anyone. When she claims, “’I think I’m pregnant.’ He organized the raid against her” (Kingston 7). We see here she can possibly be viewed as the victim. Once the village assumes she must be sleeping around, since her husband has been gone for years, her name is ruined, she is tainted, and she is put to shame. But was she really raped? Was there absolutely no way it could have been her husbands’ child? Even though as a reader this is the information we are given the full truth is still uncertain. The narrator is giving us insight based on information from her mother, which could in fact be biased because tells her own daughter, “What happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us” (Kingston 5).

This leads me to another topic we discussed in class when Ronald brought up the idea about this story being ironic. Ironic in the sense that the “No Name Woman” was being punished when she was the one who was raped when it should have been the other way around. When you first read the story the situation could easily appear to be ironic because the victim is punished instead of the perpetrator. But when we started discussing the possibility of this in class a bigger issue came up. I thought it was really interesting when we came to the conclusion that this part of the story isn’t really ironic at all because it happens in our society today. Women are demonized by our culture and are, more often times than not, too afraid to speak up if they are victims of abuse.

Although as readers we don’t know which version of the story to believe, but the third version is the one I choose to believe. The “No Name Woman” committed her last act of love. “Carrying the baby to the well shows loving. Otherwise abandon it…Mothers who love their children take them along” (Kingston 15). This I strongly agree with. As the mother she knew that her baby was already deemed to be nothing and a no one. Instead she believed it was her “devotion,” “responsibility,” and ultimate “protection” to take her daughter to die with her. Ultimately we do not know the truth of the story in it’s entirety but the outright defiance from the narrator herself proves she is trying to find her own truth and guidance for who she should be.