Maxine Hong Kingston straddles genre between memoir and fiction, her role between artist and protagonist, and her identity between Chinese and American in The Woman Warrior. The very act of publishing her work challenges the notion of Necessity. Introduced in the opening pages of “No Name Woman,” Necessity strips family history of detail and transforms it into a barebones, useful account that serves merely as a cautionary tale. Interestingly enough, Brave Orchid, harbinger of utility, comes to vouch for Extravagance. While Maxine the character spearheads her own balance between self-actualization and familial responsibility, Kingston the writer routinely ventures into Extravagance in order to tell her stories at all. Although it seems that Brave Orchid dutifully abides solely by Necessity, her decisions in “At the Western Palace” prove her motivations, too, can be selfish.
“No Name Woman” outlines the ever-present conflict between autobiographer and storyteller, a clash between the need to tell the truth and the desire to daydream. Maxine takes her mother’s version of her aunt’s suicide, one colored by shame and paucity, and reinvents the nameless woman’s life. Brave Orchid “will add nothing unless powered by Necessity, a riverbank that guides her life” (6); in fact, she only tells her daughter this story “to warn [her] about life” (5). Brave Orchid became intolerant, priding herself on being a tough, no-nonsense woman who “did not ‘long’” (108). Maxine, however, dares to embellish the story beyond the realm of need. She is most attracted to the idea of a woman who allows herself to care about something as useless as beauty. Hence, she supposes her aunt, in order “to sustain her being in love, […] worked at herself in the mirror” (10), “gave” her familial responsibility “for warm eyes or a soft voice or a slow walk—that’s all” (9). Though Brave Orchid sees this story as authoritative counsel, Maxine draws parallels between herself and her aunt. As a child, she couldn’t help feeling ashamed “whenever [they] did frivolous things,” likening their amusement to flying “high kites” and “[paying] in guilt” (6) on their way home. Her image of a carefree, unburdened kite starkly contrasts with her mother’s decided, controlled riverbank.
As a writer, Kingston abandons Necessity, which takes the form of silence, in favor of speaking the taboo. Despite her mother’s insistence to suppress the story at all costs, Kingston “alone [devotes] pages of paper to her […] after fifty years of neglect” (16). Storytelling provides an avenue for transforming private into public meanings. The storyteller bridges the spheres of private and public, story and memoir, and self and other. However, she acknowledges the consequences of such an exposé. After all, she presumes a man had threatened her aunt, saying, “If you tell […], I’ll kill you” (7), and of course, the aunt’s village was plundered and her life became the final expense for revealing her pregnancy. Similarly, Kingston concedes that the nameless woman does not “always [mean her] well” (16). Because Kingston is “telling on her,” the aunt haunts Maxine and, as a spite suicide, “waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute” (16). Knowing all that, the author still rejects silence and refuses to “participate in her punishment” (15) any longer.
Much later in the novel, when Maxine has grown up and her mother grown old, “At the Western Palace” inverts the expectations of austerity and indulgence Brave Orchid once embodied. After thirty years, she reunites with her sister Moon Orchid and ultimately endorses Extravagance. Upon an initial reading, Moon Orchid seems to lead the lavish lifestyle, a woman who traveled “with her jewels showing” (136) and “never understood the gravity of things (137). Meanwhile, her sister and her frugal sensibility packed “two shopping bags full of canned peaches, real peaches, beans wrapped in taro leaves, cookies, Thermos bottles, enough food for everybody” (132) to survive a nine-hour wait. Brave Orchid condemned “her bad boy and bad girl” (132) who wouldn’t eat with her. She “would scold them” (132) for wasting money on “the pay TV’s or the pay toilets” (131) and for “probably sneaking hamburgers” (132). Her utilitarian habits lingered, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of “her American children” (131).
In reality, Moon Orchid faithfully followed the code of Necessity, forever waiting for word from her estranged husband. Because her husband had kept her well-fed, hired her a maid, and even provided a college education for their daughter, she became complacent in her undemanding lifestyle. Despite Moon Orchid’s inaction, Brave Orchid fought tooth and nail to bring her sister stateside. She married off her niece “to a rich and angry man with citizenship papers” (120), “sent [Moon Orchid] the plane ticket,” and “wrote her every day [to give] her the heart to come” (152). Brave Orchid’s Extravagance stems from her attention to detail to the scheme. Should Moon Orchid make her debut when only the husband was home? Should she dye her hair or leave it white? What reparations should she demand? Evidently, Brave Orchid did not prioritize her sister’s welfare and instead focused on the scenario with a histrionic payoff, determining “yes, coming with you would be exciting” (167) or “this is most dramatic” (169).
Ironically, Brave Orchid would have deemed all these efforts wasteful for the no-name woman. Even so, she seeks to hit the “right combination” (9) for the greatest emotional impact just like the no-name woman sought to hit the right combination for her lover with her appearance. Although Moon Orchid admitted she could not perform “in front of all those people—like a stage show” (174), her sister dismissed the fear as if it were stage fright. In actuality, Brave Orchid gambled away her sister’s sanity. Likewise, in “No Name Woman,” the disgraced aunt ventured into Extravagance at the cost of her life. After humiliating her sister, Brave Orchid could only retort that the husband “made [Moon Orchid] live like a widow” (178). This reasoning also defends the no-name woman, whose sin arose when she could not bear “living like a widow” (153). At this moment, Brave Orchid accepts defeat and tragically says that “the least [he] could do is invite [them] to lunch” (179).
Brave Orchid’s interference reflects both her experience as an abandoned wife and a dissatisfaction of her life in the United States. Raised in an era of poverty, Maxine’s mother abided by a code of strict, family-oriented Necessity and once she immigrated to the U.S., she became even more restrained by Necessity. She sacrificed her contentment in China as an esteemed physician serving society. In her old life she could travel widely and truly impact the community, but after settling in the States, Brave Orchid became a toiling workhorse who laundered “from 6:30am until midnight” (104) and raised six children born in her mid-forties. She realized she “shouldn’t have left” for this “terrible ghost country, where a human being works her life away” (104). As a result, she jumped at the chance at retaliation against Moon Orchid’s husband who found fulfillment in the “ghost country.”
What exactly does Moon Orchid’s tragedy mean for Maxine? On a surface level, Maxine and her sisters saw their aunt as a victim of her husband’s betrayal, so they “made up their minds to major in science or mathematics” (160). The story reaffirms Necessity, which emboldens the daughters to pursue secure, stable careers. The lesson appears to be the same as in “No Name Woman”—catastrophe inevitably ensues when one deviates from Necessity and gives in to Extravagance. Ironically, it is Brave Orchid who succumbs to temptations and consequently ruins her sister’s life. Perhaps we must reassess Maxine’s initial statement then and conclude that Brave Orchid would “add nothing unless” she believed herself to be “powered by Necessity” (6). She thought Necessity drove her to divulge legendary, lavish “talk-stories” and thought she kept her sister’s needs in mind, but Extravagance had gotten the better of her.
Often in The Woman Warrior, Kingston constructs a story that begins as her mother’s and ends as hers. What starts as a narrative of Necessity grows into a fantastical chronicle mired in Extravagance, be it in “No Name Woman” or “At the Western Palace.” Kingston refuses to sit in silence and instead uses her voice to rebel. Although Kingston sets up her mother as the paradigm of utilitarian survival, a woman who scorned the “prodigal aunt” (6), Brave Orchid’s staunch worldview unravels as she fails to seek reprisal on her sister’s behalf. In a culture that had valued Necessity for so long, Extravagance becomes an impossible to achieve pipe dream, even if the opportunity presents itself.