Feminist - Shaman

In this chapter of The Woman Warrior the theme that women are less powerful than men and have less privileges is still very evident. One obvious place is when the book talks about when Maxine's mom is choosing a slave to become her assistant nurse. All of the slaves at the market are daughters, there are no sons at all. Since there are no sons, this shows thats boys are valuable and no one wants to sell their sons. Another place that we can see the theme of women being less powerful and valuable than men is when Maxine's mom brews a special soup for a certain couple. She brews this soup for them because they are infertile. The soup ended their infertility and also gave them a boy. The soup was made specially so that a boy would be born not a girl because a Chinese couple would much rather have a boy than a girl that is worthless in their eyes. A third time that this theme is evident is when the book says, "Chinese without sons stole boy babies of Japanese settlers," (Hong Kingston 93). This quote shows the theme because it says that Chinese families without any sons often stole sons. The quote doesn't say that they stole daughters, but only sons. This because they only wanted sons, not daughters. Also you can see this theme when Maxine talks about what would happen if her family moved back to China. She says that her and her sisters would be sold. Also she says that her father would get at least two or three more wives. They would sell Maxine and her sisters because in China girls are useless. Also since her dad would marry two or three more wives, this shows that wives would get less attention and catering to than men. It shows this because each of the wives would only cater to their one husband, but that one husband would only partially cater to each of his wives since he has to cater to more than just one person.