The aunt was a woman whose husband went of to work in America. While the husband was gone she became pregnant, and nobody knew who the father was. The aunt was silent even to the end when she dies. The reader must consider that she was forced to be silent. Kingston imagines her rapist telling her, "If you tell your family, I"ll beat you. I"ll kill you," Kingston (7). Kingston's mother says; "To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time, was a waste enough" (6). According to Kingston, it was very hard for a village to have enough to eat and the only exile was America, "your father and his brothers and your grandfather and his brothers and your aunt's new husband sailed for America, the gold mountain," her mother states (1). Today in liberal society that would not be a major problem, because everybody has individual rights and the community dose not shapes our lives, but that was different in China. .
Tradition, culture, respect and honor are the ideals that shape the Chinese civilization. Certain traditions had to be followed in life and if they were not obeyed, well then there were serious consequences that followed. Kingston states: "Daughters-in-law lived with their husbands" parents, not their own. [ ] Her husband's parents could have sold her, mortgaged her or stoned her" (8). The traditional role of women in Chinese society was one of subservience and humility. Chinese folklore is peppered with such phrases as "girls are maggots in the rice," and "it is more profitable to raise geese than daughters." Kingston states (34). Females were considered unnecessary; it was the birth of a son that was cause for celebration. Chinese girls were more likely than boys to suffer infanticide in poor families. An early marriage arranged by the female's parents made a girl's stay in her parent's house short-lived. In other words, she didn't have any rights to anything a woman was like a slave.
