The Ghost in the Well

Pre-marital sex and the consequences of social ostracization if the mother gets pregnant is a fairly common theme in many stories of a family member who did not conform to the cultural norms of a certain group. This is true for Kingston’s short story, “No Name Woman.” However, something that I think made this story unique for me was the motif of ghosts. Kingston uses ghosts as a way to express various aspects of the consequences for the aunt getting pregnant, and the narrator even uses this as a way for her to understand her cultural and sexual identity within the context of being a part of both Chinese and American culture.

            The first time that we see her use the image of a ghost is when she retells the first time that her mother told her the story of her aunt who killed herself by drowning herself in the well with her newborn baby. Her mother tells her that her aunt was called “pig” and “ghost” (5). This first image sparks for the narrator the idea of her aunt believing herself a ghost before she even died. Later, in her imaginings of what could have been her aunt’s story of how she came to be pregnant and her feelings through the whole process, she imagines her own family calling her a ghost and even a “dead ghost” (14) as though being a ghost didn’t imply death as it was. This moment acts as a bridge between the villagers telling her aunt that she is a ghost and her believing that she is one.

            This takes itself up on the following page after she has given birth and she describes calls her baby “little ghost” because the child has been born into the mother’s reputation and therefore is a ghost and has no future because her once socially accepted and alive mother is now dead to their community which heavily relies upon one another. This moment creates an issue for the narrator in figuring out how to view her own sexuality and multi-culturalism. On the one hand, she has come from this culture and community which is very interconnected to everyone within the community and everything you do should be for the good and propriety of said community. However, since she appears to be of the first generation born in the US, she is also a part of a culture which is not heavily reliant on the idea of your actions being for the betterment of the community and is rather geared toward the idea that you do what is best for you.

            Here, we can see the paradox for the narrator, if she did not mind losing her Chinese family and community, she could end up pregnant as her aunt did and not have to face the same consequences because she could still have the opportunity to be successful in her life as an American.

            This, however, is still a scary thought for her because her haunts her (16). She even explains how, as someone who identifies with the Chinese culture, she knows that the Chinese “are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute” (16). While the her own images of her aunt and cousin as ghosts create sympathy for them, this final image of her aunt waiting to pull her down as a substitute is one that is chilling and terrifying because it creates an image of the aunt which paints her as someone who wants revenge against her community and no longer identifies herself with the family who disowned her and is willing to kill those who were not alive at the time of her death.

            With this, the image of the ghost changes from one that is melancholic to one that is similar to that of a poltergeist. It makes you want to watch your back and stay away from ditches filled with water.