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(Dis)figuration: The Body as Icon in the Writings of Maxine Hong Kingston

1994; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 24; Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3507894

2222-4289

Deborah L. Madsen,

Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics

In the short story, 'In the Penal Colony', Franz Kafka describes an ingenious instrument of execution which despatches its victims by inscribing upon their bodies, with a myriad of sharp needles, the law they have transgressed.Over a period of hours condemned prisoners are tortured to death.This tale could act as 'talk-story' pointing to the significance of bodily mutilation in the work of Maxine Hong Kingston and other American ethnic writers.Granted, the prisoners of whom Maxine Hong Kingston writes generally do not die.Yet these women endure physical torture not for a matter of hours but for a lifetime, in effect serving life sentences.Recall the Woman Warrior's thoughts upon releasing a roomful of pathetic, mutilated creatures from the evil baron's stronghold: these 'cowering, whimpering women [...] blinked weakly at me like pheasants that have been raised in the dark for soft meat.The servants who walked the ladies had abandoned them, and they could not escape on their little bound feet.Some crawled away from me, using their elbows to pull themselves along.These women would not be good for anything'. 1Kingston's autobiographical works are dedicated to the purpose of discovering a way to live as a useful and worthy woman.But for her, as for the 'slaves and daughters-in-law' liberated in her imagination, the female body represents a crime committed and punishment exacted.Both crime and punishment are inscribed upon the body.The symbolic role of gendered bodies which is at work in Kingston's writings has been described by Leslie Rabine:Sexed bodies become the visible signs through which a system of hierarchical social roles is enforced by economics, politics, the family, religion, and other institutional constructs so that individuals whose bodies are visibly marked 'female' find themselves forced into oppressive positions. 2 course, the physical marks of ethnic difference complicate the situation of Kingston's women who bear the traces of two kinds of oppression.Their crime is the crime of difference -sexual and also racial -which is located most explicitly in the body and which sets into play a symbolic vocabulary that permeates Kingston's texts.The whole concept of bodily mutilation is comically explored in Kingston's novel, Tripmaster Monkey, where it forms a part of the complex and allusive fictional texture.Wittman Ah Sing, at work in the department store where he sells toys, catches his tie in the gear sprockets and chain of the bike he is trying to set on display.With a customer nagging at his back, 'he cut the tie with the dull scissors on a string tied to the counter.The Steppenwolf gnaws his leg free from the trap of steel, he thought'. 3Later he refers to his new-style 'castration tie'.But it is through the character of Judy Louis, the boar/bore who accompanies Wittman on a bus ride from San Francisco to Oakland, that the idea of physical embodiment is introduced.Judy is plain, presumptuous, and prying, insisting that Wittman acknowledge their common 'Chineseness' by talking to her.The revulsion Wittman feels about a personality like Judy's quickly takes on a sexual cast as Wittman turns from the issue of Judy's 'homeliness' to speculation about her chances of finding a husband.This unattractive woman, with her complete vocabulary of racial cliches, is transformed before