Pam's Post

Both Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen” and Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman" contain characters of different cultures; Mrs. Sen is of Indian heritage in, “Mrs. Sen”, and speaker of , “No Name Woman”, is of Asian decent. Both characters display a struggle with their place in American culture in relation to their traditional ways. Mrs. Sen sets up her home in a simply, Indian way with many rugs, colours, and always makes dinner for her husband, never ordering out. She does not know how to drive therefore limiting her freedom and dresses traditionally, in a sari. The speaker in, “No Name Woman”, displays herself as torn between acting as though her aunt that brought shame to her family never existed in order to maintain honour for her family or to remember her aunt, which could be turbulent.

The main difference between these two characters is that although Mrs. Sen tried to break her own boundaries, she failed to push herself after her failure in driving while the speaker in, “No Name Woman”, knows no limits. She, in a sense, went a step further; she pushed her own boundary lines, disregarding her instructions of her mother which were to never think about her aunt ever. By publishing a work about her aunt and the hardship that she faced with her adultery, bearing a child from that, and her suicide, she is keeping her aunts memory alive. Mrs. Sen does makes an effort to gain freedom by driving but let her fear eat away at any chance of that. When she finally decides to go to the market, without Mr. Sen or a license, she crashes and cries in her room after leaving the reader unsure of what happens to her in the end.

Pam Kawalerski
Post #1