Comparison of Two Stories

¶ … Patriarchy to Another

It starts early. Socialization into the social system we call patriarchy starts at birth when we put pink on "beautiful" and "angelic" girls and blue on "handsome" and "tough" baby boys. We hold baby girls so they can see into our faces, as we talk to them. We hold baby boys so they can see what's going on in the room. That's how the process begins. We are the recipients, either willingly or unwillingly, of a patriarchal legacy. What probably began in prehistoric times as a cooperative system for survival has become an albatross. We are stuck with living in a patriarchal society where women are oppressed. And it is certainly not a local phenomenon. "Desiree's Baby" and "No Name Woman" are two stories from far-off cultures, but patriarchy as a system is as much in evidence in those places, if not more so, as it is here. In this essay we will compare and contrast the two stories, explore the nature and resolution of the conflict in each story, and the characters, setting, and themes.

In both stories the birth of a child triggers the central conflict. In "Desiree's Baby" the baby, born into a rich plantation family, is black in a society where black slaves are treated as the lowest and most contemptible of all human beings. In "No Name Woman" the child is illegitimate, the result of adultery, and thought to be the reason for poor crops, illness, and bad fortune in the community. In both stories the mother is blamed. Desiree, who just "appeared" one day on a doorstep when she was very young is assumed to be the carrier of African genes. Because the baby is black, it must have got its "blackness" from Desiree whose background is unknown. In "No Name Woman" the narrator's aunt had sexual relations, no one knows whether consensual or not, with someone while her husband was away working. In both stories, the fathers themselves blame the mothers. In "Desiree" the husband learns to hate his once-beloved wife because of his shame and embarrassment in the community. The irony is that he is actually the carrier of the black gene that shows up in the baby. In "No name" the father is someone in the community and probably is present during the violent destruction of the family's home. Neither father is willing to take any responsibility for his child. Likewise, in both stories the conflict is resolved through the self-destruction of the woman. Desiree and her baby disappear into the wilderness and are never seen again. "No name" drowns herself in the family's well.

In both stories the setting contributes greatly to the action. Desiree lives on a plantation where slaves are kept as property and are not paid for their labor. Slavery was a system in which it was all right for the master to impregnate his female slaves in order to produce more slaves (for free, he didn't have to buy them), but it was not all right for him to marry a black woman or for his legitimate heirs to be black because that would elevate blacks socially, and slavery depended on the control and domination of one race over another. Patriarchy is more than the relationship between men and women. It is a system that organizes the entire world around domination, control, and competition. The Chinese village where "No Name" lives is a superstitious place where people depend on "the gods" to favor their crops and their fertility. If a man and woman displease the gods by breaking the rules, then some sort of sacrifice must be made to appease them. Who they sacrifice shows the difference in value they place on males and females. Plus, it's a system of control devised by men. They are not going to sacrifice themselves.

Girls are socialized to be quiet, docile, and conforming. Desiree and No Name, the main characters in the two stories are both women who have been successfully socialized into patriarchy. They cooperate with the patriarchal system. Indeed, like most women, they take it for granted and are probably unconscious of their own oppression. Desiree, for example, sees herself through her husband's eyes. As long as he loves her and she is his wife, she is "somebody." But once he doesn't love her anymore and doesn't want her, she sees her life and the life of her child as worthless -- even though her mother loves her and wants her back. In "No Name Woman" the main character cannot bring herself to accuse the man who put her in the position of having a child who was not her husband's. Having grown up in the system, she knows she is going to be blamed anyway. If she did accuse him, she would still have to live with the stigma forever afterwards. Perhaps, the consequences of making an accusation are just too great. Unlike Desiree, whose mother wants her back, No Name's family behaves hatefully towards her, disowns her, and refuses to ever speak her name again. The father of No Name's child joins the other villagers in destroying everything the family owns, but she still does not reveal who he is. She, too, decides that life is not worth living -- neither hers nor her child's -- and kills herself. Whether the man raped her or she loved him or simply was attracted to him sexually, she values his life more than her own.

Patriarchy sharply defines masculine and feminine roles, and one of the most highly valued characteristics of femininity is self-sacrifice. "Real women" are unselfish and put men first. Both stories take place in male-identified cultures where men are supposed to be strong, forceful, decisive, and aggressive (they earn money) while women are supposed to be weak, dependant, supportive, and cooperative (they don't earn money). Men have the upper hand. In both stories the theme seems to be that women make good scapegoats. In "Desiree's Baby," nobody knows that there is black blood in the father's family or that his mother was part black. So even though she is lighter skinned than her husband, it must be Desiree's fault. In "No Name Woman" the villagers don't go looking for the man and hunt him down. They go straight to the woman to destroy her. In patriarchal societies, women are seen as more vulnerable and powerless; thus, they make easy scapegoats for whatever goes wrong. Not only are they easy to blame, but they can be counted on to go along with it. Desiree and No Name certainly do. In a male-dominated society, that is, one in which men hold nearly all the positions of power, and women are overwhelmingly subordinate, men are in the position to do the blaming. Women are not, so they get the other role.