Overcoming Ghosts of the Past : Henley"s Crimes of the Heart and Kingston"s The Woman Warrior

Overcoming Ghosts of the Past : Henley"s Crimes of the Heart and Kingston"s The Woman Warrior

&nbsp;&nbsp;This paper focuses upon two patriarchal cultures, the Southern and the Chinese ones, which idealize the acquiescent, passive, and self-sacrificing women. In conjunction with, and as examples of these two cultures, I examine how female characters in two representative literary works, Henley&quot;s Crime&quot;s of the Heart and Kingston&quot;s The Woman Warrior, are affected by their respective patriarchal societies and how they succeed in their struggles for autonomy.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The patriarchal dominance exerted over women in Crimes of the Heart and The Woman Warrior exemplifies how two geographically divergent cultures produce a very similar norm of femininity that restricts women&quot;s position in family and society. Nonetheless, from within these two patriarchal societies, the repressed and devalued women, the MaGrath sisters and Kingston, struggle to break through cultural expectations which bound them to the ghosts of the past. Through the female bonding between sisters and by moving beyond both the silence and aggression, they are transformed into autonomous beings.