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Brave Orchid
Also known as “the woman warrior” (and familiar in Western popular culture as “Mulan”), legend has it that she replaced her father in battle and saved her village from a greedy baron. Kingston imagines herself as The Woman Warrior to defy her mother’s expectation that she will be “a wife and a slave,” deciding instead that she “would have to grow up a warrior woman,” using the “the song of the warrior woman” that her mother had taught her to imagine other possibilities for herself. Fa Mu Lan lives with an old man and an old woman who train her from the age of seven to the age of twenty-two to avenge her village. The legend of Fa Mu Lan is reimagined by Kingston with the inclusion of details that are specific to her Western upbringing. For example, Fa Mu Lan’s effort to depose the current emperor, whom she beheads, and inaugurate “the peasant who would begin the new order” is reminiscent of Joan of Arc. Kingston even mentions Joan directly in the narrative as a contrast to the woman warrior, who has a husband and a son, whereas Joan of Arc was “a maiden.” The woman warrior also goes alone in the woods for a spirit journey, akin to the traditional spirit journey that Native American boys take as a rite of passage during puberty. After years on the mountain being trained by the old couple, Fa Mu Lan returns to her family, and they carve a message of revenge on her back. At the age of twenty-two, she gathers an army, marries “a childhood friend,” and soon bears a child. Disguised as a man, she enters the baron’s stronghold, reveals the message and simultaneously reveals herself to be a woman, then decapitates him. Kingston chooses Fa Mu Lan as a heroine, for the warrior woman’s femininity does not hinder her strength, but instead reinforces it. The story of the woman warrior contradicts Brave Orchid’s negative attitude toward girls and also challenges China’s traditional devaluation of girls and women.
Fa Mu Lan Quotes in The Woman Warrior
The The Woman Warrior quotes below are all either spoken by Fa Mu Lan or refer to Fa Mu Lan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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2. White Tigers
Quotes
After I grew up, I heard the chant of Fa Mu Lan, the girl who took her father’s place in battle…. I had forgotten this chant that was once mine, given me by my mother, who may not have known its power to remind. She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman.
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I saw two people made of gold dancing the earth’s dances. They turned so perfectly together they were the axis of the earth’s turning [….] Chinese lion dancers, African lion dancers in midstep. I heard high Javanese bells deepen in midring to Indian bells, Hindu Indian, American Indian [….] Then the dancers danced the future—a machine-future—in clothes I had never seen before. I am watching the centuries pass in moments because suddenly I understand time, which is spinning and fixed like the North Star. And I understand how working and hoeing are dancing; how peasant clothes are golden, as king’s clothes are golden; how one dancer is always a man and the other a woman.
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The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are “report a crime” and “report to five families.” The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words— “chink” words and “gook” words too—that they do not fit on my skin.
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Get the entire The Woman Warrior LitChart as a printable PDF.
Fa Mu Lan Quotes in The Woman Warrior
The The Woman Warrior quotes below are all either spoken by Fa Mu Lan or refer to Fa Mu Lan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
2. White Tigers
Quotes
After I grew up, I heard the chant of Fa Mu Lan, the girl who took her father’s place in battle…. I had forgotten this chant that was once mine, given me by my mother, who may not have known its power to remind. She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman.
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Explanation and Analysis:
I saw two people made of gold dancing the earth’s dances. They turned so perfectly together they were the axis of the earth’s turning [….] Chinese lion dancers, African lion dancers in midstep. I heard high Javanese bells deepen in midring to Indian bells, Hindu Indian, American Indian [….] Then the dancers danced the future—a machine-future—in clothes I had never seen before. I am watching the centuries pass in moments because suddenly I understand time, which is spinning and fixed like the North Star. And I understand how working and hoeing are dancing; how peasant clothes are golden, as king’s clothes are golden; how one dancer is always a man and the other a woman.
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The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are “report a crime” and “report to five families.” The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words— “chink” words and “gook” words too—that they do not fit on my skin.
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