Woman Warrior Quote

The mother of the narrator has just finished telling her daughter the story of her aunt. A tragic story of how she was pregnant with a child that wasn't her husband's and how the shame led to her commiting suicide and being forgotten be her family. A quote that really stood out for me was, "Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born." This is a pretty harsh thing to say to a young girl. Instead of just telling her that although she's capable of having sex, don't, because you might get pregnant, the mother decides to basically threaten her. And not just any threat, but the threat of being forgotten. So the mother is saying, "If you have sex, it'll humiliate us, you'll be disowned and we'll act as if you never existed." Ouch. That's a horrible thing to say, you can threaten to ground someone, or to ignore someone, but to completely ignore their existance is probably the worst thing you can do. It's also rude to just assume that her daughter is automatically going to do something like get pregnant like her aunt just because puberty finally came around. She could've said something like with great comes great responsibilty, but no, she had to say it as if she was a mindless child who would've gone and done something stupid if her mother hadn't threatened her.