Previous
Moon Orchid’s Husband
– In her fantasy as Fa Mu Lan, the baron is an evil lord who has seized control of Kingston’s / Fa Mu Lan’s village. He hoards all of the villagers’ food and oppresses them with his army. The baron sends a horseman to Kingston’s family’s imagined home in ancient China to conscript a man—“one from each family”—into his army. Kingston describes the baron as having “a piggish face.” When the woman warrior / Kingston faces him in her male disguise, he is counting his money on an abacus. Kingston / The Woman Warrior pulls off her shirt to reveal the words her parents have engraved into her back. The baron is shocked at seeing her breasts, letting him know that the warrior is actually a woman. Kingston / The Woman Warrior cuts off his head, then lets the villagers into his stronghold, where they drag his family and servants out into the courtyard for punishment.
The Baron Quotes in The Woman Warrior
The The Woman Warrior quotes below are all either spoken by The Baron or refer to The Baron. 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
It is confusing that my family was not the poor to be championed. They were executed like the barons in the stories, when they were not barons. It is confusing that birds tricked us.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Woman Warrior LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
The Baron Character Timeline in The Woman Warrior
The timeline below shows where the character The Baron appears in The Woman Warrior. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
2. White Tigers
...to protect themselves. One of the horseman “shouted from the scroll in his hands” that the baron has “pledged fifty men” from the district, “one from each family.” Kingston / Fa Mu...
(full context)
...in the gourd “churns” and Kingston / Fa Mu Lan then sees the faces of the baron and his family, who thank the gods out loud for “protecting them from conscription.” The...
(full context)
...Kingston / Fa Mu Lan drops her soldiers off “at crossroads and bridges” and confronts the baron in his stronghold alone, as she had intended. She finds him counting money with his...
(full context)
The villagers enter the baron ’s home and drag his family out into the courtyard, “where they tried them next...
(full context)
...the villagers “tore down the ancestral tablets” and Kingston / Fa Mu Lan declares that the baron ’s great hall will be used for operas and talk-story. Then she returns home to...
(full context)
...trying to take food for his family. Oddly, Kingston thinks her family was treated like the baron 's in the Fa Mu Lan legend.
(full context)
