Yellow Woman

“Last night you guessed my name, and you knew why I had come.”

Silva’s language suggests that the narrator has knowledge beyond her awareness. He exerts control, inciting the question of consent, but ultimately assigns the responsibility of the truth of the situation to the narrator.

“But I only said that you were him and that I was Yellow Woman—I’m not really her—I have my own name and I come from the pueblo on the other side of the mesa.”

The narrator’s attempt to reject the identity of Yellow Woman reveals her inner conflict as she struggles to determine who she is and which culture she belongs to. That she was the one who called herself Yellow Woman and also cast Silva as ka’tsina suggests the ambiguity in her identity originates in her storytelling.

“What happened yesterday has nothing to do with what you will do today, Yellow Woman.”

This statement has a double meaning. It suggests that the narrator does not have to allow the past to dictate her future, and that the past and the present are in conflict. The narrator must make and own her choices; she can’t blame them on who she was in the past.

“I was wondering if Yellow Woman had known who she was—if she knew that she would become part of the stories. Maybe she had another name that her husband and relatives called her so that only the ka’tsina from the north and the storytellers would know her as Yellow Woman.”

The narrator’s identity blurs as she begins to inhabit the consciousness of Yellow Woman. Here, she seriously considers whether her identity is modern and tied to the reservation or more ancient and tied to the land itself.

“I will see someone, eventually I will see someone, and then I will be certain that he is only a man—some man from nearby—and I will be sure that I am not Yellow Woman.”

The narrator seeks outside confirmation of her identity rather than owning her own Female Power and Sexuality, or agency. She has to choose whether she is Yellow Woman or not, and until she has made that choice, she does not encounter anyone other than Silva.

“I didn’t mind him watching me because he was always watching me—he had been watching me since I came upon him sitting on the river bank trimming leaves from a willow twig with his knife.”

The narrator repeats the phrase “watching me” three times in a single sentence, emphasizing Silva's captivation and in turn her own as she watches him watch her. This adds sexual tension to their relationship as well as a sense of danger, as Silva is holding a knife. While he is calm and nonviolent at this moment, he later carries another weapon—a gun—which he uses for genuine violence.

“But someday they will talk about us, and they will say ‘Those two lived long ago when things like that happened.’”

This is an example of Tradition Versus Progress —the present becomes the past, and then the past becomes a story that is told in the future. Likewise, the narrator will become part of the past and may have stories told about her, though she may claim agency and tell her own story.

“I was afraid because I understood that his strength could hurt me. I lay underneath him and I knew he could destroy me.”

There is ambiguity in the phrasing here. The narrator is afraid, but it is unclear whether she is afraid of Silva or of the Indigenous identity he represents, which in turn complicates her own sense of self.

“I drowsed with apricots in my mouth, and I didn’t believe that there were highways or railroads or cattle to steal.”

The narrator momentarily rejects the modern world. This is another example of Tradition Versus Progress. In her dreamlike moment here, there is a thought experiment to reject progress entirely.

“I looked at Silva for an instant and there was something ancient and dark—something I could feel in my stomach—in his eyes, and when I glanced at his hand I saw his finger on the trigger of the .30-30 that was still in the saddle scabbard.”

This is the climax of the story. When the narrator looks at Silva, she sees old Indigenous American rejection of the white man’s world, just as Silva will reject the authority of the rancher and shoot him.

“Horses have a hard time running downhill, but I went that way instead of uphill to the mountain because I thought it was safer.”

This is the turning point of the story when the narrator finally makes a choice of her own. She uses her own judgment of safety and as a result begins to claim her identity.

“I was thinking about waiting beside the road for someone to drive by, but by the time I got to the pavement I had decided it wasn’t very far to walk if I followed the river back the way Silva and I had come.”

The road and pavement are representations of modern progress. The narrator’s choice to follow the river is a choice to maintain tradition, further emphasizing the theme of Tradition Versus Progress.

“I saw the leaves and I wanted to go back to him—to kiss him and to touch him—but the mountains were too far away now. And I told myself, because I believe it, he will come back sometime and be waiting again by the river.”

The ambiguity of which life the narrator has chosen is reasserted here—the narrator has chosen to return home. Even so, she tells herself that she can always return to the identity of Yellow Woman someday, maintaining an ambiguous identity even though she has owned her agency.