I think that the most significant idea underpinning Leslie Silko's story, The Yellow Woman, is the opposition of a woman’s domestic duties and demonstration of female sexual desire. There are some passages in this story where the Yellow Woman talks about her baby as if it is just a baby and never recognizes that it is in fact hers. In the passage below she says, “My mother and grandmother will raise the baby like they raised me. Al will find someone else, and they will go on like before…”. This part of the story shows readers that the yellow woman thinks about how her family would move on in her absence and they would raise her baby for her, making it clear to the reader that she doesn’t really care to raise her baby and doesn’t think her husband would raise their baby in her absence. Later in the story she also says, “When I saw the stone house I remembered that I had meant to go home. But that didn’t seems important anymore…” This line from the story shows that the yellow woman has no desire to return home, which is perplexing considering her family, including her baby, is at home. The yellow woman’s actions don’t seem like that of a “normal” wife and mother; as Nancy Armstrong discusses in her article, Some Call it Fiction: The Politics of Domesticity, it is believed that in today’s society women have specific roles to fulfill, and thus they must behave in a particular manor. It is considered strange for women to have and express any form of sexual desire, as it does not fall under the image that society has painted for women. Several times throughout this story we see the display of female sexual desire through the thoughts and actions of the yellow woman. She recurrently refers to her lover as a mountain spirit who kidnapped her and says that she is even afraid of him and his strength at one point, making it seem almost as if she is being taken against her will; however, when she has the opportunity to return home she chooses not to. Later in the story when she and her lover are separated and she has to return home, she talks about missing her lover and wanting to touch and kiss him again. She even hopes that she will see him by the river again one day. The yellow woman’s lover represents her sexual desires surfacing, and because of shame or something else, she tries to cover them up by making her lover out to be some kind of kidnapper; she even says at the end of the story that she will tell her family that she was kidnapped when they ask about her disappearance. The yellow woman’s hope that she will again see her lover by the river one day shows that even though she is returning home to perform her domestic duties as a wife and mother, she still has that sexual desire lingering inside of her.
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