The Theme of Home in Louise Erdrich´S Love Medicine

MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Education

Department of English Language and Literature

The Theme of Home in Louise Erdrich´s Love Medicine

Bachelor Thesis Brno 2012

Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Buchtová

Author: Mgr. Eva Slaná

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography.

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Eva Slaná 2

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Pavla Buchtová for her valuable advice and comments. I would also like to thank my family and friends for providing priceless moral support and encouragement. 3

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5

1. Louise Erdrich ...... 7

1.1 Louise Erdrich´s life ...... 7

1.2 Louise Erdrich´s perception of identity and homeland ...... 9

2. The theme of home in Native American Literature ...... 10

3. Women as home-creators in Love Medicine ...... 14

3.1. Marie Kashpaw, her daughter Zelda and granddaughter Albertine, and their perception of home ...... 14

3.2 Homecoming of June Kashpaw ...... 21

3.3 Lulu Lamartine ...... 26

4. Men as home-seekers and home-losers in Love Medicine ...... 31

4.1 Nector Kashpaw ...... 32

4.2 Lipsha Morrissey ...... 35

Conclusion ...... 40

Annotation ...... 45

Anotace ...... 45

Bibliography ...... 46

Introduction

Home is a word with a great emotional potential. We can never be objective when we speak about our homes. Yet, we need to belong somewhere; we need a place and space where we feel safe, loved and able to love. Thus, it is no wonder that this theme has been accompanying the humankind in literature for centuries. Nevertheless, for people of different cultural backgrounds this theme can have various meanings. This bachelor thesis will deal with the perception of home of literary characters presenting the members of a Native American tribe in Love Medicine, a novel by Louise Erdrich.

Love Medicine is book of complicated structure. There is not one narrator and a straightforward story. The story is like a spider´s web or mosaic– there are many stories narrated by individual people wattled together in one real-like chronicle, though not written chronologically, of two families living their lives during the tough second half of the twentieth century. Through the story of those two families we can see a picture of life reality of Native American people living in reservations from the World War II to 1980s.

Every single narrator of the book says her or his part of the collective story from a different point of view. There is something, though, which they all have in common. Their very identity is created by where they come from and where they live, no matter, how much they would crave for escaping from the reality they live. Even if they leave their neighborhood they are always looking for something similar, they are always looking for home. Even if they stay in the reservation for their whole lives, they never stop fighting for what they need most – their homes.

The theme of home is what will be analyzed in this thesis, on one hand from the point of view of several individual female characters in the book, on the other hand from the point of view of male characters.

The perception of home is different for women and men in Love Medicine. Women are usually the ones who are tightly settled within their families and homes, they are also the ones who contribute mostly to the home-creating: they take care of the house, children and also husband. Since women in Love Medicine are so closely connected to their homes, their own personalities are often very important for perception of home of the other members of their

families. Thus, the most important element of the home-creating in Love Medicine is not the house as such, but the woman herself. That is why women in the novel usually do not feel uncertain about what and where their home is.

Men in Love Medicine, on the other hand, usually do not contribute to the home- creating much, apart from providing the financial support for the family. The feeling of home of the other members of the family is typically not connected to the character of a man. It is not the fault of men that they are not able to take part in the process of providing home for the others, because they are not invited by women to it, sometimes they are not even allowed to take part. In consequence, the men´s perception of home in the novel is very insecure. Their perception of home is completely dependent not on themselves, but on another person – on their wife, mother or even daughter. This mediated feeling of home may be very confusing for the men, especially if they fall in love with another woman. They can never be sure then, where and what their real home is. That is the reason why men in Love Medicine, in contrast to women, seem to be completely lost in their lives.

1. Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is one of the most popular and praised Native American writers. Her novels reflect strongly her origin, and family and community background. That is why it is crucial to include her short biography, information about the tribe she is a member of, and a commented list of her works in this bachelor thesis.

1.1 Louise Erdrich´s life

Louise Erdrich was born as the eldest of seven children in Minnesota in 1954, and grew up in North Dakota. Although both of her parents taught at the Wahpeton Indian Boarding school and worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, only her mother was a Native American - concretely Chippewa1, whereas her father was of German-American origin (“Louise Erdrich, 1954-“, n.d.). This multilingual and multinational heritage influenced her life and future work greatly as she often felt tension between the two worlds she belonged to. She has been coping with this ambivalence in almost all of her writings. For example Rainwater (1990) found that “Erdrich´s novels feature Native Americans, mixed-bloods, and other culturally and socially displaced characters whose marginal status is simultaneously an advantage and disadvantage, a source of power and powerlessness” (p. 405). Though culturally and gender marginalized person, Louise Erdrich was able to matriculate to prestigious Dartmouth College in 1972 as one of the first women admitted there. The college studies were very important for both her personal and working life. Firstly, she met there her future husband, anthropologist Michael Dorris, who was a chairman of the Native American Studies department. And secondly, she started her first serious literary attempts there. In 1975 she was awarded the Academy of Poets Prize for her poems in which she got along with the Ojibwe tradition. In 1976 she graduated her bachelor studies and went home, to North Dakota, where she taught at the Dakota Arts Council. She received her Master of Arts degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1979 and kept sending her literary attempts to publishers with rarely any positive responses. The same year she came back to Dartmouth

1 The Chippewa people are often referred to as the Ojibwe, Ojibway or Ojibwa.

College to do a poetry reading and in 1981 she got married to Michael Dorris (“Louise Erdrich”, n.d.). At that time, Louise Erdrich started to get popular for her short stories published in magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly or The Paris Review. Her stories were praised for example in The Best American Short Stories of 1983; she won Nelson Algren Award in 1982 and The Society of Magazine Editors´Award in 1983. And finally, her first novel Love Medicine was published in 1984 and immediately won hearts of its readers as well as the Sue Kaufman Prize for Best First Novel, the Virginia McCormack Scully Prize for Best Book of 1984 dealing with Indians or Chicanos, and the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation (About the Author, 1984, p. 273). The genius of Erdrich was not at least inhibited by her maternity- she brought up six children, among them three foster children Dorris adopted before they got married; and still she was able to publish a novel almost every two years. Erdrich´s firstly idyllic personal and working life with her husband and collaborator Michael Dorris ended up in 1990s, though, when Dorris was charged with child abuse of one of his adopted sons. The couple separated in 1995 under the pressure of the conditions. The investigation remained unresolved and Dorris committed suicide in 1997. These tragic events urged Erdrich to put her mind more in the care of her children for a while: she moved closer to her family to Minneapolis in 1999, where she along with her sister Heidi opened Birchbark Books, Herbs, and Native Arts, an independent bookstore, the following year. She still lives in Minneapolis and owns her store, though, she hasn´t at all resigned to her writing. (Gale Encyclopedia of Biography: Louise Erdrich, n.d.)

Figure 1. Photograph of Louise Erdrich. (Emmel, n.d).

1.2 Louise Erdrich´s perception of identity and homeland

For her work, Louise Erdrich´s roots, her family, and land her mother comes from have constituted almost unlimited source of inspiration. Antony Rolo (quoted in “Louise Erdrich”, n.d.) put Native American literature in opposite to Western literature, concerning the themes used. Whilst Native American literature is mostly about coming home - to the land and language of ancient traditions, Western literature praises adventures and journeys to the unknown distant countries. Owens (1994) writes likewise: the construction of Native American identity always begins with the land. The land the specific tribe comes from is important for the actual perception of identity for all its members; it plays a crucial role in their storytelling, myths, relationships, family tradition and way of living. “In Erdrich´s fiction, those characters who have lost a close relationship with the earth – and specifically with that particular geography that informs a tribal identity – are the ones who are lost” (p. 193). Louise Erdrich herself values her roots very highly. Although her first tongue is English, she has been in the process of learning Ojibwemowin, the language spoken by her mother´s tribe, for almost twenty years now. The reason for it has been simply to get closer to her wider family and community by means of understanding their jokes. Erdrich believes that humour plays essential role in maintaining sanity for Native people (Bacon, 2001). Although her Native descent is what has most visibly influenced her writing, she had to cope with her German-American descent form her father´s side of the family as well. Erdrich herself claims that for every mixed-blood person searching for identity is part of their personal characteristic. The advantage of this ambiguity is that one can make the choice who he or she wants to be. The disadvantage is quite painful, though: the actual fact that one has to put himself or herself the question: “Who am I? Where am I from?” is confusing (Erdrich in Owens, 1994, p. 194). Erdrich commented on her own status of mixed-blood writer of popular novels pertinently:

When you live in the mainstream and you know that you´re not quite, not really there, you listen for a voice to direct you. I think, besides that, you also are a member of another nation. It gives you a strange feeling this dual citizenship....It´s kind of incomprehensible that there´s the ability to take in non-Indian culture and be comfortable in both worlds.... (Erdrich in Owens, 1994, p. 194). 9

2. The theme of home in Native American Literature

Cambridge Advanced Learner´s Dictionary explains home as “the house, apartment etc. where you live, especially with your family.” In other sense of the word also as “someone´s or something´s place of origin, or the place where a person feels they belong, (...) your own country or your own area.” (Walter, 2005, P. 612). When we look at this term from the dictionary´s point of view, it seems quite clear. But in real life and also in literature, the word has much more meanings or at least much more dimensions and nuances of meaning. This chapter will focus on the specific meaning of the theme home in Native American literature.

Whilst Chang integrates the Native American literary attitude to the home issue to the framework of the mainstream American literature and perceives the search for home as a universal theme (2011, p. 132-3), Rolo views it from a different perspective: he believes, that Native American literature is mostly about coming home, in comparison to the mainstream Western literature which praises more the adventurers´ travels to remote unknown places – and searching for a completely new home. (Rolo in “Louse Erdrich”, n.d.). Yet, even Chang sees the differences between the mainstream and minority experience of home-seeking: “although the issues around homelessness and the search for home are universal, different ethnic groups have experienced them, and responded to them in very different ways. Choosing to relocate is not the same thing as being dispossessed.” (2011, p. 133).

Here, it is important to point out, that during the last two centuries the Native American tribes were made to relocate their homes repeatedly, by the Governmental directions. The loss of homeland for the Native American tribes had tragic consequences as the homeland was usually closely connected with the religion, spirituality, history and therefore traditions of the given tribe (Chang, 2011, p. 134). That is why the Native American heroism in literature is not based on the courage to leave home and search for American dream, but on the bravery of fighting to preserve the home in the shape it is supposed to be, according to the traditions and spiritual continuity of the tribe.

For at least the last fifty years the Native Americans have been trying to rediscover their heritage, cultural continuity and ethnic identity. It was not possible to rebuild home physically in the traditional homeland, but home has been at least recalled and recreated thank 10

to the oral tradition. To this re-creation contributed greatly also Louise Erdrich: “Just as stories in Native American communities will continue to be created and narrated, their “homes” and identity are fluid, unstable, and in process. Erdrich constructs a Native American “home” through her writing.” (Bhabha in Chang, 2011, p. 139).

Louise Erdrich perceives strongly the need to understand the history to preserve the traditional culture of her tribe (Chippewa or Ojibwe), and to this aim she devoted especially two of her books: The Birchbark House (published in 1999) and The Game of Silence (published 2005). In those two novels Erdrich comes back to the forced removal of her tribe from their beloved homeland on an island in Lake Superior to North Dakota in the 19th century. The fear and sadness of losing home is revealed there from the child´s perspective, which is convenient as the books are supposed to be used for educating children on this issue. (Chang, 2011, p: 134) This is one of the ways for Native Americans to become visible for the mainstream culture and historians. “Writing history (as historical novels and in other forms), has (...) become one way for marginalized people to counter their invisibility.” (Ferrari, 1999, p. 145).

But what does home signify for Native Americans? Tanrisal claims that home means a supportive environment for its members which provide a defense against the real-life tragedies that take place in historical time. (1997, p.3). The defending power of home is created by psychological and mythological life that is lived within it. And - it is not restricted to its blood members only: “The Native American notion of “family” joins the individuals living together in one house because it includes spiritual kinship as well as clan membership.” (Tanrisal, 1997, p. 3). This means that within the Native American community the concept of home is superior to the concept of blood family. This approach is completely different in comparison to the traditional Euro-American culture. In Love Medicine this concept of home is strongly pronounced in the story of Marie Kashpaw´s family – her home is full of children, both biological and taken-ins and neither of them is preferred. In the following quotation Marie´s husband Nector recalls their life with their children:

I liked each of our babies, but sometimes I was juggling them from both arms and losing hold. Both Marie and I lost hold. In one year, two died, a boy and a girl baby. There was a long spell of quiet, awful quiet, before the babies showed up everywhere again. They were all over in the house once they started. In the bottoms of cupboards, in the dresser, in the trundles. Lift a

blanket and a bundle would howl beneath it. I lost track of which were ours and which Marie had taken in. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 93).

The concept of home is especially strongly connected with the character of the woman – mother that creates it and leads its wending. That is why we can say that not only the homes themselves but also their creators – mothers – provide the members of the particular home with identity and feeling of belonging. That implies that it is only natural for Native American women authors to be “interested in the configuration of home, identity and community, more specifically, in the power and appeal of “home” as a concept and a desire.” (Martin and Monhanty in Chang, 2011, p. 136).

It is a really difficult task, though, for the women to configure the homes as they wish, as the traditional structure of the Native American family has been broken due to the historical events described above. Within Love Medicine, especially those who are mixed blood – as the author herself is – struggle the hardest to achieve the task, as their homes were torn when they were young, such as June or Marie - who, though seemingly a born home- creator, has to try really hard to build and maintain her home despite all the troubles of her life. As Tanrisal point out, the mixed bloods “occupy a marginal position because they are unwanted by both cultures and therefore ultimately led into isolation. They are torn between two worlds. Being unable to reconcile them, must create a new identity.” (1997, p.5). Marie succeeds as she is able to create not only the identity of born Indian mother for herself but also an almost perfect home and supportive background according to what is expected by the community she wants to become the full member of.

There is also one particularity of a Native American perception of home that is worth mentioning – home is there not only a place for the living inhabitants, but also for the dead ones. In fact, Native Americans do not consider the dead as “dead” because they are the spirits of the ancestors (Hernandez-Avila in Chang, 2011, p. 137) – therefore, even these members of home or family carry the identity and are able to help to create the identity of the living ones, and help keeping the traditional continuity of the culture of the tribe. This attitude to the dead is manifested also in Louise Erdrich´s work where the characters who die actually do not vanish from the stories completely, such as June or Nector who keep coming to visit their beloved ones even after their deaths.

Furthermore, it is evident that home cannot be understood only in the domestic sense of the word within the Native American community. As Bevis points out: “Nature is home (...) Nature is not a secure seclusion one has escaped to, but is the tipi walls expanded, with more and more people chatting around the fire. Nature is filled with events, gods, chickadees, and deer acting as men. Nature is “house”.” (Bevis in Chang, 2011, p. 137). We can find characters in Love Medicine whose perception of home correspond with the last quotation – Eli and June, who both prefer to spend their days outdoors, and who are able to survive in nature with no house at all.

In conclusion, home in Native American culture is both physically and spiritually closely connected to landscape, as the particular landscape is the space where their myths take place and where the spirits of their ancestors live their eternal existences. It is the tradition, not the place itself, though, which enable people to feel that they belong somewhere, that their identity is legitimate and secure. Especially because of what Chang claims: that Native Americans are always between home and homelessness, because of their history of displacement. (2011, p. 145).

Silko (in Chang, 2011, p. 138) states that not only landscapes but also storytellers are the keepers of the myths and traditional stories – that means that they both provide their “users” with the feelings of belonging and spiritual security. Thus, in figurative sense of the word, both specific landscapes and persons telling stories can represent home for the others.

3. Women as home-creators in Love Medicine

In this thesis, the focus will lie on the theme of home, which I understand as a place (perhaps a house, but not necessarily as it was mentioned above) where people live together in company of their family or other relatives and friends. All the people who live in one particular home contribute somehow to the perception of home of the other people and also of themselves.

Yet, the perception of home in Love Medicine may be not only one-dimensional. As another dimension of the same term the reader can see the whole area of the North Dakota reservation, including the wild uninhabited parts of it, as home of the main characters of the book. On the other hand, the word home may be also understood more narrowly – as something that mother creates for her children. The differing perceptions of home of the individual characters of Love Medicine will be the main object of the analysis in this work.

The analysis will be based on the idea that women in Love Medicine are the ones who stay securely with their feet on the Earth, because they are also the ones who give the right feeling of home to the others – to their children and also to their husbands. They are strong and independent individuals who fight tightly for what they believe create the right feeling of home. In comparison to men in the novel, women can be sure about what and where their home is – as they are continually creating themselves what they consider their home – and they have to work really hard to make it as hospitable as they wish. Besides, they do not only create the home from a house – when they are pregnant they consider their own bodies as homes of their yet unborn children.

There are five main female characters in Love Medicine; two of them are real home- givers for the other people in the story: Marie Kashpaw and Lulu Lamartine; and three seemingly minor but for the story essential characters: June Kashpaw, Alebertine Johnson and Zelda Kashpaw. The analysis will successively deal with all of them.

3.1. Marie Kashpaw, her daughter Zelda and granddaughter Albertine, and their perception of home

Marie Kashpaw is quite a difficult character to analyze. Although her achievements as a mother and a leader of a household indicate that she is a born Indian mother and home- 14

creator, brought up in a complete family with equally strong mother, she is actually a mixed blood whose family background was not at all satisfying when she was a child. She does not fit into the reservation where her family lives because she is not that much Indian as she is supposed to be according to the other Natives in the reservation. Even her future husband, Nector, does not consider her an Indian:

“Lemme go, you damn Indian,” she hisses. Her teeth are strong looking, large and white. “You stink to hell!” I have to laugh. She is just a skinny white girl from a family so low you cannot even think they are in the same class as Kashpaws. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 59).

Nevertheless, Marie is not white either. For a smart and ambitious girl this situation is unbearable, she does not want to end up as a wife of an always drunken white horse-thieve and she probably cannot imagine that she will be able to fit in to the Native American world either, so she chooses her way of finding a proper home in dedicating her life to God and live as a nun in a convent.

The nuns, though, do perceive her as an Indian, which only encourage her aspirations more: “I was going up there to pray as good as they could. Because I don´t have that much Indian blood. And they never thought they´d have a girl from this reservation as a saint they´d have to kneel to.” (Erdrich, 1989, p.40).

Marie is willing to do almost anything to fit in the microcosm of the Catholic convent. She is not reluctant to become as pure as she possibly can be; she is not reluctant to pray long hours, and to work hard on her soul. She is obeying all the rules and “special” treatments from the zealot and violent Sister Leopolda, because Marie believes that Leopolda can help her in getting rid of Satan power:

Before sleep sometimes he came and whispered conversation in the old language of the bush. I listened. He told me things he never told anyone but Indians. I was privy to both worlds of his knowledge. I listened to him, but I had confidence in Leopolda. She was the only one of the bunch he even noticed. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 43).

Marie craved for getting rid of Satan as she believed that once pure, she would become almost Saint-like and thus respected and beloved by all the Sisters. The word Sister would become less formal then and they would become her true family; she would gain a home –

where she belongs, where she can feel safe, and which provides her with identity and security of ever-lasting traditions.

Apart from the things mentioned above, Marie is not afraid to cheat a little to get closer to her dreamed-of home. When she gets hurt on her palm with a fork by Sister Leopolda during one of Leopolda´s fits of violent fanaticism, Marie does not hesitate to play along the theatre with Leopolda and pretend that she has stigmata:

Leopolda had saved herself with her quick brain. She had witnessed a miracle. She had hid the fork and told to the others. And of course they believed her, because they never knew how Satan came and went or where he took refuge. (...) “Christ has marked me,” I agreed. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 55-56).

After this incident, Marie realizes that she is earthier than she thought: “My skin was dust. Dust my lips. Dust the dirty spoons on the ends of my feet.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 56).We can say that at this moment, the Indian woman in Marie beats up the white part of her self, which is heading towards Heaven instead of staying tight on Earth with her feet. She decides then that she is not going to stay in the convent any more. On her way down the hill back to the reservation she meets Nector Kashpaw, an Indian boy who is being educated in mainstream school, and who is in love with an Indian girl – Lulu Nanapush. Marie completely enchants Nector so he makes love with her right on the road, and then he is not able to leave her, though he is confused by his feelings. After that they get married and Marie starts her career of a housewife and home-creator. She immediately changes one prospect of a home to another. And she is successful there.

She is an unselfish type of mother and wife and leads her household as firmly as a general leads his soldiers to the war. Apart from her own children she takes in also orphans from the reservation and loves them all equally, June Kashpaw and later her son Lipsha among them. Besides, she helps her own husband to make the decision to become a chairman of the tribe. This means that she still has ambitions – she will never be Saint Marie, but still she can be the wife of the most important man in the reservation and mother of his children. For Marie this kind of satisfaction is especially important – she is a mixed-blood after all. Part of her blood is the same as the people in the reservation have, but still, she looks uncommonly white and she is known to be a daughter of a white man, a man whose social status is considered so low that even the Native Americans, whose social position in the 1950s is not

good, feel that they are above him. And now, Marie, his daughter, is above them. It may seem that even her struggle to keep her home in a perfect order and to take care of all those children is only a try to persuade the other people that she is as much an Indian mother and wife as she can be.

However, she is not just playing it, she only lets the Native Marie within her to win and lead her life as it is supposed to be lead. She loves her children tenderly and truly, yet, she brings them up strictly. In the novel, Marie recollects one of the moments of bringing her foster daughter June up:

“You damn old bitch,” [June] said, aloud, again. I grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her flying across the field. She was light as a leaf. I tossed her in the house. Then I grabbed the jaw and packed a handful of soap flakes in her mouth. (...) The other children were gaping at the door, satisfied with horror, thrilled with her punishment. “Chores!” I said. They vanished in a whirl of clothes and flying hair. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 68)

Even though Marie´s conception of home is obviously a house where she can take care of all her children like a hen takes care of her chickens, the Indian self in her understands also the urge some of the others feel to go to the woods and live outdoors. Thus, even though she loves June very much, she lets her take her own path. She is strict and firm but she is not unjust or cruel and when she feels that some of her children need to leave, she lets them leave, though her heart bleeds. Apart from June, who Marie lets go to live with Eli, Marie also enables Lipsha to take her money and go find his roots when she feels he might need it.

As it was said above, Marie´s heart is wide as much as her home. With the same urge her husband Nector feels to keep in touch with his love and lover Lulu, she feels the need and responsibility to take care for all the people who might need her. Her home is always neat and the flowers in her garden bloom in the right way. She is not able though, to keep her beloved ones from leaving her. First of all, two of her babies die, then June leaves her for Eli. When Nector wants to leave her for his lover Lulu, Marie is desperate. However, she does not complain. She only tries even harder to maintain the warmth and neatness of her home.

I never went down on my knees to God or anyone, so maybe washing my floor was an excuse to kneel that night. I felt better, that´s all I know, as I scrubbed off the tarnished wax and dirt. I

felt better as I recognized myself in the woman who kept her floor clean even when left by her husband. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 128).

But for nobody it is really good to leave Marie. June dies in a snowstorm after a messy life but still too young, and Nector does not find his happiness with Lulu - at the moment he decides for her, Lulu decides to abandon him. Thus, it is not a lucky decision for anybody to leave Marie, because not her house, but Marie personally presents home for her family and also for herself. She does not get lost in her life; no matter what happens to her – she is always confident in the essential issue – where her home is. Though she has no patterns for running home from the family she spent her childhood with, the natural part of her, the woman and mother in her, is able to create a space around her which is full of love and security for all the people present. She is not aware of that, so she is always trying hard to keep her house in perfect order -she does not know that the essential entity of her home does not reside in her house but in her personally. There are moments when she seems to understand the fact – when looking at her son Gordie and also at her daughter Zelda:

“I remembered the year I carried her. It was summer. I sat under the clothesline, breathing quiet so she would move, feeling the hand or foot knock just beneath my heart. We had been in one body then, yet she was a stranger. We were not as close now, yet perhaps I knew her better.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 122).

Thus, Marie perceives her own body as a home of her yet unborn children – this idea repeats with other children, too. The importance of her mind and soul that creates home for the children when they are already born does not cross her mind, though. As Silko (in Chang, 2011, p. 138) points out, not only the homeland but also the storytellers have the power to keep the traditions going and to make people feel safe and at home. It is not so simple with Marie. There is nothing in particular that she makes for maintaining the traditions of her tribe, yet her home is lead perfectly according to traditions. Her home is open to anyone to join it – there is no requirement for her children to be biologically related with her, she loves all of them equally and she also provide all of them with the same protection that only the feeling of belonging can give. (see Tanrisal, 1997, p. 3). She also gives her children and husband enough space to live as they wish – she respects that

their idea of home maybe more nature-like or much less traditional than hers. She is even able to forgive her husband Nector, and she takes him back, even though she knows he wanted to abandon her for Lulu. When Marie and Nector grow old together they move into a home for elderly, and so does Lulu. Marie still does not give up her love and jealousness for Nector and tries to bond him to her with the help of special mythological medicine. This special love medicine unfortunately kills Nector but it does not kill his love for both of his women- Marie and Lulu and he visits them both after his death. Marie mourns Nector´s death, but still, her identity of a home-creator is not disturbed by it. She still feels the responsibility to take care of her children, grandchildren and also other people of the tribe who might need her. It is not a coincidence that Lulu, after a surgery, is among them. Marie simply cannot stand the idea that a person so close to her husband and so important for her tribe suffers. She offers her help and a silent forgiveness – in other words, she offers part of herself, which means that she offers Lulu kind of a home and Lulu accepts it. “The light was cloudy but I could already see. She [Marie] swayed down like a dim mountain, huge and blurred, the way a mother must look to her just born child.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 236). Thus, Lulu, in her half blindness is able to see something that always escaped her attention. She sees Marie from the point of view of all her children, because from now on, Lulu´s is taken to Marie´s care. Lulu is finally at home. Marie never realizes the fact, though; she still believes that her household is what the other people perceive as their home. However, the truth is that not her house, but her personality presents a home for her extent family.

Zelda, Marie´s daughter, inherits her mother´s resemblance and also her ability to keep her home running, no matter what tragedies are currently going on. Thank to her character the reader can learn that not only mothers but also daughters can present home for the men in the book. It is her who brings Nector back home when he decides to leave his family and live with Lulu. At the moment of complete Nector´s desperateness that his prospects of love are gone because Lulu is not at home and probably does not want him anymore, Zelda appears and suddenly, Nector is safe, though he does not realize that it is her and not her mother Marie.

I see Marie standing in the bush. She is fourteen and slim again. (...) Her breast is a glowing shield. Her arm is a white-hot spear. When she raises it the bush behind her spreads, blazing

open like wings. I go down on my knees, a man of rags and tinder. I am ready to be burned in the fire, too, but she reaches down and lifts me up. “Daddy,” she says, “let´s get out of here. Let´s go.” (Erdrich, 1989, p.110).

When she is adult, Zelda is not a mother to many children. She has only one daughter (Albertine) with a white man. She, as well as her mother, wants to join the convent when she is a teenager, but she marries the father of her daughter instead. Her daughter is mixed blood, and as such she leaves Zelda for the white world when she is a teenager. Zelda probably fails her role of a home-creator and identity provider to her child then, though she was very important as a part of home not only for her father but also for her mother when she was a kid. When Marie realizes that a teenage Zelda is as attracted to the life in the convent as she used to be as a child, she thinks: “I was on the verge of saying how I needed her, at the house, but I didn´t say it. After all, I thought, she should be free to go.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 123).

Albertine went away from home when she was sixteen. She ran away from reservation to the city, as she believed probably that she belonged more to the white people. The first thing she does when she gets there is that she follows a man, who looks Indian. She runs away from home but the only thing she is able to do is looking for something which resembles her home. It turns out later that the boy is from the same reservation as she is and that he is a son of Lulu. In her teenage years Albertine still prefers the company of people originally from reservation, though she lives in the city. When she is in her twenties, she starts living almost completely among white people as she studies at college. However, only there she realizes that her home is in the reservation. She knows, though, that she cannot live there – that although she still considers the reservation her home, she is not able to fit in there and that she is lost somewhere in the middle - not quite Indian, not quite white. The only thing she can do is to live her life outside of reservation where people do not have their demands on her behavior, because in reservation everybody´s life is everybody´s business. Albertine, similarly to her aunt June, is not able to stand that so she is condemned to live outside of her home. As Zelda is a similar type of mother as Marie is, Albertine feels clenched tight at home similarly to June, at the time she was a kid living in the Marie´s house. “Between my mother and myself the abuse was slow and tedious, requiring long periods of dormancy, living in the blood like hepatitis. When it broke out it was almost a relief.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 7.)

Thus, Albertine, after the two generations of supreme mothers seems not to be prepared for her own motherhood or home-creating at all, similarly to her Aunt June, who was known for being a bad and unwilling mother and a housewife. Though Alebertine is considered to be “different” too, the idea of her not willing to be a mother seems shocking to Zelda and her sister Aurelia all the same - it seems almost like a betrayal. Albertine recalls her chat with her Zelda and Aurelia as follows:

“Believe me” – [Aurelia] adressed me now with mock serious vigor-“ marriage is not answer to it all. I tried it enough myself.” “I am not interested anyway,” I let them know. “I´ve got other things to do.” “Oh my,” said Mama, “are you going to be a career girl?” She froze with her hands in the air, seemingly paralyzed by the idea. “You were a career girl,” I accused her. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 14).

Thus, although it seems that Marie and her daughter Zelda were able to provide a satisfying home to its all Indian members, it is not so clear in the case of their mixed-blood children. Both June and Aurelia leave their homes very soon – in their teenage years, though they are equally beloved and taken care of as the other children in the family. However, what Marie does not manage with June, she manages with June´s son Lipsha, who really eventually finds his identity in the reservation in general and in Marie´s and Nector´s home in particular. Nevertheless, it cannot be evaluated only as the mother´s fault, if her mixed-blood child is confused about where his or her home is. As Erdrich herself claims, searching for identity is a part of personal characteristic of mixed-blood people. It is true that those people can make their choice where they want to belong, but on the other hand, the confusion of the situation is quite painful. (Erdrich in Owens, 1994, p. 194). It seems that the magic of “preparing” home is just as uncertain a business as preparing Love medicine. We can never be sure what comes out of it, no matter how hard we try.

3.2 Homecoming of June Kashpaw

First of all, it is necessary to remark that June does not fit to the typical picture of a woman within the story of Love Medicine. She is one of the very few female characters in the book who do not care for their families and homes. Her perception of home is therefore

distorted; and this fact has a great impact on her lifestyle and basically on the quality of her life as such.

The book starts with the description of last several hours of June´s life in a chapter called the “World´s Greatest Fisherman”, which was first published as a short magazine story. June, of whom we at first know only that she wants to get home and needs to kill some time before the bus takes her there, is a woman, who is lost in her life and who does not know how to respect herself. The satisfaction with her life is produced only by the feeling that she has enough money to survive – her life is not determined by her connection with home (compared to what the reader can observe with the other female characters in the book). Besides, it is quite difficult to recognize what she considers to be her home at all. If she ever thinks of the concept of home, which the reader can doubt quite successfully, she maybe considers the house of her ex-husband and first son to be her home. But most probably she feels that her home lies somewhere within the reservation where her whole family live. The area of reservation - as her home - is not determined only by the community of people living there, but also by the wild and uninhabited parts of the reservation. The reader can not be absolutely sure, though, as the author is quite vague about the situation: “They weren´t expecting her up home on the reservation. She didn´t even have a man there, except the one she ´d divorced. Gordie. If she got desperate he would still send her money. So she went on the next bar with this man in the dark red vest.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 3). June actually does not live with her family anymore; she has left the reservation for the city where she can live her life freely. Whilst in the reservation she would have to live according to the established standards – as a mother of several children and a responsible home-creator for them and all their possible fathers, in the city she can live as she wishes. She does not have to take care neither of children, nor their fathers or a household. This way of life is completely different in comparison to the lives of the other female characters of Love Medicine, perhaps apart from character of Albertine Johnson, June´s niece.

Although June seems not to fully realize the fact, she is torn – both inside and outside. The torn inside part of her personality is represented by her lack of true connection with her family and life. She has never cared for her children, or her husband and home. She could never really experience the feeling that her very presence and care represents a home for someone. The insecurity about where or what her real home is makes her as lost as only the men are in Love Medicine, that is why her soul seems to be torn as well.

The outside part is even more obvious: She is broke and needs to get home to recover from whatever has happened to her since she was there for the last time. Also her dress shows signs of her state: “The pink shell was sweaty and hitched up too far under her arms but she couldn´t take of her jacket, the white vinyl her son King had given her, because the pink top was ripped across the stomach.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 4).

Suddenly, she feels that she can not stay in that dress, that she needs to get rid of it: “She felt that underneath it all her body was pure and naked – only the skins were stiff and old.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 4). She simply feels that if she goes deeper, she gets to something natural – something closer to the Earth - that is why also closer to her roots, closer to her home – perhaps the wild part of reservation. Taking off her clothes –in literal or figurative sense of the word - is something normal and inherent to her; and this is maybe what makes her so vulnerable and unprotected when being with men.

When she later that night, after having sex with a stranger in his car, sets up for a journey home by walk in a snowstorm, she seems to reach even closer connection with the Earth: “Even when it started to snow she did not lose her sense of direction. (...)Even when her heart clenched and her skin turned crackling cold it didn´t matter, because the pure and naked part of her went on. The snow fell deeper that Easter than it had in forty years, but June walked over it like water and came home.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 6).

We learn later in the book that June actually does not make it home that night; she dies in the snowstorm instead. Nevertheless, the author writes about her death as about coming home. It can be explained and understood in two ways: firstly, Erdrich may appeal to a biblical scene of Jesus walking on the water: “When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:22, n.d.). Does it mean that June after a life-long struggle for the opportunity to live as she likes finally finds her true home – the Heavenly Kingdom? The parallel with Jesus is not simply acceptable, as her life is more similar to the life of Mary Magdalene. We can see it, perhaps, as an expressed conviction of the author that God loves all the people equally.

The second and for me more probable way of explanation of the quotation on June´s death is that she finally gets back to what is closest to her perception of home – to the wild parts of the reservation; closer to the Earth. Here, it is essential to mention that for June home

really means something different than for other women in the book. She has never really had a home in the usual sense of the word and she never tries too hard to create one for herself or for the others. She is free and seemingly enrooted. Why it is so, the reader can find out thank to the narration of Marie about June´s childhood.

June´s mother was Marie´s sister. She died out in the bush alone, accompanied only by little June. After her mother´s death the girl survived on eating pine sap out in the woods until her other relatives took her to Marie´s house.

At first, Marie did not wont to take June in – she had more than enough mouths to feed already, but when she realized what the girl came through, she yielded. June was not an easy child to bring up. She was tough and behaved more like a boy than a girl, and even when she was an adult, her character was almost man-like. Similarly to the men in the book, she gets completely lost in her life, she loses her home and she is never really able to find it again, not to speak about its creating.

As June inclines more to hunting in the woods with her silent step-uncle Eli, it is only natural that she leaves Marie´s house for his company: “Sometimes I thought she was more like Eli. The woods were in June, after all, just like in him, and maybe more. She had sucked on pine sap and grazed grass and nipped buds like a deer.” (Erdrich, 1989, p.65).

Later, June marries Gordie, one of Marie´s sons, and has a son with him – King. She is not able to tame her wildness, though, and she leaves her young family for a stranger who gives her another son – Lipsha. She does not take care much of either of them, but Lipsha, unlike King, does not even know, who his parents are and he naturally becomes one of the taken-in children by Marie. As the time passes, June just comes and goes, she is a beloved aunt but a bad mother to both of her sons, and as a wife she is even worse.

June´s close connection with her home is not that much represented by a particular house, but more by the wild areas of reservation and the nature as such, is perceptible also in the story narrated form the point of view of her ex-husband Gordie. Few months after June´s death he gets drunk and does what an Indian is never supposed to do – he calls the dead June by name. It does not help him that he turns all the lights and electric devices in his house on; June is already there, outside of his house: “There were no curtains in the bathroom, and something made him look at the window. Her face. June´s face was there. Wild and pale with a bloody mouth. She raised her hand, thin bones, and scratched sadly on the glass. When he 24

ran from the bathroom she got angry and began to pound. The glass shattered.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 177). This quotation confirms what was observed about June´s perception of home above – even as a ghost, she stays outside of the house. She really is not an inside, home- creating, type of woman, not even after her death. And the reader can be sure that it is not usual for the ghosts in Love Medicine to stay outside, for example Nector Kashpaw comes to visit both his wife and his lover after his death: “And he was there like so long ago. I remembered the doctor´s advice to keep still. I felt the long weight of Nector, cold with the chill of early morning, and I smelled the lilac bath soup on his hands.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 235).

Later on in the Gordie´s story, the reader gets another evidence of June´s close connection with wild nature of the reservation, which is so strong that it violates even the barrier of death. When Gordie loses completely his senses after seeing June behind his bathroom window, he leaves his house and sets off for the town in his car. On the road he hits a deer. It turns out that it is an old doe; yet, Gordie decides to load her in his car, on the backseat and sell her meat later in the town. But when he drives on, the doe suddenly wakes up. In horror, Gordie kills the deer with the tire iron on one hit between the eyes. But when he stops to look carefully what he has just done, the situation is even more horrifying: “In that clear moment it came to his attention that he´d just killed June. She was in the backseat, sprawled, her short skirt hiked up over her hips. The sheer white panties glowed. Her hair was tossed in a dead black swirl. What had he done this time? Had he used the bar? It was in his hands.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 181). Though Gordie is drunk and perhaps not completely conscious, this event shows the reader what was the image of June in the heads of the closest people of her – a wild doe living in the woods, killed accidentally on the road.

In conclusion: June, who never really could experience her mother giving her home, is never able to give real home to her children or her husband. Due to what she came through as a child, it seems that she does not see her home in a shape of a building or other people around. Her home is what she experienced most closely as a child – the wild parts of the Earth – the bush, the woods. That is what is so true about her death in a snowstorm – for her it actually was coming home.

3.3 Lulu Lamartine

Among people in the reservation, Lulu Lamartine is considered a shameless woman who does not hesitate to choose and pick men (even the married ones) as she pleases. She is known for cheating on her husband Henry and giving birth to children whose fathers and origins are unknown, it is only obvious that biologically they are not Henry´s. Everybody in the reservation knows that Henry suffers by her attitude to their marital faithfulness and that is why they don´t think of her well. It is not very surprising, though, as no woman in the reservation can be sure that her husband is not a father to some of Lulu´s children. Who would have liked that idea? When Henry dies and his funeral is served, she fells to his grave by mistake and suddenly, some of the people do not consider her such as bad wife as they used to: “Some people, assuming that she had jumped in the grave to be buried along with Henry, though much better of her for a while.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 76).

Though a bad wife, Lulu is a great and beloved mother. We cannot compare her to Marie because she never leads her sons so strictly and she does not take in any orphans, but she accepts all the children that are given to her by various types of men.

They were eight of them. Some of them even had her maiden name. The three oldest were Nanapushes. The next oldest were Morrisseys who took the name Lamartine [Henry´s name], and then there were more assorted younger Lamartines who didn´t look like one another, either. Red hair and blond abounded, there was some brown. The black hair on the seven-year- old at least matched his mother´s. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 76-77).

Similarly to Marie, Lulu also takes care of her house meticulously, although she is bringing up eight children on her own. And similarly to Marie, Lulu also takes the men as an element that has to be cared of, not as a help in the household or while bringing up children. And their husbands behave similarly – Lulu´s husband is not so strong as Lulu and commits a suicide; Nector, Marie´s husband cannot bear the responsibility of bringing up so many children and lives two lives – with Marie the first one and with Lulu the second one – for several years without being strong enough to choose just one of them. Never mind, Lulu is strong enough to maintain what she perceives to be her home on her own:

That was how she was. Even with eight boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily. All her furniture was brushed and straightened. Her coffee table held a neat stack of Fate and True Adventure magazines. On her walls she´d hung 26

matching framed portraits of poodles, kittens, and ad elaborate embroidered portrait of Chief Joseph. Her windowsills were decorated with pincushions in the shapes of plump little hats and shoes. (Erdrich, 1989, 81).

At that time, Lulu perceives her house as her home, but later her perception changes. But for now, Lulu as an Indian mother lives somewhere in the middle – on one hand, she decorates her house as she thinks ordinary “mainstream” American interiors of rich people look like, and she only confesses her origin in hanging the portrait of an important chief of her tribe on the wall, but on the other hand, outside of the house where everything has to be clean, she lets her sons to live freely and in a complete harmony with nature. She is proud of her children who can hunt as their ancestor did and who are always able to put meat on her table, which actually enables all of them to eat properly after Lulu´s husband death.

Lulu also connects her sons with irrevocable bond of belonging to family and home- which is not based on the house as such, but mainly on her own personality and maternal authority: “Lulu managed to make the younger boys obey perfectly, Bev noticed, while the older ones adored her to the point that they did not tolerate anything less from anyone else. (...) Lulu´s boys had grown into a kind of pack. They always hung together.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 85). The thing that gives the feeling of security, love and certain identity to the boys is their mutual kinship. Graphically, their relations would seem like a spiders web in center of which stands Lulu as the protected and never questioned queen of the pack. And Lulu certainly deserves this unconditional love of her sons – she creates home for them all, not because she keeps her house in the perfect order but because she loves them with equally unconditional love and with fierce of a lioness, when her boys are in danger. The reason why she is so beloved lies also in the fact that within her home she functions as an eternal source of warmth and electricity for the mutual love among the brothers – she presents a home for them, where they all can recharge their batteries, regardless to whether they live in a perfectly neat house or under the raw sky. The boys simply do not ever have to be anxious about where their home is and what is their identity – their home is Lulu and their identity is based on the membership in the pack of Lulu´s sons.

This net of love, which we can call a home, is restricted only to her boys, though – she never really allows anyone but them to get in – not her husband Henry, not her other lovers and fathers of her sons, not Beverly, Henry´s brother and after all not even the love of her love – Nector Kashpaw. She does not present a proper home for any of them, quite the 27

contrary – she is doom for them. For her sons she would sacrifice her own life but she would never bend down in front of any of her men. She loved at least two of them with a real love (her husband Henry Lamartine and her almost life-long lover Nector) but even them she is reluctant to swear the real depth of her love and promise absolute faithfulness.

She does not only refuse to provide them with faithful arms and the warmth of home, she usually ruins their lives and their previously existing relationships within their original families beyond repair. We cannot accuse her of her husband´s suicide as there are obviously also other reasons why he commits it, but we can be sure that she destroyed his relationship with his brother Beverly, who also craves for Lulu:

People used to say you couldn´t drive a knife edge between the Lamartines. Nothing ever came between them. Nothing ever did or would. Even while he was thinking that, Beverly knew it wasn´t true. What had come between them was a who, and she was standing across from him now at the kitchen counter. Lulu (...). (Erdrich, 1989, 82).

For Nector, Lulu means a source of joy but also of worrying. He cannot leave her but he is also not able to give her what she deserves after a several years lasting relationship and a mutual child. She is not able to destroy his home, though, as she does to her dead husband and his brother Beverly. Nector is saved by his belonging to a similarly strong home created by Marie and Zelda who protect him against homelessness. But their home is not strong enough to protect Nector against insecurity in his feelings. Lulu is like a poison in Nector´s veins and he cannot give her up, although he intends to at first:” I swam until I felt a clean tug in my soul to go home and forget about Lulu. I told myself I had seen her for the last time that night.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 103).

The thing that parts definitely Nector and Lulu after such a long time is, symbolically enough, the Lulu´s fight for what she considers her home up to that time – her land and on that: her house. At that time, Nector is ä chairman of the tribe and that means that he also chairs the committee of the reservation and from the position of his political function he has to sign the decision that takes the land from Lulu and her boys in favor of building a factory. Nector is unhappy about it and feels that he betrays Lulu by this act, although the land actually is not officially in her possession, the Lamartines just live on the land for such a long time that they consider it their own. Lulu perceives it as a betrayal of the whole tribe and mainly of Nector on her and her family. And decides to get in strike against the decision and

fight for her land. Firstly, she would not give up her house, and secondly, she would give up Nector.

Nector is devastated by the idea and decides to say goodbye to his wife Marie after all and start living with Lulu. But she does not want him back. Or at least, he thinks so. When he comes to offer himself officially - for the first time ever to her door, not to her window - she is not at home. He gets desperate, smokes and reads the letter he wrote for her again and again. But then suddenly, the letter catches fire from the cigarette and after a few moments the whole house is in fire. By physical act of burning Lulu´s house and the place of their secret meetings – the source of her pride, and as she though her home, he sinks to absolute bottom of his hopes and goes home in company of his daughter Zelda. At that moment, Lulu gets to her burning house and she rescues her youngest son out of the flames – this son is actually the Nector´s son, too. Thank to her bravery to go into the burning house, her child makes it out without injury, so she really only loses her house and not her son. This accident only confirms her decision never to get back to Nector and also much more important thing – it changes her whole perception of home. Thank to this event she abandons the “American” image of home as a neat and well decorated house, and gets back to more natural way of understanding home as a land where the family and tribal traditions are fixed and lived through.

All through my life I never did believe in human measurement. Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down size. (...). Henry Lamartine had never filed on or bought the land outright, but he lived there. He never took much stock in measurement, either. He knew like I did. If we´re going to measure land, let´s measure right. Every foot and inch you are standing on, even if it´s on the top of the highest skyscraper, belongs to the Indians. That´s the real truth of the matter. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 221).

Lulu, after the incident, suddenly feels deeply connected with the land and refuses to abandon it, although her house is burned down completely. Now, it is not only the matter of tradition and preserving home, but also a matter of higher principals. Lulu feels that she has every right to keep the land she cared of so well for so long – in the contrast to the white men factory that made “equipment of false value.” (Erdrich, 1989, p.223). So Lulu and her boys camp on the land for two month like “a pack of wild animals,” until even the people who do not have anything in common with the decision of the tribal committee feel the disgrace of

that kind of living. Finally, the tribe offers Lulu a new house on a new piece of land and she accepts it.

She probably does not feel disgraced by camping on the land she used to keep her neat house once on as much as the other people do, because she feels as more important to follow her principles and fight against what she perceives an injustice. This summer of camping on their land probably only bonds her family even closer together, and she realizes that her home is not her house, nor the land but herself in the center of her family.

When she is old and half-blind her perception of home changes once more. She still views herself as the home for her boys, both death and alive, but after she gets to Marie´s care, she starts perceiving Marie as a home for herself, as almost everybody in the situation does.

4. Men as home-seekers and home-losers in Love Medicine

There is no typical man in Love medicine as there is no typical woman there. Yet, what we can see as “meeting point” of all the male characters in the book is their connection to the wild nature - in contrast to female characters. Although the connection to land and nature should mean that men are also closer to traditions and that is why also closer to the core of their homes, the opposite is true. The land in the book is often a source of living for people but there is no mythological dimension of land to be seen. Men seem to be happy hunting in the woods but that seems to be all. What is important for their perception of home, are their houses and families. However, in comparison to their wives and mothers, men do not create their homes, they provide money, but otherwise they only consume their homes, they do not contribute much otherwise. It would be simple to say that it is their fault. But it is not – actually in most cases they are not invited by their women to the process of home-creating at all. Sometimes, they are not even allowed in (as in case of Nector in Lulu´s home).

And that is the reason why men in Love Medicine, in contrast to women, seem to be completely lost in their lives. This is a result of the fact that their perception of home is very insecure. As their homes are represented by their wives, mothers or even daughters, they are completely dependent on some other person in creating their perception of home. That is why they are so confused about where and what their right home is – if they fell in love with a new woman, then where their home is? With their wedded wife and children or with the love of the moment? Similarly, the perception of home of the women in the book who are not able to create or at least contribute highly to the creating of their homes is distorted; and therefore they are lost in their lives, too.

This bachelor thesis will focus on two characters of Love Medicine who represent two different types of men in the novel. The first one is Nector Kashpaw, the descendant of tribal chiefs, and the other one, Lipsha Morrissey who is an orphan mixed-blood boy taken in home by Marie, and her husband Nector.

4.1 Nector Kashpaw

Nector Kashpaw is a man who is pulled from his natural environment very soon in childhood to be taken to the governmental boarding school. He comes back educated- at least in the White people sense of the word, but quite unskilled in the Native one:

She [Nector´s mother] had let the government put Nector in school, but hidden Eli, the one she couldn´t part with, in the root cellar dug beneath her floor. In that way she gained a son on either side of the line. Nector came home from boarding school knowing white reading and writing, while Eli knew the woods. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 17).

It seems that it does not disqualify him as a man among girls. They are attracted enough by his good looks and the fame of his ancestors – the last tribal chefs. He never has to try really hard to get any girl he chooses. First he can think of only Lulu, the girl he grows up with. She tastes sweet to him and he cannot imagine that he will grow old with anyone else. But then, Marie crosses his way, she looks like she does not want him and when he gets her, she tastes bitter. And he is not able to let her go. To analyze it from the psychological point of view, it would be possible to remark that because for his own mother he is a child she can spare (in contrast to his twin brother Eli), he unconsciously prefers a girl whose love for him is uncertain and for whom he has to fight. Lulu is at this time very close to him, she is a member of his tribe and almost a family member: “At boarding school, as children, I treated her as my sister and shared out peanut-butter-syrup sandwiches on the bus to stop her crying.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 92). We can say that when they are in the boarding school, Lulu represents home for Nector – when he is with her he can feel at home.

Marie, on the other hand, does not even look like an Indian; she has a white father whose social status is very low. She does not give herself easily and it only intensifies Nector´s desire for her. “Her taste was bitter. I craved the difference after all those years of easy sweetness.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 92). Marie is probably hard to imagine as a good household-leader and home-creator, but it can look even more desirable for him – Nectors´s mother disappoints him, at the time he is a child relying completely on his mother, and now, he expects nothing more from his future wife than disappointment.

Nevertheless, Marie never disappoints him. They get married soon and as little he contributed to creating of his mother´s home, he contributes to creating of the home he has with his wife. It seems that he is not really expected to contribute much, at least not more than 32

as a financial supporter. He perceives his home as something natural what he does not have to think about much, Or even worse, he sees his home as something he needs to escape from, at least for few hours every now and then. He loves all his babies, both biological and the taken- ins, and also his wife, but he realizes soon that he cannot live only for supporting his family. His home is simply not in the center of his life. It is Marie who creates it and who makes all the decisions. She never expects that Nector will be interested much in the home-issues and she does not give him any clues that he is invited as an active player in home-creating. Perhaps such a thing never crosses Marie´s mind at all. They both perceive their house to be their home. That is why Nector thinks that if he escapes his house for an evening for the pub and bier, he escapes his home. But it is not true and it does not help him much. His real home is not created by the house – he would be probably as unhappy in any house in the reservation.

His home is not the reservation as such either. It is true that he is a son and grandson of the last tribal chiefs and that is why he thinks he accepts a similar function of the reservation committee when he becomes a chairman, but it is not the real reason. He was pulled from the center of his tribe when he was just a child and he was educated in the white people´s school – he is not prepared to lead an Indian tribe in the original sense. He is not the strong chief who is able to kill a bear, make decisions for the whole tribe and hand over the traditions of all his people. He is nothing of that. He is a good looking man, perhaps a very smart one, but he is not a leader. He is not even able to make decisions at home, not to speak about the whole-tribal things. It is his wife, Marie, who makes him to get and accept the function. She does not want him to drink so much and she wants him to be someone in the tribe, people of which still see her as the daughter of the dirty Lazzarre. It is not selfishness, though, that leads her to do this. She is convinced that she makes only the best for her children and for Nector himself (as a descendant of famous chiefs), and last but not least, for her home, because she believes that only this can keep Nector out of the pub and that is why also above the surface, and so in the right condition to support the family. Eventually, it turnes out that Nector is not a very bad chief. He is educated after all and that is why he is able to communicate with the Government: “Somehow he´d gotten a school built, a factory too, and he´d kept the land from losing its special Indian status under that policy called termination.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 18). Besides, he is not despotic and tries to meet the expectations of the people of the tribe, but he is not strong enough to do only the decisions he believes to be right:

“Oh, I argued. I did as much as I could. But government money was dangling before their noses. In the end, as tribal chairman, I was presented with a typed letter I should sign that would formally give notice that Lulu was kicked off the land.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 104).

The worst thing about the signing of the paper kicking Lulu out off her land is, that at that time Lulu and Nector are lovers. Nector´s character in Love Medicine from the very beginning of the novel makes impression of someone walking through his own life without any visible purpose or aim, his steps seem to be lead only by chance: “I never wanted much, and I needed even less, but what happened was that I got everything handed to me on a plate.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 89). First, there are white officers taking him to the boarding school, then several jobs offered by various people, just because of his appearance or his name Kashpaw, and then he meets Marie who literally leads his steps from their first intercourse, by his election as a tribal chairman, to the death. It is Marie who represents all the security in his life. He can always count on her, he can always come back to her and she will provide him with love, the feeling of real belonging, in other words – his home is where she is. Yet, neither Nector, nor Marie is aware of the fact. That is why Marie sticks to keeping her house in perfect order, and that is why Nector thinks that he can escape to the pub from the reality of his home. Unconsciously, though, Nector feels that the very idea of home is closely connected with a woman. That is why he is so confused about where his home is when he fells in love with Lulu again and starts visiting her in her house secretly. At this moment, even he starts to realize that he is completely lost in his life and that he shall be the one making the decisions. At the moment he fells in love with Lulu, he starts to perceive her as his home too and that is what confuses him most. In the case of his marriage with Marie he thinks that his home is their house with all the children around. In the case of Lulu, the situation is completely different. Lulu´s children are absolutely ignorant about the fact that Nector is her lover. Nector also does not think much about them, not even about the last one, who is actually his own. He is only worried that Lulu might have an extra lover apart from him. Nector also does not take care of the house and he does not support Lulu financially. He loves her but he is not connected to her by any other means than by his love. Lulu, on the other hand, is known to be a flirt. She is famous for her treatment of her husband Henry, who committed suicide. And Nector cannot be sure about her love to him. He used to be sure about her when they were children but now, she will not reveal her true feelings. Her home is thus a secret for him, even after several years of secret meetings in her bedroom, where Nector can come only through

the window, never door. That is why he considers Lulu to be his second home for the time when her house (apart from her bedroom) was restricted area for him. However, at the moment he decides to leave Marie and go living with Lulu, he automatically assumes that not only Lulu, but her house and children will start to be his new home.

Then the unfortunate event with the Lulu´s land occurs and Nector is never welcomed in Lulu´s bedroom anymore. When he makes his final attempt to live with her officially and comes to her door (for the very first time), she is not at home. He thinks that she does not want him anymore, becomes desperate and by a mistake starts a fire in Lulu´s house. He makes nothing to stop the fire, not even at the moment it would be very simple: “The letter smokes. I do not notice right off what is happening, and then the paper flares. Curious and dazed, I watch the letter burn. I swear that I do nothing to help the fire along.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 109). It is not only the weakness of his character that makes him to watch the house of his love catching fire motionlessly. At the moment he sees the burning house, he thinks that he is burning Lulu´s home which means that he is burning the very prospect of their future life together that she refuses. There is a simple message – if I cannot have it, then nobody have it! But he does not understand that he cannot destroy Lulu´s home by mere burning her house. Her home, as well as Marie´s, is not based in the house as such, but in her, personally. Nevertheless, he is not able to see it and he goes back to Marie and Zelda, to what he considers his real home, because he believes that Lulu´s home is destroyed forever.

His soul, though, stays torn between these two women: between his two homes, and not only when he is still alive but also after his death, when both of them call him by name to tell him their farewells, and he comes to their bedrooms again to tell them his goodbye. It was the last time he visited both of his homes.

4.2 Lipsha Morrissey

Lipsha´s life does not start very successfully, as his mother puts him away at the moment he is born. He is lucky, though, to get into Marie´s and Nector´s home as their youngest foster child. They both love him and take care of him but he is always aware of the fact that he is not their son, nor their grandson. His mother is June, once also a kid raised in this home and beloved by Marie. When Lipsha is taken in, Marie is so afraid that he will eventually leave her as his mother June did when she was a kid, that she rather works on 35

Lipsha´s feeling of gratefulness systematically, so he would be sure that nowhere else he would be better. Thus, Lipsha since his childhood believes that his mother wanted to drown him in a lake to get rid of him, but fortunately enough, he got to Marie´s house instead, which saved his life. He is grateful to have a home, to be sure. When he grows up, it is certain that he is not the type for school, nor for work, so he just stays at home and keeps his eye on his growing-old foster parents, Marie and Nector, who is continually losing his mind. Thank to the legend about his mother trying to kill him as a baby, Lipsha is quite content with the fact that he does not know who either of his biological parents is:

“Your mother...” I began. “I can never forgive what she done to a little child,” he said. “they had to rescue me out of her grip,” I tried again. “I want to talk about your mother...” Lipsha nodded, cutting me off. “I consider Grandma Kashpaw my mother, even though she just took me in like an old stray.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 36).

Lipsha is so convinced that Marie and Nector took him in only of compassion, that it never crosses his mind that they actually want him very much to be with them. Or at least Marie does, and Nector automatically loves each child that Marie takes in. Lipsha is not so experienced to be able to differentiate whether it is only well hidden compassion from their side, or real love. Anyway, he loves them both back with the same love their biological children and grandchildren love them, and, most importantly, he feels that with them he has the real home. He does not care much about whether it is in their old house or in the Senior Citizens home; he just knows that his true home is where they are. For Lipsha, home is not represented only by Marie as for most of the people living in the household, his perception of home is based on the connection of the whole couple – Nector and Marie. Each of them represents an element he needs for his growing up. Nector represent Lipsha´s connection to the tribe and their traditions and Marie provides him with maternal love and care. The security of his home is therefore very fragile. Lipsha is a man full of paradoxes. He does not know who his parents are, yet he is completely sure about where and what his home is, he is both confused by his originlessness and certain about where his place on the Earth is. Lipsha´s mind, in contrast to almost all the other characters, is also full of magic and mixture of old traditional mythology and Catholic

principles, yet he is quite a pragmatic type of person. On one side he thinks about the Catholic God as about someone who is deaf for the Indians´ complains and demands, so they have to shout at him to listen, on the other hand, he does not consider Indian gods completely reliable either, but at least he believes that they come around if people really need them. And then, there is his “touch” which he can heal people without even knowing what is wrong with them. Lipsha, though he can never be sure about who his parents are, can be sure that he belongs somewhere – he is a full member of the tribe, he is the rightful citizen of the reservation, because he has inherited special powers restricted only to the true members of the tribe. On the other hand when it comes to magic, he is aware of the fact that it is only a matter of belief. When Marie asks him to prepare love medicine for her and Nector, he is afraid. It demands a lot of power to get such strong medicine and he seems to be too weak, but he is also afraid to refuse it. He is fighting for preserving his home along with Marie, after all. Eventually, he pragmatically prepares something that looks like real love medicine, but it is not. However, even in this fake he puts a lot of effort and thinking: “I finally convinced myself that the real actual power to the love medicine was not the goose heart itself but the faith in the cure.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 203). As we know already, this medicine does not help saving Nector´s and Marie´s relationship; it kills Nector instead and fulfills Lipsha with regret. After Nector´s funeral, Lipsha´s perception of home is both strengthened and shaken. He feels that he belongs among all the people mourning Nector as their father and grandfather, but at the same time, he loses one of the essential elements of his home. He is more open at that time to getting to know about who his biological parents are. Marie, who loves Lipsha with the same tenderness as she loved her June, is both afraid to lose him and unwilling not to let him free to go his own way to look for his origin, because she feels that the fragile home she helped create for him for past twenty years, is broken now. He discovers very soon that his mother is June and that she never wanted to kill him. He also gets to know that his father is a famous criminal Gerry Nanapush, Lulu´s son. Garry is also a tribal hero, typical fighter and hunter: “He was a big boy, a born leader, light on his feet and powerful. His mind seemed quick. It would not surprise Bev to hear, after many years passed on, that this Garry grew up to be both a natural criminal and a hero whose face appeared on the six-o´clock news.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 85-85.). Lipsha definitely does not feel ashamed of this kind of father. Quite the contrary, he gets in him what he lost in Nector – a natural connection to his tribe, and in addition a new grandmother: Lulu.

On his way to finding Garry, Lipsha gets to the City, to home of King, his half- brother, who always makes life harder for Lipsha. By coincidence, the very same night Garry brakes from prison and finds King too. Garry has some unsettled bills with King, too, and he and Lipsha threaten King into a card game where there is only one prize – the beloved car King bought with the money that he gets from June´s insurance after her death. The car wins Lipsha and he feels it as a justice - he gets his mother´s car after all. At the same time, the police come to the apartment for Garry and they both manage to escape. Garry, to be free has to get to Canada where his wife and little daughter live and Lipsha drives him there, but no matter that he is going to his family, Garry is not going home:

“I won´t ever really have what you´d call a home.” He was right about that, of course. I´d never seen. He could not go back to a place where he was known and belonged. No matter where he settled down, he would always be looking behind his shoulders. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 268).

Lipsha at this time realizes that Garry´s home will always be with his mother, Lulu, who he misses badly. And he also realizes what home means for him: “I believe that my home is the only place I belong and was never interested to leave it, but circumstances forced my hand.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 270). The truth is that Lipsha was lead out of the reservation and out of Marie´s arms by Nector´s death and the sudden need to find his father instead. And the father really provides him with what he needs – with the feeling of the almost lost belonging. Now Lipsha belongs not only to Marie´s arms and the reservation, he also belongs to the Nanapush´s clan, for which he has an evidence – so far undiscovered heart-defect that all the Nanapushes have. When Lipsha walks Garry to the Canada boarder and tells him his goodbye, he comes back to the river that creates a boundary of the reservation. He looks into its waters and thinks about both of his mothers: “I´d heard that this river was the last of an ancient ocean, miles deep, that once covered the Dakotas and solved all our problems. It was easy to still imagine us beneath them vast unreasonable waves, but the truth is we live on dry land.” (Erdrich, 1989, p.272). In other words, Lipsha imagines being back in June´s body, where he carelessly lived in her amniotic fluid, feeling safe in his mother´s womb. He was born, though, to a dry land where there is no mother and no relaxing water to live in. Yet, he does not complain because in exchange for it he gets a secure Earth under his feet and a real home on it – Marie

and Nector: “The thoought of June grabbed my heart so, but I was lucky she turned me over to Grandma Kashpaw.” (Erdrich, 1989, p. 272.). Thus, Lipsha, June´s son, in the very last chapter of the novel not only comes home, he also closes-in the whole story that starts with June´s death. They both come home in their ways and they also find the way to each other after all.

Conclusion

Love Medicine is definitely not a book about Chippewa traditions, at least not intentionally. The purpose the author probably follows is perhaps to show the real life in the reservation in its rawness and sometimes even brutality. If what Erdrich offers us is the true picture of Native American community, then we can say that there is not much space for practicing any traditional rituals in their lives anymore. We can see that the characters in the story are aware of certain mythical warnings (such as that one is not supposed to call the dead people by their name, otherwise they show up for sure) or rituals (like the Lipsha´s preparing medicine for love), but there are no notions about how these traditions are passed on to the next generations. We can assume then, that the traditions are either such a marginal thing in the nowadays Native American life that there is no need to talk about them, or there is no need to talk about them as it is such an integral part of Native American life that nobody have doubts about their existence.

Home is supposed to be connected closely to the traditions of the tribe - home is actually supposed to be based on the mutually shared and passed on traditions, which provide people with personal integrity, tribal identity and feelings of belonging. What we can observe in Love Medicine is not any explicit importance of traditional rituals in creating home; the characters in the book try to preserve and use them only in states of emergency – when their beloved ones die without saying goodbye, or as in the case of love medicine, if they think that their marriage and love is in a great danger: “Indian ritual has no place in Love medicine except in “touch” of Lipsha” (Silberman in Schultz, p.81). Yet, we cannot simply assume that traditions are not an important element of creating home in the novel. What we can read about in Love Medicine are the current traditions of the Chippewa families: hunting, foster-parenting or ambiguity of religious beliefs, which all contribute to the home-creating and perception of home of the individual characters of the book. I believe, though, that there are other things more important for the perception of home of the characters of the novel than traditions.

We can assume that the individual feeling of belonging to home is closely connected with the self perception of identity. The identity is not necessarily based on the traditions of the tribe – it can be shared by all people living in the reservation, with no regard to their origin. The traditions are also not restricted for the Native Americans only, even people, whose origin is mixed, can share them (like Marie), if they choose so. The benefits of home

are also not restricted for the blood members of the family only – anybody who is taken in can join it (as we can see it in the case of Marie´s and Nector´s home). But, it is perhaps uncommonly difficult (if possible at all) to influence anyone´s process of identity creating. And creating of identity is probably one of the crucial functions of home, which usually fails to do its work at this aspect in Love Medicine.

To sum up what was stated in this thesis above, it is necessary to remark that the perception of home of the individual characters in Love Medicine is not stable at all. It changes throughout the whole story. Marie Kashpaw, for example, begins her life as a girl from such a bad family background that she does not even know what the word home means. She wants to gain home, love and identity of a nun when she joins a convent. However, she underestimates the drop of Indian blood she has in her veins and when she is called by the Earth back to the reservation she connects her life with Nector´s, and since that time she represents home for everyone in touch with her, after the Nector´s death even for his long- lasting lover Lulu, when Lulu is recuperating from her eye surgery. However, Marie does not realize that her personality is what presents the home for her extent family and friends. She still believes that her household is what the other people perceive as their home.

The only character for whom Marie´s way of home is not suitable is June, Marie´s taken-in daughter, who very soon leaves Marie´s neat house and Marie herself for Uncle Eli´s life in the woods. June never really gets internalized the idea that she shall be a mother and a home-creator too. She wants to find her happiness in the city where nobody knows her and she is free of reservation gossip, but she stays wild and Earthy for her whole life, and when she eventually dies in the snowstorm on her way back to the reservation, she symbolically gets closer to the earth, and she feels that she finally comes home.

Lulu, Nector´s lover and a mother of eight sons, is a similar case as Marie, she personally represents a home for her sons. She is not aware of the fact at first, as she thinks that her home is created by her well kept house. When her house burns down, she realizes that it is not her house, but her self that means home for her sons. Her motherhood and home- providing, though restricted only to her children, is not limited by time or the state of living:

There was no place for the drowned in heaven or anywhere on earth. That is what I never found it easy to forget, and that is also the reason I broke custom very often and spoke Henry

Junior´s name, out loud, on my tongue. I wanted him to know, if he heard, that he still had a home. (Erdrich, 1989, p. 234).

When Lulu grows old, her perception of home changes slightly – she still views herself as a home for her boys, but her home is now represented by Marie who takes care of her, if Lulu need it.

Nector also thinks that his home is the house that he keeps with Marie. But when he starts his affair with Lulu, everything changes and suddenly, he is confused about what and where his home actually is. He does not realize that his home is in the arms of Marie and he thinks that if he just moves into Lulu´s house he would get a new home. But he is never really allowed to Lulu´s house. He is only a visitor in her bedroom, not a part of her home, no matter how much she loves him. He does not realize it to the very end of his life, not even after his death when he is still confused about where he belongs. That is why he comes again to his wife´s and then also his lover´s bedroom to say his farewells, and he is accepted by both women.

Lipsha Morrissey is an abandoned child that Marie and Nector take in and he, although he is often confused about his origin, is never really confused about where his home is. His home is represented by the couple of Marie and Nector and he would do anything to keep them together. His home is therefore created quite complexly- by his foster-mother´s love and care and his foster-father´s belonging to the tribe. The other children of the family whose home is created by Marie´s personality only, are not as bound to the traditions of the tribe as Lipsha is. Even after he discovers who his biological parents are his perception of home remains untouched. He never stops belong to Marie and Nector who brought him up, only after Nector´s death, Lipsha´s home is not complete. The gap, though not fully filled, is at least bridged by Lipsha´s discovered belonging to the family of Nanapushes, the old Indian family with long tradition.

As I indicated in the Introduction of the thesis, women in Love medicine can be sure where and what their home is, and not only because they care of their houses and children carefully. Home is not something that women create thank to their house-chores and care; they personally represent home. Not their houses, but their bodies and souls.

Men in Love Medicine seem to be weaker than women and they also seem to contribute less to the perception of home of their relatives, but in some cases they do. 42

Although Nector never mentions Lipsha in his story, Nector is one of the two crucial characters creating Lipsha´s idea of home. With Nector´s character, the hypothesis that men are often lost in their lives because they do not know where their home is and where they belong, is confirmed. He is so confused by his split perception of home that he loses his mind at the end of his life. However, Lipsha´s perception of home is not confusing for him, although he is mixed-blood and therefore it is harder for him to get fully identified with the people in the environment he grows up in. Thank to the fact that he perceives his home complexly, not only as Marie herself but as the connection of Marie and Nector, Lipsha is closely connected to both his foster family and the tribe and their traditions.

If we look at this summary we have to come to a conclusion, that Erdrich did not want her characters in Love Medicine to be observed only through the perspective of their ethnicity, and that is why also their perception of home is not purely “Native American” or “Chippewa”. Their feelings of belonging are created by people who they love and count on with their whole hearts – those are usually (but not always) exclusively women. The characters also feel that they belong to the land their traditional gods live and where their myths took place once. But is it really something purely ethnical? Everywhere around the world people live at homes created and represented by their mothers and wives, after all. And even here, in the heart of Moravia, people tend to be connected with their land very much. This approach to the land and extent families is not common in the United States of America, though, where people usually do not have any special relationship to the land they live on, and so they quite easy and often move from place to place, alone or accompanied only by their nucleus family. Perhaps, that is why is in the USA the clinging of the characters of Love medicine perceived as a sign of difference, or in other words ethnicity. In Europe, on the other hand, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, the approach to the land is very similar to what is described in Love Medicine. People here often see the land they live on as imbued with the stories of their ancestors´ lives, although they know that for the next generations those stories will only be myth-like, because the myths are created continually. Thank to the continuality of the myths-creating and re-creating, the traditions can survive even despite moving to different land, if it is not very often. The reservation in Love Medicine is also not built on the original land as the tribe was forced to leave it. Though this forced moving was extremely painful for the tribe, its members were able to adapt their myths to the new land, and so the gods moved with them and made themselves at home in the new land, as well as

the new stories and old traditions. Thus, it is not necessarily the land as such that is so important in the process of identity making and home-creating. In Love Medicine, even the traditions themselves are not that important for the perception of home for most of the characters, which, as it seems, is the author´s intention. Lydia Schultz claims that “Erdrich attempts to avoid being exoticized by making her characters recognizably human above all else.” (Schultz, 1991, p. 82). That only confirms my viewing of the characters´ perception of home and the characters themselves as not mainly “Native American” but human in the first place.

Annotation

This Bachelor thesis deals with analysis of the home theme from the Native American perspective in Louise Erdrich´s novel Love Medicine. The thesis consists of four main chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the life and perception of home of Louise Erdrich. The second chapter focuses on the theme of home in Native American literature in general. The third and fourth chapters deal with the analysis of the perception of home of several female and two male characters of Love Medicine. Crucial role in perception of home of all the characters of the novel play women as the home-creators, and that is why women usually do not feel any uncertainty about what and where their real home is. Men´s perception of home in the novel, on the other hand, is always relying on the personality of their wives, mothers or daughters, and thus it is highly uncertain.

Anotace

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá analýzou tématu domova v knize Love Medicine autorky Louisy Erdrichové z pohledu původních obyvatel Spojených států amerických. Tato práce se skládá ze čtyř kapitol. První kapitola je věnována životu a vnímání domova autorky Louisy Erdrichové. Druhá kapitola se zaměřuje obecněji na téma domova v literatuře původních obyvatel. Třetí a čtvrtá kapitola je pak věnována analýze vnímání domova z pohledu několika ženských a dvou mužských postav románu Love Medicine. Nejdůležitější roli ve vnímání domova u všech postav knihy sehrávají ženy jako tvůrkyně domova, které si díky tomu mohou být jisté, kde leží a co to vlastně je jejich pravý domov. Na druhé straně, mužské vnímání domova je v románu vždy závislé na osobnosti manželky, matky anebo dcery, a je proto v zásadě nejisté.

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