NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Tisseroman : The Weaving of Female Selfhood within Feminine Communities in Postcolonial Novels
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Field of Comparative Literary Studies
By
Gretchen Elizabeth Kellough
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
June 2008 2
ABSTRACT
Tisseroman : The Weaving of Female Selfhood within Feminine Communities in Postcolonial Novels
Gretchen Elizabeth Kellough
The central analytic concern of this dissertation is the problem of privileging one, true, unified, singular self as the essential focus or goal with respect to contemporary French- and English-language novels by women authors from Africa and the Caribbean. In the past, feminist critics, in particular, have read these texts through a Western lens that valorizes individualism and separateness, while subjectivity in these texts stresses a larger participation with family, society, and nation. My thesis offers a re-reading of these texts to argue that the women writers re-conceptualize the relationship between an individual and society through their depiction of local struggles against gender and racial oppression, particularly with reference to the female experience of self and feminine community. While my corpus is varied in terms of language and geography but unified in its genre and themes, I draw from different geographic locations to focus on how these black women writers problematize notions of development and female identity through their depiction of women and women’s experiences and women’s ways of knowing self and community. The intent of this dissertation is to examine how specific, unconventional communities can be used to explore notions of female subjecthood and authorship in postcolonial novels of development. Because of its intricate connections to communities of other subjects, this narrating “I” represents a denial of a totalized, self-contained subject. The title that I use to describe this set of novels is tisseroman because it more correctly places the importance of narrating the interplay of multiple voices rather than one singular voice.
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Acknowledgements
I want to express my sincere gratitude to the members of my committee, who each in their own way helped me to find my way through this project: Wendy Griswold for being there for me from the beginning and generously gave me feedback as I worked on draft after draft of the prospectus and chapters; Evan Mwangi who agreed to help after being faculty at
Northwestern for only a few weeks; and Doris Garraway for her detailed reading and insightful questions.
My gratitutde also goes to Andrew Wachtel, without whom this project never would have gotten started. Thank you for believing that I could write this dissertation and for helping make sure it did not fail before it had even begun. To Saul Morson for his mentoring, generosity, and encouragement. To the students, staff, and fellows of Willard Residential College who helped me feel connected to a larger community.
My appreciation also goes to my friends and extended family who constantly encouraged me. A special thanks to Robert Alexander for supporting me through the various stages of prospectus- and dissertation-writing and for helping me stay motivated through times of doubt and discouragement. To Mick Cullen for encouraging me through the final stages. Finally, my deep gratitude to my parents for believing in me, for supporting me through the disheartening times, and for celebrating the successes along the way with me.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: Introduction ………………………………………………………………..5 Methodology………………………………………………………………………8 Chapter Summaries………………………………………………………………13 Chapter Two: Community of the Exiled or the Loss of the Mother……………………..22 The Slave Girl ……………………………………………………………………25 Gwendolen ……………………………………………………………………….46 Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit ……………………………………………………….59 Chapter Three: A Community of Wives…………………………………………………71 The Joys of Motherhood …………………………………………………………71 Juletane …………………………………………………………………………..97 Chapter Four: Sisters in Prison…………………………………………………………131 Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem ……………………………………….134 Hester Prynne…………………………………………………………...150 Tu t’appelleras Tanga …………………………………………………………..164 Chapter Five: Mythological and Fantastic Female Communities……………….……...182 Efuru ……………………………………………………………………………186 Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem……………………………………….191 Breath, Eyes, Memory ………………………………………………………….201 Chapter Six: The Narrative Weave of Community or the Tisseroman ….……………...222 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...233 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………239 Curriculum Vita………………………………………………………………………...260 5
CHAPTER ONE:
Introduction
James Olney writes in Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature that African
narartives differ from their western counterparts “because of the more than intimate relationship
in Africa between individual existence and group existence” (43). African and Caribbean works
of (auto)biographical fiction and novels of development differ from their Western-European
counterparts by their treatment of the individual’s place within community. While the idea of the
formation of the self within a collective runs counter to Western capitalist thinking that
privileges and isolates the individual, the community’s role in the development of the self is a
central aspect of novels from these African and Caribbean cultures. In Beyond Feminist
Aesthetics, Rita Felski underlines the centrality of community in writings by women, particularly black women: “The notion of community emerges as an equally insistent theme in recent black writings, which explicitly relate the destiny of the individual subject to that of the group” (139).
In Francophone Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean , Renée Larrier also addresses how
African and Caribbean women writers confer authority to community and how relationships with
community can move female characters toward subjectivity (2). In Selfish Gifts , Lisa McNee’s
field research on Senegalese culture and women’s autobiography leads her to conclude that “the
life of a community provides the framework for individual experience” in West African society
(16). McNee returns to Olney’s argument to disagree with his premise that African identities are
always and only collective; instead, McNee argues that individual identities become visible
through the individual’s “active negotiation of her relations to the whole community” (24). For 6
marginalized writers, particularly those who are female, selfhood remains inextricably linked to
community.
Though not necessarily exclusively autobiographical, the novels that my dissertation
compares all reflect a search for individual identity through a series of experiences of feminine
community. According to Irène Assiba D’Almeida, African women have always known “that
they [are] members of a community… they always recognized that they [are] women and they
have their own women’s world” (“African Literature,” 12). Using a comparative analysis of
eleven novels by women writers from West Africa and the Caribbean, this dissertation will
examine the interplay of the individual and her community to offer some perspectives on the
representation of female community and the development of subjecthood within these feminine
novels. In my study, I will evaluate the extent to which the category of “novel of development”
works in these novels by assessing in what ways the notion of development implies a way of
thinking about the subject. I will explore how these authors problematize the notion of
“development” (development of the individual, development of the community, development of
the text, development of the nation) by asking: are these narratives of development (in the sense
of unwrapping or unfolding), or would they be more accurately described as narratives of
weaving and braiding? I argue that the title tisseroman 1 would be more fitting for these novels, in order to correctly place the importance of multiple voices rather than the privileging of one singular voice.
Because women’s selfhood has been traditionally constructed through family and gender and culture/community, the notions of self and community are continually complicated and
1 Tisser comes from the word “to weave” in French and roman means “novel.” By tisseroman , I refer to the “novel of weaving.” 7
redefined by the authors of the texts I have selected. My dissertation will explore answers to the
following questions: How do these women authors write about selfhood in their novels? What kinds of collectivities support or impede the journey to self-awareness? Are the authors able to resist idealizing feminine community? I will also draw from the questions put forth by Françoise
Lionnet in Postcolonial Representations : How does the female protagonist inscribe herself in her own narrative? How does she articulate the relationship within which her narrative is inscribed yet not fully contained? (Lionnet, 3).
By singling out community as a central concern, I will articulate how these authors depart from privileging ‘one true, unified, singularly developed, and knowable self’ as the essential focus and/or goal of the black female postcolonial narrative. I will argue that these authors problematize the categories of development and female subjecthood, while simultaneously also problematizing the category of feminine community, by blurring the lines of individual and collectivity/ self and community. I will analyze how these women writers attempt to depict subjectivity by balancing collective identity (being part of a community of women and a community of authors) with individual selfhood (claiming separateness from men and family and claiming authorship). This re-conceptualized notion of female subjectivity neither represses difference nor privileges identity nor authenticity, but rather engages with the social aspects of self (via community) and a subjective plurality.
The nine novels comprising my study share common elements in narrative genre (novels of development), period (later twentieth-century), and gender (female protagonists). The novels
I have chosen retain elements of (auto)biography and fiction, but none is purely autobiographical nor purely fictional. These narratives offer possible forms of female involvement in dominant 8
systems of place and period and offer potential forms of resistance to the dominant ideologies;
they offer particular concern for the treatment of resistance, identity, and female subjectivity. In
an endeavor to engage a dialogue of Francophone and Anglophone texts, I have specifically
avoided categorizing the works by the countries from which they originate or the languages in
which they are written. As Ashok Bery and Patricia Murray emphasize in their introduction to
Comparing Postcolonial Literatures and Charles Forsdick and David Murphy discuss in their
introduction to Francophone Postcolonial Studies , a linguistic separation of narratives serves to further perpetuate hierarchical relationships and neocolonial separation, by “isolat[ing] one
literature from another and mak[ing] the metropolitan [European] cultures the absent centers
round which these literatures revolve” (Bery and Murray, 9).
The categories of race, gender, language, nationality, and class are all inextricably linked
in the novels of this dissertation. While one author might privilege race over gender, all describe
these categories as they function together. The authors show what is distinctive in the black
women’s story, while also suggesting that her conflict and stories are representative in a way that
is not limited to black women. All of the novels in my study posit issues of personal
development, ranging from gender and identity-formation, to incest and abuse, to polygamy and
infertility, while simultaneously confronting concerns of political, national, and economic
development in an effort to explore the ways in which these elements disrupt traditional
experiences of community and how this affects the lives of the women portrayed in these novels.
Methodology
Elizabeth Abel points out in The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development that in
contrast to male initiation stories, the female novel of development is couched in terms of 9 conflict between responsibilities to others and care for self. “Friendship becomes a vehicle of self-definition for women, clarifying identity through relation to an other who embodies and reflects aspect of the self” (416). The representations of female community and same-sex friendships allow for exploration of the development and negotiation of female subjecthood within the feminine narrative. While Abel evaluates how, in novels, identification with women is essential to the achievement of the central figure’s understanding of self, she fails to address how same-sex identification and relationships can similarly tear down self-discovery. An inclination for fusion may result in a female subject’s forming identity exclusively in relation to others, rather than as an autonomous, independent entity. However, this leads to the question of whether the conclusion of an independent and fulfilled self remains a value within postcolonial female novels of development and also whether these women writers seek autonomous definitions of selfhood for their female protagonists.
By combining feminist and postcolonial methodologies through their emphasis on the community (feminists see community as gendered; postcolonialists see it as cultural) and their shared desire to recuperate the marginalized and de-center a hegemonic, patriarchal system, my dissertation will examine how individuality develops in the context of female community and how specific, unconventional communities can be used to analyze the construction of female subjecthood in postcolonial novels of development. I will explore selfhood as it is found in community and communal experiences, rather than in the search for an individual, private self.
My thesis will examine how these authors resist or fall into the risk of isolating the individual or binding identity in relation to others, and how communities of women can provide alternate models of identity-formation. 10
There exists in academia the belief that speaking for others can be disingenuous and
arrogant, something to be avoided; it elicits an unease within the community. Gilles Deleuze
characterized it as “the indignity of speaking for others.” 2 The problem of speaking for others
comes from the notion that a social location affects the subject and motivation of what a speaker
says; the premise is that it is dangerous for a privileged person to speak from his or her position
of privilege for the less privileged because it might increase or reinforce the oppression of the
marginalized group. On the other hand, Gayatri Spivak has pointed out that it is important to
avoid taking a member of the oppressed and making him/her a representing subaltern. 3 For even
the “countersentence” of the oppressed is not necessarily libratory or free from oppressive
interests. Therefore, the problem of speaking for others is not limited to when a privileged
person speaks for a less privileged one, and the solution cannot be limited to allowing a single
member of the oppressed to speak for everyone.
Rather than “speaking for,” Spivak points towards a “speaking to” relationship with the
other. She emphasizes the dialogue and the practice of speaking with , rather than speaking for .
The dialogic encounter becomes crucial for undermining reduction, representation, or disregard.
An emphasis on the dialogic also reduces the risk of privileging of one position over another by
emphasizing the polyvalent discourses at work in the texts. Anne Herrman describes the dialogic
as a disruption of “the self/other binary by positing the other as another subject rather than
object.”4 This describes the weaving of multiple stories with multiple subjects. One of the ways
2 Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals and Power,” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice . Ed. Donald Bouchard. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). 209. 3 “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory Eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 4 Anne Herrmann , The Dialogic and Difference: “An/Other Woman” in Virgina Woolf and Christa Woolf (New York: Columbia UP, 1989), 7. 11
that West African and Caribbean female authors have successfully ‘spoken’ for themselves and
others is by weaving together multiple stories with multiple subjects. These authors create
dialogic communities where their voices, and the multiple voices of their characters, are
recognized and heard.
In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, a number of important texts focused on furthering an
understanding of the self and community by shedding insight on the ways we identify in groups,
including Maurice Blanchot’s La communauté inavouable (1983), Benedict Anderson’s
Imagined Communities (1991), Jean-Luc Nancy’s La communauté désoeuvrée (1991), and
Alphonso Lingis’ The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (1994). These
works were instrumental in creating a dialogue of questions: What constitutes a community?
What does it mean to be a member of a community? How does the community (or communities) in which someone lives play a role in the constitution of that individual's identity? My dissertation will further these questions with additional inquiries centered on female community in the postcolonial narrative: What comprises community in the novel of female development?
How is community uniquely privileged in these novels? What types of communities are illustrated? For women, can the shared experience of being an outsider create a new form of communal unity and understanding? Is feminine community portrayed as a necessary component to the successful development of the female character in West African, and Caribbean novels?
This dissertation will further the current limits of studies of feminine community and female novels of development that have largely focused exclusively on Western European and
American texts. In 1978, Nina Auerbach was one of the first feminist critics to explore communities of women as they occur (or fail to occur) in historical reality. According to 12
Auerbach, communities of women reflect a fictional possibility of women’s autonomy and “the
self-sustaining power to repel or incorporate the male-defined reality that excludes them” (6).
Auerbach’s study focuses on how novels of the nineteenth-century reflect the failure or success
of the fellowship of women. Sandra Zagarell’s study on the “Narrative of Community” (1988)
identifies a literary genre where “the self exists as part of the interdependent network of
community rather than as an individualistic unit” (499); Zagarell’s study is also restricted to an
analysis of nineteenth-century European narratives. Maria Mardberg’s study Envisioning
American Women (1998) looks at communal identity in novels by women of color written in the latter half of the twentieth-century, but she only addresses novels by American women.
Similarly, I have found little analysis of how female community functions in the identity- formation of the female postcolonial protagonist. More research remains to be done on the female postcolonial subject and her representation as a speaking subject. Insistence upon gender
(in the protagonists and their authors) in my analysis allows me to analyze how relations of power and resistance constitute the women authors and the female subjects they create. Renée
Larrier, one of the few critics to focus on female friendships as important to literature of the
Caribbean and Africa, has written about how “friendship is valorized and celebrated among women writers in the literature of French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean” (191). However, her analysis has been limited to positive portrayals of these relationships, and while the shared oppression of women often results in increased feelings of unity and cohesiveness, the relationships among women in female novels of development can also be adversarial. Similarly,
Rita Felski in Beyond Feminist Aesthetics fails to note that positive experiences of women’s
community, of “the comfort and strength which the protagonist gains from the company of 13 women” (139), are not always present in female novels of development. In her article “Black
Women Writers,” Susan Willis also focuses upon the idyllic portrayals of community and
“genuine sisterhood” in narratives, and excludes the violent and oppressive ways in which community can work against the protagonist. Mothers can be abusive and devastating to the creation of their daughters’ identities, and best friends and co-wives can betray and destroy each other. While co-wives have the potential to lighten each other’s loads, they often act competitively and destructively in these novels. While I will explore the positive qualities that female community can bring to the protagonist’s identity quest, my dissertation will also study how women are depicted in these novels as obstacles to each other’s and to their own development and fulfilled selfhood. These novels point to a reality in which the women may hold the key to unlocking each other’s prisons of oppression, yet they also are capable of standing guard as enforcers of their sisters’ and their own tyranny.
Chapter Two: Community of the Exiled or the Loss of the Mother
I intend to structure my dissertation by dividing it into six chapters, according to varying models of female community and female development. The first chapter engages three novels:
Buchi Emecheta’s Gwendolen (1989) and The Slave Girl (1977) and Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s
Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit (1980) for their portrayals of young female protagonists forced by economic circumstances to participate in communities that develop outside of their birth villages in West Africa and the Caribbean. The comparison of these novels allows for a dual interrogation of the role of origin (native village, mother, “mother” country) and the circumstances of the “rejecting” mother. These novels also invite a cross-study of the strategic purposes for establishing female communities not founded upon shared native cultures or 14 languages or origins but on shared geographies and locations, in effect forcing the reader to reflect upon a comparison of “natural” community (of the village, of the mother) with “artificial” community (in the city, across different cultures and languages).
Emecheta’s The Slave Girl is the story of young Ojebeta who, upon the death of both her parents, is sold into slavery by her older brother. While struggling to maintain individual identities, the slave girls create a new community of women to help them survive their oppression. Emecheta contrasts the joy of one's own native/original community (Ojebeta’s birth village) with an externally, forcibly, and artificially created one (Ma Palagada’s slave girls in
Onitsha). Le Quimboiseur L’Avait Dit describes the tragedies that await young women who leave their villages for the city in search of intellectual or emotional fulfillment, comparing the
“natural” female bonds and friendships that Zetou had in her village with the lack of connection women have in the city. In contrast to Zetou, and perhaps the only hopeful novel of the three,
Emecheta’s main protagonist Gwendolen, also a young Caribbean girl who ends up in a
European hospital, creates a new, stronger community for herself comprised of other black female immigrants in England. The new community replaces her native/original community/family and is symbolized in the Yoruba name Gwendolen gives her daughter:
“Iyamide.” Gwendolen finds the emotional support she needs in the few African women who come to her aid in London (the Nigerian Gladys Odowis and Ghanaian nurse Ama). For these women characters, the shared experience of being “black” in a foreign, white country creates feelings of community that transcend geographic origins. The two authors explore what kinds of communities or communal/maternal bonds are good or healthy, posing the question of whether 15 native or original culture is more authentic/natural or healthier than artificial or forced community.
Chapter Three: A Community of Wives
In Chapter Three, I will compare Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and
Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane (1982) to discuss the potentially oppressive role of motherhood in West African culture and how the experience of polygamy can be both helpful and hurtful for women. Marital life is often the central conflict for the adult protagonist in the female novel of development, and the portrayal of the polygamous marriage allows for an exploration of how women can but often do not come together to resolve marital strife. While previous studies have focused on how Emecheta’s and Warner-Vieyra’s portraits of female victimizers underscore the need for women to acknowledge their responsibility for the perpetuation of dominant power structures,5 in this chapter, I will explore what the female protagonists gain from endorsing ideologies that oppress women. I will focus on how Juletane and The Joys of Motherhood present the im possibility of female community as long as it is mediated through heterosexual, polygamous relationships.
There is no possibility of female bonding in the two texts, as women-to-women relationships among the co-wives do not exist outside the male-centered heterosexual relationship. Instead of helping each other, the women measure each other with the same ruler that patriarchal society has handed them. According to Elizabeth Janeway, mutual female betrayal is a logical outgrowth of internalized shame, and female communities are unnatural
(impossible) in their inevitable betrayal (111). These women lock each other in a psychological
5 See Laura Dubek “Lessons in Solidarity: Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba on Female Victim(izer)s” 16
prison, bringing the walls closer and closer until, for Nnu Ego, Juletane, and Awa, madness and
death are the only options for breaking free. Because the women are unable to create for
themselves a female community outside of heterosexual relationships, the women are also unable
to imagine an identity for themselves separate from what has been designated by a patriarchal
society.
Chapter Four: Sisters in Prison- The Illicit Nature of Feminine Community
Chapter Four will transition from the psychological prison of oppressive marriages
discussed in Chapter Three to the literal space of imprisonment and containment. The theme of
confinement and recurrent images of imprisonment are present in many of the novels in this
study. As Maria Anagnostopoulou-Hielscher points out in her study of Juletane , the spaces
occupied by the protagonist are tiny and barely lit, culminating in Juletane’s suffocating
bedroom. Similarly, in Breath, Eyes, Memory , when Sophie visits her mother in New York, the
tiny space of the city apartment contrasts with the freedom of movement Sophie experienced in
her rural village in Haiti, thus leading to Sophie’s nightmares of suffocation by her mother. The
cramped quarters can either aggravate the female community (as in the examples of Juletane and
Breath, Eyes, Memory ) or can lead to an experience of shared closeness.
I will particularly focus on two novels in which the space of a prison cell connects a black woman’s story with a white woman’s story. In Communities of Women Nina Auerbach
writes that a community of women may suggest “an antisociety, an austere banishment from
both social power and biological rewards” (1). The space of the prison reflects female
community as “furtive, unofficial, complex, shifting, and underground” (Auerbach, 11). The
prison also expresses female selfhood in terms of connectedness and bondage. Yet at the same 17 time, the female communities resulting from the shared experiences of imprisonment suggest that these fellowships share a subtle and unexpected power that unites women in their experience of oppression: both black and white. My study will look at how Maryse Condé and Calixthe
Beyala wrestle with the tension between female connectedness and female independence. Are the woman authors able to redefine connection so that it does not represent bondage?
By retelling her story of development to her French-Jewish cellmate, Cameroonian Tanga allows her narrative to be re-inscribed in Anna-Claude, wherein Anna-Claude takes Tanga’s identity and is able to absorb some of Tanga’s suffering. One could argue that Tanga is imprisoned for her desire to resist traditional values of femininity, thus upsetting and endangering established social order. Tanga rewrites her identity by refusing to procreate, thereby refusing the maternal role privileged by society. She attempts to escape every role designated for her by society: she refuses to use her womb for childbearing and instead purposefully commodifies it by becoming a prostitute. However, while Tanga wants nothing to do with womanhood in its limitations, she values female community and sees it as a way to resist oppression, as exemplified by her sharing her story with her cellmate, Anna-Claude.
In Moi, Tituba, Sorcière , the protagonist Tituba similarly shares her story in a prison cell with a white woman, Hester Prynne. In her article, Jeanne Garane points out that both Tituba and Hester are branded: Hester by the ‘A’ (of adultery) and Tituba by her skin (162). As a result, both are rejected by society and are bonded by their mutual experiences of oppression and isolation. In the space of the prison, Hester teaches Tituba the “rules” of their Puritan community and how to plan her testimony before the Salem judges. Together, the two women discuss their visions for feminine community and find a way to temporarily subvert their 18
oppression and imprisonment by providing each other with power derived from shared
knowledge.
Chapter Five: Mythological and Fantastic Female Communities
The three novels Efuru (1966), Moi, Tituba, Sorcière (1986), and Breath, Eyes, Memory
(1994) reflect the idea of female community as comprised of myth and/or fantasy. Throughout
time and geography, there have been stories of mythological (often threatening) female
communities: Amazon warrior-women, Greek sirens, Salem witches. As Carole Boyce Davies
points out in her section “Witchery and Madness” of Black Women, Writing, and Identity ,
“witches are the most deliberate violators of societal traditions” (74). The figure of the witch or
another mythological woman may provide protagonists with a model of transgressive feminine
power. “[The witch or priestess] stands between the community and what it is unable to attain”
(Davies, 75). Similarly, a priestess may have social power but not what is traditionally accorded
to women. In Flora Nwapa’s Efuru , the female protagonist turns to the beautiful and wealthy
water goddess Uhamiri to find spiritual, sensual, and psychological solace that is not otherwise
available to Efuru in her village community. The strongest valorization of female community in
the novel is exemplified through Uhamiri and her affirmation of a mythological women’s
community and of Igbo female power. As Gay Wilentz notes in Binding Cultures, Uhamiri is
the female center of Efuru and the driving force in the novel; Uhamiri provides Efuru with a woman-centered function in society while at the same time removing the insistence on a
traditional, biological female function (motherhood) from Efuru since the goddess denies
children to her followers. 19
In Maryse Conde’s Moi, Tituba, Sorcière , mythical stories, rituals, and magic are important for Tituba because the stories are records of Tituba's mother and grandmother. Tituba
has a fantastic female community comprised of the ghosts of women who were important in her
life: Mama Yaya, her mother Abena, Hester. Tituba narrates her own development by choosing
how she responds to the ghosts, usually largely ignoring their advice to her. The invisible spirit
world of sisterhood is a source of comfort for Tituba and provides her with a female community
where women are empowered, rather than the disempowered role shared by women in Puritan
society. As Jeanne Garane points out, Moi, Tituba also shows how white women have taken part in the oppression of black women, again making it difficult for Tituba to participate in a
community of women (161). Garane argues that ”any possible solidarity among women based
upon the ideal of ‘sisterhood’” is undermined by the oppressive attitude taken by the Puritan
white women toward Tituba; however, the impossibility of female community within Tituba’s
earthly society contrasts with the experience of feminine community she shares with her spirit
world.
Breath, Eyes, Memory similarly uses legends, myth, and Haitian vodou to provide the young protagonist, Sophie, with alternative identities and a better understanding of the community of ancestral women to whom she is connected. In Breath , Edwidge Danticat shows
how stories become legends and legends become myths, like women flying on wings of fire and
women carrying the world on their heads. Sophie’s grandmother tells stories of family legends
and vodou myth, all designed to provide Sophie with a better understanding of who she is as both
a Caco daughter and a Haitian woman. In Breath, Eyes, Memory , the purpose of mythology and
fantastic stories is to protect the listener by explaining the “rules” of the world and telling the 20
listener where she belongs. They are designed to soften harsh realities and allow both the tellers
and listeners to share their experiences as women. The mythical stories helped to form the
structure and history of Haitian female community as well as provide the listeners with narratives
of feminine identity.
Chapter Six: Narrative Weave of Community in the ‘Tisseroman’
Ellen Moers’ study Literary Women suggests that the fictional narration of other women’s stories is reflective of the literal practices of women writers (43). Female authors
constitute their own creative and generative tradition by drawing confidence from each other’s
work and the strength to deny the exclusionary atmosphere of a male-dominated profession.
Nina Auerbach similarly writes, “the unformulated miracle of the community of women is its
ability to create itself” (11). The community of women writers sustains the community of
women who exist within postcolonial female novels of development. In the concluding chapter, I
will explore how, in these female novels of development, one woman weaves the tale of another
woman’s story. The purpose of this comparison is to explore the outcomes of this narrative
strategy and discuss the possibilities/potentialities derived when women tell each other’s stories.
By writing/speaking from within the margins, can a marginalized self find a subjectively
pluralized voice? In the texts, female narrators must often interpret or give meaning to another
woman’s life based on fragmentary moments found through personal journals or stories told by
other women.
We find this narrative quilt of story-weaving (or tisseroman) in many of the novels examined in this dissertation: in Breath, Eyes, Memory Sophie tells her mother’s story, and
grandmother Ifé recounts the stories of many Haitian women; in Juletane Hélène narrates 21
Juletane’s story; Tanga tells Camilla’s story, and Anna-Claude will tell Tanga’s story. Tanga,
like these other female characters, performs the creation of female solidarity by including the
narratives of other women’s existences in her own story- telling. Tanga’s “I” is weaved together
with the other female voices that populate her story and cannot speak for themselves. Through
her narration, Tanga (re)produces a community of women who can empathize with each other’s
sufferings.
Moi, Tituba is a book that does not hide its emergence from dialogue with other texts. Its title is an echo of another successful French book that had appeared in 1979: Moi, Joséphine,
impératrice by Paul Guth. The passage where Tituba is named by her adopted father Yao is an appropriation of Alex Haley’s famous naming scene in Roots , where Kunta Kinte names Kizzy.
And of course, Tituba encounters Hester Prynne, taken straight from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter . As Tituba tells Hester’s story, Maryse Condé similarly returns to Tituba her own voice to
tell her historic story, as demonstrated by the almost defiant “I/Me” in the title Moi, Tituba,
Sorcière . The women authors affirm their own voices by writing while participating in a female
collective that binds protagonist to author and author to author. In the novels of this study,
female characters are reliant upon each other for a subjecthood that is achieved by re-creating the
women as subjects in their own narratives. They initiate each other into subjecthood though a
dialogic experience that creates narrative communities. 22
CHAPTER TWO:
Community of the Exiled or the Loss of the Mother
This chapter engages three novels, Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl (1977) and
Gwendolen (1989) [later reprinted as The Family (1990)] 6, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Le
Quimboiseur l’avait dit [As the Sorcerer Said ] (1980), for their portrayals of young female protagonists who, due to economic circumstances and familial responsibilities, are “exiled” to communities outside of their birth villages in Nigeria and the Caribbean (specifically Jamaica and Guadeloupe). The comparison of these novels reveals how the two authors interrogate the role of origin (mother, motherland, “Moder Kontry”) as a social and mythic signifier. For the protagonists of Gwendolen and Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit , the mother countries of England and
France first represent opportunity and possibility; but upon arrival, the unraveling of myth and illusion is replaced by a reality of obstacles and limits symbolized in the form of the rejecting and betraying mother. The intertextual crossings of these three texts point to a way in which young female protagonists can successfully navigate the experience of exile: their path to a sense of belonging lies in the protagonists’ successful participation in female communities not founded upon shared native cultures or languages or origins but on shared geographies and experiences, in effect forcing the reader to reflect upon a comparison of natural or native community (village, family) with artificial or foreign community (city, cross-cultural, multi-linguistic).
6 Jacqueline Brice-Finch writes as a footnote to her article “The Magic of Motherhood: Buchi Emecheta and the Caribbean Bildungsroman”: “In a telephone conversation with the author, Emecheta stated that she entitled the novel Gwendolen and prefers this title to the Braziller title The Family , for two reasons: the novel is the young girl’s story, and her parents cannot pronounce properly their older daughter’s name” (431). 23
Emecheta’s The Slave Girl is the story of young Ojebeta who upon the death of both her parents is removed from her village and sold into slavery by her older brother Okolie. All of the slave children who comprise Ojebeta’s new family have forgotten where they came from, as manifested in their inability to recall their “original" families, villages, languages, or customs.
Ojebeta tries to hold onto her individual self by retaining the charms of her childhood given to her by her mother, so that they might help her to remember her identity and origins. While struggling to maintain individual selves, the slave girls create a new feminine community that helps them endure their oppression. In depicting these two communities (traditional village and the marketplace), Emecheta contrasts the joy of one's own native or original community
(Ojebeta’s village of Ibuza) with an externally, forcibly, and artificially created one (Ma
Palagada’s slave girls in Onitsha). In The Slave Girl , Emecheta illustrates the potential for female community to resist patriarchy, as well as how women/girls collectively enforce patriarchy, as Ma Palagada’s slave girls have interiorized her gaze and force each other to follow
“the rules.” While the novel points to how female community can successfully alleviate the oppression of women and their subservient economic status, the novel is also pessimistic in its argument that black women are always “slaves,” no matter their legal or social status. The last lines of the novel, after Ojebeta is freed from one form of slavery by her husband's payment to the son of her master, underline this point:
Every woman, whether slave or free, must marry. All her life a woman always
belonged to some male. At birth you were owned by your people, and when you
were sold you belonged to a new master, when you grew up your new master who 24
had paid something for you would control you…Ojebeta, now a woman of thirty-
five, was changing masters. (112, 179)
While the women can offer some solace to each other, they ultimately fail to stay together to
disrupt the social order or to create a new community that will enduringly alleviate female
oppression.
Perhaps the most hopeful novel of the three I explore in this chapter, Gwendolen is the
story of a young Caribbean girl who immigrates with her family to London. While London is
nothing like the mythic city of opportunity and riches that her Jamaican relatives and neighbors
tell her it will be, Gwendolen eventually succeeds, after much struggle, in creating for herself a
strong community of support comprised of other black female immigrants. This new feminine
immigrant community replaces Gwendolen’s “native” community and stands in as support when
her biological family betrays her; the possibilities of feminine community are symbolized in the
Yoruba name Gwendolen gives her daughter: “Iyamide” or “my anything-nice-you-can-think-of-
in-a-woman’s-form is here” (178). Gwendolen finds the emotional support she needs in the few
African women who come to her aid in London: her Nigerian neighbor Gladys Odowis and the
Ghanaian nurse Ama. For these women characters, the shared experience of being “black” in a foreign, white country creates feelings of community that transcend geographic origins, native customs, and different languages.
The third novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit, describes the
tragedies that threaten a young Guadeloupean girl who leaves her island village for Paris in
search of intellectual and emotional fulfillment, contrasting the “natural” female bonds and
friendships that Zétou had in her Caribbean village with the lack of connection women have in 25 the European metropole. As she reminisces on happier times on her island, Zétou explores the familiar and cultural disasters that have resulted in her betrayal and hospitalization. Unlike
Gwendolen who is able to make for herself a new community and surrogate family based upon shared experiences with other young women in the hospital, Zétou retreats deeper and deeper into herself, seeking solace in the isolation of madness. Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit illustrates the betrayals and greed (by nation and family) that halt the development of the young woman, symbolized most forcefully through the betrayal of the protagonist by her mother.
Buchi Emecheta: The Slave Girl
Much of the West African writing produced in the 1960s and 70s reflected themes of social and political independence from Europe, including Ousmane Sembène’s L’Harmattan
(1963), Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965), Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost
(1965), and Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les Soleils des independences [The Suns of Independence ]
(1968). In “Slavery and Etiological Discourse,” Modupe Olaogun describes the sentiments echoed by many post-independence authors: “the feeling as articulated in much of the literature was of betrayal by an independence that had brought many of the new African countries a myriad of political, economic, and social problems” (171). Rather than focus upon Africa’s immediate political realities, Buchi Emecheta sets her novel The Slave Girl in the colonial past, allowing her to explore, with her readers, past experiences as a means of understanding the development of postcolonial beliefs and practices. The Slave Girl is the fourth of Emecheta’s novels, but it functions as the first by going backwards in time; whereas Emecheta’s earlier novels are autobiographical and treat her own experiences as an immigrant in London, The Slave 26
Girl transports the reader to the small Nigerian village of Ibuza in the early 1900s to tell the story of Emecheta’s mother:
My mother, Alice Ogbanje Ojebeta Emecheta, that laughing, loud-voiced, six-
foot-tall, black glossy slave girl… my laughing mother, who forgave a brother
that sold her to a relative in Onitsha so that he could use the money to buy ichafo
siliki – silk head ties for his coming of age dance… my mother, that slave girl
who had the courage to free herself and return to her people in Ibuza, and still
stooped and allowed the culture of her people to re-enslave her, and then
permitted Christianity to tighten the knot of enslavement (Head Above Water , 3).
The protagonist of The Slave Girl is one who is caught between two times and two cultures: the
traditions of Igbo culture prior to colonialism and the teachings of the British colonialists and
Evangelical missionaries during colonialism.
The story of The Slave Girl is the story of Alice Ogbanje Obejeta, born in 1910 after her
parents already have two sons. Because they have lost countless girl babies over the years,
Obejeta’s parents are very grateful for her birth. Unlike many families who might have prized
sons more, Ojebeta’s birth is highly desired and she is a very esteemed daughter. “Girl children
were not normally particularly prized creatures, but Okwuekwu [Obejeta’s mother] had lost so
many that they now assumed a quality of preciousness” (The Slave Girl , 19). Emecheta
emphasizes how ‘special’ Ojebeta is to her family by the many ways that her parents spoil her
(still nursing her at six years old, protecting her with cowries and bells, and decorating her with
special tattoos). The story of Obejeta’s birth, the great lengths her parents go to assure that
Obejeta will stay and not leave in the way of the previous girl babies, and the tattoos and charms 27 her parents give her all indicate to the reader that Obejeta is a girl-child highly prized by her parents in spite of and because of her female gender. The tattoos and charms are physical manifestations that symbolize her parents’ gratitude for Obejeta’s arrival and the many hopes and expectations they have for her.
Emecheta uses the first fifty pages to explain to the non-Nigerian reader the history of
Ojebeta’s culture and the rich stories that Ojebeta will be forced to leave behind in Ibuza. For six years, Obejeta is valued and prized by her parents until they die from the German nerve gas used in World War I. According to Emecheta in her autobiography Head Above Water , “the early Europeans told our people that what was killing them was only influenza. And what the typical Igbo ear made of the word ‘influenza’ was Felenza” (214). 7 While Obejeta’s family has already been influenced indirectly by colonialism (the young men leaving the villages for “white man’s work” in the cities, new diseases infecting the neighboring villages and markets), this is the first instance where colonialism directly touches the six-year old’s life. While Emecheta does not attribute Obejeta’s later enslavement to any one cause, she carefully provides her reader with multiple connections that together led to the devaluing of traditional African community and allowed for the persistence of the institution of slavery.
Obejeta’s parents die just as she is passing through the critical stage of dependent infancy to the period of young girlhood when Obejeta would have begun to interact more with her age- group and establish an identity for herself within her community. Upon their parents’ death,
Obejeta’s brother Okolie sells her to Ma Palagada for eight pounds so that he might buy colorful scarves for his coming-of-age ceremony. Okolie’s need for instant gratification and his self-
7 Some critics, such as Florence Stratton, have written that Obejeta’s parents die from an influenza epidemic, thus failing to read that this was a colonial explanation created to cover for the German nerve gas that was used in World War I. 28 centeredness blind him to the greater profit Obejeta could bring by her trading in palm oil or palm kernels (like the girl Obejeta’s age whom Okolie sees trading palm kernels in Onitsha) or by later profiting from her twenty-pound bride price upon Obejeta’s marriage. The new currency and larger Onitsha market create the opportunity for Okolie to leave his village and sell his sister, rather than draw upon the more traditional economic possibilities. Emecheta uses this desire for quick money on the part of Okolie and his failure to see the greater long-term value potential to remind readers of the other young men who would sell out their country (their brothers and
“sisters”) to the European colonialists for quick money.
Obejeta lives as a slave for many years, learning valuable market skills and even learning to read and write through the instruction of the Church Missionary Society. Eventually, after her mistress dies, Obejeta returns home to her relatives in the village of Ibuza and starts a profitable business selling palm oil. She marries Jacob, an Ibuza man living in Lagos, and moves with him into the city. When Jacob and Obejeta fail to have children, their families decide that they must pay back the eight pounds to the Palagada family for which Obejeta was originally bought. Once this debt has been repaid, Obejeta kneels in front of Jacob and thanks her “new master” (178), delighting in the face that she “belong[s] to Jacob body and soul” (176). The reader is faced with the problem of deciding whether Emecheta intends this ending to be happy or ironic, and certainly many feminist readers are tempted to read it as the latter.
While much of the literary criticism, particularly feminist criticism, treating The Slave
Girl has described it as an indictment of slavery and the imbalanced gender roles of Nigerian society, a more careful investigation would find that Emecheta has not written a unilateral condemnation of the institution of slavery or even a denunciation of those who profited from it. 29
Some characters in the novel whose economic success is dependent upon slave labor are even portrayed almost lovingly, and in this way Emecheta is able to show that slavery is not just an outside institution willfully imposed but that it has human faces: both in the slaves and the slave- owners. In some episodes, Emecheta appears to be arguing the advantages and opportunities that slavery can offer, particularly in contrast to the difficulties of rural life. The realities of having plenty of food and new clothes make Obejeta’s status and life as a slave less sufferable to her.
Emecheta shows how completely Obejeta has ‘bought into’ her status/identity as a slave, feeling gratitude for the slightest kindness shown her. When Ma Palagada gives the slave girls some discarded, damaged muslin to make European dresses for themselves, Obejeta thinks “It was times like this that she felt grateful for having been bought by [Ma Palagada]… at time like this, it was as if she hardly even cared whether she ever went back [to Ibuza] or not” (107). As
Katherine Frank notes, “perhaps the most dangerous aspect of [Obejeta’s] servitude at the
Palagada’s is that it is not an entirely abhorrent life… Indeed, there is much to lull Obejeta into an acceptance of her slavery” (481). At this point in the novel, it begins to appear that Obejeta stands in for Nigeria, lulled into an acceptance of colonialism for its seemingly quick benefits and economic resources while in reality all is done for the benefit of the colonizers:
The British claimed they brought transportation and communication systems,
education, and technology…but the roads and railways were used to ship raw
materials to British industry. Moreover, they were built by taxing natives and
using forced labor. All real economic power was concentrated in the hands of
foreign firms. (McElroy) 30
Those who assisted the British received quick rewards, but the long- term effects on the Nigerian
people (higher taxes, more expensive goods, a threat of starvation) overshadowed any short-term
benefits.
Obejeta’s failure to abhor her condition of slavery reappears again critically at the end of
the novel, and is perhaps a hint to the readers of how to read the novel’s conclusion. Obejeta is grateful for the benefits that come from her position as a slave, just as she will be grateful for the social benefits that come from her role as a married woman later in the novel, despite any oppression suffered under either slavery or patriarchy. Emecheta’s work undoes the premise that all slave narratives are narratives of liberation; while The Slave Girl hints at the potential for
great female rebellion, we realize that Obejeta’s narrative will not be a story of great female
rebellion or liberation.
Emecheta’s portrayal of slavery highlights some of the social and political
transformations brought about by colonialism. While the transformations create even more
injustices for women, at the same time one of the advantages might be that the new markets and
new currencies allow some women to occupy positions of more power: Ma Palagada and Ma
Mee are examples of these new, successful market-women. However, their wealth and social
position are dependent upon their being accomplices to female enslavement (70). In her article
on The Slave Girl , Bella Brodzki argues that Emecheta depicts slavery as a fundamental feature
of the African political and social economy, but Emecheta uses the novel to explore the locally
and historically specific Nigerian aspects of slavery: “For Emecheta, slavery is inextricably tied
to sexual oppression, a specific and traditional form of oppression that was reinforced and
extended through the more generalized subjugation of African people by Europeans, but the 31
terms of which must be relativized, localized, and historicized” (48). Emecheta intentionally
reveals that it was not just white Europeans who were buying and trading slaves, but that
Nigerians within the country were also participating in slave trading as a result of economic
realities brought about by colonialism. Not only do the market-women participate in the
institution of slavery, but also Emecheta tells us that years earlier Ojebeta’s grandfather had
raided neighboring villages and taken young girls like Obejeta to sell as slaves to Europeans.
Ma Mee states that buying and selling people could not be helped but instead argues for it as a benefit or service to the country: “‘Where would we be without slave labour, and where would some of these unwanted children be without us?’” (64). As Emecheta writes, slavery
“might be evil, but it was a necessary evil” (64). Once again, it is difficult to decipher whether
Emecheta means the reader to take this statement as sincere or ironic. While some critics have argued that it reflects Emecheta’s own ambivalence about slavery, it would appear that Emecheta makes a clear stance against any benefit from slavery by the end of the novel (again comparing the short-term benefits for a select few to the long-term problems for many). Emecheta makes it clear by the end of the novel that Obejeta’s story has a more nationalist purpose, standing in for a story of Nigeria. Obejeta’s sale and betrayal by her brother is representative of the way that
Nigeria was “sold” to the British by those who saw quick economic benefit for themselves:
Before the end of the story, the reader gradually comes aware of the fact that
Obejeta is Nigeria, ‘enslaved’ by the British through her betrayal by her own
people for mere bauble. Obejeta’s kith and kin, those to become the colonized,
lacked the moral strength and the foresight to present a unified front to fight the 32
new, black, elitist force, which, suicidally, would entrench British mores in the
society. (Ogunyemi, 72)
While some economic benefit may result for a select few from slavery and while it can create new possibilities for both the oppressed and the oppressors, the dangers Emecheta presents are that slavery (and colonialism) seduces its participants by providing short-term benefits while taking away traditions, cultures, and a sense of origin or belonging. However, as Emecheta will make clear at the end of the novel, slavery is not the worst institution to change Obejeta’s life.
At the end of the novel, most of the slaves have profited from their experiences of slavery and upon Ma Palagada’s death, the slaves have, effectively, inherited the market: “Jieunuka was now a successful businessman in Otu and had married Nwayinuzo; [Obejeta’s] friend Amana had also gone into business and had a big shop, and a car, and though she was now widowed was fine and happy” (177). If Obejeta is not as successful as the others, it is because she has made the choice to re-enslave herself to her native culture and the Christian religion; however,
Emecheta makes the point that Obejeta is very happy with her life, that she chooses marriage over economic success, and would not change her current life for a wealthier existence. Just as
Obejeta was able to experience gratitude during her life as a slave and was grateful for the benefits it offered, Obejeta has now just as readily accepted the oppression of tradition (her return to her village and subsequent marriage to Jacob) as well as a new female subjugation under Christianity. Emecheta differentiates between physical and social bondage versus emotional slavery. She writes in Head Above Water :
The body can be enslaved but the greatest type of enslavement is the one most
black African countries are going through at the moment: the enslavement of 33
ideas. At the end of the book Obejeta Ogbanje was happy to be married in
church, happy that her bride price had been paid, but we readers know it was her
embracing Christianity, and the way Christianity had been preached to her, that
was her greatest enslavement. (191)
In an interview with Rolf Solberg, Buchi Emecheta further discusses the oppressive effect of
Christianity on African women:
You’ll remember that this was during the late Victorian times, while the
colonization was at its highest. [The colonizer] brought his own values on top of
what we already had in Africa, so that the position of the African women got
worse without changing the oppressive traditional situation in which she was
before, he brought a second oppression so it is like a double yoke. 8
One voice warns Obejeta about so readily accepting the initial social and economic benefits that may mask oppression. After Ma Palagada’s death, a fellow slave girl Amanna tells her friend
Obejeta to ”go to your people, and eat the mushroom of freedom if they cannot afford to buy you meat” (146). In Amanna’s advice, Emecheta seems to counter any of the previous perception she may have given that slavery has its benefits. While in some respects, like food and clothing, slavery might be capable of offering some quick resources (like the Christianity brought by the evangelical missionaries), its greatest threat is a stripping of pride and identity. In Amanna’s words, it would be better to be hungry and free, then full and owned. Unfortunately, by returning to Ibuza, choosing Christianity, and marrying Jacob, Obejeta chooses to give up both economic fortune and emotional freedom.
8 Interview, London, March 1980, as cited by Rolf Solber, 259. 34
The Slave Girl connects Emecheta to her mother’s story, but it is also connected to an
even larger community of women, even by its dedication to a woman who was one of
Emecheta’s early publishers: “to Margaret Busby for her believing in me.” Emecheta includes in
Obejeta’s story other accounts of how women support each other and how they often mistreat each other. Contrary to what readers might expect from a novel about slavery, Ma Palagada, the woman who trades slaves, is not painted unilaterally as a villain. At times, she is even depicted warmly for her success as a businesswoman, and she becomes a surrogate mother figure to
Obejeta. However, Emecheta never lets the reader forget that Ma Palagada’s success stems from her ruthlessness and business savvy, and her profit is based upon her acquiring child slaves to perform her labor; in fact, Ma Palagada unfeelingly differentiates between her “bought girls” and the “daughters of ‘human beings’” (89). Yet still, there is some sense of loss when Ma
Palagada’s business empire collapses with her death.
One of the most striking characteristics of Ma Palagada is that she is not only economically successful, but she is able to circumvent patriarchal restriction, most ironically noted in her reversal of a common convention: the woman’s taking of her husband’s name. As
Modupe Olaogun points out, Ma Palagada is “potentially threatened by social subjugation and economic exploitation” as a woman in this patriarchal society (187). However, contrary to cultural convention, we find Ma Palagada’s husband is referred to by his wife’s name and thus is called Pa Palagada, and their children are similarly named Palagada. What is particularly noteworthy is that Palagada is a name connected to no man (neither father nor husband); it has no masculine or traditional origin, as its onomatopoeic source is the sound of Ma’s legs when she walks: 35
[The people] said that when she dropped those legs in walking they went
palagada, palagada, like kolanut pods falling on dry leaves; and because of this
onomatopoeic description of how she threw those long legs forward the explosive
name “Palagada,” which was not the name her parents had given her, stuck. So
popular and so wealthy, so charitable was she in her Christian beliefs, that
anybody connected with her took on the same name. Her domestic slaves were
Palagada girls or Palagada men, her children by her two husbands were
Palagadas, and even her last husband, who came from over the sea and spoke Ibo
in a funny way, was known locally as Pa Palagada. (70)
Ma Palagada has a name given to her by the people for the way she walks, and all those related to her and owned by her take on this name.
Not only does Ma Palagada successfully circumvent the patriarchal conventions that make children and property a male’s possession (thereby assuming the husband’s or father’s name), she also detaches herself from any sense of origin or beginning. Ma Palagada hides the fact that like Obejeta she is from the small village of Ibuza. “She did not enlighten them that
Obejeta came from the same place as her own parents; a statement like that could be used against her in a place like Otu market” (71). While the market creates new values and new currencies, it also allows for new identities and can veil over un-useful origins, allowing Ma Palagada to create for herself an identity entirely of her own design.
All of Ma Palagada’s slaves, with the exception of Obejeta, forget their original villages along with the native customs and beliefs they left behind there. Chiago, the oldest of the female slaves, has no memory of her birth village or family. “Where exactly her village was to be found 36 was now shrouded in obscurity… The picture of her family had dimmed” (60-61). Perhaps this failure to hold onto a sense of origin is what enables the girls to accept so quickly the Palagadas’ residence as their home. Amanna, a slave the same age as Obejeta, can no longer remember what her previous home may have been like or where it was or even what her birth name was:
“She could not even remember what part of Calabar she had originally come from; it was Ma
Palagada who had given her the Ibo name Amanna, meaning someone who did not know her own father… Amanna did not know a word of her native Efik but chattered like a monkey in
Ibo” (89). The female slaves are not alone in losing their sense of origin; the male slaves similarly are given new Ibo names and lose any sense of their native lands:
It was said that Pa Palagada had bought the men from some Potokis [Portuguese]
who were leaving the country and returning to their own land. The two, who
were young boys at the time, could not remember where they had originally come
from, so they were given Ibo names and were put to work on the Palagada farms.
(60)
This failure to retain a sense of connectedness and origin is similarly echoed by the young men who leave their farm work in the villages to work in the cities with the Europeans at the “olu
Oyibo” (white man’s jobs). While it becomes clear that the experience of slavery destroys the slaves’ sense of connectedness, belonging, and origin, one could also argue that the institution of slavery stands in for the institution of colonialism, which similarly breaks down a national understanding of identity, origin, and belonging.
While Obejeta remains the most connected to her family and birth village, even she is not immune to the changes that take place in the Onitsha market. Obejeta also loses some of her 37
‘native’ traits: “Gone was her abrasive Ibuza accent; she now spoke like a girl born in Onitsha, with rounded ‘Rs’ and a slowness of delivery” (107). However, Obejeta differs from the other slave girls for her ability to maintain a sense of connectedness to Ibuza. Part of what gives
Obejeta her sense of self is that she was sold at an age when she was old enough to understand that she had been valued and loved by her parents, and old enough to be able to remember the stories of whom she is and from where she came. “The other girls, on the other hand, could not even remember where they came from, nor did Ma divulge where they had originally been bought. They all knew vague stories of their origins but could not point out exactly where their villages were. Obejeta could…” (132). Ojebeta retains her individuality and connectedness to
Ibuza by keeping her cowries and bells; in fact, later in the novel Emecheta even refers to these as Obejeta’s “identity charms” (166), and the chapter where the cowries and bells are cut off is entitled “Lost Identity.” While the bells and cowries may not protect Obejeta from the forces of greed and oppression in modern society, they successfully function in keeping Ojebeta connected to her family, as well as her village and her culture. “Each one of them she came to identify with a particular member of her family… the biggest bell was her father, the next in line her mother…. When things became difficult she would call upon them one by one to help her out”
(89). The identity charms keep Obejeta from being cut off from her native village and family.
Because of her tattoos, Obejeta also wears her identity (as a Western Ibo) on her face, unlike the other slave girls:
All over her features were traced intricate tattoos, the pattern of spinach leaves,
with delicate branches running down the bridge of her nose, spreading out on her
forehead and ending up at the top of her ears. On each cheek was drawn the 38
outline of a large spinach leaf looking ready to be picked…. If she got lost her
people would always know her, for although the patterns on her face might seem
madness here to these Ibos from the East who frequented Out Onitsha market,
among the Western Ibos called the Aniochas it was a distinctive and meaningful
design. (45)
The tattoos, cowries, and bells are visual markers that keep Obejeta connected to her place of origin and to her family, and she keeps the charms with her throughout her time at the Palagadas.
For Ojebeta, “it was going to be difficult for her to walk and swing her arms like everybody else.
It was going to take her a long time to be somebody else” (72). However, Obejeta does become someone else by the end of the novel; in fact, she becomes a very emphatic someone else who will no longer answer to the name “Obejeta.”
After struggling for so long to maintain a sense of connectedness to Ibuza and her native culture, has Obejeta lost her “native” identity at the end of the novel? She goes to the white men’s church, responds with “Ma” and “Sa” rather than “Eh” as was her village’s custom, and she changes her name to “Alice.” “Now if you called her just Ogbanje, or just Obejeta, she would not answer; but if you said Ogbanje Alice, she would flash her snow-white teeth at you and greet you” (154). The name “Obejeta” means “did her journey start today?” (Ogunyemi,
71). Obejeta’s name emphasizes the important role that journeying has taken in her life:
Obejeta’s father journeys far away to find the identity charms that will protect his daughter;
Okolie takes Obejeta on the journey to the Onitsha market to sell her; Obejeta will journey back to Ibuza to rejoin her relatives; and finally, she will journey with Jacob to start their new life in
Lagos. “Ogbanje” is the Igbo term for the spirit-children whom villagers believe are destined to 39 die and be reborn repeatedly to the same mother 9 (as Obejeta’s mother has repeatedly lost all of her girl infants in the past). However, with the changing of her name, Obejeta loses the roots/origins of her identity (as symbolized by the meaning of her name) and Obejeta’s new name “Alice” hearkens to a more nonsensical journey taken by a young white British girl in
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland .
Emecheta shows that while the economics of colonialism make possible Ma Palagada’s identity as a successful woman, at the same time colonialism deprives many others (men and women) of individuality and identity and pride. Ma Palagada throws the money for his sister at
Okolie, and for a moment Okolie loses any sense of pride in his scramble to collect this new currency:
In the intensity of his search he forgot his dignity, forgot what it was he had done.
All the human pride he had – pride that he was a man, pride that he was the best
horn blower of his age-group, pride that he was Ibuza’s greatest orator – all was
submerged in his urge to find money, and more money. His attitude recalled those
days when it was easy for the European to urge the chief of a powerful village to
wage war on a weaker one in order to obtain slaves for the New World. (73)
Identity becomes not a right to all but a privilege for some. “She [Obejeta] did not know yet that no slave retained any identity: whatever identity they had was forfeited the day money was paid for them” (72). Unlike the other slave men/boys and women/girls, Obejeta, with the help of her identity charms and tattoos, is able to maintain a sense of self and uniqueness throughout the
9 The ogbanje myth is discussed further in Florence Stratton’s essay “The Shallow Grave: Archetypes of Female Experience in African Fiction.” See page 101. 40 time of her slavery; however, once she ascribes to Christianity and loses her identity charms, this strength of self is weakened.
While Emecheta shows the potential for power if women are able to collectively resist their oppression, she also gives several examples of how the women and girls collectively enforce their subjugation. First, Chiago, the oldest slave girl, has interiorized the gaze of the
Palagadas and enforces their rules among the younger girls. She makes sure the girls perform their tasks at the market, and ultimately she assists in building Ma Palagada’s empire (and will later inherit it as Pa Palagada’s mistress when Ma Palagada dies). Just as the Europeans were able to make the chiefs wage war on one another, Pa Palagada is able to make Obejeta and her closest friend Amanna turn on each other for his entertainment; they tell on each other’s misdeeds and then physically fight each other while he watches and encourages (97). One of the strongest examples of female-to-female cruelty is Ma Palagada’s daughter Victoria who is brutal and hateful to Obejeta and all the other slave girls. “ ‘You good-for-nothing slave! You bush slave!’” (114). Victoria is the one who ultimately destroys Obejeta’s charms and tries to prevent
Obejeta from acquiring her freedom. “ ‘You can’t go. We bought you. You’ll be treated as a runaway slave. I’ll see to that. You must come with me’ ” (144). Victoria does not view
Obejeta is anything other than a slave and therefore property, and so, even though the men (Pa
Palagada and Clifford) have extended her freedom to Obejeta, Victoria tries to intimidate and keep Obejeta from returning to Ibuza in order to continue to profit from Obejeta’s labor.
However, there are more instances in the novel of the girls and women supporting each other; one example comes at the end of the novel when the reader learns that the slave girls have created a way of supporting one another economically as they help each other to save and hide 41
away extra money. “Whatever little amounts had come their way they had kept together in this
common fund… they buried their money, to save it being discovered, and because they knew
that if they did it that way nobody would tell on anyone else” (142-143). Chiago even gives
Obejeta her share to help Obejeta return home.
In The Slave Girl , the most powerful illustration of the collective power of women, as
well as their struggle in self-determination, comes through its allusion to the Igbo Women’s War
of 1929. 10 In the 1920s, women in Nigeria bore the brunt of the economic depression the country was experiencing under British colonial regime. While their husbands were put in prison or forced to work in labor camps, the women were left to till the land alone and try to make money through commercial trade in the market. Women began to react against the increasing emasculation of their men, as well as their own increased financial difficulties (Akpan and Ekpo, 41). In 1929, tens of thousands of market women in southern Igboland protested against the British imposed tax laws (Van Allen, 165). While the women originally mobilized around the issue of women’s taxation, their demands soon included the abolition of Native
Courts (or inclusion of women in them) and the return of all white men to their countries (Van
Allen, 175).
Women had in place a traditional means of protesting any men against whom they had filed a complaint. Women’s political power was dependent upon the solidarity of women and found its expression in meetings, female market networks, kinship groups, and women’s use of
10 The study by Ekwere Out Akpan and Violetta L. Ekpo is compelling in its argument to call these events the “Women’s War of 1929” rather than the “Aba Riots,” as they were labeled by the British colonial administration. The label of “riots” allowed the British regime to depict the women’s rebellion as the uncontrolled, unorganized, and frenzied mob behavior of irrational women; it also allowed the British to justify their cold-blooded killing of the women under Public Order Ordinance Section 3, which made riot acts punishable by shooting at sight. According to Akpan and Ekpo, “it neatly removes the women and their universal thirst for self-determination” (1). 42
strike or boycotts to affect change. If women wanted to single out a man for his wrongs, they
could “sit on” or “make war on” him:
To “sit on” or “make war on” a man involved gatherings at his compound,
sometimes late at night, dancing, singing scurrilous songs which detailed the
women’s grievances against him and often called his manhood into question,
banging on his hut with the pestles women used for pounding yams, and perhaps
demolishing his hut or plastering it with mud and roughing him up a bit. A man
might be sanctioned in this way for mistreating his wife, for violating the
women’s market rules, or for letting his cows eat the women’s crops. The women
would stay at his hut throughout the day, and late into the night, if necessary, until
he repented or promised to mend his ways. (Van Allen, 170)
For these methods to be effective, especially the boycotts and strikes, all the women had to
participate together and their power came from the extensive networks market women had in
place. Unlike men who could assume individual titles that would have influence in the
community, the solidarity of women was essential to their power. Later, in The Joys of
Motherhood , Emecheta depicts the main character Nnu Ego and her co-wife Adaku attempting to make use of these women’s methods of collective boycott and strike, but in their story the times have already changed and in colonial and postcolonial life, the former collective strength of women has deteriorated; as such, the strike is unsuccessful. The Women’s War of 1929 showed the speed and action that were taken by a politically unrecognized and underestimated group.
However, even after the Women’s War of 1929, women remained excluded from political leadership in Nigeria. 43
British colonialism greatly weakened the traditional roles of collective power that Igbo women had shared. The collective action method that was especially useful for women was gradually replaced by an emphasis on individual achievement mostly based on wealth and education. English and Western education became necessary for political leadership, and
Western education was more accessible to men than to women. Even when girls did go to school, they received a different sort of education, as seen by Obejeta’s education by the Church
Missionary society, that involved domestic skills, Bible instruction, and training to be Christian wives and mothers (not workers and politically-engaged citizens). “The British effectively eliminated the women’s abilities to protect their own interests and made them dependent upon men for protection against men” (Van Allen, 178). The British Victorian values that came with the colonialists and missionaries to Nigeria were grounded in a belief that only men would be active in politics, and so the institutions that endured during and after colonialism did not protect or even allow for women’s political roles. While pre-colonialism and for a short while during colonialism, the collective action and support of women gave them power, this influence was ultimately reduced and replaced by a more masculine, Western, individualistic approach.
Many critics appear so intent on “finding” the feminism in Emecheta’s works that they give a concrete example of what Christopher Miller describes in Eurocentric critics who find what they are looking for in a work, even when it might not be there (Theories of Africans ).
Rose Mezu applies Lacanian Deleuzian theory to Emecheta’s novels and wrongfully states that
Emecheta depicts a patriarchal system where all men are slave masters and oppressors who
“perpetually produce women in chains” (133). Mezu writes: “in Emecheta’s worldview, all men
– husbands, fathers, and brothers—are slave masters and tyrannical oppressors; the only option 44
open to women is to choose the lesser of all these evils” (143). (As a mother of sons, it would be
shocking if Emecheta did indeed ascribe to such a worldview.) Ernest Emenyonu writes that
men “are beasts in Buchi Emecheta’s literary perception” (253). Similarly, Katherine Frank
writes that the “slave masters, the tyrannical oppressors, in The Slave Girl are all men” (482); in
her eagerness to pinpoint the “enemy,” Frank fails to recall that Ma Mee and Ma Palagada are
powerful examples of female slave owners. In her article “What They Told Buchi Emecheta,”
Cynthia Ward addresses the many critical readings of African literature that point to “traditional
African culture” and masculinity as the source of women’s oppression, then “looking to Western
feminist consciousness and Western education for emancipation from the ‘slavery of tradition’”
(85). Ward describes these readings as “essentialist” in their reproduction of an image of the
African woman as “essentially oppressed” (86). Buchi Emecheta problematizes these easy
scapegoats for the oppression of women by writing stories of women’s lives in pre-colonial and
colonial settings, in the village and in the city, in colonized Nigeria and in the colonizer’s
London.
One of the benefits of setting The Slave Girl in the beginning of British colonialism is the
possibility of depicting how Nigerian men similarly suffered a loss of identity at the hands of
colonialism. The men were leaving their farm jobs and heading to the city in search of white
man’s work, olu Oyibo, (and we later see has happened to men in Lagos in Joys of Motherhood ).
While the women collectively resisted the British tax laws based upon their force as a community, we see in The Slave Girl the Nigerian men taking more individualistic paths, like
Ojolie looking out for himself or the older brother who shirks his duties as first son and settles in
Lagos. In all of Emecheta’s novels, one sex is not portrayed unilaterally: there are oppressive 45
men and oppressive women, nurturing men and nurturing women. By depicting the lives of
successful female characters (Uteh, Ma Palagada, Ma Mee, Amanna), Emecheta shows that it is
possible for Nigerian women to succeed in life and find emotional and financial fulfillment.
Perhaps it is not so much society that is to blame for Ojebeta’s enslavement but first her
orphanage and then her education under the Evangelical missionaries. The blame for her
orphanage goes to colonialism and the gas that was unleashed during World War I, and the
second blame goes to the British and American missionaries in Nigeria. While Obejeta’s initial
education into reading and writing is very useful in giving her some power and prestige, her
second education into Christian femininity has the opposite effect. The sole purpose of her
second education is to teach Obejeta how to bake, sew, embroider, and live within the confines
of her female sphere as a wife and mother.
Katherine Frank points out in her article “The Death of the Slave Girl” that there are three
inter-related issues or problems often presented in Emecheta’s fictions: the oppression of African
women; female education; and the effects of Western development on women’s lives as shown
through a female Nigerian point of view (478). While The Slave Girl explores the ways in which
a Christian education enslaves Obejeta into a double oppression, Gwendolen demonstrates how a
lack of education enslaves an entire family. In Emecheta’s later novel, removed from the
traditional village environment, poverty and illiteracy threaten the mother-daughter relationship
and keep immigrant cultures divided and isolated. “I have no sympathy for a woman who deserts her children, neither do I have sympathy for a woman who insists on staying in a marriage with a brute of a man, simply to be respectable,” states Buchi Emecheta in her essay
“feminism” (175). In Gwendolen , Emecheta creates just this woman: a mother who deserts her 46
children (twice!) and then stays in her marriage, even after her daughter Gwendolen is molested
by Gwendolen’s father.
Buchi Emecheta: Gwendolen
Gwendolen Brillianton is “always already” isolated from her mother, father, and village
by having been given a name that they cannot pronounce: “She was christened Gwendolen. But
her Mammy could not pronounce it, neither could her Daddy nor his people” (1). The name
immediately takes Gwendolen out of her native Caribbean village and places her in the realm of
Welsh language, British history, and English literature. According to Charlotte Mary Yonge’s
History of Christian Names (1863) (which George Eliot consulted in naming her female
protagonist Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda) , the name “Gwendolen” stems from Welsh:
“Gwen” is used in the double sense of the color white and of a woman and “dolen” for ring or
loop. 11 While the name “Gwendolen” first appeared as a literary character in the form
Gwendoloena in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work, Historia Regum Britanniae (1135), 12 the name
“Gwendolen” later appeared in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1874-1876) as the selfishly
determined protagonist who is forced by economic circumstances into an oppressive marriage to
a sadistic older man. The name then appeared again as the character Gwendolen Fairfax, a
confident city girl who provided Oscar Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest (1894) with
the opportunity to discuss marriage and courtship and criticize inane Victorian attitudes.
Clearly, Emecheta’s use of the name Gwendolen is ironic (if only for its literal meaning
of ‘white’) and meaningful, but the author gives no reason or explanation for why Gwendolen’s
11 Note 10, page 741 in the 2002 Modern Library Classics edition of Daniel Deronda.
47 parents chose her name, nor why she (the author) may have. Yet, the act of naming is significant and occupies an important place in Emecheta’s writing (as we have seen in Obejeta’s name in
The Slave Girl and will see in Nnu Ego’s name in The Joys of Motherhood ). Emecheta states in her interview with Joseph Ogundele:
In Nigeria and African situations, especially in our own culture, we don’t just give
people names. Our names have to identify with something… Gwendolen
Brilianton is a name that sounds Victorian. You would assume that it is
somebody coming out of the Victorian high ball. The satire in this book is that
Mr. Brillianton, someone with such a dauntless name, stutters and can’t even
express himself. (449)
Gwendolen’s Victorian name shows the extent to which the Jamaican parents are affected by cultural imperialism, going so far as to bestow upon their daughter a name that they and their neighbors cannot pronounce. Gwendolen’s name is ill-fitting and ironic for other reasons: first, her first name translates as “white woman” and secondly, her last name is Brillianton when her family is clearly far from “brilliant.” Her parents, incapable of pronouncing “Gwendolen,” refer to her as “June-June” (again, we the readers do not know why), and it is the double naming that perhaps contributes to and mirrors Gwendolen’s schizophrenic identity: no longer exclusively
Jamaican but not quite English. 13
It is this sense of not belonging and not fitting that haunts Gwendolen throughout the novel, a sentiment echoed by many immigrants and by Emecheta herself in her autobiography
Head Above Water . When Gwendolen arrives in England and the flight attendant calls her by
13 We also see this double naming and dual identity in the third novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit . 48
name, Gwendolen learns for the first time that her name is actually “Gwendolen” and not “June-
June.” “ ‘Gwendolen’, was that what people would be calling her in England? Everybody called
her June-June in Granville, in the county of St Catherine and even in Kingston” (34). The
changing of her name isolates Gwendolen from her Caribbean home, a name that she herself
must learn to recognize and to pronounce by attending British school. Gwendolen is unable to know herself and her place in the world as long as she does not know how to speak her name:
She was unsure whether to say “June-June”, her pet name, or, as her mother said,
“Grandalee”, her official name, but she knew that neither sounded anything like
that version used by the air hostess on the plane that brought her from Jamaica
over eight weeks ago… One thing that she was determined to do on her first day
[of school] was to learn how to pronounce her name right. (57).
Gwendolen’s determination to learn how to pronounce her name correctly is her first step towards creating an identity for herself and an understanding of whom she was/is/will be. "And my name not June-June. My name is Gwendolen, or Gwen. Don’t call me no June-June no more” (79). The recovery of her name is Gwendolen’s first act of self-legitimization.
The novel begins as Gwendolen’s father is forced by economic circumstances to leave
Jamaica for England in search of work. When he sends for his wife, Gwendolen is left behind to live in the Jamaican countryside with her widowed grandmother. Gwendolen senses her first betrayal as she feels that her mother is happy to leave her behind. “It looked as if her Mammy was happy to leave her behind, giving the impression that she was not really wanted” (9). In fact, Gwendolen describes the departure of her mother as “the final act of rejection life had imposed on her” (9). The theme of doubling or schism is reflected again as Gwendolen learns to 49 divide her life between the one she was living prior to her mother’s departure for England and her life after her mother’s departure.
Emecheta emphasizes the depth of Gwendolen’s rejection through her mother’s failure to write Gwendolen more than four letters in two years (18). At the same time, Emecheta points out the practical difficulties and obstructions to communication: neither Gwendolen’s parents nor her grandmother nor Gwendolen can read or write. The failure to write is a recurring problem in the novel. We later learn how remorseful Gwendolen’s mother Sonia feels for not having written
Gwendolen’s grandmother more often from England; then after Sonia leaves England for the
Caribbean to attend her mother’s funeral, Gwendolen’s mother again fails to write her husband and family back in London because of her pride and desire to conceal her illiteracy from her neighbors.
Before she went to England, she could ask the Indian letter-writer, now, with her
new sophistication, she could not bring herself to ask him again. They all knew
she’d been to London. And what a laugh to know that somebody who’d been to
England, the country in which the queen lived, the very ‘Moder Kontry’, and
stayed there years, could only recognize the numbers and was not able to write to
her husband. (115)
As Winston, Gwendolen’s father, is also unable to write, two years pass without any communication between the married couple. “They were both isolated in their illiteracy. A problem that never bothered her [Sonia] before loomed so large. Her children must learn to read and write” (118). While Sonia had initially resisted sending her daughter to school, she finally realizes the necessity of an education for her daughter, as well as for her sons. 50
Emecheta writes in Head Above Water with respect to her relationship with her own mother that “my mother did not understand me and did not see the reason for my wanting to stay
long in school. How we both suffered in those days. Poverty and ignorance can be really bad
for a mother and daughter who apparently loved each other but did not know how to react to
each other” (25). While illiteracy was not a great problem as long as families remained living
together in their local communities, the phenomenon of immigration raises new problems that
confront the families and impede communication and connection. The failure to communicate
always leads to a crisis in the novel, and each time Gwendolen suffers for this communicative
failure. Emecheta shows that Nigerian women can succeed in life and find fulfillment if they
strive for it, but that in this endeavor an education greatly helps. Katherine Frank writes in
“Women Without Men,” “education is the crucial liberating force in the lives of Emecheta’s
heroines, and in fact their degree of servitude is inversely proportional to the amount of
education they receive” (85). Emecheta states, “I want very much to further the education of
women in Africa, because I know that education really helps the women. It helps them to read
and it helps them to rear a generation. It is true that if one educates a woman, one educates a
community, whereas if one educates a man, one educates a man” (“feminism” , 175). At the end
of the novel, there is hope that the next generation of daughters will not suffer in the same way
because Gwendolen has learned how to read and write and will make sure her daughter learns as
well.
Immigration to England offers a promise of new identity to Gwendolen and her family.
When Gwendolen hears that she will be rejoining her family in England, she begins to feel
“almost mended” (31) after her previous feelings of betrayal by her mother and the molestations 51 by Uncle Johnny. Elaine Savory Fido explains the attraction of a potential adoptive country with respect to the child abandoned by her mother:
Mother belongs to a culture and a country, which becomes ours, and gives us our
first social identity. But should mother’s approval be withdrawn from us, or
should she leave us in some traumatic way, perhaps we might be willing to
perform that fundamental act of betrayal… we might seek, in other words, not
only a substitute relation with another woman, an adoptive mother, a substitute,
but also an adoptive country. (331).
The successful development for Gwendolen becomes dependent upon her finding an adoptive country that can provide her with the possibility for a new “almost mended” self-identity.
“Anybody could be anything in England” (32). Early in the novel, one of the women in Jamaica expresses this recurring belief in the text that anything is possible in England. Emecheta’s story makes it clear that life is still very difficult for the immigrants in England; just as Emecheta questions in The Slave Girl whether life is qualitatively better or worse under the experience of slavery or outside of a traditional setting, in Gwendolen Emecheta also questions whether the lives the immigrants would have had back in their native villages were possibly better. Some things are gained in London (increased wages, better clothes and home furnishings, subsidized housing) but at the expense of others (a sense individuality, belonging, tradition, and rootedness).
Once Gwendolen begins to acculturate to life in Britain, she begins to doubt the wisdom of her parents: “Gwendolen was beginning to doubt the sense of parents giving their little girls names they could not pronounce” (57). Gwendolen begins to experience her own identity as separate from her family and her mother’s wishes, which starts to wear at her relationship with 52
her mother. Sonia does not see Gwendolen as a separate individual, but as someone created to help her with Sonia’s own labors. Gwendolen is brought to England specifically to help Sonia with her work. “ ‘If June-June here, she for help with the pikneys… When June-June come Ah go a work… When June-June come, life easy for me…’” (48). Once Gwendolen and her mother are reunited in London, it does not take long for the communication between them to break down once again.
When Sonia learns that it is illegal for Gwendolen not to attend school, she worries that an education will erode her power over her daughter. “Gwendolen was supposed to be her ally, and to be hers, and to be under her” (74). Emecheta places the blame for the ruptured connection between mother and daughter on the experience of migration. “That closeness between African mother and daughter had been lost during the slave passage” (143). This rupture echoes the same rupture between the Afro-Caribbean immigrant groups who are unable to transcend cultural differences in the novel. Like the mother and daughter who are unable to communicate with each other, their paths having diverged too many times during the past journeys, so too the
Nigerian landlord has difficulty communicating with and relating to his Jamaican tenants.
Mr Aliyu, a Nigerian immigrant and the Brillianton family’s landlord, speaks of how the experience of immigration strips one of personal meaning. Sonia, Gwendolen’s mother, is unable to pronounce Mr. Aliyu’s name, and Mr. Aliyu finds this even more offensive than when the white people are unable to pronounce it:
[He] had given up the task of teaching Sonia how to pronounce his name
properly. Being a Nigerian, with a deep family meaning to his name, he used to
be annoyed when his name was badly pronounced, thereby rendering it 53
meaningless. He could appreciate when white people would not bother to make
the attempt, but when it came to black people like himself, the pill became very,
very bitter indeed. But by now he had learned to recognize it as one of the
dehumanizing processes of existence you have to go through in a country that is
not your own. (44)
The immigration to a foreign country effectively strips one of the meaning of one’s identity and roots. Emecheta also shows how the black immigrants are just as isolated from each other, even though they may have higher expectations of one another, as they are from the white English residents.
When Mr. Aliyu asks Gwendolen for her name, Sonia replies “Grandalee,” trying to remember the right way to pronounce it. Mr. Aliyu mispronounces it “Grandalew” and asks if it is a name from Barbados, instead of Jamaica where they are from. Emecheta uses this opportunity to criticize the colonial education that isolated, stripped the colonized of their origins, and kept them ignorant under colonialism. Mr Aliyu’s education “had taught him the names of all the important towns in Britain and America, but little about his own country or about his brothers living in the Caribbean” (45). The legacy of the colonial education is the isolation of the colony from its brethren.
We also see these cultural misunderstandings and failure to communicate with one another later in the novel when Mr. Aliyu informs the family that Sonia’s mother is very ill. In fact, she has died, but it would be culturally inappropriate for Mr. Aliyu to state this. “In his own culture, it was quite correct to say that Granny Naomi had not died, but was very ill. If Mr.
Brillianton had been a Nigerian, he would have guessed straight away that his mother-in-law had 54 died” (96). But in fact, Winston is not Nigerian and he is unable to make the correct translation to decipher the coded message. “But the man had had that part of his cultural heritage taken away from him by slavery” (96). Because Winston fails to translate the message, Sonia leaves again in the hopes of caring for her (already deceased) mother, and a trusted male once again molests Gwendolen: this time her own father. Each time Sonia departs, Gwendolen’s world is undone by molestation; this second time both Gwendolen and her mother feel mutually betrayed by each other, and their relationship is nearly severed.
As had happened already once before between Gwendolen and her grandmother, a man ruptures the relationship between Gwendolen and mother. Gwendolen’s relationship with
Granny is never the same after Gwendolen confesses to being regularly molested by Uncle
Johnny, Granny’s good friend; instead of consoling Gwendolen, Granny had begun to accuse and punish her granddaughter for every trivial offense. Gwendolen senses that the same will occur with her mother if she confesses her father’s molestations to Sonia. “Gwendolen knew her mother by now and knew that she was one of those women who would do anything to have a man by their side” (144). Emecheta shows how Sonia has sacrificed her daughter, and thus
Emecheta criticizes women who allow men to rupture these feminine relationships and female communities. The blame is not placed on the men but on the women who allow this to occur and for it to continue.
At first, the women in the Caribbean village appear to be much more connected and supportive than the women Gwendolen sees in London. The women in her village show their support when Gwendolen is molested by Mr. Johnny by marching together, almost like the
Nigerian tradition of “sitting on a man” in Igbo culture. “They [the neighbors] marched to 55
Johnny and really started a fight. Everybody came and shouted at him, calling him all kinds of names under the sun…” (23). Unlike the Jamaican women, the women in London are isolated from and emotionally distant with each other. As they wait for their children to enter the school gates, the mothers fail to look at each other or to speak with other. “Gwendolen noticed that her mother did not speak to the other mothers and they did not talk to her. They did not even give her a look… Everybody seemed to be standing in their little vacant islands, not touching, not talking, just waiting for the gate to open” (46). This is strikingly different from the feminine community we see in Jamaica where the women all call to each other, know each other’s intimate lives, and support each other.
Mrs. Gladys Odowis, a well-educated Nigerian immigrant and a victim of domestic abuse
(and likely a mouthpiece for Emecheta herself), criticizes this “solid wall of indifference, in which people look past you, or on top of your head, or stare at your shoes, actually look beyond you so as not to look at your face, all of which was to tell you that as far as they were concerned you were not there” (47). Mrs. Odowis combats this indifference by speaking more loudly and by forging connections with the Brillianton family, who become necessary to Mrs. Odowis’ survival when her husband violently beats her. The friendship between Mrs. Odowis and Sonia shows that it is possible to transcend the cultural differences between them and that women benefit when they forge these connections. Sonia supports Mrs. Odowis when her husband beats
Gladys, and Gladys similarly looks out for Sonia and her family. When Sonia is in Jamaica for her mother’s funeral, she realizes the extent and value of her friendship with Mrs. Odowis:
If she could write, she would have written her friend Mrs. Odowis to find out how
her family were. She could have communicated her doubts to her. Suddenly she 56
realized that though Mrs. Odowis came from Africa, and she from Jamaica, they
had more in common. She could no longer relate to Roza [her Jamaican closest
friend] the way she used to before she left for London all those years ago. (118)
Mrs. Odowis and Sonia now share more in common with each other than each woman does with the women from their respective ‘original’ villages. “They were like lost children. They had stayed away from their countries of birth for too long” (139). Like Gwendolen, Mrs. Odowis and Sonia are not quite fully British in their acculturation, but neither are they purely Nigerian or
Jamaican any longer. “If they stayed all their lives here [in Britain], they would be perpetually marginalized and that would always make them suffer a kind of religious, social and political paralysis” (139). The solution seems to be to create a new community founded not upon common history, blood, or language, but on shared experiences.
Gwendolen experiences the worst of all possible circumstances: pregnant with her father’s child, forsaken by her mother, and institutionalized by both her parents. Yet she is able to draw upon the women around her to create a supportive community to help her withstand her misfortunes and take advantage of the opportunities that London offers (literacy, subsidized living, independence, and self-fulfillment). While in the hospital, Gwendolen befriends a young
Ghanaian nurse Ama who continues to aid Gwendolen after she leaves the hospital. When Buchi
Emecheta gave birth to her daughter in London, it was similarly a young black nurse who befriended her:
Somehow, of all people, it was the young black nurse who had helped me with
Alice who understood, she begged the ambulance men to drive me home and
promised to see to it that they sent me a home nurse. ‘If they refuse, I’ll come 57
myself.’ Without saying a word, there was a kind of affinity between us. She was
so young, yet she understood; but then we were both blacks and maybe, like me,
she knew what the word ‘family’ ought to mean. (Head Above Water , 38)
With all the hardships she has suffered, Gwendolen makes it clear at the end of the novel that she
believes her life can be better in England. “But now I have learned that I can work for my
salvation by myself,” a belief in individualism that may not have been possible in the
community-privileged Jamaican life.
Mrs. Odowis expresses in the last pages that Gwen (her name now shortened and owned
wholly by Gwendolen) will find her own identity (201). “Don’t worry, Gwen is a big girl now.
She can take care of herself. She’ll find her own identity” (201). The possibility of gaining a
sense of herself and her place within a female community is expressed at the end of the novel
when Gwendolen chooses a name for her baby girl. Rather than choose a name of Jamaican
descent, or family heritage, or English tradition, Gwendolen desires a name that is significant
and personal in its meaning; it is also important to Gwendolen that she is able to pronounce her daughter’s name, so that her daughter will not suffer the same isolation and uncertainty of self that Gwendolen experienced. Gwendolen looks to her Ghanaian nurse-friend Ama for assistance in choosing such a name: “‘I have no people. I have a few friends; you are one of them. But I want a name that will show that this baby is my friend, my mother, my sister, my hope, all in one’” (177). Gwendolen chooses a Yoruba name, Iyamide, which means “my mother, my female friend, my female saviour, my anything-nice-you-can-think-of-in-a-woman’s-form, is here” (178). 58
Emecheta draws from her personal experience of sisterhood to offer a new definition of feminine community at the end of the novel, a definition which privileges shared experience rather than shared blood or origin:
A new kind of awareness was coming into [Gwendolen’s] life. In Granville, she
had to love all the uncles, cousins, and aunties, because they were all related. She
had tried to continue that kind of loving here. But for the past five months, she
had been making new kinds of friends. Friends who were not related to her at all.
Friends she could like or even love, without her wanting to live their lives for
them and them wanting to do the same to her. It was a kind of relationships that
did not choke. Was that a good thing? She did not know. (175)
Gwendolen has succeeded in creating for herself a community that strengthens and supports, rather than subjugates. Cynthia Ward differentiates between a community that oppresses individual identity and one that interlinks the individual to her community: “to have a place in a community that implicates one in others’ subjectivities is not oppression; oppressive relationships only arise when one cannot participate, when one cannot respond to one’s given name with a new name, when one cannot respond to a fiction with one’s fiction” (91).
Gwendolen loses the support of her female family members (though the ending of the novel is optimistic in the hope that Gwendolen and Sonia will be able someday to have a successful adult relationship), but she has become capable of garnering that feminine support from the diverse women around her.
59
Myriam Warner-Vieyra: Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit…
One of the links between the writings of Buchi Emecheta and Myriam Warner-Vieyra is
that both authors left their native countries to live somewhere else, a sort of self-imposed exile
during which they became writers. Myriam Warner-Vieyra was raised in Guadeloupe until she
moved to France when she was twelve years old; now living in Senegal, Warner-Vieyra is
perhaps one of the authors best positioned for exploring the position of the immigrant and the
experience of cultural and psychic exile from the “mother country.” Warner-Vieyra has written
novels that successfully bridge African and Caribbean narratives as her female protagonists
follow a trajectory of village to metropole and metropole to village. In Le Quimboiseur L’Avait
Dit [As the Sorcerer Said ], Zétou grows up in the French Caribbean but leaves for Paris in hope
of continuing her education. Her father and grandmother raise Zétou and her brothers and sister
after their beautiful, light-skinned mulâtresse mother, Rosemonde, abandons the darker-skinned family to make a new life for herself with her white European lover in Paris. When Zétou is fifteen, her mother returns to Guadeloupe to obtain a divorce from Zétou’s father. With dreams of finishing her education in Paris and finding a career for herself, Zétou successfully persuades her mother and her mother’s lover Roger to take Zétou back with them to Paris. Once in Paris,
Zétou soon discovers that her mother only views Zétou as a slave and as a commodity to be used and exchanged for profit. Her mother has encouraged Roger to seduce her daughter, so that
Rosemonde and Roger will be better able to manipulate Zétou. Feeling duped and deceived,
Zétou fights back but is condemned by her mother to a Paris mental hospital for “maladaption”
[poor adaptation]. As she looks back on happier times in the Antilles, Zétou explores the familial and cultural disasters that resulted in her hospitalization. Her lighter-skinned 60 schoolteacher and mulatto mother, who both equally condemned Zétou for her darker skin, betray Zétou by their limited views of whom she can become. While Zétou could have found support in the other young girls in the hospital, she has learned to mistrust feminine community and instead retreats deeper and deeper into herself.
Zétou echoes the trajectory that Gwendolen makes: the young girl who leaves her small island village, enthusiastic for all the great things she has heard that the metropole has to offer her, only to end up isolated, betrayed by family, and nostalgic for the island she has left behind.
While Gwendolen leaves Jamaica for London, Zétou leaves Guadeloupe for Paris. Both girls experience a sense of not knowing who they are: not fitting into the limited lives they see for themselves on their islands and not finding all the opportunities they expected to await them in the European cities. While Gwendolen is able to find appropriate surrogate mother figures in some of the immigrant women around her, Zétou has no such surrogate and thus has a problematic relationship to her native Caribbean identity and homeland.
The sense of not belonging and divided identity is expressed in both Gwendolen’s and
Zétou’s narratives through their multiple names. As Gwendolen is June-June in Jamaica, Zétou will also leave behind her name and learn that in France she is called Suzette:
“Et comment t’appelles-tu encore?
-- Suzette. Chez nous, c’est Zétou qu’on m’appelle.” (41)
[‘And what is your name again?’
‘Suzette. At home, they call me Zétou.’] 14
This divided identity and double naming express the tension between rootedness and belonging and the protagonists’ sense of longing for further opportunity and expression. It also expresses
14 All English translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 61 the schism of an identity torn between African roots and European influence. In an interview with Françoise Pfaff, Warner-Vieyra shares her personal experience of this multi-layered identity: “Both my European and African experiences have reinforced my West Africanness. In the end, I do no feel European at all, but neither do I feel totally African” (Pfaff, 31). It is striking that in this statement, Warner-Vieyra does not mention her Caribbean identity at all.
The coming to terms with identity, and specifically Caribbean origins of identity, is part of the crisis in Gwendolen and Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit.
While both girls are betrayed by their families and hospitalized in their new cities, only
Gwendolen is able to make a positive experience of feminine community for herself. Simon
Gikandi argues in Writing in Limbo that “the repressed and marginalized Caribbean self can never find wholeness and deep meaning in the world of the other” (173). While Gwendolen’s story might contradict this statement (or give evidence that it is written by an African author and not a Caribbean author), Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit… firmly supports it. Gwendolen’s success can be attributed largely to her ability to create for herself a new community that has no strict origin but stems from cross-cultural contacts. Perhaps her story is more optimistic because Gwendolen has more support (through her male friend Emmanuel and the Ghanaian nurse Ama and her mother’s Nigerian friend Gladys Odowis), whereas Zétou is left completely isolated and stranded in Paris. We see the mark of her isolation in Zétou’s language as she shifts from using “we” and “our” when remembering her life on the island to “I” and “my” in the hospital ward. Life on the Caribbean island reflects an emphasis on communal experience, whereas Zétou faces individualism and isolation in Paris. 62
Zétou begins telling her story after she has arrived in Paris and her mother and stepfather
have sent her to a psychiatric hospital for her rebellion against them and her failure to marry one
of their wealthy, older French friends (who is fascinated by Zétou’s “exoticism”). The story
begins and concludes at the hospital, with Zétou remembering back to episodes from her happy
childhood in the Caribbean. The focus is placed on the past and the memories that come to the
surface. It is a circular narrative or closed structure where Zétou is just as miserable, if not more
so, at the end of the novel as she was at the beginning. The circular form of the narrative reflects
the noose that is gradually closing on Zétou through the course of her story. As Mildred
Mortimer has pointed out, Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit parodies the shape of an inverted slave
narrative, “a metaphorical reenactment of historical Caribbean oppression” (40). Whereas
traditional slave narratives like Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl chronicle the
journey of slavery to freedom, Zétou’s narrative reverses the trajectory (also similar to The Slave
Girl ). “Unable to flee physically, she [Zétou] reconceptualizes the trajectory of the nègre- marron, the runaway slave, by escaping into imaginative space.. and bridge the gap in time and space that separates her from her island” (Mortimer, 40). Le Quimboisueur l’avait dit is the anti-
Bildungsroman where the female protagonist has no chance for successful development, and
Zétou finally takes refuge in madness and exile.
Zétou’s attempts at rebellion and self-realization only serve to alienate her further from
her society—the ultimate alienation taking the form of her admittance in the asylum: the arena
that contains those outside of/not legitimated by society. 15 Zétou tries to escape from one
restrictive situation only to find herself in a setting immeasurably more restrictive. In retrospect,
Zétou’s island home becomes an idyllic setting of nostalgic pleasure. Her childhood is almost
15 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization . 63 idealized in its descriptions, although Zétou also describes the difficulties there: the obstacles to education in the paths of impoverished children; the social expectation that she will do nothing more than marry and have many children; the poverty of her rural home life.
Zétou first describes her island as no bigger than two coconuts, and she leaves it to find a wider field of choices for herself, specifically with respect to female education that is not valorized by her father and grandmother in Guadeloupe. However, in her quest for open possibility, Zétou encounters its antithesis: physical confinement, closed space, and a lack of choice. As is common in the other texts studied in this dissertation, the foreclosure of physical space functions as a metaphor for the foreclosure of psychological independence and self- realization. Once Zétou arrives in Paris, her mother restricts Zétou’s mobility, first confining her to the apartment and then sending her to a hospital.
We first see the contrast to Zétou’s physical freedom on her island in her confinement in the cramped space she must endure during the ship passage to Paris. Whereas her mother has booked a first-class cabin for herself and Roger, Zétou is condemned to the cramped quarters in the hull; and whereas her mother and the other lighter-skinned passengers are free to travel about the boat, Zétou is forced to stay down below unless her mother or Roger comes for her. The boat passage reminds us again of Zétou’s ‘real’ ancestors and how they traveled as slaves from Africa in the infamous Middle Passage, like human cargo confined to the hull of the négrier . Also, this racial segregation reflects the feelings of contempt that Rosemonde has for her darker-skinned daughter and the racism that Zétou will encounter in Paris. Like the slave-traders before her,
Rosemonde brings her daughter to Paris to perform domestic labor and to bring Rosemonde 64 economic gain, even so much as arranging a marriage to a much older white man and in effect
“selling” her daughter.
One of the crucial aspects of a novel of development is the search for and acquisition of self-knowledge. For Zétou, this knowledge begins with her discovery that her ancestors are not the light-skinned Gauls (what she has been taught in school) but Africans who were uprooted by the slave trade:
Contrairement à tout ce que j’avais appris jusqu’alors, je découvrais que nos
ancêtres n’étaient pas uniquement des Gaulois, mais aussi des Nègres arrachés à
leur terre, dans le golfe de Guinée, au pays d’Angole, au Cap-Vert, au Sénégal,
etc., et emmenés captifs dans notre île…J’avais déjà entendu parler de Victor
Schoelcher, de l’abolition de l’esclavage, jamais je ne m’étais sentie concernée.
Malgré mes doutes sur nos origins, j’avais fini par admettre que nos ancêtres
étaient gaulois. Aussi ces Nègres libérés étaient-ils une race éteinte depuis la nuit
des temps. C’est du moins à ce stade de connaissances que je reçus, comme un
coup de poing en pleine poitrine qui vous fait vaciller, le contenu de ce livre. (47-
48)
[Contrary to what I had been taught up till then, I discovered that our ancestors
were not only the Gauls, but Negroes, snatched from their own country in the
Golf of Guinea, in Angola, Cape-Verde, Senegal, etc., and brought as prisoners to
our island… I had already heard of Victor Schoelcher, of the abolition of slavery,
but I had never felt that it had anything to do with me. In spite of my doubts
about my origins, I had finally accepted that our ancestors were Gauls, and 65
consequently that these Negroes who had been freed belonged to a race that had
become extinct in the Dark Ages. At least that was the state of my knowledge
when the contents of this book hit me like a punch in the chest, nearly knocking
me off balance.] (Translated by Dorothy Blair, 23)
Thécla Midiohouan points out in her article “Des Antilles à l’Afrique” that it is the same attitude
and institution that forbids the school children to speak in their native language that also hides
from them any knowledge of their history and African origins (46). Zétou defines this new
knowledge of her link to Africa as a “tournant” [turning point] in her life, but rather than being a
positive development in her self-understanding, Zétou is punished by her schoolteacher, who
with her lighter mulatto skin does not want to be affiliated with any dark-skinned African ancestors, and so Zétou is nearly expelled from school. Warner-Vieyra further informs her readers that the teacher, Mrs. Paule, took any excuse to expel from school the village girl- children on whom, in her opinion, an education was wasted: “car pour elle, des filles de pecheurs na’avaient pas besion de savoir plus que lire, ecrire, et compter” (78) [according to her, fishermen’s daughters didn’t need to know anything more than how to read, write, and count].
Both Gwendolen and Zétou are unable to find substitute mother figures or feminine role models in their female teachers who represent an alien culture, one that is at first seen as “superior” by the girls. The lighter-skinned teachers are unable to see any promise in their darker-skinned girl students, and the girls are unable to find a positive and accepting female figure in their teachers.
Both Emecheta and Warner-Vieyra show the problems for girls when the adults around them do not see the importance of feminine education. Neither Zétou nor Gwendolen has parents or friends who support their scholarly ambitions. Zétou’s father thinks that female education 66 leads to domestic troubles and disturbances (having placed the blame for his wife’s misbehaviors and abandonment of her family on her having received her secondary school certificate); Sonia,
Gwendolen’s mother, similarly thinks that Gwendolen’s education is loosening Sonia’s hold and influence over Gwendolen. “Education for girls is a new and disputed right, which can fit them or unfit them for their future lives, according to their judger” (Bruner, 333). The adults dispute the value of an education for girls; in the novels, female education represents a departure from the traditional values for girls. The girls are shaped by their societies to fit the traditional molds, and when they do so, they lose their individual identities. However, if they resist society’s traditional designations, then the girls are subsequently rejected by and isolated from their cultures. The fight for education becomes a symbolic struggle that demonstrates how the young female protagonist is torn between village/traditional and urban/reformed roles.
Zétou appeals to her mother when her education is in danger of being terminated. She hopes to continue her schooling in Paris and to live with her mother and Roger, ultimately with her plans of returning to Guadeloupe, marrying her childhood friend Charlie, and working as a nurse alongside her doctor-husband. Zétou sees an education as being the path to success; this explains why she is so willing to leave her island and her family to go to Paris with a mother she does not know, if only to be able to continue her education. At the beginning of the novel, Zétou believes that her education and her success completely depend upon herself. “A Paris, mon avenir était assuré: il suffirait que je me mette sérieusement à mes etudes: ma réussite ne dépendait que de moi, donc était certaine” (80) [In Paris my future was assured; all I had to do was devote myself to my studies: my success was only dependent upon myself, and therefore was certain]. What Zétou learns in Paris is that her life in the new city is not up to her and is 67 instead outside of her own control; she is left without any social support system and so is completely vulnerable to the adults around her and their malintentions. While Zétou leaves
Guadeloupe in order to receive an education that would provide her with wider choices in life, instead she encounters the antithesis to all her dreams: limitation and confinement. “J’avais choisi une route large et fleurie, elle s’était transformée en étroit sentier plein d’embûches mais je devais poursuivre mon chemin, n’ayant pas d’autre choix possible” (131) [I had chosen a wide flowered road, and it had transformed itself into a narrow path full of ambushes, but I had to keep following my path, having no other possible choice]. Zétou travels to France, which her teacher has tried to tell her is the home of her “ancestors” and the place of possibilities, and this
‘home’ is as dangerous to her and betrays her as totally as her biological mother does.
According to Simone Alexander’s work on mother imagery in Afro-Caribbean writings, a daughter’s relationship with her mother determines her relationship to the “motherland” and to her mother country (18). If a girl has been denied a developmental bond with her mother or a surrogate mother figure, then her relationships to the motherland and to self-identity may be problematic. Zétou sees that her mother Rosemonde is false and inauthentic, just desperately playing at a role that threatens to unveil her inadequacies at any time. She smokes the ‘right’ cigarettes, listens to the right music, and talks in a “ton pointu pour se donner des airs de grande dame” (110) [high-pitched voice to give herself airs of a fine lady]. Attempting to escape her
Afro-Caribbean identity, Rosemonde is terrified of revealing the gaps in her education or showing herself as anything other than nearly white. Zétou’s mother has bought into what the colonizers have taught her: that anything from Cocotier has no value (45), including her daughter. “Pour elle, tout ce qui venait de Cocotier était sans valeur” (87) [For her, anything that 68
came from Cocotier had no value]. Elizabeth Wilson points out in her article “Island and
Journey as Metaphor” that Zétou’s mother stands for the part of Guadeloupean culture that
rejects African roots while privileging and pursuing white values and a false vision of France
(49). Clearly, the correlation can be made in Warner-Vieyra’s narrative between the political
difficulties that afflict the island-‘mother’ country relationship and the problems affecting the
mother-daughter family relationship. Rosemonde is described as “diaboliquement maternelle”
(128) [diabolically maternal], and instead of guiding and nurturing her daughter, she rejects and
enslaves her. Ultimately, Zétou is completely betrayed by feminine community, and so she
doesn’t long for the comfort of a female figure but to be rocked again in the paternal womb of
her father’s fishing boat (with its Afro-Caribbean roots in contrast to the colonialist steamship by
which Rosemonde takes Zétou to Paris) in the isolated security of the ocean off the coast of her
island.
Because Zétou cannot escape her physical confinement and return to her native island,
she escapes to an imaginative space: her madness. Annis Pratt writes that the imaginative space
is not escapist but strategic: “Women’s ‘escape through imagination’ is not escapist but strategic,
a withdrawal into the unconscious for the purpose of personal transformation” (177). However, this strategy offers no possibility for self-actualization and perhaps only depicts a protagonist’s
“defeat without surrender.” 16 Only through narrating her own story can Zétou reinscribe herself
as a subject (speaking subject). I disagree with Mildred Mortimer’s reading that by remembering
and narrating Zétou successfully reclaims her subjecthood: “her narrative ends with
transformation and empowerment in imaginative space, thereby offering the possibility, but not
16 Phrase used by Professor Eric Newhall of Occidental College when describing characters such as Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening . 69
the assurance, of ultimate triumph, of renewal and reintegration via the return to her island”
(109). I believe the tale can only be read as a failed novel of development because the story
vehemently shows that Zétou is not allowed to develop into a subject, not by her family, nor by her native village, and nor within the Parisian hospital. Zétou has no possibility for self- development, and she describes herself and the other female patients around her as “des petites folles en puissance ou en mal de folie” (101) [“little lunatics or people for whom madness was the only solution to a desperate situation”] (trans. Dorothy Blair, 52).
“Imagined community” is a phrase used by Benedict Anderson to define a nation as an imagined political community. Zétou, at the end of the novel, has reconstituted her image of
Guadeloupe as an imagined homeland. She has imagined kinships with France, then Africa, and
finally with Guadeloupe. To Zétou, France represents educational possibilities and economic
advancement, while Africa represents a link to an authentic past (not the past imposed by French
colonial ideology) and ancestral homeland. “The absence of an ideal homeland intensifies the
imagining and the inventing of home spaces or homelands, thus leading to the construction of
imagined homelands or ‘imagined communities’” (Alexander, 10). Similarly, before she leaves
Jamaica, Gwendolen has envisaged all the opportunities available to her in the “Moder Kontry,”
only to find that her life there is no easier than it was in Jamaica. As Ania Loomba points out:
“If the nation is an imagined community, that imagining is profoundly gendered” (215).
Gwendolen’s story ends better than Zétou’s because Gwendolen is able to re-imagine a
successful feminine community or homeland for herself through the friendships with Mrs.
Odowis and Ama, a community made symbolic by the naming of Gwendolen’s daughter 70
Iyamide. Similarly, Obejeta is also able to re-imagine a familial community for herself in the
Palagada home comprised of her fellow slave girls. It is the successful creation of these
“imagined communities” that gives the young female protagonists a sense of belonging and self- worth.
In exploring these three novels, we find that the authors place less emphasis on a community founded upon common languages, traditions, family, or origins, but instead privilege shared locations and experiences. As we see in these three novels, the success of colonialism
(whether in West Africa or the Caribbean) depended upon breaking down a sense of origin and connectedness—isolating not only one colony from the next but also one village to the next.
These authors re-imagine successful communities that transcend geographic and cultural boundaries as a way of disrupting the legacies of colonialism.
Maryse Condé writes in Le Roman antillais that the Caribbean author (and I will include
African) who writes an autobiographical novel writes the symbolic tale of a community: the author “lui donne valeur d’exemple ou de symbole, dire ‘je’ pour lui équivaut à dire ‘nous’
(“turns the book into an example or a symbol, saying ‘I’ and meaning ‘we’” (trans. mine). In effect, these novels of development use the story of a female protagonist to speak the story of a community as it seeks to move beyond the suffocating effects of colonialism. While the novel of the young protagonist focuses on maternal betrayal to signify a betrayal by country, the central conflict in the adult female novel of development is the marital relationship; rather than focusing upon the mother-daughter community, the adult tale centers on the triangle of wife-husband- wife.
71
CHAPTER THREE:
A Community of Wives
In this third chapter, I continue the comparison of texts by Buchi Emecheta and Myriam
Warner-Vieyra to discuss how feminine community in West African culture is portrayed through the female experience of polygamy as both potentially oppressive and supportive. In her book
Writing Beyond the Ending , Rachel DuPlessis has argued that the conventions of a culture’s
ideologies converge in the heterosexual couple (1); marital life is often the central conflict for the
adult protagonist in the female novel of development. In such texts, disharmony in the family
often mirrors a similar disharmony in the nation, and conversely developmental changes in the
nation are reflected in the practices of the heterosexual couple. The polygamous marriages
portrayed in these texts reflect national changes in development, politics, economics, and gender
relations, as well as they depict how feminine networks have the potential to affect positive
political and social changes for women; however, while there are brief moments of alliance and
camaraderie, the relationships among the co-wives in these novels are generally suspicious and
antagonistic, and the wives more often exacerbate rather than resolve strife for each other.
While previous studies have focused on how Emecheta’s and Warner-Vieyra’s portraits
of female victimizers underscore the need for women to acknowledge their responsibility for the
perpetuation of dominant power structures, 17 in this chapter I explore what the female
17 See Laura Dubek “Lessons in Solidarity: Buchi Emecheta and Mariama Ba on Female Victim(izer)s” and Bella Brodzki’s “Reading/Writing Women in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Juletane ” and “‘Changing Masters’: Gender, Genre, and the Discourses of Slavery.” 72
protagonists gain from endorsing ideologies that oppress women. How do the women uphold
gender subjugation and tyranny over one another? Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
and Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane (1982) present the im possibility of female community as long as it
is mediated through a heterosexual relationship. There is no opportunity for consistent female
bonding in the two texts, as women-to-women relationships among the co-wives are subordinate
to the male-centered heterosexual relationship. Instead of helping each other, the women
measure each other against the ruler that patriarchal society has handed them. As one co-wife
says to another in The Joys of Motherhood , “we women set impossible standards for ourselves.
That we make life intolerable for one another” (169). According to Elizabeth Janeway, mutual
female betrayal is a logical outgrowth of inculcated self-shame, and female communities are
unnatural (impossible) in their inevitable betrayal (111). The women in these texts support this
theory by locking each other in a psychological prison of gender oppression, bringing the walls
closer and closer until, for Nnu Ego, Juletane, and Awa, madness and death are the only options
for breaking free. Because the protagonists are unable to sustain female community outside of
the heterosexual relationship, the women are unequipped to imagine and uphold a healthy
identity for themselves separate from what has already been designated by a patriarchal society.
Buchi Emecheta: The Joys of Motherhood
The novel begins as the protagonist Nnu Ego flees her home in Lagos to commit suicide after the sudden death of her first newborn son. The tragedy of her child’s death and her difficulties in becoming pregnant are attributed to Nnu Ego’s “chi 18 .” The intertextual link
18 “Chi” is an Igbo concept, akin to a ‘personal life force.’ The Chi is the spiritual guardian who is there from the time of an individual’s birth until his/her death. A person’s Chi is the personification of the individual's fate; a 73 between Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood and her earlier novel The Slave Girl is the story of a slave woman who is buried alive with her deceased mistress. Nnu Ego is conceived at the same time that her father Agbadi’s senior wife becomes gravely ill. At the funeral, a young and beautiful female slave is mistreated and buried alive with the senior wife, vowing in her final words to return to Agbadi as a legitimate daughter. The slave woman returns as Nnu Ego’s chi, and so the daughter will suffer the sins of her father. Nnu Ego informs the reader at the beginning of the novel that she knows her chi is a woman because “only a woman would be so thorough in punishing another” (9). This opening line sets the stage for a tale where women are in competition with each other, punishing each other while at the same time their lives are also inextricably linked to and dependent upon one another (just as Nnu Ego is linked to her punishing chi). An important detail to the story of the slave woman’s death is the description that while the slave woman pleads for her life, the women of the village “stood far off for this was a custom they found revolting” (23). While the women of the village may find the tradition offensive and horrifying, they do not use their collective strength as a female community to step in and save the slave girl’s life or stop her mistreatment. Instead, the women stand back and distance themselves from the act; in some way, the women must feel empathy for the powerless position of the slave girl as she pleads for her life, but the women fail to arrest or change the
“revolting” tradition. As such, Nnu Ego’s life becomes conditioned by the adherence of the village female community to tradition. Perhaps this event sheds some light on why Nnu Ego is a traditionalist who lives by feminine convention and duty.
person’s Chi is credited for the individual's successes, misfortunes, and failures. The Igbo believe that no man or woman can rise past the greatness of his/her own Chi. 74
Nnu Ego and her village believe she has the chi of the slave woman, confirmed by the dibia who tells Agbadi that “the child is the slave woman who died with your senior wife
Agunwa… the painful lump on her head is from the beating your men gave [the slave woman] before she fell into the grave” (27). Her chi directs Nnu Ego’s life, first in keeping any children from her when she is so desirous of them and then providing her with too many children when she cannot afford them. Nnu Ego’s difficulties in life are attributed to her adherence to traditional values within a changing society and to her loss of self to a wholly consuming definition of motherhood. She values her children, particularly her sons, more than she values herself. The central conflict with her children is that they are too modern to fulfill the traditional expectations Nnu Ego and her husband Nnaife have for them, and instead the children privilege individuality over family or communal responsibility. As a result, while Nnu Ego appears to have everything an Igbo woman is expected to desire (a husband and many healthy, successful children), she dies friendless and alone on the roadside. Is Emecheta saying that Nnu Ego, and the community of women, should not have blindly accepted tradition but should have rebelled, like the slave woman at the beginning of the novel, against those customs that left women powerless and “buried?” Or instead has modern life destroyed the traditional values that protected and insulated women, particularly the value of female community?
Three major female characters inhabit Emecheta’s novel: Nnu Ego, her mother Ona, and
Nnu Ego’s co-wife Adaku. By beginning the novel with the powerful character of Ona,
Emecheta shows what has been lost to Nigerian women—and to Nigeria. In an interview with
Adeola James, Emecheta questions: “Why are women as they are? Why are they so pathetic?
When you hear about traditional women who were very strong, you wonder, why are we today 75 so pathetic, so hypocritical?” (42). Ona, in her pride and independence, is the counterpoint to
Nnu Ego’s weakness. When Ona’s lover, the chief Agbadi, is wounded during a hunting expedition, Ona is the only one able to nurture Agbadi back to health and restore him to full manhood; Nnu Ego, on the other hand, is unable to restore a sense of manhood back to her husband Nnaife when he is robbed of his status in the emasculating environment of Lagos. One of the lessons Emecheta may be imparting here is that the possibility of a healthy Nigeria resides in her women, and that the women first must be restored to a place of independence and strength so that they might then provide for their men. In The Joys of Motherhood , Emecheta points to the source of this female strength and independence in women’s participation in feminine community.
By beginning the narrative with the character of Ona and contrasting her with the adult
Nnu Ego, Emecheta shows the reader that traditional women were not more oppressed than their modern, urban counterparts: “the stereotypical notion of the docile, tractable ‘traditional’ African wife and mother generally depicted by Emecheta’s critics is immediately called into question by the characterization of ‘The Mother’s Mother,’ Ona” (Ward, 93). Ona is described as a “very beautiful young woman who managed to combine stubbornness with arrogance. So stubborn was she that she refused to live with Agbadi [Nnu Ego’s father]” (11). Emecheta goes on to emphasize that such an independent and stubborn woman was considered traditional: “a woman who gave in to a man without first fighting for her honor was never respected. To regard a woman who is quiet and timid as desirable was something that came after his [Agbadi’s] time, with Christianity and other changes” (10). In her book Gender Issues in Nigeria , Akachi
Ezeigbo explores how traditional Nigerian women had more power than modern women: 76
[The traditional Nigerian woman] enjoyed considerable economic power and
social influence in her community… by engaging in gainful occupations like the
distributive trades and other income-generating activities. The misfortune of the
modern Nigerian, nay African, woman is that she neither enjoys political nor
economic power. (xvi)
According to Ezeigbo’s study, the modern woman is even more marginalized and devalued than her traditional counterpart. Pre-colonial Igbo women were treated more as gender equals when it came to political and economic participation. Sylvia Leith-Ross, a British government anthropologist, observed in 1939 that Igbo women “were politically and economically the equals of Igbo men and that such industrious, ambitious, and independent women were bound to play a leading role in the development of their country” (19-20). Whereas women in pre-colonial times were expected to be productive and self-reliant members of the community, colonialism and Christianity changed the values by expecting women to be submissive and subordinate to men. “The indigenous literature reflects a turbulent change for the worse in the condition of women in a changing Africa” (Katrak, 145). Just as Emecheta had done earlier in The Slave Girl by alluding to the Igbo Women’s War, Emecheta shows the reader of The Joys of Motherhood how colonial and postcolonial times in fact offered less freedom and power to women and lead to their greater oppression.
Ona is both fiercely independent and also so devoted to her father that she will not marry the man whom she loves, Agbadi. Part of what makes Ona such a powerful female character is the fact that she never marries (though perhaps the circumstances of her early death partly explain this). By remaining unmarried, however, Ona remains subordinate to her father. As Nnu 77
Ego points out at the end of the novel, a woman always belongs to men: “her father and her husband, and lastly to her sons” (185). Because Ona realizes the potential for her daughter to be suffocated by patriarchal control and social traditions, she tries to assert the rights of her daughter. Ona’s dying wish is that her daughter be allowed to have “‘a life of her own, a husband if she wants one. Allow her to be a woman’” (28). And yet, while her mother Ona was fiercely independent and proud, Nnu Ego is a traditionalist who defines the value of her life by her obedience to wifely and maternal responsibilities.
Nnu Ego means “twenty bags of cowries” (26). 19 It is a name that is used when a child is beautiful (explained by Emecheta in her interview with Joseph Ogundele, 449). Nnu Ego is given a name that describes her value, just as Obejeta was by her family in The Slave Girl . Once
Nnu Ego leaves the village, however, her status and her quality of life diminish substantially
(like Obejeta). In Lagos, Nnu Ego loses her former independence and links her feelings of self worth exclusively to the status of motherhood; thus, motherhood becomes her all-consuming self-identification. When Nnu Ego suffers the death of her first infant son, she cries out “But I am not a woman any more! I am not a mother any more” (62). Nnu Ego fails to see herself as having value based upon her own merit; her tragic flaw is her obedience to principles and ideals of motherhood that have no currency in modern Lagos. She blindly adheres to oppressive practices under the guise of remaining fast to “tradition.” Nnu Ego’s greatest mistake is trying to follow the values and customs of the traditional village in the modern city where they no longer fit.
19 Some critics have looked for meaning in Nnu Ego’s name with “no ego,” but this strikes me as an example of the Western reader applying his/her own intentions and Western biases onto the narrative. 78
Both Ona and Adaku, Nnu Ego’s co-wife, are foils to Nnu Ego. Ona and Adaku refuse to conform to the traditional roles set for them by society and instead pursue their own interests and desires. Adaku is repeatedly described as a “very ambitious woman” (117, 158); she is bold and determined. Like Ona, Adaku does not follow convention and rejects complete dependence on men. Also like Ona, Adaku is supportive of her daughters. Adaku warns Nnu Ego not to be so dismissive of her girls: “These girls when they grow will be great helpers to you in looking after the boys. Their bride prices will be used in paying their school fees as well” (127). Adaku says the same to Nnaife when he is disappointed by the birth of his twin daughters. By highlighting the similarities between Ona’s and Adaku’s personalities and behaviors, Emecheta makes it clear that the traits and practices that appear as “modern” in Adaku are in fact traits formerly associated with Igbo women: cooking strikes, market trading, feelings of independence and pride. The character of Adaku points to a rebelliousness and independence that is a traditional part of the Nigerian woman.
Emecheta underlines the traditional practices that support Adaku’s seemingly rebellious behavior by the episode of Adaku’s and Nnu Ego’s cooking strike. Adaku initiates a brief moment of solidarity with Nnu Ego in their strike against Nnaife when he fails to give his two wives enough housekeeping money. “Adaku insisted that the only way to bring home to him the fact that they needed more housekeeping money was to stop cooking for their husband” (133).
Judith Van Allen and Ifi Amadiume have explained that cooking strikes were traditionally a form of collective power levered by Nigerian women: “In this culture, men did not cook: control of food was therefore a political asset for women” (Amadiume, 65). “All the women refused to cook for their husbands until the request was carried out. For this boycott to be effective, all 79 women had to cooperate so that the men could not go and eat with their brothers… Where individually women couldn’t compete with men, collectively they could often hold their own”
(Van Allen, 170, 24). In fact, this is one of the reasons why Nnu Ego’s and Adaku’s strike is not effective: without consulting Adaku, Nnu Ego withdraws from the strike. The women are not united in their strike (with each other or with other women in their area), and so Nnaife is able simply to share a co-worker’s meal. In a village setting, the men would have no recourse other than to capitulate or do their own cooking. Additionally, the women in the city lack any domestic independence and are completely dependent on Nnaife’s income to feed their children.
The loss of domestic authority “entails a forfeiture of the powerful gender alliance that unites
Nnu Ego and Adaku as women of common interests” (Derrickson, 43). Without the consistent joint effort of female community and without domestic independence, the women’s strike in the city is ineffective.
Nnu Ego and Adaku are repeatedly made pregnant, which adds to the difficulty of their financial situation and places strain on their increasingly cramped close quarters. Whereas large families represent wealth and status in the village, numerous children create economic and physical burdens in the city. The sheer number of her pregnancies and children eventually overwhelms Nnu Ego, while Adaku has only two daughters. When Adaku realizes that she will never be seen as valuable unless she provides Nnaife with male sons, she decides to leave and make a life for herself and her daughters. “I will spend the money I have in giving my girls a good start in life” (168). Unlike Nnu Ego, Adaku refuses to live her life exclusively for her children; once she leaves Nnaife’s homes, Adaku puts her daughters in a convent school to receive an education but also so that Adaku can continue her life without unnecessary hindrance 80 from her children. Nnu Ego’s and Adaku’s views of motherhood are direct contrasts of each other. Nnu Ego views her children as her life while Adaku sees her daughters as part of her life.
Nnu Ego wants her sons to grow up and be somebody for her; Adaku wants her daughters to be somebody for themselves. Adaku says “As for my daughters, they will have to take their own chances in the world. I am not prepared to stay there and be turned into a mad woman, just because I have no sons” (169-170). By the end of the novel before her death, Nnu Ego is driven to a loss of reason by the devastating failure of her children to give her the pleasures that would have been traditionally accorded to her as a mother. Nnu Ego is turned into a mad woman in spite of having many sons.
Adaku learns to assert her economic independence by using opportunities available in
Lagos that would not have been available to her in the village of Ibiza. Adaku becomes a fairly successful trader in the Zabo Market and then becomes an even more successful trader once she has moved out of the house. Adaku’s prosperous cloth-vending business gives her economic autonomy and an increased sense of power and control over her life. Her success comes from
Adaku’s ability to adapt her ideals to urban life and to combine traditional and modern values, which contributes to her greater happiness and success. Even though she becomes an outsider by leaving her marriage (and possibly briefly participating in prostitution), there is little doubt that
Adaku is more happy and better off once she has moved out of Nnaife’s house, and her successful financial situation contrasts strikingly with Nnu Ego’s stark poverty. In her autobiography, Emecheta writes: “What makes all of us human is belonging to a group. And if one belongs to a group, one should try and abide by its laws. If one could not abide by the group’s law, then one was an outsider, a radical, someone different who had found a way of 81
living and being happy outside the group” (Head Above Water , 155). Adaku does not abide by
the social codes of Igbo society as Nnu Ego, Nnaife, and their Lagos neighbors interpret them,
and so Adaku becomes an outsider; but her failure to conform to the social ideals also allows
Adaku to define herself successfully as a female self. In her autobiography, Emecheta writes,
“people like me who go against tradition must die” (165). Adaku doesn’t die but instead thrives, perhaps because Adaku does not thwart modern codes but instead adapts them within traditional values (whereas Nnu Ego is unable to adapt herself to modern life). Angelita Reyes writes in her article, “the African woman who finds herself caught within the transitional phase is faced with deciding which aspects of tradition she wants to retain and which to abandon” (206). Clearly,
Adaku’s success results from her ability to retain useful aspects of tradition and leave behind those that would oppress her.
Just as it is misguided to read The Slave Girl as a unilateral condemnation of slavery, the
critics who read The Joys of Motherhood as a one-sided indictment against tradition or polygamy
are similarly wrong. Eustace Palmer writes that Emecheta uses The Joys of Motherhood to
“make her propagandist point about the fate of mothers and the evils of the polygamous
situation” (45). Katherine Frank has argued that “polygamy, of course, is the most glaringly
inequitable and sexist feature of traditional African society” (18). But in fact, Emecheta has
openly shared her personal opinion about the practice of polygamy, and it is not a unilateral
condemnation. Emecheta said in her presentation on “feminism” in 1986:
People think that polygamy is oppression, and it is in certain cases. But I realize,
now that I have visited Nigeria often, that some women can make polygamy work
for them… Another woman in the family will help share the housework… In 82
many cases polygamy can be liberating to the woman, rather than inhibiting her,
especially if she is educated. (“feminism,” 176, 178)
Earlier in 1980, Buchi Emecheta said in an interview with Rolf Solberg: “a polygamous life I think in village Africa you still need this tradition” (Solberg, 260). Critics seem eager to dismiss the pluralistic dimension of Emecheta’s writings, but Emecheta refuses to take a feminist essentialist stance against polygamy; instead, Emecheta has even argued that polygamy can be useful for women who use it to give themselves more freedom. “Polygamy encourages [a woman] to value herself as a person and look outside her family for friends. It gives her freedom from having to worry about her husband most of the time” (“feminism,” 178). Emecheta contends that polygamy can even allow the husband and wife to have a more fulfilling and respectful relationship because they are not exclusively dependent on each other.
More importantly, polygamy allows the children to be surrounded by multiple loving mother figures who will be able to look out for them (179). Because Igbo women have been encouraged to have more children than they could probably manage on their own, the institution of co-wives helps to relieve some of the workload for women who share domestic chores, such as cooking and caring for the children, and allows them to use the extra time for other useful tasks, such as trading. The number of children makes it more difficult to accumulate wealth in the city, as Emecheta points out in The Joys of Motherhood : “Babies were always ill, which
meant the mother would lose many market days” (80). When Adaku first arrives in Lagos, she
tells Nnu Ego that they will be like sisters, “sharing a husband” (123). Adaku is willing to help
Nnu Ego with the children and to make money through trading in the market. In fact, because
Nnaife is so often away, Nnu Ego and Adaku both must participate in trade in order to make 83 enough for their housekeeping and children’s expenses. Together, when they combine their efforts, Nnu Ego and Adaku have more power than they do individually. The polygamous marriage gives women power just in the fact that they outnumber the singular male head of household. As Janet Pool observes, polygamy allows co-wives “to form a power-bloc within the family” (11); this alliance could enable wives to coerce a stubborn husband into giving them more household money or to behave more kindly.
However, like many Western feminists who use The Joys of Motherhood as evidence for a condemnation of polygamy, Nnu Ego blinds herself to the usefulness or benefit in sharing her husband with another woman. Nnu Ego’s response is very understandable to the Western reader, which perhaps makes it more difficult for him/her to accept that there might be some positive merits to the polygamous practice. Anthropologists suggest that high infant mortality rates and pregnancy complications lead to the institution of polygamous marriages to ensure the continuation of kinship lines. However, modern medicine, advances in midwifery, and better nutrition lowered the infant mortality rate, thus resulting in an increased number of children that families in the city could not afford to support. The increasing financial burden of children, a burden never anticipated in the traditional villages, is one of the central conflicts for Nnu Ego and Nnaife. Naife’s taking of multiple wives results in the numerous children he and his wives cannot afford. In fact, Nnaife’s practice of polygamy is not reflective of traditional principles, which is perhaps one of the reasons his marriages do not work. He does not consult Nnu Ego, he does not provide her with her own space, he does not provide his wives with sufficient income to care for their children, and Nnaife spends more money on his brides than his family can afford. 84
By illustrating the polygamous marriage of Nnu Ego and Nnaife in the city and comparing it to what Agbadi shared in the village, Emecheta explores where and why polygamous relationships work and where/why they should not be practiced. The confinement and imprisonment of space explains why polygamy is not suited for the city: the women do not have the luxury of their own huts but must live in cramped quarters that exaggerate the feelings of competition and jealousy. Emecheta shows that polygamy worked in the traditional villages where women had their own huts and were not forced to live together and bear witness to their husband’s multiple conjugal visits. By providing their wives with separate living spaces, polygamous men were able to limit conflict between the wives. Author Akachi Ezeigbo writes:
But today, many a polygamous man keeps his wives in one house (sometimes in a
flat in the city). Inevitably, conflict becomes the order of the day in such a home.
In some cases, even a single room is shared by the wives, their children, and the
husband! … It is wisest for women who accept polygamy to insist on being
quartered in their own private homes. If polygamy must be practiced, it should be
an indulgence for the rich alone. (59)
However, even in the village with separate spaces, polygamy is not without jealousy and cruelty.
Emecheta shows how Agbadi, having seven wives and two mistresses, flaunts his favoritism towards Ona by noisily making love to her in the courtyard so that all the other neglected wives and mistresses hear. Agbadi’s behavior directly results in the death of his first wife who becomes very ill after hearing and watching Agbadi’s lovemaking with Ona (22). The villagers say “it was very bad for [the first wife’s] morale to hear her husband giving pleasure to another woman in the same courtyard where she slept” (21). This scene of exaggerated lovemaking and 85 the suffering of a first wife reoccurs later in the novel on the first night that Adaku arrives in
Nnaife’s home. Nnu Ego “tried to block her ears, yet could still hear Adaku’s exaggerated carrying on. Nnu Ego tossed in agony and anger all night, going through in her imagination what was taking place behind the curtained bed” (124). Nnaife instigates sexual competition and comparison between Adaku and Nnu Ego by saying out loud, “My senior wife cannot go to sleep. You must learn to accept your pleasures quietly, my new wife Adaku. Your senior wife is like a white woman; she does not want noises” (124). According to Emelia Oko, Emecheta is
“the only Nigerian female novelist to explore those normal situations in polygamous homes when affection cannot possibly be shared equally among all the wives” (96). Wives live together in a definite pecking order of seniority that naturally encourages competition and envy.
Emecheta shows that as long as the relationships between and among women are negotiated through a man, there can be no feminine camaraderie.
As soon as Adaku arrives, Nnu Ego is immediately jealous of this more beautiful and healthier woman. “Now there was this new threat” (118). In the city, Adaku is not viewed as a partner with whom labor can be shared (as she may have been in the traditional village), but as a threat, “a new menace” (118). “She and Adaku would be fighting for Nnaife’s favour. Strange how in less than five hours Nnaife had become a rare commodity” (121). Akachi Ezeigbo writes: “Polygamy cannot help in forging unity and equality or in bringing about integration and harmony in the home because it introduces hostility and rivalry between women” (10). The polygamous marriage inevitably creates a situation of anxiety for co-wives who must worry about the security of their own position and also that of their children. According to Lauretta
Ngcobo, “relations among the co-wives are seldom wholesome. Rivalry and insecurity within 86 the institution often result in hatred. This sort of bitterness has little outlet, for its expression is discouraged” (145). Nnu Ego does everything she can to make Adaku jealous and to prove her superiority over Adaku (162), until eventually the bitter conflict among the wives affects the social and economic well being of the household.
According to Akachi Ezeigbo, “the common belief amongst men in Nigeria today is that women are their own worst enemies and that women hate each other and are forever locked in rivalry” (“The Enemy Within,” 7). Articles in local newspapers and magazines and popular fiction promote this portrayal of women as enemies. Folklore and popular fiction also propagate stories of women as rivals, telling the stories of favored wives or the tales of poisonous relationships between wives and their stepchildren. 20 Is this story of the problems and rivalry between women real or created? In Emecheta’s depiction, the difficulties of city life inevitably bring out competitiveness among women: whether over a husband, a trade stall, or children. As
Susan Andrade has pointed out, the hostility between Nnu Ego and Adaku is due primarily to their struggle over “limited resources in the urban colonial context” (26). The poisoned relationship between Adaku and Nnu Ego points to the breakdown and impossibility of feminine community in a neocolonial urban context. A possible friendship between Adaku and Nnu Ego is hampered by the competition between them for Nnaife’s attention, limited financial resources, increasing family demands, and the cramped single room they must all share. Once Adaku has left the close quarters, a friendship might have developed between the two women, but Nnu Ego is too proud and worried about how the community may perceive such a friendship with the now-outsider Adaku.
20 One example is the story of Ugoye in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God . 87
Throughout her interviews and writings, Emecheta has addressed the problems of female competition and jealousy in Nigerian society. In her interview with Adeola James, Buchi
Emecheta states that in order for the situation for women in improve in Nigeria, women will have to stop putting each other down and they will have to stop resisting change (36). Later, in
an interview with Dr. Akachi Ezeigbo, Emecheta reiterates: “As long as women are suppressed,
there will be no progress. As long as women are hypocritical and undermine themselves, they
will get nowhere” (99). She reiterates in her paper on feminism: “And yet we [women] are on
the lowest rung. Men do not put us there, my sisters, I think sometimes we put ourselves there”
(“feminism,” 180). In The Joys of Motherhood , both the village and urban communities clearly
foster a sense of jealousy and insecurity among the women. When Nnu Ego consults a medicine
man in Lagos about her oldest son’s dream, the medicine man tells Nnu Ego that she must
protect her sons “against the jealousy of the younger wife [Adaku]” (129). Later when Nnu Ego
returns to her home village, Nnaife’s female relatives nurture the seeds of jealousy and rivalry in
Nnu Ego towards Adaku. The senior wife of Nnaife’s oldest brother warns Nnu Ego against
leaving her husband at home with such an “ambitious woman:”
‘Can’t you see that you are running away from the position your chi has given
you and leaving it for a woman your husband inherited from his brother, a woman
who we here all know to be very ambitious, a woman who has not even borne a
son for this family?… Do you think that clever thing would put in a good word
for you?… Don’t forget that she is desperate for a son and you have three already’
(158). 88
The warnings and feelings of rivalry lead Nnu Ego to distance herself from all other women in the city.
The urban environment antagonizes the tension and animosity between Nnu Ego and
Adaku, and so instead of helping each other, the women harbor feelings of jealousy and superiority towards one another. Nnu Ego’s feelings of jealousy and rivalry increase until by the end of the novel she has distanced herself from all other women. When a friend of Adaku’s visits, Nnu Ego is incredibly rude to the woman because she is so jealous of her: of her children, her expensive clothes, and jewelry. “[The visitor] had never in all her life seen such anti-social behavior. She had never been so insulted” (164). While Nnu Ego’s failure to greet the female visitor is a great offense, it is Adaku who is chastised by the men because she is the second wife and has failed to bear any sons. Even though Nnu Ego knows that she is in the wrong, she fails to stand up for Adaku or defend her in front of the men. After the men have gone, Adaku says to
Nnu Ego: “we women set impossible standards for ourselves. That we make life intolerable for one another. I cannot live up to your standards, senior wife. So I have to set my own” (169).
Nnu Ego does not seize this opportunity to form an alliance with Adaku, but instead enjoys her own feelings of superiority, safe from chastisement this time by her “joys of motherhood.” Nnu
Ego’s desperate poverty and unhappy marriage place her in an isolated position of her own creation.
In Lagos, the traditional roles and values between men and women are disrupted, and marital relationships and individuals suffer as a result. Nnaife feels emasculated because he must assume a domestic role doing a white woman’s laundry and cooking. Nnu Ego doesn’t have the help of her village community in raising her children and cannot afford to care for them 89 on her own. Because of their individual burdens in the city, the relationship between Nnu Ego and Nnaife also deteriorates. Emecheta shows how part of the problem in marital life in the cities is the failure for the couple to have adequate time with each other and to demonstrate their affection for one another:
Like other husbands and wives in Lagos, Nnu Ego and Nnaife started growing
slightly apart… now each was in a different world. There was no time for petting
or talking to each other about love. That type of family awareness which the
illiterate farmer was able to show his wife, his household, his compound, had
been lost in Lagos, for the job of the white man, for the joy of buying expensive
lappas, and for the feel of shiny trinkets. Few men in Lagos would have time to
sit and admire their wives’ tattoos, let alone tell them tales of animals nestling in
the forest, like the village husbands who might lure a favorite wife into the farm
to make love to her with only the sky as their shelter, or bathe in the same stream
with her, scrubbing one another’s backs. In Lagos, a wife would not have time.
She had to work” (52).
In Lagos, the husband and wife are so preoccupied with living, with providing the daily necessities of life, that they are unable to enjoy life or each other.
The passionate relationship between Agbadi and Ona serves as a counterpoint to the weakened marriage between Nnaife and Nnu Ego. Before his death, Agbadi realizes that changes in modern life are removing the time and personal freedom that allow a husband to better love his wife: 90
The art of loving, he knew, required deeper men. Men who did not have to spend
every moment of their time working and worrying about food and the farm. Men
who could spare the time to think. This quality was becoming rarer and rarer,
Agbadi found, and sometimes he thought it was actually dying out with his own
generation. (36)
Adaku and Nnaife are foils of each other. While Agbadi is respected in the village for his strong masculinity, Nnaife is forced to wash women’s linens and beg for work in the city. Agbadi stops dealing in slaves and offers freedom to those already in his household; he encourages slaves to return to their homelands and those who wouldn’t or couldn’t he adopts as children; he is a constant source of love and strength for his daughter Nnu Ego; he criticizes those who mistreat a woman because she has failed to bear a child; and he remains a devoted lover to Ona throughout the novel. While Agbadi has freed all his slaves, in contrast Nnaife is (re)made a slave by colonialism; Nnaife acts out his resentment of his emasculated powerless status by abusing the next weaker group: women or specifically his wife Nnu Ego. “Not only did life in Lagos rob
[Nnaife] of his manhood and of doing difficult work, now it had made him redundant and having to rely on his wife” (87). Later in the novel, Nnaife thinks, “He could even now afford to beat
[Nnu Ego] up, if she went beyond the limits he could stand” (117). According to Akachi
Ezeigbo:
The colonization of Africa meant the total emasculation of the African male…
The Igbo man, having been symbolically ‘unmasked’ and ‘stripped named’ by the
white man, suffered a loss of face with his women. He lost all dignity, having
been reduced to a state of impotence and powerlessness by the colonial master. 91
Unable to deal with the source of his pain and humiliation, he turned his anger on
the women who, though innocent, nevertheless witnessed his emasculation.
(“Tradition,” 15-16)
Emecheta’s narrative voice appears as explanation in Nnu Ego’s friend Cordelia who tells Nnu
Ego: “‘They are all slaves, including us. If their masters treat them badly, [the men] take it out
on us. The only difference is that they are given some pay for their work, instead of having been
bought’” (51). Cordelia’s voice is echoed by what Emecheta says in her interview with Rolf
Solberg: “I think our men have an excuse to oppress us, because they are not free themselves,
even in the so-called independent states. They cannot see that they are being used. So until they
are free you can’t really claim to be a feminist….We need our men” (260). When Nnu Ego
complains about Nnaife’s lack of time in the city, Cordelia again responds: “‘Men here are too
busy being white men’s servants to be men. We women mind the home. Not our husbands.
Their manhood has been taken away from them. The shame of it is that they don’t know it. All they see is the money, shining white man’s money’” (51). The corrupting effects of Western materialism on traditional African culture are seen through the dehumanization and effeminization of the Nigerian men in modern, urban society. Cordelia refers to the Lagos men as “machines” (53), and Nnaife’s boss, the British Dr Meers, calls Nnaife “a baboon” (41). By the end of the novel, Nnaife is completely adrift (our last picture of him is being taken to prison for failing to follow modern laws), without attachment to the old traditions but also unable to adapt to the rules of modern society.
Critics of Emecheta’s works have mistakenly pointed to men as the ultimate enemy and purport that Emecheta embraces the solution of a world without men. In “Women Without Men: 92
The Feminist Novel in Africa,” Katherine Frank writes that in Emecheta’s novels “man is the enemy, the exploiter and the oppressor” (15). In fact, Emecheta does not single out men as the enemy or the oppressor; rather, she describes how men are also victims of colonization and how women collude in their own oppression. While the men take their oppression out on their wives, the women take it out on each other and their daughters (who are less prized than sons). Nnu
Ego shouts at her daughters that they must work harder because they are girls and must provide for the boys and men in the family. “‘But you are girls! They are boys. You have to sell to put them in a good position in life, so that they will be able to look after the family’” (176). Nnu
Ego believes that the purpose of daughters is “to be of little trouble and allow themselves to be used by their family until they were transferred to their men” (207). Lauretta Ngcobo, in her study on “African Motherhood,” writes that a daughter “is well loved but her rights within the family are limited compared to those of her brothers. She is aware that somehow she is on her way out” (143). While Emecheta shows Nnaife abusing Nnu Ego, Emecheta also shows Nnu
Ego similarly oppressing Adaku (for her ‘failure’ to only have girl children). Nnu Ego buys into and reinforces the patriarchal belief that a woman is only a woman if she has had male sons.
At the end of the novel, Nnu Ego realizes that she has participated in the oppression of women. “‘But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man’s world, which women will always help to build’” (187). Nnu Ego realizes that women are active agents, either in enforcing patriarchy or in changing it. The women collude in each other’s oppression and so they must similarly participate in the unburdening of women. But by the time Nnu Ego has reached this realization, it is impossible for her to change her traditional ways. At the same time 93 that Nnu Ego says girls should be educated and women should earn a monthly income, she also says that the most important thing is to find husbands for her daughters (189). The possibility for change resides in women like Adaku and her educated daughters, and possibly Nnu Ego’s daughters who have been raised in Lagos and know a country and worldview different from their mother’s. By not portraying women solely as victims of oppression, Emecheta illustrates the power women hold to change their situation and points to the source of this power in feminine community.
One of the greatest sacrifices by women who move to the cities is giving up “the sense of belonging which existed in their village communities” (Ngcobo, 141). In village society, men and women lived more segregated lives, which allowed them to foster their same-sex communities (largely friends of their age-group). “A young wife is in close touch with other women in the home rather than with her husband, for social organization and work roles tend to keep the sexes apart in every day life” (Ngcobo, 143). The powerful final realization by Nnu
Ego is that “she would have been better off had she had time to cultivate those women who had offered her hands of friendship” (219). Nnu Ego created her own isolation because “she had shied away from friendship, telling herself she did not need any friends, she had enough in her family” (219). Husbands and children do not substitute for the power and support derived from feminine community. Buchi Emecheta explains:
In The Joys of Motherhood I created a woman, Nnuego, who gave all her energy,
all her money and everything she had to raise her kids. She chopped wood for
sale, she dealt on the black market, she did everything except whore herself to 94
raise money. She was so busy doing all this that she had no time to cultivate any
friend among her own sex. (Head Above Water , 225)
While Nnu Ego’s relationship with the women in the village is described as “amicable” (33), she is unable to foster this feminine community under the conditions of her life in Lagos.
When Nnu Ego first arrives in Lagos, she meets monthly with the other women from
Ibuza. These monthly meetings help Nnu Ego to start up a trading business and teach her how to survive in the city:
The monthly meetings on the island with her fellow Ibuza wives did Nnu Ego a
great deal of good. The other women taught her how to start her own business so
that she would not have only one outfit to wear. They let her borrow five
shillings from the women’s fund and advised her to buy tins of cigarettes and
packets of matches. (52)
The other women’s experiences help Nnu Ego to acclimate and establish a new life in Lagos.
When Nnu Ego gives birth to her first child, a son, an Owerri woman helps deliver the baby.
When Nnu Ego thanks the woman for her assistance, the reply is: “ ‘We are like sisters on a pilgrimage. Why should we not help one another?’” (53). Later when Nnu Ego loses this first son, she wishes that she had the village women around her who would have comforted her with stories of the children they had themselves lost (72). Nnu Ego has a few close female friendships at the beginning of the novel (Cordelia and Ato, an Igbo woman who helps Nnu Ego through the loss of her first son), yet these relationships do not endure in the city where people are moving and resources are scarce. Poverty and multiple pregnancies/children prevent Nnu Ego from continuing to attend the monthly meetings of Ibuza women, and so she disconnects from the 95
female network. Other village women chastise Nnu Ego for not attending the meetings: “‘Who
would look after you if not your people, and yet you don’t attend the meetings?’” (74). Female
community comes to Nnu Ego’s rescue repeatedly throughout the novel, particularly when all the
men are taken overseas to fight for the British: Cordelia and Ato help Nnu Ego to find a home
for her family when Nnaife is away; Mamy Abby helps Nnu Ego to open a post office savings
account and reads her correspondence with Nnaife; a neighbor, Iyawo, cooks a yam stew to feed
Nnu Ego and her children when they are starving (without bruising Nnu Ego’s pride).
Yet even with all the much-needed support from the women around her, Nnu Ego begins
to have antagonistic relationships with women. At the end of the novel, Nnu Ego dies friendless,
alone on the side of the road. Marriage and motherhood are designated by society as what bring
women happiness, but neither brings Nnu Ego the happiness she has expected from them. “The
central irony of her life can be found in her solitariness even when she is surrounded by so many
people to whom she had given her all” (Oriaku, 81). The final ironic sentence is “She had never really made many friends, so busy had she been building up her joys as a mother” (224).
Emecheta’s message to her women readers is: “what we gain by forgiving one another is better than what we gain by being alone in order to avoid jealousy” (“feminism,” 178). The real rewards and joys lost by Nnu Ego are those gained from participation in female community.
According to Emecheta, “the beauty in sisterhood is when women reach the age of about forty.
The women who cultivated sisters, either through marriage or through the village age-group, start reaping their reward” (“feminism,” 177). Nnu Ego fails to cultivate female community because she is so focused on motherhood, and this is why she dies alone, friendless, on the side of the road. 96
Through her title, Emecheta links her novel into the community of women’s writing by
revising and revisioning the last lines of Flora Nwapa’s Efuru : “She had never experienced the
joys of motherhood.” In Nwapa’s novel, the “joys of motherhood” are reflected glory and the
assurance of security in one’s old age. Emecheta takes Efuru’s tragic flaw (not having children)
and revises it in the new protagonist of Nnu Ego: Nnu Ego gives birth so many times that she
and Nnaife are not able to afford more children. However, critics should not interpret “the joys
of motherhood” as entirely ironic; after all, the novel is dedicated to all mothers. Adaku is happy
in her motherhood, as are other women around Nnu Ego. Similarly, in Emecheta’s later novel
Gwendolen (1989), the joys of motherhood become Gwendolen’s salvation, bringing her self- awareness and a source for positive identity. The Joys of Motherhood is not a novel whose
purpose is to condemn the institutions of motherhood or polygamy; instead, Emecheta resists
absolute closure by writing texts with enigmatic endings and a plurality of meanings that
preclude definitive understanding. I agree with Cynthia Ward who contends that “Emecheta’s
works are pulled apart- not by the tensions inherent in her works but by the opposing forces that
try to make her ‘speak’ clearly and unambiguously for them’ (85). However, one message that is
spoken clearly throughout her works is the value and importance of feminine community. Those female characters who participate successfully in female friendships are portrayed more optimistically in their development (Gwendolen); those women who eschew female community in place of social institutions such as marriage and family are betrayed (Obejeta and Nnu Ego).
Nnu Ego fails to form a friendship with Adaku and instead sees her as a rival; instead of loosening the shackles that bind and oppress them, Nnu Ego attaches herself even more tightly to traditions that will ultimately result in her poverty and non-subjecthood. In the end, Nnu Ego is 97 as unsuccessful in finding her freedom as her slave girl “chi” was in earning hers; fortunately, however, Emecheta leaves the ending open to the possibility of a more happy ending for Adaku and the next generation of daughters.
Myriam Warner-Vieyra: Juletane
While the title seems to suggest otherwise, Juletane is the story of not one but four women’s lives: two Caribbean and two African women. As in Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit,
Myriam Warner-Vieyra treats the three geographical points of the French Caribbean psyche –
West Africa, the West Indies, and the European metropole. For the first ten years of her life,
Juletane grows up on an unspecified French-Caribbean island; she is haunted by a tension between her conception during Lent, the Catholic period of fasting and abstinence, and her birth on Christmas day, a day of celebration and miracles. Just as the circumstances of Nnu Ego’s conception and birth will haunt her through the form of her punishing chi, so Juletane must also suffer for the sexual transgressions of her parents. According to Juletane, the two opposing facts of her birth make her “déjà victime des éléments” (13) [already a victim of the elements].
Juletane attributes her subsequent misfortunes in life to a destiny of needing to atone for the sin of her father:
C’est la date de conception qui doit être pour quelque chose dans mes traits de
caractère et sur le cours de ma vie. Mon père n’avait pas respecté la coutume, en
rendant homage à sa jeune femme, et me procréa avec toute la malédiction de
l’église du bourg. (13)
98
[It is the date of conception that must have influenced my personality traits and
the course of my life. My father had not respected tradition, in paying homage to
his young wife, and created me with all the condemnation of the village church.]
Because of the circumstances of her birth, Juletane is always already an outsider, condemned by
the village. Juletane places the blame for her weaknesses and her life path on her father who
could not control his desire for his young wife (just as Agbadi could not control his desires for
Ona). Later in the novel, Juletane will similarly blame the next prominent male figure in her life,
her husband Mamadou, for her suffering and victimization in Africa.
When Juletane is orphaned at ten years by the deaths of her parents, she moves to Paris to live with her godmother. Her overprotective godmother prevents Juletane from making her own peer community, and so Juletane appears to have no personal experiences of female friendship or community (Juletane never mentions any childhood friends from her years in the Caribbean).
After her godmother’s sudden death, Juletane is left completely alone in the world; thus, when she meets Mamadou, a Senegalese 21 law student in Paris, her loneliness makes her especially
vulnerable to his attention. She invests too much of herself into her relationship with Mamadou
to the detriment of her own sense of self. The reader learns nothing of Juletane’s interests or
desires outside of her connection to Mamadou because she quickly erases any sense of self-
identification outside of his presence. Juletane writes in her diary that when she met Mamadou
in Paris, she was already “coupée presque totalement de tout lien avec mon île et les jeunes de
mon âge” (27) [almost totally cut off from any connection to my island and young people my
age]. Therefore, Mamadou not only becomes her only friend and surrogate family, but he also
21 Just as Warner-Vieyra never specifies Juletane’s island home as Guadeloupe, she also never identifies Mamadou’s nationality as Senegalese. However, most critics agree that he is Senegalese and that Juletane and Mamadou travel to Senegal. For the purposes of this study, I agree with the critics. 99 becomes Juletane’s replacement for her lost Caribbean homeland and a connection to her African origins. Edward Said describes the state of exile as “fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past” (Exile , 360). Juletane assumes an almost insatiable desire for Mamadou as he becomes for her a symbol of reconnection to her island homeland and the African continent.
During their courtship in Paris, Juletane willingly gives Mamadou control over her life: she allows him to choose all the films they see (and her failure to read the subtitles or understand the films foreshadows the way she will later isolate herself from communication in Senegal);
Juletane only goes out with Mamadou’s friends (not her own); and she allows Mamadou to make all the decisions regarding their future without any combined discussion of their plans. Juletane loses a sense of herself separate from Mamadou:
Moi je l’aimais avec toute la fougue et l’absolu d’un premier et unique amour. Il
possédait à mes yeux toutes les vertus. N’ayant pas de parents, peu d’amis,
Mamadou devint tout mon univers… Lui ma seule richesse, mon bien le plus
précieux! En l’épousant, en plus d’un mari, c’était une famille que j’avais
retrouvée. Il était devenu ce père disparu si tot, cet ami dont j’avais rêvé. (31, 51)
[I loved him with all the ardour and intensity of a first and only love. In my eyes
he possessed every virtue. I had no relatives, few friends, so Mamadou became
my whole universe…Mamadou, my only treasure, my most precious good! By
marrying him, it was more than a husband, it was a family that I had found. He 100
had become the father who had disappeared too soon, the friend of whom I had
dreamed.]
Juletane invests herself too completely in what Mamadou represents to her: a husband, a family, a homeland. Because she has placed Mamadou in such a position of superiority and value,
Juletane especially is unable to tolerate not having Mamadou to herself. She is not prepared to share Mamadou with another family or another country, let alone another wife.
Juletane marries Mamadou and follows him to Senegal, anticipating her arrival in a homeland that will provide her with the family, rootedness, and sense of belonging she desires.
Juletane is seduced by all that she thinks Africa has to offer her, but in contrast to her expectations, as she crosses the seas, she begins to realize that Africa will not present her with the happiness and stability she expected. Shortly after arriving in Senegal, Juletane has a miscarriage as a result of a car accident and later learns she will never be pregnant again. Her capacity for womanhood, as understood in West African society, is taken away. Her feminine identity is removed from her by outside circumstances beyond her control: just as she was a victim by the circumstances of her birth, she once again feels victimized by the elimination of her capacity for motherhood. The loss of her ability to bear children is the greatest assault to
Juletane’s sense of identity. Juletane is unable to find a place for herself in the matrocentric culture of West Africa. According to Katherine Frank, “The African woman without children is clearly better off dead, for she has no intrinsic value of her own. The only power a woman possesses is her procreative power, and if she is unable to exercise it she is deemed useless and expendable, both in her own eyes and those of her culture” (488). Without the capacity to use her body as a vessel for maternity, Juletane abandons her body as a sexual and gendered being. 101
She refuses to share her husband’s bed and she secludes herself away from her husband, co- wives, and family. Juletane’s sterility leaves her “powerless to change her position within the hierarchy of the household or within society” (Proulx, 700). In Senegalese society, motherhood is the sole proof of a woman’s worth, and so Juletane loses her most esteemed role and power as a woman. She enters a state of nothingness, stripped of her identity as a woman and having lost her name, her past, her role as wife and mother, and her sense of self. As motherhood is the most privileged female role in her society, Juletane’s sterility pushes her to the margins in a forced silencing and exile.
Once Juletane’s body is unable to function as a vessel for motherhood, she becomes the ultimate outsider, “la folle” [the madwoman] as her co-wife Ndèye calls her. Juletane cannot speak in the local language, so she is rendered voiceless. She cannot bear children, so she loses her status as a woman. She has been categorized as insane, so she no longer has a presence in the community. Because Juletane has very little sense of herself as an individual prior to arriving in
Africa, she completely loses herself there—so much so that she even loses her name: “Je n’ai ni parents, ni amis. Et même plus de nom. Peu importe, ce n’était qu’un nom d’emprunt et je crains l’avoir oublié… Ici, on m’appelle « la folle »” (13) [I have no parents, no friends. Not even a name any more. But that is of little importance, it was only a borrowed name and I fear I have forgotten it… Here they call me the ‘mad woman’]. The loss of her relationship with her husband, her failure to communicate with the community around her, and her inability to bear children lead to the overdetermination of Juletane’s madness. Both Glissant and Fanon argued that the suffering body or madness functions as a metaphor for the ‘diseased’ female and Creole 102 condition and alienation. Warner-Vieyra similarly suggests that Juletane’s madness is the “sane” response to a sick society.
Et si les fous n’étaient pas fous! Si un certain comportement que les gens simples
et vulgaires nomment folie, n’étaient que sagesse, reflet de l’hypersensibilité
lucide d’une âme pure, droite, precipitée dans un vide affectif réel ou imaginaire?
Pour moi, je suis la personne la plus clairvoyante de la maison. (13-14)
[What if mad people weren’t mad! What if a certain behavior that simple, base
people call madness was only wisdom, a reflection of a lucid hypersensitivity of a
pure, upright soul thrown into a real or imaginary affective void. For me, I am the
most clear-sighted person in the house.]
Juletane’s madness ultimately does not deliver any form of resistance or rebellion but leads to her increasing isolation and exile.
Juletane willingly enters into exile, first by her accompaniment of Mamadou across the seas and then by her self-imposed imprisonment in her tiny room in Mamadou’s home. It is ironic that Juletane spurns what she has always desired- the family and homeland that potentially await her in Mamadou’s extended family- but Juletane is unable to see beyond Mamadou’s immediate betrayal of not having disclosed to her the existence of his first wife Awa. Juletane’s failure to learn the indigenous language spoken by the women around her and her inability to invest any of her emotions outside of her relationship to Mamadou force her deeper and deeper into physical and emotional isolation and exile. When Juletane is unable to communicate verbally with those around her, she finds another way to tell her story; Juletane resorts to 103
privately transcribing her thoughts by keeping a diary of her married life to Mamadou in Africa.
The diary becomes a way of attempting to recapture lost origins, where Juletane can recall the
memories of her childhood in Guadeloupe and reexamine her past. Writing represents a return to
Paris (to her godmother) and to Guadeloupe—a return to origins that, contrary to Juletane’s
expectations, was not fulfilled by the travel to Africa.
Just as for Emecheta (who likens her books to children), writing in Juletane is connected
to motherhood. 22 Since Juletane cannot give birth to any biological children, writing becomes her form of procreation. She is unable to produce a child, and so she produces the journal (for
Mamadou) instead (she even keeps it under her dress close to her womb). In fact, the journal is stolen from and will take the place of Diary, Awa’s oldest daughter. The journal or written word substitutes for the place of Juletane’s life and unborn child, and it also gives Juletane a new possibility for communication. Since she is unable to converse with the women around her, she attempts to communicate through the diary (she refers to it as her friend). While Juletane attempts to substitute her lack of speech and community with her writing, we see in her story that the written word is unable to stand in for the spoken word. Juletane attempts to make the written word a substitute for life within community, but the written word is unable to comfort its writer in its silence. Juletane writes because she is alone, and perhaps because she writes, she is alone.
Juletane’s writing is her only act that is not self-destructive or aggressive against others.
Until she procures the journal, Juletane must resort to masochistic and violent acts to communicate her frustration; the first example we see is when she rips her sheet into shreds and throws them out her window (making her act a public display that can be witnessed by Awa in the courtyard since if her acts are not witnessed or read/heard, then they would have no use as
22 In fact, Juletane is dedicated to Warner-Vieyra’s husband and children. 104
communication). Juletane’s hostility towards her oppression (patriarchal, religious, cultural) has
been pent up for so long that once it erupts it cannot be controlled, and Juletane is not even
conscious of what she is doing:
Malgré mon peu d’aptitude à la violence, je ne peux pas accepter cette gifle…
Cette gifle n’est que la goutte d’eau qui fait déborder ma coupe de passivité et
transforme ma patience en torrent impéteux.” (92-93)
[Although I have little aptitude for violence, I could not accept that slap… That
slap was the drop of water that made my cup of passivity overflow and
transformed my patience into a raging torrent.]
First Juletane commits acts of violence against her own body (losing much of her body weight
and cutting off her hair), and later her acts of violence are carried out against her co-wives and
their children. Her violence offers no revolutionary emancipation, and ultimately even the act of
writing cannot save or liberate Juletane’s life.
While writing cannot save Juletane, it does enable her to have some sense of control and
mastery over her life and helps her to analyze and make sense of her experiences. “Coucher ma
peine sur une feuille blanche pouvait m’aider à l‘analyser, la dominer, et enfin, peut-être, la
supporter ou définitivement la refuser” (60) [Putting down my anguish on a blank page could help me to analyse it, to control it and finally, perhaps to bear it or reject it once and for all].
Writing from a realm of madness becomes a way to locate subjectivity outside the norm, to escape male codes and find other systems that will bring women into their own logos.
Underlining this possibility, Mudimbe-Boyi notes "madness or illness is the place from which 105
[feminine] discourse emerges"(138). Writing opens up the possibility for Juletane to
communicate with herself and to constitute herself as a speaking and narrating subject
(Mudimbe-Boyi, 125).
The primary purpose for Juletane’s journal is a final attempt to win back sole possession
over Mamadou, as the diary is (indirectly) written to/for him: “Je dois achever mon journal, c’est
le seul héritage que je lègue à Mamadou. J’espère qu’il le lira et comprendra combien il avait été
éloigné de mon rêve” (130) [I must finish my journal, it is the only legacy I am leaving to
Mamadou. I hope he will read it and will understand how far from my dream he really was].
Juletane believes she can win back Mamadou if he will only read her thoughts. The journal substitutes for a physical reconnection to Mamadou and is Juletane’s attempt to recuperate their lost monogamous marriage. Even at the end of the novel, Juletane has still given Mamadou the ultimate power as she places him in the role of reading her “confession.” In The History of
Sexuality , Michel Foucault discusses how the confession conveys power to the confessor and to the listener: “The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship” (61). Juletane uses her diary write (about) herself as a speaking subject and to “confess” her actions/thoughts to her husband and readers in order to seek salvation and redemption from them. All of Juletane’s energy and acts of violence are directed against Mamadou and his “property” (wives and children) to punish him for his betrayal of her. Once Mamadou dies, there is no possibility for continued interaction between writer/confessee and reader/confessor, and so Juletane stops writing. “Je me sens vide de toute énergie. Je n’ai plus personne à aimer, personne à hair” (140)
[I am emptied of all energy. I no longer have anyone to love, anyone to hate]. Without 106
Mamadou against whom she can direct all of her energy and hatred, Juletane quickly loses the will to live.
While Juletane’s suffering appears to be at the hands of Mamadou and his failure to prepare her for the traditions and cultural demands of Muslim Senegal, perhaps the blame would be better placed upon the ambiguous status of subjecthood Juletane inherited from her colonial past.
Croyant trouver en Mamadou toute la famille qui me manquait, je ne l’aimais pas
seulement comme un amant, un mari. C’était aussi toute cette affection filiale
débordante en moi que je reportais sur lui. Une fois de plus je retrouvais mon
angoisse d’orpheline. Perdue, seule au monde. (34)
[I thought I had found in Mamadou the family I missed, so I did not love him as a
lover, a husband. I transferred to him all the filial affection that was overflowing
in me as well. Once again I felt the anguish of being an orphan. Lost, alone, in
the world].
Warner-Vieyra states in her interview with Mildred Mortimer, “cultural alienation and isolation lead Juletane to insanity. If she had not been an orphan, Juletane would not have experienced
Africa in the same way” (33). If she had not been an orphan, Juletane would not have experienced marriage in the same way either; perhaps she would not have lost herself so completely to Mamadou. Many critics have focused upon the fact that Juletane loses herself to an African man. Thécla Midiohouan describes the Caribbean woman’s quest for marriage with an African man as a return to the Motherland: “des femmes antillaises, plus nombreuses, qui 107 souvent vivent leur marriage avec un africain comme un retour vers la Mère-Patrie” (39)
[Antillean women, more numerous, who often experience their marriage to an African man as a return to the Motherland]. The initial seduction by Mamadou and Juletane’s subsequent total dependence upon him “came from an apparent ability to satisfy the woman’s needs for concrete ties to a long-lost African culture and identity” (Lionnet, “Inscriptions of Exile,” 31). Ironically,
Juletane’s relationship to the Mother-Homeland is mediated through her relationships to men.
Just as her father was her connection to Guadeloupe, so Mamadou is Juletane’s connection to
Africa.
In her chapter on Maryse Condé’s Heremakhonon , Françoise Lionnet addresses the pull of Africa for writers from the French West Indies. Warner-Vieyra’s protagonist Juletane shares some striking resemblances to Condé’s character Veronica: both come to Africa in a quest for belonging and rootedness; both are disappointed by the elusive fantasy of Africa; both women fail to learn the indigenous languages; and both remain caught in their own created alienation.
According to Edouard Glissant, the desire for a return to origins is strongly internalized in uprooted and de-historicized people. In Eloge de la Créolité , Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and
Confiant write that it was a necessary development for Caribbean people to look to Africa for identity:
L’extériorité d’aspirations (l’Afrique mère, Afrique mystique, Afrique
impossible)… extériorite d’affirmation de soi (nous sommes des Africains)” (20)
[the exteriority of aspirations (to mother Africa, mythical Africa, impossible
Africa) and the exteriority of self-assertion (we are Africans)] (82). 108
The homecoming to Africa is expressed as the end of a journey where the alienated Caribbean self has found a reunited identity, but according to Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant it would be a necessary challenge for Caribbean people to step away from and move past an identity embedded in Africa.
Women writers like Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Buchi Emecheta, and Maryse Condé write against the Caribbean quest for identity that projects the potential for psychic unity onto Africa.
Maryse Condé writes that the dream for racial unification with Africa is not possible, especially for women:
Etre femme et antillaise, c’est un destin difficile à déchiffrer. Pendant un temps,
les Antillais ont cru que leur quête d’identité passait par l’Afrique… l’Afrique
était pour eux la grande matrice de la race noire et tout enfant issu de cette matrice
devait pour se connaître, fatalement, se rattacher à elle. En fin de compte, c’est
un piège. (“L’Image de la petite fille,” 89)
[Being a Caribbean woman is a difficult destiny to decipher. At one time,
Caribbeans believed that their identity quest went by way of Africa… For them,
Africa was the great womb of the black race, and every child issued by this womb
had, in order to understand him/herself, fatally, to reconnect with it. In the end,
it’s a trap.]
Africa cannot provide Juletane with all the happiness and belonging for which she has longed.
In her interview with Françoise Pfaff, Warner-Vieyra states: “West Indian people, whose ancestors were transported from Africa to the West Indies, have gone through a lot of changes. 109
People forcibly estranged from Africa cannot expect to come back to Africa to find their
ancestors’ villages where people will welcome them as African” (31). In fact, one of Juletane’s
co-wives will even question the African-ness of Juletane, calling her a toubabesse or ‘white
woman’ (79). Later, a woman in the African hospital describes Juletane’s writing in a diary as a
past-time for white people: “une histoire de Blancs” (138). Juletane cannot find the lost
connection to her Caribbean island by forging a new connection to the African continent.
According to Edward Said, once the bond between nationhood and citizenship is broken, it
cannot be reconstituted, and nationalism and exile become opposites that cannot be reconciled
(Reflection on Exile , 360).
Warner-Vieyra’s writing responds to a Caribbean notion of home expressed through the idealized image and myth of ‘Mother Africa.’ A return to the “motherland” communicates a dream to return “home”—finding a homeland stands in for finding self-identity and belonging.
Betty Wilson writes in her introduction to the English translation of Juletane :
[Caribbean women’s] alienation is linked to feelings of rejection and expresses
itself in negative mother and father figures: a rejection both of natural parents and
of the past. This rejection of their history is expressed as disillusionment with the
island-mother, with Europe, the mother or father-land (la mère-patrie), as well as
disappointment with Africa, the mythical motherland. (Wilson, viii)
Warner-Vieyra addresses the mythicization of Africa through Juletane’s journey by ship with
Mamadou to Senegal. Just as in Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit Zétou’s boatride from Guadeloupe to
France was marked by disillusionment and betrayal, so Juletane’s boat journey from France to
Senegal is a similar setting of disappointment and duplicity. 110
L’arrivée sur cette terre africaine de mes pères, je l’avais de cent manières
imaginée, voici qu’elle se transformait en un cauchemar… sûre d’être une intruse,
déplacée, déclassée… moi l’étrangère. (15)
[The arrival on this African land of my fathers, I had imagined it in a hundred
ways, and it was becoming a nightmare… I knew I would be an intruder, out of
place, lost… I was the stranger.]
Juletane’s travel to from Paris takes on the qualities of the Middle Passage, the journey that symbolizes an uprooting of millions of people. Simon Gikandi writes that the Middle Passage
“represents the temporal moment when the slaves are dislocated from Africa, it is also a challenge to them to reassemble their cultural fragments, fuse their multiple ethnic identities and appropriate imprisoned social spaces” (Writing in Limbo , 14). The Middle Passage effectively cut off Caribbean roots to Mother Africa and deprived Caribbeans of their ‘original’ identity, but, as theorists such as Glissant, Barnabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant also express, Caribbean identity cannot be exclusively expressed by a connection to France, to Africa, or the native
Caribbean island. Rather, it must be expressed through Creolization (métissage) that synthesizes the multiplicitous nature of identity; for this reason, Juletane cannot come to terms with her identity because she attempts to elide her Caribbean past and return “home” to Africa.
In Caribbean Discourse , Edouard Glissant writes “off the coast of Senegal, Gorée, the island before the open sea, the first step towards madness” (9). Ironically, it is in heading towards this country of Senegal that Juletane takes her first step towards madness when she learns that Mamadou has another wife awaiting them. As Foucault writes in Madness and 111
Civilization , the madman has no sense of destination or origin: “the land he will come to is unknown – as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him” (11).
Juletane is this exiled madman with no sense of destination or homeland. She admits that she knows nothing of Africa:
Moi qui ne connaissais pas l’Afrique et très peu mon propre pays d’origine…
Jusqu’à ma rencontre avec Mamadou, j’avais donc vécu bien loin de tout écho du
monde colonial. Aussi, independance ou autonomie étaient des mots tout à fait
nouveau pour moi. (26)
[I didn’t know Africa and I knew very little about my own homeland…Until I met
Mamadou, I had thus lived very far from any echo of the colonial world. Also,
independence or self-government were words which were completely new to me.]
Warner-Vieyra criticizes Juletane’s failure to know anything about her history or the land of her
“origins.” Although Juletane’s diary is kept in 1961 and her story takes place during the struggle for independence in colonial Africa, Juletane has little or no awareness of the situation around her. Ironically, she is so immersed in her own battle for freedom and selfhood that she is incapable of finding solace and/or help in the stories and people around her. Juletane’s ideas of
Africa are based on illusions and myths, rather than truth. She continuously repeats throughout the novel “I did not know.” Juletane does not have a relationship to her island home or to Africa outside of what has been taught to her by colonization and mediated through the lives of men. 112
As Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant express in Eloge de la Creolité , it is the Caribbean condition to perceive one’s world with the eyes of the other (14).
Juletane creates her exile by placing all of her happiness dependent upon the recognition of one individual (and one homeland) when she could have had the support of a larger community (multiple or ‘creolized’ homelands). She turns down the friendship extended by her co-wife Awa, scorns the third wife Ndèye, and fails to attempt to learn the language that would give her access to the other women in the community. The four women in the novel (Juletane and Hélène, Ndèye and Awa) function as doubles for each other. Juletane’s passivity as a subject contrasts with Hélène’s active readership. Awa’s simplicity and tradition are distinguished from Ndèye’s urbanness and modernity. Juletane’s co-wives represent two female roles present in African literature: the childless vamp (à la Jagua Nana) and the idealized, traditional Mother (as in négritude poems). Juletane rejects these two roles and assumes a third female literary convention: “the madwoman.” However, Juletane also simultaneously encompasses parts of Awa and Ndèye as if showing that all of these women’s lives are inextricably linked; Juletane projects qualities of the childless vamp (she seduces Mamadou in the shower with her naked body unchanged by pregnancy) and the maternal nurturer (we see this in the way Juletane treats Awa’s children and is similarly treated by them).
Mamadou’s third wife, Ndèye, is everything that Juletane despises: vain, disloyal, proud.
Ndèye and Juletane’s relationship is antagonistic from the beginning, as both women perceive each other as mutual enemies. 113
Ndèye, la nouvelle, me déteste, lance paroles et invectives en ma direction.
Pourquoi? Alors je ne la regarde pas, je ne l’entends pas non plus. Je l’ignore, et
c’est sans doute cela qui la vexe d’avoir à monologuer. (76)
[Ndèye, the new wife, hates me and hurls insults in my direction. Why? I don’t
look at her, I don’t hear her either. I ignore her, and that is undoubtedly what
annoys her, having to talk to herself.]
Ndèye brings Juletane’s hatred for her to a boiling point when she calls Juletane a white woman or toubabesse :
‘Je viens de faire la connaissance de ta « toubabesse ». Elle est plus folle que je
ne l’imaginais, elle a refusé de me saluer’… Elle [Ndèye] m’assimilait, ni plus ni
moins, aux femmes blanchons des colons. Elle m’enlevait meme mon identité
nègre. (79)
[‘I have just met your toubabesse . She is crazier than I imagined, she refuses to
say good morning to me’… She [Ndèye] was identifying me, no more or less,
with the white wives of the colonials. She was even stripping me of my identity
as a black woman.]
Juletane experiences the loss of her identity as a black woman as the ultimate insult from one woman to the next. By labeling Juletane as “la folle” and “la toubabesse,” Ndèye strips Juletane of her femininity and African-ness. Ndèye silences Juletane and renders her invisible, so that 114
Juletane is no longer a threat as a co-wife, which thus gives Ndèye greater power and desirability over Mamadou.
Although Juletane does not admit it, she is as dependent upon Mamadou as Awa, the traditional uneducated first wife from the rural village. Awa is gracious to Juletane at first, welcoming her as a co-wife: “Elle disposait les meilleurs morceaux devant moi, me souriait avec tant d’insistance, que je me demandais si c’était par gentillesse ou par moquerie” (46) [She put the best pieces before me, smiling at me so insistently that I wondered if it were from kindness or from mockery]. Awa has been brought up to share her husband and so is willing and happy to share Mamadou with Juletane: “Malgré toutes mes résolutions, je mourais de jalousie: je ne pouvais pas m’empêcher de penser à Mamadou avec une autre femme comme un sacrilège” (50)
[I was dying of jealousy. I could not prevent myself from thinking of Mamadou with another woman as a sacrilege]. Because Juletane does not have prior experiences of female camaraderie or friendship, she has nothing to draw from in her relationship with Awa. Unlike Awa, Juletane has no familiarity with or understanding of polygamy, and so Juletane views Awa as a rival who has invaded her home and stolen her husband; Awa, on the other hand, treats Juletane as a potential friend and ally:
[Awa] m’accueillit avec beaucoup de gentillesse, je dois l’avouer. Femme
naturellement douce, généreuse et soumise, la polygamie faisait partie de sa
culture; elle semblait toute heureuse de vivre enfin à la ville avec son époux. (71)
115
[She welcomed me with much kindness, I must admit. A woman naturally soft,
generous and submissive, polygamy was part of her culture; she seemed very
happy to live finally in town with her husband.]
Awa treats Juletane with the highest degree of respect, as though Juletane is the first wife. Awa is even willing to share her children, her most prized possessions, with Juletane and demonstrates her trust by allowing Juletane to hold the babies:
A sa sortie de clinique, après la naissance de son fils Alioune, elle vint me voir et
me dit: « Prends-le, c’est ton enfant. » J’étais touchée qu’elle me confiât son
bébé. Je sentais cependant sa vive inquiétude, car je lisais dans ses yeux la peur
de ma réaction; mais elle sut dépasser la crainte pour me faire plaisir. Elle faisait
tout pour que je sente à l’aise, vraiment très surprise de mon comportement, ne
comprenant pas que je refuse mon mari le trois jours où il me revenait de droit
dans mon lit. (73)
[When [Awa] came home from the hospital after the birth of her baby son
Alioune, she came to see me and told me: ‘Take him, he is yours.’ I was touched
that she trusted me with her baby. However, I felt her deep anxiety, for I read in
her eyes her fear of my reaction; yet to please me she could transcend her fear.
She did everything to make me feel at ease, truly surprised at my behavior, not
understanding my refusal to have my husband in my bed on the three days that
were mine by right.] 116
When Awa see that Juletane does indeed love her children, she begins to care for Juletane and look after her:
Elle s’occupait de moi comme une mère, me faisait coudre, quelque fois, une robe
par son tailleur. Elle m’achetait les petites choses dont je pouvais avoir besoin.
C’était la seule personne à qui j’adressais la parole dans la maison, hormis les
enfants. (75-76)
[She looked after me like mother, sometimes having a dress made for me by her
tailor. She bought me little things that I might need. She was the only person in
the house to whom I spoke, except for the children.]
After Awa commits suicide following her children’s death, Juletane realizes that she misses her and that Awa had indeed become part of her sense of family:
Ma soeur Awa. Me manque t-elle? C’est vrai que nous aurion pu être une grande
et belle famille. Pour cela, il aurait fallu que je sois également née dans une petite
village, élevée dans une famille polygame, dans l’esprit du partage de mon maître
avec d’autre femmes. (115)
[My sister Awa. Do I miss her? It is true that we could have been one big,
beautiful family. But for that, I would also have had to be born in a little village,
have been brought up in a polygamous family, taught to share my master with
other women.] 117
Juletane is unprepared for the cultural differences among women from Guadeloupe, Senegal, and
France. She does not understand the gender differences she encounters:
Je ne comprenais pas non plus cette forme de ségrégation où les femmes
semblaient n’avoir aucune importance dans la vie de l’homme, sauf au moment de
ses plaisirs, ou encore, comme mères des enfants. Elles n’étaient pas les
compagnes complices et confidentes. (49)
[Neither could I understand this sort of segregation where women seemed to have
no importance in a man’s life, except for his pleasure or, again, as the mother of
children. They were not companions, partners, and confidantes.]
The women are taught to relate to each other through their position to a man, as wives and
mothers. Clearly, what separates Juletane and Awa and what prevents them from understanding
one another are their cultural and linguistic differences and the fact that Mamadou stands
between them. Had Juletane not placed Mamadou in such an overwhelming position of control
and “mastery” over her life, perhaps she would have found the family, community, and sense of belonging that she desired.
The co-wives’ relationships are mediated through their primary relationship to Mamadou.
They do not have friendships with one another outside of their heterosexual coupling. The wives are taught by the surrounding society to compete with another for the favorable attentions of
Mamadou, just as the wives in the community are taught to compete with one another to prove the extent of their male-derived attentions: 118
Les épouses, ignorant les véritables possibilités financières des maris, passaient
leurs temps à rivaliser entre elles sur le nombre de leurs toilettes et de leurs bijous,
la femme du planton voulant égaler celle du directeur. (49)
[The wives, ignorant of their husbands’ true financial means, spent their time
vying with each other as to the number of outfits and jewels they had, the
messenger’s wife wanting to have as many as the director’s.]
Society encourages the women to compete with one another to prove their attractiveness to the men. Ndèye fiercely competes with the other women in the community over who has the most money, the most jewelry, the best outfits, and the most male attention. According to Elizabeth
Wilson, “there is no female bonding; no strong ties exist between the women as women, as friends, outside of the male-centered relationship” (xiv). The competition among the three co- wives even decides their physical space in the home: as the least esteemed of the wives (even though she actually ranks as the second), Juletane receives the smallest and least desirable room.
As the most desired of the wives, Ndèye receives the largest space and is given the most mobility—she is able to walk throughout the rooms and even enters Juletane’s room. Ndèye is given the right to punish Juletane and does so by breaking Juletane’s record when she plays it too loudly; even Awa sides with Ndèye that Juletane deserved to be reprimanded. While polygamy works for some of the traditional women (Awa) who are brought up around such marriages, it is very clear that this relationship is unbearable for Juletane and leads to her physical, emotional, and mental downfall. Warner-Vieyra herself explains that polygamy works best in rural area when a first wife “asks her husband to marry another wife so that she can help her” (34). 119
Overall, in contrast to Emecheta, Warner-Vieyra takes a stand against the practice, as she argues
“polygamy often causes depression in women and this can lead to suicide” (34).
Warner-Vieyra demonstrates that sisterhood cannot be assumed solely on the basis of
gender. Juletane’s experience of feminine community and family life is one of betrayal and
rivalry; she sees the women stirring trouble for each other. Mamadou’s niece tells Juletane that
her car accident and miscarriage are punishment from Awa: “Une nièce de Mamadou, Mariama,
vint me voir et me dit que mon accident était l’oeuvre du marabou qu’Awa entretenait au village,
depuis que Mamadou n’allait plus la voir.” [One of Mamadou’s nieces, Mariama, came to see me and told me that my accident was the work of the Marabout that Awa had been visiting in the village, since Mamadou had stopped going to see her] (68). We don’t know whether this is true, and neither does Juletane; however, it is enough to make her further distrust the women around her. This sentiment is also echoed outside of Juletane’s narrative when Hélène’s male neighbor warns her about the threat of polygamy if she marries Ousmane: “‘Assistante sociale, tu connais bien l’habilité des mères, soeurs, tantes pour glisser une nouvelle épouse vers un fils’” [‘You are a social worker, you know very well how mothers, sisters, and aunts cleverly bring a new wife into a son’s life’] (20). In the novel, it appears that the greatest threat to women comes from other women.
Juletane’s narrative is interweaved with the stories of many women. As Ann Elizabeth
Willey points out in her article on Juletane , Warner-Vieyra makes Juletane a paradigm of
women’s experiences of alienation (460). Juletane’s experience of alienation and isolation is
echoed throughout the novel as the reader learns of other female stories paralleling Juletane’s.
Hélène remembers a similar case of an African woman’s experience of alienation in France: 120
Une femme mariée depuis peu. Le mari émigré en France pour travailler, elle le
rejoint dès que possible. Quand elle arrive, quelques mois après, elle trouve une
de ses voisines et amies, qui avait quitté le pays à la même époque que le mari,
installée dans la maison et vivant maritalement avec son époux. Isolée, loin de sa
famille, de son pays, elle ne peut supporter le choc. Elle tombe malade. (82)
[A woman recently married. The husband emigrates to France to work, she is to
join him as soon as possible. When she arrives, a few months later, she finds one
of her friends, who had left the country at the same time as her husband, moved
into the house and living conjugally with her husband. Isolated, far from her
family, from her homeland, she cannot stand the shock. She becomes ill.]
The woman’s story mirrors Juletane’s in geographic reversal. It is this isolation that precipitates both the unnamed woman’s and Juletane’s madness. “Nous avons connu toutes deux la solitude de «l’étrangère » qui n’a que des souvenirs à ruminer pendant de longs jours, qu’une voix à
écouter, la sienne, jusqu’à l’obsession” [We both knew the solitude of being the foreigner who had nothing but memories to think over for days on end, one voice to hear, her own, until it became an obsession] (140). Juletane also hears a similar story herself when she meets a woman, Nabou, in the hospital:
Elle avait été rejoindre son mari à Paris. Arrivée en France où elle ne parlait pas
le français, elle s’etait trouvée complètement coupée de son mode de vie familial
habituel au village. Son mari étant absent toute la journée pour son travail, elle 121
était seule, enfermée, sans pouvoir communiquer avec personne. Au bout de
quelques mois, elle tomba malada. (139)
[She had gone to join her husband in Paris. When she arrived in France where
she could not speak French, she found herself completely cut off from the
traditional family lifestyle of her village. Her husband was away all day for work,
so she was alone, locked up, without being able to communicate with anyone. A
few months later, she fell ill.]
The shared element of the women’s stories is their dependence upon men for identity and belonging, which leads to the women’s isolation, illness, and fractioned selfhood. By including stories of women who had the same experiences as Juletane, but in Europe, Warner-Vieyra answers the question of whether Juletane’s experience is unique or representative. Warner-
Vieyra makes it clear that Juletane’s experience is not specific to Africa but representative of a feminine situation, resulting from her dependence on Mamadou and her isolation (physical, linguistic, emotional) from family and community. As Françoise Lionnet points out, the author gives the reader “insights into the social configurations of power that drive women to make desperate decisions when they are trapped in dead-end situations” (“Geographies,” 147).
Several times, Juletane refuses help offered by a woman; soon after Juletane moves to
Africa, a young female French social worker interviews Juletane in the hospital and offers to help her be repatriated to France (63). Juletane is incapable of accepting help from outside because she has isolated herself through her all-consuming relationship to Mamadou. She cannot imagine herself away from Mamadou. Juletane begins to see the people around her as monsters: 122
“Je regardais les êtres humains qui m’entouraient; c’étaient des géants terrifiants, au visage monstreux” (74) [I looked at the human beings who surrounded me; they were terrifying faints with monstrous faces]. “Etais-je ce monstre de douleur?” (35) [Was I this monster of pain?].
Juletane projects her own feelings of monstrosity (she refers to herself as a “zombi” (74) onto those around her; she is caught between the world of the living and the dead, between the future and the past. In Eloge de la créolité , Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant also refer to the
“zombie” in Caribbean identity and mimetic expression: “l’acquisition quasi totale d’une identité autre” (15) [the quasi-complete acquisition of another identity, 77]. Edouard Glissant similarly uses the figure of the zombie in his definition of the principle of “assimilation”: “the absurdity of the theory of assimilation in the French Caribbean is that what the French Caribbean claims to be assimilating- the French experience- is nothing but a deformed version of this experience, a cultureless, futureless zombie. Which in turn zombifies the assimilé ” (261-262). Juletane’s failure to find a place for herself in/between Caribbean and African community turns her into a cultureless zombie.
When Juletane arrives in Senegal, she witnesses firsthand the more significant role that community and family occupy there in contrast to Paris and her childhood in Guadeloupe: “Ici, la solitude à deux n’existe pas, la famille est là, elle vous entoure, vous distrait, pense à vous, pense pour vous” (62) [Here, being alone as a couple is not possible, the family is there, surrounding you, distracting you, thinking of you, thinking for you]. Juletane realizes the extent of the power of the community when Mamadou tells Juletane that if he refuses to visit his wife
Awa in her village that they will be “ostracized by the whole community, that it would be impossible for us to go and live in the country” (23). In her interview with Françoise Pfaff, 123
Warner-Vieyra states; “Families are very important in Africa. It is difficult for individuals to
isolate themselves” (34). Although she feels isolated, Juletane is in fact warmly received by
Mamadou’s family upon her arrival:
Je ne fus pas mal reçue par la famille, bien au contraire. Dès que nous eûmes mis
pied à terre, toute une foule de tantes, cousines, soeurs, et même ma rivale, me
prirent la main, m’embrassèrent. Les femmes parlaient toutes à la fois. La langue
national se mélangeait au français. Une tante me tapotait la joue, me comblant
certainement de paroles de bienvenue. Je n’y comprenais certainement de paroles
de bienvenue. Je n’y comprenais goutte et me contentais de sourire… Les
femmes me prirent en mains. (45)
[I was not poorly received by the family, quite the opposite. As soon as we had
stepped onto the ground, a whole crowd of aunts, cousins, sisters, and even my
rival, took me by the hand and kissed me. The women were all talking at once.
The national language mingled with French. One of the aunt tapped me on the
cheek, showering me with what were certainly words of welcome. I didn’t
understand a single word and contented myself with smiling… The women took
me in their hands.]
Just as Gwendolen and her family were isolated for their inability to read and write and speak
“proper” English in Emechata’s Gwendolen and Nnu Ego and her family suffer from her inability to read and write in The Joys of Motherhood , so Warner-Vieyra also emphasizes the
emotional exile and isolation that result from not being able to communicate. 124
The theme of communication plays a primary role in women’s novels of development.
Juletane writes about being “au milieu d’un tas de femmes, souriantes et gentiles, mais qui ne parlaient pas le francais” (49) [in the middle of a group of women, smiling and kind, but who spoke no French]. Juletane makes no effort to learn the indigenous language (most likely Wolof) spoken by the women around her, and instead places the blame for her isolation on their inability to speak French. Juletane is unable to communicate her pain to her co-wives and Mamadou’s family because she is unable to express and explain the reasons for her suffering. Again, we find the problem of cultural translation. Senegalese culture does not ‘allow’ for the expression of illness (particularly in women) 23 , and so Juletane’s illness is not recognized within this society.
It is not that the family and community refuse to see her suffering (as Frieda Ekotto argues in her article [78]) but more that they are unable to see it because it should not be expressed. The illness is not recognized, and so the help that Juletane needs cannot be provided. Language structures cultural outlooks, and thus certain aspects of life (illness and weakness in this example) are forced into silence and invisibility.
The narrative surrounding Juletane’s diary is the story of Hélène, a fellow Caribbean living in Africa, who finds the diary in stored boxes on the eve of Hélène’s marriage to an
African man. We read Hélène as she is reading Juletane, and thus Hélène is contained within the narrative as the double or the other of Juletane. Whereas Juletane lost herself completely to
Mamadou, Hélène, on the other hand, is described as a self-reliant, “too independent” (12)
23 This was explained to me through my Wolof lessons while I was in Senegal. One of my Wolof instructors explained to me that when asked how are you (“jaam nga am? Sa yaram jaam?”), one must always reply I am well (“jaam rek”), even if one is very ill. My instructor explained to me that it is not acceptable in Senegalese culture to express illness, and so one always covers it up. I also personally experienced this with my host family in Senegal. When I became very ill (which resulted in my hospitalization), the family was visibly very uncomfortable when I mentioned not feeling well (even though the father and son were both medical doctors) and always made light of my sickness. There did not seem to be a “place” for illness. 125
“maîtresse femme” (11) [very much her own woman], a career woman who will only marry a man she can dominate for the sole purpose of giving her a child. “Elle avait décider depuis peu de se marier, dans l’unique but d’avoir un enfant tout à elle” (1) [She had recently decided to get married, with the only goal to have a child of her own]. Warner-Vieyra emphasizes that up until the point that Hélène begins to read Juletane’s diary, she was very self-centered in her relationships with men: “réglait sa vie comme elle l’entendait, en donnant à son « moi d’abord » un place de choix” (11) [organized her life as she saw fit, giving priority to ‘me first’]. Hélène is described as “too independent”: “elle n’aurait pas pu supporter un mari qui commande, décide, dirige” (12) [she could not have tolerated a husband who would order, decide for, and dominate her]. Hélène believes she must stay in control of everything (her career, relationships, family).
Juletane’s diary forces Hélène to confront the vulnerabilities of joining one’s life to another’s in marriage. It also helps Hélène to learn about her identity as a Caribbean woman, raised in
Guadeloupe, educated in France, and living in Africa. Like Juletane, Hélène is also an outsider, but Warner-Vieyra shows that Hélène is better equipped to understand her identity by relating her life to the lives of other women she meets through her social work.
Hélène is distinct from the other three main female characters. While Juletane is completely engrossed in her suffering and isolation, Awa has no identity outside of her relationship to her husband and children, and Ndèye is only interested in the pursuit of materialism and admiration. In contrast, Hélène is connected to the female lives around her through her position as a social worker. Although Hélène does not appear to have close same- sex friends, she finds community and peace through her work with other women. The ability to connect her story to other women’s stories is what saves Hélène from living a similarly 126 unfulfilled life. “It is the supportive community that women build around themselves that gives them the courage to oppose male social order, and to jeopardize their own lives and freedom”
(Lionnet, “Geographies of Pain,” 147). Juletane is engrossed in her own pain and isolation and fails to reach out to women around her. Awa tries to reach out but is mainly absorbed in her own children, and Ndèye is preoccupied with her own vanity. Only Hélène is connected to the lives of other women, and so she is able to make changes to her own life based on the other life-stories she hears. Hélène learns to “relate parts of her identity” to other female lives (Willey, 454), rather than identifying herself exclusively with one male life.
Juletane and Hélène represent opposite ways of relating to men and therefore opposite ways of relating to their origins. Both Juletane and Hélène must rediscover their Creole identity and come to terms with what this means. In Eloge de la créolité , Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and
Confiant define the process of Creolization as a successful cohabitation of opposing cultures and a “nonharmonious” [ non harmonieux ] mix of linguistic, religious, culinary, architectural, medical, and other practices of different people (31). This nonharmonious contact leads to the creation of a new type of syncretic culture or identity. Unfortunately, Juletane is unable to come to this creolized identity, unable to find a harmonious mix among her Caribbean roots, French education, and African home, and instead feels parts of herself being taken away. Hélène, on the other hand, learns about herself and her Creole identity and evolves through reading Juletane’s diary. As we later see occur in Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga (Chapter Four), Hélène reconstitutes her identity through reading Juletane’s story.
Juletane’s text has four implicit readers: Juletane herself, Mamadou, Hélène, and the reader outside the text. By creating a community of readership, Warner-Vieyra shows that the 127 life of the individual has little meaning without the community surrounding it, just as Juletane’s journal means little when separated from the readership of Hélène and the outside reader(s). The community of readers resuscitates (temporarily) the life of Juletane. While her journal ultimately alienates Juletane from society, at the same time it subsequently reunites her through the community of readership. By writing Juletane’s story in the form of a diary and then having it read by another Caribbean woman, Warner-Vieyra points to a possible restoration and healing of identity through writing:
L’acceptation de notre créolité nous permettront d’investir ces zones
impénétrables du silence où le cri s’est dilué. C’est en cela que notre littérature
nous restituera à la durée… La littérature n’a pas pour vocation de transformer le
monde, tout au plus aide-t-elle à saisir les profondeurs cachées, contribuant ainsi,
à l’instar de la musique et de la peinteure, à le rendre plus supportable, à le
connaître mieux. (Eloge de la Créolité 38, 64)
[The acceptance of our Creoleness will allow us to invest these impenetrable
areas of silence where screams were lost . Only then will our literature restore us
to duration… Literature does not necessarily transform the world, at the most it
helps understand some of its hidden deepness, thus contributing, like music and
painting, at making it more livable and at knowing it better.] (99, 124). bell hooks describes the movement from silence into discourse as a gesture of defiance that can lead to healing: “Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new 128
growth possible” (9). While the movement does not heal Juletane (perhaps it is too little too late
for her), it does offer a healing and reconciliation for Hélène. It allows Hélène to make peace
with her hurt from the past and re-accept the place of her Caribbean home in her life. Helene is
potentially transformed by Juletane’s journal in a way that Juletane cannot be: “Hélène redressa
avec tendresse les coins écornés du cahier, le referma et pour la première fois depuis près de
vingt ans, elle pleura. Le journal de Juletane avait brisé le bloc du glace qui enrobait son coeur”
(142) [Helene tenderly smoothed out the folded corners of the notebook, closed it, and for the
first time in twenty years, she cried. Juletane’s journal had melted the block of ice around her
heart]. Hélène’s acceptance of her Creole identity is portrayed as her moving from
impenetrability to allowing herself to be vulnerable again.
Conclusion Contemporary French-Caribbean literature often treats the problem of a cultural identity
that cannot be found in France nor in Mother Africa nor exclusively in the native island. Notions
of plurality, heterogeneity, and fragmentation founded the theories of antillanité and créolité by
Caribbean critics such as Glissant and Chamoiseau, but these critics failed to address the place of the woman in Caribbean identity and the female quest for identity and liberation. In recent years, literary critics such as Françoise Lionnet, Myriam Chancy, Elizabeth Wilson, and Valerie
Orlando have addressed the recurrent literary themes of alienation and the quest for identity found in contemporary Caribbean female writings. Elizabeth Wilson writes in her essay “Le voyage et l’espace clos—Island and Journey as Metaphor” that Caribbean female and male authors express the quest for self differently: “Unlike male-authored Caribbean fiction, the quest in women’s writing usually ends in withdrawal and isolation and/or flight and evasion rather than 129 confrontation” (45). As in Le Quimboiseur l’avait dit , Warner-Vieyra’s second novel Juletane addresses the theme of female isolation from community and nation. Warner-Vieyra’s protagonists are forced into exile for their failure to conform to the female roles ascribed to them by society, as well as for their failure to understand or recognize their “homeland.” Just as Zétou leaves Guadeloupe because she refuses to give up her education and marry and bear children as her father and friends expect her to do, similarly Juletane is unable to fit herself into the social and domestic expectations she meets in West Africa. Juletane is doubly alienated: she has little knowledge of her island home and no understanding of African society. Thus, like Zétou,
Juletane lives in exile, not only from her native country but also from female community.
The protagonists of the two novels, The Joys of Motherhood and Juletane , are brought into polygamous marriages that do not work for them. While Adaku successfully finds new direction and meaning for her life, Nnu Ego and Juletane “kill” themselves, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Adaku rejects the laws that say a woman only has worth if she is a mother of sons and instead follows her own principles; she realizes that women have “set impossible standards” for themselves. In contrast to Adaku, both Nnu Ego and Juletane reject the valuable assistance offered to them through the network of women around them. “This network, if exploited to the fullest, would have opened up many doors that could have helped
[them] out of ‘prison’ or at least opened up new windows to let in breaths of fresh air” (Nfah-
Abbenyi, 48). West Africa is considered by some social scientists to have the most numerous and most active women’s associations (for example, mbotaye and nat in Senegal, and ebre and mkpin in Nigeria). Women can use these collectivities, both formal and informal, to acquire greater economic control (as we see Nnu Ego do when the women’s network in Lagos helps her 130 to begin her trading) and to affirm female rights (such as the cooking strikes). Female community points to a way to resist or create a space that is outside patriarchal power. As Buchi
Emecheta and Myriam Warner-Vieyra suggest in their novels, one powerful way for women to resist the socially imposed limitations on their gender is to establish a counter-community of feminine support.
131
CHAPTER FOUR:
Sisters in Prison- The Illicit Nature of Feminine Community
In Chapter Three, the novels transition from the psychological prison of oppressive polygamous marriages discussed in Chapter Two to the literal space of female imprisonment and containment. The theme of confinement and recurrent images of imprisonment are present in many of the novels in this study. In Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane , the spaces occupied by the protagonist are tiny and barely lit: first in Juletane’s suffocating bedroom within Mamadou’s home and later in the confined space of her hospital bed. Often the authors show how the shared experience of confinement and limited space results in feelings of mutual oppression and jealousy amongst the adult women. In Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, the cramped domestic space in Lagos explains why Nnu Ego and Adaku cannot get along; however, it is not only wives and adult women who are affected by crowded quarters. For example, in Edwidge
Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory when the young protagonist Sophie visits her mother in New
York, the tiny space of her mother’s city apartment contrasts with the freedom of movement
Sophie experienced in her aunt’s village home in Haiti, resulting in Sophie’s nightmares of suffocation by her mother. A confinement of space either aggravates the experience of female community (as in the above examples), or in other novels, it leads to an experience of shared closeness, particularly when the incident of confinement occurs as the result of a shared experience of oppression and imprisonment, as is the case in the two novels of this chapter. In this third chapter, I discuss how Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé and Cameroonian author 132
Calixthe Beyala both use the confined space of a prison cell to narrate a story of feminine
oppression. In the two novels, each author depicts a central encounter in prison between a black
woman and a white woman so that the novels pose the questions: how is black identity affected
by being a woman, and how is female identity affected by being black? Both authors make it
clear that both gender and race together play an interconnected role in the protagonists’
experience of imprisonment and oppression. The two authors explore issues of gender and race while wrestling with the tensions between female connectedness and female independence.
The prison expresses female selfhood in terms of connectedness and a shared experience of bondage. The female communities resulting from imprisonment suggest that these fellowships share a subtle and unexpected power that unites women by their experience of oppression: whether black or white. In Communities of Women , Nina Auerbach writes how the
space of the prison reflects female community as “furtive, unofficial, complex, shifting, and
underground” (Auerbach, 11). A community of imprisoned women suggests “an antisociety, an
austere banishment from both social power and biological rewards” (1). The female protagonists
in these novels refuse to follow the socially prescribed gender roles that society has assigned to
them. In Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga (You Will Be Named Tanga), the
Cameroonian protagonist Tanga is imprisoned for her resistance of traditional values of
femininity, thus upsetting and endangering established social order. Tanga rewrites her feminine
identity by refusing to procreate, thereby refusing the maternal role privileged by society. She
attempts to escape every feminine role designated for her by her family and society: she remains
unwed, she won’t financially support her family as they wish, and she refuses to use her womb
for childbearing (instead, she purposefully commodifies it by becoming a prostitute). However, 133 while Tanga wants nothing to do with womanhood in its limitations, she values female community and sees it as a way to resist oppression, as exemplified by the sharing of her story with her French-Jewish cellmate, Anna-Claude. Tanga allows her narrative to be re-inscribed in
Anna-Claude through a retelling of Tanga’s narrative; through the performance of Tanga’s story,
Anna-Claude is able to absorb some of Tanga’s suffering and upon Tanga’s death, Anna-Claude has absorbed Tanga’s story and thus allows her identity to persist.
In Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem , Maryse Condé writes the fictive autobiography of Tituba, a historical figure from the Salem witch trials. Condé intentionally writes Tituba’s narrative in first-person from a black female perspective, while using her fictional skills to create a space for Tituba to share her story in a prison cell with a white woman.
This white woman is Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , and Condé points to the similar ways in which both Hester and Tituba are oppressed by Puritan society.
Jeanne Garane points out that both Tituba and Hester are branded: Hester by her scarlet ‘A’ and
Tituba by her dark skin (162). As a result, both are rejected by society and Condé creates a bond between these women through their shared experiences of oppression, isolation, and imprisonment. In the space of the prison, Hester teaches Tituba the “rules” of Puritan community and helps Tituba to find her voice and plan her testimony before the Salem judges.
Together, the two women discuss their visions for feminine community and find a way to temporarily subvert their oppression and imprisonment by providing each other with a power derived from shared, combined knowledge.
In both novels, the main protagonists, Tituba and Tanga, tell their stories orally to other women (Hester, Anne-Claude, Maryse Condé). There is no narrative device of recorded words, 134
like the journal that is found in Juletane . Since Tanga is unable to write her story, she must
transmit it orally to Anne-Claude; and because Tituba’s history has been lost or undocumented, a
new one must be imagined. Through the literary creativity and mouthpiece of Maryse Condé,
Tituba is afforded the ability to “write” her autobiography from the grave. “Néanmoins, on
conviendra que devant les graves dangers qui me menaçaient, j’aie eu besoin d’une
communication plus étroite. De mots. Rien parfois ne vaut les mots. Souvent menteurs, souvent
traîtres, ils n’en demeurent pas moins des baumes irremplaçables” (137). [Nonetheless, on will
agree that faced with the serious dangers that were threatening me , I needed closer communication . With Words. Sometimes nothing can replace words. Often lying, often
treacherous , they remain nothing less than an irreplaceable balm.] Condé translates Tituba’s story from an oral one to a written one so that it might be read and heard by a greater audience.
By allowing Tituba and Tanga to tell their own stories, Maryse Condé and Calixthe Beyala blur the roles of “author/heroine” and “author/narrator” as the authors undo the hierarchy between author and protagonist.
Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem
Tituba Indian, a mulatto Barbadian woman was, along with many white women, accused
of witchcraft during the famous witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692:
As an herbal healer, and as the wife of a slave owned by the Reverend Samuel
Parris, the real Tituba was, indeed, the victim of Parris’ and the Bay Colony’s
puritanical and racist ideologies. She is remembered only because she, unlike the
others, confessed her guilt. She was eventually pardoned, but unlike the others, 135
who were white, she was sold to pay for her room and board during her prison
term. After that, she disappears from history. (Balutansky, 42)
Tituba was physically imprisoned by the Puritans, but she was also contained and kept captive by the silencing of her story. Tituba’s skin color and her slave status resulted in her nearly complete eradication from Western history books. Maryse Condé restores a voice and a history to Tituba by writing Tituba’s narrative in first person as a fictional autobiography; Condé creates a discursive space in which Tituba has the symbolic power to tell her own (hi)story. As Hélène
Cixous argues in “The Laugh of the Medusa,” “Woman must put herself into the text – as into the world and into history – by her own statement” (245). Tituba’s first-person narrative replaces the historic absence of her voice. As Maryse Condé states in an interview:
For a black person, history is a challenge because a black person is supposed to
not have any history except the colonial one… For a black person from the West
Indies or from Africa, whatever, for somebody from the diaspora, I repeat it is a
kind of challenge to find out exactly what was there before. It is not history for
the sake of history. It is searching for one’s self, searching for one’s identity,
searching for one’s origin in order to better understand oneself. (Interview with
Scarboro, 203-204)
Tituba’s voicelessness and failure to be accorded a voice in recorded history is equated with the colonized accounts that were also repressed by the colonizers. The possibility of a slave autobiography was almost nonexistent since slaves did not have access to the master’s language, typically did not read or write, and did not have the luxury of free time to write. Condé’s 136 fictional invention addresses two quests: the quest for a Caribbean identity and history and the search for (black) female subjecthood.
The title of Moi, Tituba (which is what Condé originally chose for her novel—the publishers later added Noire de Salem to give the title more information) points to the idea that by telling her story, Tituba will be performing an act of self-generating identity: “Moi, Tituba”
[Me/I, Tituba]. Tituba will produce her own narrative and thus immortalize herself through the sharing of her story. First, Tituba must find her voice with which she can “rompre ce silence sur lequel nous butions comme un mur” (138) [break the wall of silence]. Tituba expresses her misfortune repeatedly of having had her story silenced in/by history:
J’avais déjà déploré de n’avoir joué dans toute cette affaire qu’un rôle de
comparse vite oubliée et dont le sort n’intéressait personne. « Tituba, une esclave
de la Barbade et pratiquant vraisemblablement le hodoo. » Quelques lignes dans
d’épais traités consacrés aux événements du Massachusetts. Pourquoi allais-je
être ainsi ignorée? Cette question-là aussi m’avait traversé l’esprit. Est-ce parce
que nul ne se soucie d’une négresse, de ses souffrances et tribulations? Est-ce
cela? (231)
[I had already regretted having played only a minor role that was quickly
forgotten and that no one paid attention to. ‘Tituba, a slave from Barbados and
probably practicing voodoo.’’ A few lines in the many volumes written on the
Salem witch trials. Why was I going to be thus ignored? This question too had 137
crossed my mind. Is it because nobody cares about a Negress and her trials and
tribulations? Is that why?]
Tituba speaks and screams for all of the silenced women in the novel: her mother, her teacher
Man Yaya, the Puritan women hanged as a result of the witch trials. Tituba screams for her
aborted child and for Hester Prynne’s lost fetus (a pregnant Hester Prynne hangs herself in
Condé’s version).
One of the first actions Tituba takes in the narration of her story is to speak for her
mother, Abena. These are the first lines of Tituba’s narrative and they are presented in active
past voice (in the original French). “Abena, ma mère, un marin anglais la viola sur le pont du
Christ the King, un jour de 16” alors que le navire faisait voile vers la Barbade. C’est de cette
agression que je suis née. De cet acte de haine et de mépris” (13) [Abena, my mother, an English
sailor raped her on the deck of Christ the King, one day in 16** while the ship sailed towards
Barbados.] Tituba tells the story of her mother’s rape by a white English sailor as Abena, an
Ashanti, travels against her will on a slave ship from Africa to Barbados. Tituba’s conception is
caused by an act of white male violence against a black female slave. This also echoes
characteristics of the novels in the previous chapter where female protagonists (Juletane and Nnu
Ego) were born from acts of violence and/or transgression. Tituba is born from European/white violation of the African mother(land). Condé establishes the theme of white (masculine) power over black women from the beginning of the novel with the rape of Tituba’s mother on the ship.
Then Abena is later hanged for attempting to assault the white plantation owner who would have raped her for a second time. 138
Beginning with the story of Abena’s voyage from Africa to Barbados is also important thematically for a second reason. According to Condé, the middle passage is an image and a story that must be returned to in order for the Caribbean people to move into the future:
“D’abord le passé, qui est à la fois douleur et honte, et qu’il faut exorciser. C’est du ventre des négriers que sont sortis les ancêtres des Antillais de couleur et ils ne cessent de se tourner vers lui, d’y retourner par la pensée, de magnifier le terrible voyage ou de s’apitoyer sur lui” (Le
Roman antillais , 15) [First to the past, that is both painful and shameful, and that must be exorcised. It is from inside the slaveships where the Caribbean ancestors came forth and so they do not cease to return there, to return there in thought, to reflect on the terrible voyage and to find self-pity there]. Her mother’s displacement is a precursor to the experience of exile that
Tituba will herself face. Condé continues that it is part of the therapeutic role of the author to help “exorcise” the traumatic events of the past:
Par ce retour à l’origine, le poète et son peuple auquel il est identifié se libèrent,
revivant symboliquement les événements douloureux qui les ont traumatisés dans
l’inconscient… Quand le peuple a revécu le rôle qu’ont joué les Ancêtres depuis
le début du temps antillais, c’est-à-dire depuis la création du monde, une nouvelle
ère peut s’ouvrir (Parole des femmes , 39).
[Through this return to origins, the poet and the people with whom s/he identifies
liberate themselves, by symbolically reliving the painful events that traumatized
their unconscious…. When the people have relived the role that their Ancestors 139
played since the beginning of a Caribbean time, that is since the creation of the
world, a new era can reveal itself.]
The stories of Abena and Tituba incarnate the painful and violent origins for the Caribbean people. Tituba is rejected by her African mother (motherland) because she is a child born from rape. She is similarly rejected by her white relatives. As the daughter of a white European and an
African slave woman, Tituba is caught between two countries and two cultures, and neither one accepts her. She embodies the alienated position of the Caribbean and incarnates the difficulties of Caribbean identity. Thus, Condé addresses the problem of Caribbean identity by going back and writing/creating a history and a personage.
After arriving in Barbados, Tituba’s mother becomes friends with the slave master’s young wife, Jennifer Davis: “un être aussi doux et désespéré qu’elle-même” [a being as gentle and desperate as herself] who hated the man she had been forced to marry. The affiliations between black and white women appear almost immediately in the novel. This early friendship between mistress and slave will offer contrast later when Tituba tries to befriend the Puritan women around her. “Elles se couchaient ensemble et ma mère, les doigts jouant avec les longues tresses de sa compagne, lui contait les histoires que sa mère lui avait contées à Akwapim, son village naturel” (16). [They slept together, and my mother, while playing with the long plaits of her companion, would tell her the stories that her mother had told her in Akwapim, her native village.] Abena and Jennifer tell each other stories, just as Hester Prynne and Tituba will later tell each other(’s) stories. The shared condition of oppression by the master allows the two women, white and black - servant and mistress, to become friends for a period of time. When
Tituba’s mother gives birth to a girl, she is immediately upset as she regrets that her daughter 140 will be forced to suffer under the same regrettable feminine conditions. “Pour s’affranchir de leur condition, ne devaient-elles pas passer par les volontés de ceux-là mêmes qui les tenaient en servitude et coucher dans leurs lits?” (19) [To free themselves from their condition, didn’t they have to submit to the will of those very men who kept them in bondage and to sleep in their beds?] Tituba is born on the plantation and there she experiences a life of solidarity among the oppressed. Abena’s rape, as a slave, signifies the slave condition, but interestingly, the novel’s heroine is derived from this condition and from this violent act. Possibly, rather than focus on the victimization of slavery, Condé is looking to other possible, more victorious alternatives.
When Tituba is a young child, her mother is hanged for assaulting the plantation owner who attempts to rape Abena; thus, like many of the other protagonists in the novels of this study,
Tituba grows up without the presence of her mother. After Abena’s death, her husband Yao subsequently commits suicide. Tituba’s adopted father Yao, another slave on the plantation, is one of the few men in the novel to be portrayed in a positive, loving light. He names Tituba to prove his love for her: “prouver que j’étais fille de sa volonté et de son imagination. Fille de son amour” (19) [to prove that I was the daughter of his will and his imagination. Daughter of his love]. It also shows that Tituba’s name has neither African origins nor European origins. It is a new creation that has no origin outside of Yao’s love. Tituba’s relationship with her father Yao will be particularly important later in the novel when she meets Hester Prynne, the symbol of
Western feminism.
Once young Tituba’s parents are both dead, the slaves must look after her and so they bring her to live with Man Yaya. Yaya is an old woman whose husband and sons were killed for their attempt to instigate a slave revolt against the master. Yaya has power to communicate with 141
the spirit world and teaches Tituba her powers of healing and communication with the spirit
world (referred to as “the invisible ones”. In Parole des femmes , Maryse Condé discusses the
importance of the spirit world in the French Caribbean: “A travers toutes les pratiques magiques,
les morts restent non loin des vivants. On peut à tout moment entrer en dialogue avec eux et on
ne doit pas les redouter si on ne leur a fait aucun mal” (55) [Throughout all the magical practices,
the dead remain close to the living. One can at any moment enter into dialogue with them and
they are not feared as long as no harm is done to them]. The spirits of the dead women around
Tituba circulate freely. Faced with the experiences of exile, communication and connection
among women (living and spirit) become the way that Tituba copes with things. Her mother
Abena, Man Yaya, and later Hester Prynne offer lifelines that allow Tituba to survive her
experiences. Communication amongst the women is portrayed as extremely important, in
contrast to the communal silencing of the Puritan women.
After Man Yaya’s death, Tituba meets and falls in love with another slave, John Indian;
John Indian contrasts with Yao. While Yao was loving and sincere and selfless, John Indian is
complex and self-motivated and weak. Although Man Yaya and Abena continually warn Tituba
of the dangers in becoming involved with a man, Tituba is unwilling to give up the pleasures of male companionship and romantic relationships. John Indian always plays the game of being the slave by performing in the stereotypical manners expected of him. His plan generally works, and by the end of the novel when he leaves Tituba after she is accused of witchcraft and imprisoned, he has secured a position as a live-in partner with a white woman. By the end of the novel,
Tituba has realized that “la couleur de la peau de John Indien ne lui avait pas causé la moitié des déboires que la mienne m’avait cause” (159) [the color of John Indian’s skin hadn’t caused him 142 half the rebuffs that mine had caused me]. Tituba recognizes that as a black woman she is made to suffer more than her black male companion, and she becomes acquainted with the gender inequalities that exist around her.
The importance of depicting the relationship between Tituba and John Indian is to show how, from the beginning, it is mediated by John’s white owners. Marrying John Indian means that Tituba will put herself in the position of also becoming a slave (up until this point, she has lived her life in seclusion with relative freedom from the white world). Tituba’s first owner is a white woman, Susanna Endicott; this is also Tituba’s first contact with a white woman, and it is the exact opposite as that of her mother and Jennifer Davis. Susanna Endicott reveals a reality that a female owner can be just as oppressive as a male owner. She will offer contrast to Hester
Prynne’s more essentialist feminist approach (men are the oppressors—women are united in their oppression). Susanna Endicott is full of hate and disgust, and Tituba hates Susanna for the way that John Indian degrades himself before her. It is the first instance in the novel where women no longer offer shelter and support but instead belittle and degrade Tituba. John Indian’s emasculation and Tituba’s feelings of indignance match Nnu Ego’s and Nnaife’s in The Joys of
Motherhood . It also echoes what Maryse Condé writes in Le Roman Antillais about the portrayal of men in Caribbean women’s literature: “l’émasculataion du mâle antillais, difficulté d’édifier l’avenir avec lui, virulence des préjugés de couleur, misère et deuil” (11) [the emasculation of the Caribbean male, the difficulty of building a future with him, the viciousness of racial prejudices, of misery and grief]. Tituba decides to protect herself and John Indian from
Susanna Endicott by using her powers against Susanna. It seems to work as Susanna quickly becomes deathly ill. Susanna suspects Tituba of witchcraft and so her final act of vengeance is to 143
sell Tituba and John Indian to a Puritan, Samuel Parris, on his way to Boston. On the ship
traveling to the US, Parris says to Tituba and John Indian “il est certain que la couleur de votre
peau est le signe de votre damnation” (68) [it is certain that the color of your skin is the sign of
your damnation]. While the color of Tituba’s skin associates her with the Devil among the
Puritans, the question is whether her skin or her sex will be Tituba’s damnation.
Like many of the other heroines in this study, Tituba leaves her island home. In Tituba’s
case, she experiences exile in the U.S. when she chooses to follow her husband and leave
Barbados. Tituba leaves her country to follow John Indian against the advice of the spirits of her
mother and Man Yaya who see the sorrow in store for her. The spirits try to warn Tituba to keep
her from sacrificing herself and her relationship with her country repeatedly for her love for men.
Mama Yaya and Abena continuously caution Tituba about trusting in men too much or putting
her happiness in the hands of men. In an interview, Maryse Condé states, “It has long been
proven that West Indian women, because of their upbringing, repeat patterns that victimize
them” (Conversations , 20). Here, Condé shows that against all of the advice and warnings of her female community, Tituba still willingly places herself in isolation and in exile out of her love
for a man who will ultimately betray and abandon her.
Tituba’s exile in America is apparent almost immediately. Her first experience with a
group of white women silences her and renders her invisible:
On aurait dit que je n’étais pas là, debout, au seuil de la pièce. Elles parlaient de
moi, mais en même temps, elles m’ignoraient. Elles me rayaient de la carte des
humains. J’étais un non-être. Un invisible. Plus invisible que les invisibles, car
eux au moins détiennent un pouvoir que chacun redoute. Tituba, Tituba n’avait 144
plus de réalité que celle que voulaient bien lui concéder ces femmes. C’était
atroce. Tituba devenait laide, grossière, inférieure parce qu’elles en avaient décidé
ainsi. Je sortis dans le jardin et j’entendis leurs remarques qui prouvaient
combien, tout en feignant de m’ignorer, elles m’avaient examiné sous face et
couture. (46)
[One would have thought I wasn’t there, standing at the threshold of the room.
They were talking about me and yet at the same time they were ignoring me.
They were striking me from the map of humanity. I was a non-being. An
invisible. More invisible than the unseen, who at least have powers that everyone
fears. Tituba, Tituba had no more reality than that which these women wanted to
allow her. It was atrocious. Tituba became ugly, coarse, and inferior because they
decided this. I went out into the garden and heard their comments, which proved
to what extent, while pretending to ignore me, they had examined me from head
to foot.]
In the above passage, Condé switches back and forth from 1 st person to 3 rd person, as if entering her own voice and opinion. Once Tituba is silenced and ignored, Maryse Condé enters to speak for Tituba and in place of Tituba. Throughout the novel, it is as if Condé is stepping in to speak for Tituba when she is unable to speak for herself.
Black and white women in the novel are depicted within their stereotypes: Man Yaya is the strong black woman and healer/caregiver; Tituba is the strong libidinous black woman who practices voodoo and stands by her male lovers; the white Puritan women are sickly, meek, and 145 subservient to their husbands. Both Abena and Tituba share close relationships with the wives of their masters (Jennifer Davis and Elizabeth Parris respectively), as the slaves and mistresses are united momentarily by their shared hatred of the masters. Goodwife Parris and Tituba experience camaraderie and equality as they are both beaten by Samuel Parris. When Tituba refuses to confess her sins to Samuel Parris, he strikes her in the face, causing her to bleed. When Elizabeth
Parris objects to the violence, he also strikes her in the face and she bleeds as well:
Il me frappe. Sa main, sèche et coupante, vint heurter ma bouche et l’ensanglanta.
A la vue de ce filet rouge, maîtresse Parris retrouva des forces, se redressa et fit
avec fureur:
-- Samuel vous n’avez pas le droit…. !
Il la frappa à son tour. Elle saigna, elle aussi. Ce sang scella notre alliance. (72)
[He hit me. His hand, dry and cutting, struck my mouth and made it bleed. At the
sight of this red trickle, Goodwife Parris regained her strength, sat up, and said in
a rage:
-- Samuel, you have no right….!
He struck her in turn. She bled, she as well. This blood sealed our alliance.]
This blood alliance shows how black and white women are united through their shared oppression by the master. Once both women experience the inferiority of the feminine status, they are allied in their resistance of the master.
A friendship unites Goodwife Parris and her daughter Betsey with Tituba. Together they undermine the oppressiveness of Samuel Parris. However, Maryse Condé admits in an 146 interview: “I don’t believe the conditions of slavery allowed for friendships between Black and
White women, between slaves and mistresses” (64). Echoing Condé’s personal view, Tituba questions whether there is an unbridgeable gap between herself and her mistress: “Nous n’appartenions pas au même monde, maîtresse Parris, Betsey et moi, et toute l’affection que j’éprouvais pour elles ne pouvait changer ce fait-là” (101-102). [We didn’t belong to the same world, Goodwife Parris, Betsey, and me, and all the affection that I felt for them could not change this fact.] Thus, the friendship between Goodwife Parris and Tituba is disrupted when the mother becomes jealous of the friendship Tituba has with her daughter Betsey (71). When
Tituba is accused of witchcraft, Elizabeth Parris takes her husband’s side and joins with Tituba’s tormentors. Tituba bitterly remarks that her devotion and loyalty to her mistress are quickly forgotten: “tout cela était oublié et je devenais une ennemie. Peut-être en vérité n’avais-je jamais cessé de l’être (113). [Everything had been forgotten and I had become an enemy. Maybe, truthfully, I had never ceased to be one.] Tituba ultimately is betrayed by female community when Betsey Parris tells all of Tituba’s stories to the older Puritan girls; later Betsey rejects
Tituba and denounces her as a witch. Once Tituba is accused of witchcraft, she too must learn how to sacrifice the women around her. “Car je commençais à me conduire comme une bête aux abois qui mord et griffe qui elle peut!” (133) [For I was beginning to behave like an animal up against a wall, biting and scratching whomever she can.] The women are encouraged to sacrifice each other and to single each other out in order to protect their own lives.
One of the ways in which Tituba’s “feminist” rebellion is depicted is through her refusal of biological maternity. Condé writes: “[La protestation des romancières antillaises] s’exprime surtout par le refus de la maternité. En effet, si toutes les héroïnes que nous avons étudiées 147 parlent de leur mère, leur accordent une place exceptionnelle dans leur vie, elles n’enfantent pas elles-mêmes” (44) [The protest by female Caribbean writers] is expressed by a refusal of maternity. If all the heroines that we have studied speak of their mothers, give their mothers an important role in their lives, they, however, do not give birth themselves]. Condé’s Tituba,
Hester Prynne, and Beyala’s Tanga and Anna-Claude (to be discussed in the second half of this chapter) all refuse to allow their bodies to be used as vessels of motherhood. In La Parole des femmes , Maryse Conde writes that: “Aux Antilles comme en Afrique ou en Europe jusqu’à une date récente, la femme se valorise presque exclusivement par la fonction maternelle” (40). [In the Caribbean as in African or in Europe until recently, woman is valued almost exclusively for her maternal capacity.] Condé cites a Creole proverb that says, “On ni on sèl manman” [One is always only a mother] (41). Part of Tituba’s refusal of maternity might be a refusal to be cast as the slave mother that her own mother was. There is a popular Creole expression: “Manje te pas fe ich pou lesclavaj” (Eat dirt; don’t make children for slavery”) (Edouard Glissant, La case du commandeur , 155.). This echoes what Tituba says in the novel: “Pour une esclave, la maternité n’est pas un bonheur. Elle revient à expulser dans un monde de servitude, un petit innocent dont il lui sera impossible de changer la destinée” (84). [For a slave, there is no happiness in motherhood. It is little more than the expulsion of an innocent baby into a world of slavery, for whom it will be impossible to change fate.] Abortion becomes an act of the slave woman to assert some sort of power over her body, but the price is that the woman must kill a part of herself.
At the end of the novel, Tituba is hanged while pregnant with her lover’s child; the noose echoes back to Tituba’s mother’s death by hanging and also to Hester Prynne (who hangs herself 148
in Condé’s version). Tituba’s story does not end, however, as she returns from the spirit world to
mother an orphaned girl. “Enfant, que je n’ai pas portée, mais que j’ai désignée ! Quelle
maternité plus haute!” (270) [A child I didn’t carry but whom I chose! What motherhood could
be nobler!] From the spirit world, Tituba adopts Samantha, and Tituba also comforts and guides
slave women tempted by suicide. Literal maternity is juxtaposed with a chosen, metaphorical
maternity. Condé suggests that feminine community continues not through biological means but
through a “consciously chosen form of feminine guidance” (Hewitt, 189). Man Yaya, Betsey,
Iphigène, and Samantha are all example of chosen maternity. Substitute-relationships among the
women provide some solace and repair to initial losses (loss of the mother, loss of homeland,
loss of child). Maryse Condé overexaggerates the mother-daughter issues (as a metaphor for the
loss of a motherland) by providing Tituba with a surplus of mothers. Barbados is figured as a
mother, and when Tituba returns to her island, she is “like a child running to hide in her mother’s
skirts” (141). At the end of the story, Tituba has a literal reunion with her island homeland: “Et
puis, il y a mon île. Je me confonds avec elle” (270) (And then there is my island. We have
become one and the same, 177). She re-enters the community of women who make use of her
healing powers for positive causes.
Tituba lives among the Maroons briefly, falls in love with a fils-amant (son-lover), and is finally hanged with other rebels after a failed slave revolt. Both Abena and Tituba are hanged for the female rebellion: Abena for going after the master with a knife and Tituba for initiating a potentially murderous slave rebellion. In “Order, Disorder, Freedom” Maryse Condé writes that
“whenever women speak out, they displease, shock, or disturb…. What they hope for and desire conflicts with men’s ambitions and dreams” (161). However, Tituba’s story still does not end 149 with her failed rebellion. Tituba speaks from beyond the grave to tell her readers that her executioners liberated her from her earthly confines, which enabled her to perform more freely her healing and revolutionary work.
“Voila l’histoire de ma vie. Amère. Si amère. Mon histoire véritable commence
où celle-la finit et n’aura pas de fin… Elle existe la chanson de Tituba! Je
l‘entends d’un bout à l’autre de l’île, de North Point à Silver Sands, de
Bridgetown à Bottom Bay (267).
[And such is the story of my life. Bitter. So bitter. My true story begins where that
one ends and it will have no end… Tituba’s song exists! I hear it from one end of
the island to the other, from North Point to Silver Sands, from Bridgetown to
Bottom Bay.]
In the epilogue, Tituba tells the readers that her story has continued, not in the written word but in the memories of her people and through her choice of a girl child to whom Tituba will pass on her knowledge of the spirit world:
“Je n’appartiens pas à la civilisation du Livre et de la Haine. C’est dans leurs
cœurs que les miens garderont mon souvenir, sans nul besoin de graphies. C’est
dans leurs têtes. Dans leurs cœurs et dans leurs têtes. Comme je suis morte sans
qu’il ait été possible d’enfanter, les invisibles m’ont autorisée à me choisir une
descendante… je l’ai trouvée, celle qu’il fallait: Samantha” (268-269).
150
[I do not belong to the civilization of the Bible or of Hatred. My people will keep
my memory in their hearts, with no need for the written word. It’s in their heads.
In their hearts and in their heads. Since I died without giving birth to a child, the
spirits have allowed me to choose a descendant… I have found her, the one who
was necessary: Samantha.]
Condé brings Tituba out of a socially, literally imposed exile by writing her story and giving her a voice. Condé has said that she felt such a “strong solidarity” with Tituba that she “wanted to offer her her revenge by inventing a life such as she might perhaps have wished it to be told”
(Interview with Scarboro, 199). Condé returns to the lost past to fill in the gaps and explain the present and to explore the possibilities of the future. In this way, Tituba offers an introspective journey of self that also looks at what it means to be Caribbean and female.
Hester Prynne The most memorable intercultural and gendered encounter in the novel takes place when
Tituba meets Hester Prynne in prison. Hester Prynne and Tituba meet in a cell where they are brought together by their acts of transgression. The site of the prison allows for an exploration of issues of female community and feminine oppression. As Patrice Proulx has pointed out, the space of the prison separates the women from the outside world, thus allowing them “to position themselves as subjects in their own narratives, and frames the elaboration of a feminist optic”
(154). Hester, like Tituba, is another woman who is an outsider to society and is a disruptive element who must be contained. Hester Prynne is the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century American novel The Scarlet Letter . The encounter is written by Condé as quasi- mocking and quasi-serious: 151
I hesitated between irony and a desire to be serious…. What some critics did not
understand is that the book is ironic. It is also a pastiche of the feminine heroic
novel, a parody containing a lot of clichés about the grandmother, the sacrosanct
grandmother, and about women in their relationship to the occult. I split my sides
laughing while writing the book. To show how much fun I was having, I imagined
an encounter in jail between Tituba and Hester, the heroine of Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter . Both talk about feminism in very modern
language. (60)
Condé purports to tell Tituba’s story, the one that history has left out, and, by including the story
of Hester Prynne in Tituba’s narrative, it is almost as though she also purports to tell Hester
Prynne’s “true” story: the story that went untold by virtue of The Scarlet Letter being written by
a male author. According to Linda Anderson, the intertextual use of fiction can free the woman
writer to imagine alternate endings and empowering interpretations:
Juxtaposing stories with other stories or opening up the potentiality for multiple
stories also frees the woman writer from the coercive fictions of her culture that
pass as truth. If women’s texts point to other texts it is frequently with a sense of
an imagined elsewhere, unacknowledged alternatives, other stories waiting
silently to be told. (vii)
Condé’s Hester differs from the Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , although
Condé picks up the traces of a sort of “feminism” in Hawthorne’s version of Hester Prynne.
There is a moment in The Scarlet Letter when Hester questions: 152
Indeed, the same dark question often rose in her mind, with reference to the whole
race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among
them?.. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step,
the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very
nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like
nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume
what seems a fair and suitable position. (149-150)
In the conclusion, Hawthorne writes that Hester Prynne spent the remainder of her days offering
counsel to women: “Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she might. She assured them,
too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness” (241). Condé picks up these elements of modern feminism and creates a Hester who is more representative of the White
Western Feminist. This allows Condé to stage the encounter/dialogue between Hester and
Tituba as an encounter/dialogue between first and third world feminisms.
The narrator of The Scarlet Letter tells the reader in the introduction that he stumbled upon Hester Prynne’s story through the discovery of the red fabric letter “A” and a written description of the events that took place in Salem at the close of the seventeenth-century. As authors and narrators, both Hawthorne and Condé contend that they were presented with the
“facts” of the events and then used their creative license to “dress up the tale… as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention” (The Scarlet Letter , 30). Both authors write that they were
haunted by ghosts who want a “remembering” of their experiences. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes 153 that Hester Prynne’s story was written to give his “predecessor’s memory the credit which will be rightfully its due” (31). He writes the story based upon “the verbal testimony of individuals” and “a manuscript of old date” (237). Similarly, Maryse Condé writes, “Tituba et moi, avons vécu en étroite intimité pendant un an. C’est au cours de nos interminables conversations qu’elle m’a dit ces choses qu’elle n’avait confiées à personne” [Tituba and I lived intimately together for a year. It was over the course of these endless conversations that she told me things she had never confided to anyone.] By including these details in the opening paragraphs of their narratives, both authors intentionally gift themselves with the privileged ability and authenticity to bear testimony or witness as they provide these historical characters with the gift of speech.
At close inspection, Tituba and Hester Prynne share some unexpected qualities. Both heroines refute the identities of victimhood and transgression imposed upon them by the Puritan community: Tituba as a witch and Hester Prynne as an immoral adulteress. Both women commit infanticide (Tituba through abortion and Hester through suicide). Both are rejected by Puritan society as they themselves also reject it. Both women are branded as their “crimes” are written upon their bodies: Hester by her pregnancy that cannot be hidden and Tituba by her dark skin.
Interestingly, both women are also marked by some aspect of “blackness.” When Tituba meets
Hester, she is taken aback by Hester’s initial beauty, which is characterized by her “blackness:” her black, thick hair “noire comme l’aile d’un corbeau, qui aux yeux de certains devait à elle seule symboliser le péché et appeler le châtiment” [as black as a crow’s wing, itself in the eyes of some people the symbol of sin and mark of punishment] and her black eyes “pas gris couleur d’eau sale, pas verts couleur de méchanceté, noirs comme l’ombre bienfaisante de la nuit” (151)
[not the gray color of dirty water, not the green color of wickedness, but black like the 154 benevolent shadow of night]. This description of Hester echoes the way in which Nathaniel
Hawthorne originally describes Hester: “She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam” and “deep black eyes” (47-48).
While the similarities derived from their shared experience of patriarchal oppression are clear, the intercourse between Hester and Tituba also “stages the typical power relations existing between white liberal feminists and women of color in contemporary Anglo society. It also stages the incongruities of their different experiences, different along both racial and class axes”
(Manzor-Coats, 7). Hester represents the white educated middle-class woman and Tituba is the poor, uneducated marginalized woman. In The Scarlet Letter , Hester Prynne chooses not to speak (not to reveal the identities of Roger Chillingsworth. and Arthur Dimmesdale), but Tituba is silenced without any choice. Hester’s insistence on privileging gender dynamics and her desire to gain the support of Tituba (as a symbol of women of color) make her blind to the power relations of race and class. Hester’s blindness points to the “unspoken assumption of whiteness as a norm in the context of white Western feminism” (Arndt, 158).
Tituba does not feel comfortable with Hester right away. She distrusts Hester’s desire to be familiar with Tituba when Hester directs Tituba not to address her as “mistress.” When Tituba tells Hester a story, Hester presses Tituba to confide in her whether it is her own story; Tituba confides to her readers that “quelque chose me retint de me confier” (157) [something kept me from telling her]. It is clear from their first exchange that Hester has preconceived false notions about Tituba’s culture and race. Hester makes generalities about Africa without understanding the complexities of Tituba’s Caribbean roots. Based upon these misconceptions, Hester judges
Tituba. Tituba points out how Hester has tried to place Tituba in the position of native 155 informant. “Peut-être en Afrique d’où nous venons, il en était ainsi. Mais nous ne savons plus rien de l’Afrique et elle ne nous importe plus” (152). [Perhaps in Africa where we come from it was like that. But we know nothing about Africa any more and it no longer has any meaning for us.] Hester represents the parody of Western feminism, of Anglo contemporary feminist liberal discourse and its failure to account for the cultural and racial differences among women of the world. According to Rangira Gallimore, “Le terme ‘féminisme’ évoque souvent en Afrique un féminisme radical qui prêche le rejet de l’homme, l’égalité des sexes à tout prix, un féminisme beauvoirien qui cherche à gommer les différences sexuelles. On comprend alors pourquoi la plupart des femmes africaines cherchent à se distancer de ce courant chargé de connotations négatives” (82). [The term ‘feminism’ often evokes in Africa a radical kind of feminism that advocates for a rejection of men, the equality of the sexes at any price, a Beauvoir-esque feminism that seeks to erase sexual differences. It is thus understandable why most African women seek to distance themselves from the charged topic with its negative connotations.]
Through the figures of Hester Prynne and Tituba, Condé addresses the problems of essentialism and stereotype that Western feminisms may have, while addressing what is specific to the black
Caribbean heroine through Tituba’s voice and experiences.
Hester’s disdain for men directly contrasts Tituba’s appreciation for various men in her life, and thus Tituba is put off quickly by Hester’s reaction when Tituba reveals that she was named by her father. “ ‘Ton père?’ Sa lèvre eut un rictus d’irritation: ‘Tu portes le nom q’un home t’a donné?’ ” (152) [“Your father?” Her lip curled in irritation. “You carry the name a man gave you?”] Hester tries to convince Tituba that life is much kinder to men: “Blancs ou Noirs, elle sert trop bien les homes, la vie!” (200) [White or Black, life is too kind to men]. While 156
Tituba does eventually realize that society is much more forgiving to John Indian than to herself, she remains skeptical of a worldview that promotes separatism; she wishes to love and support the black men, like Yao and John Indian, around her.
Tituba refuses to draw lines along racial or gender lines. Tituba represents the view by many African and African-American feminists who believe that Western (white) feminism has a tendency to exclude men. “The opposite tendency has developed as the foundation of African and African-American versions of feminism: they want to combat gender relations together with men and in the context of other social problems” (Arndt, 160). The women around Tituba, however, point to the benefits of separation between the sexes. Abena asks: “Pourquoi les femmes ne peuvent-elles se passer des homes? Oui, pourquoi?” (35). [Why can’t women do without men? Yes why?] Later, the voice of the narrator enters to ask “Ne pouvons-nous garder nos filles des hommes?” (157) [Can’t we keep our daughters away from men?] Hester explains why Tituba will never choose along gender lines: “Tu aimes trop l’amour, Tituba! Je ne ferai jamais de toi une féministe!” (160) [You’re too fond of love, Tituba! I’ll never make a feminist out of you!]. Hester hopes to write a book but “hélas! les femmes n’écrivent pas! Ce sont seulement les hommes qui nous assomment de leur prose” (160) [alas! women don’t write ! Only men bore us with their prose.] Women do not have the right/write to exchange and make public their words in the market. Hester says she would write a book in which she would construct a utopian society run and governed by women “où j’exposerais le modèle d’une société gouvernée, administrée par les femmes! Nous donnerions notre nom à nos enfant, nous les
éléverions seules…” (160) [where I would describe the model for a society governed and run by women. We would give our names to our children, we would raise them alone…] This parodies 157 the separatist feminist project (as in Monique Wittig’s Les guerillères ). While Hester points to men as the oppressor, Condé clearly shows that Hester fails to address the position white women have had in also oppressing women of color.
The most valuable gift Hester gives to Tituba is that she is the first woman (preceding
Maryse Condé) to provide Tituba with the necessary words to save her life. She teaches Tituba
“à préparer me déposition” (158) [to prepare my testimony]. Hester suggests that Tituba disrupt the system from within, by adopting and exaggerating the characteristics already attributed to her by her accusers. Hester advises Tituba to paint as vivid and stereotypical a representation as possible of herself as a witch: “Fais-leur peur, Tituba! Donne-leur-en pour leur argent!... Décris- leur les réunions de sorcières, chacune arrivant sur son balai, les mâchoires dégoulinantes de désir à la pensée du bouquet de fœtus et d’enfants nouveau-nés qui serait servi avec force chopes de sang frais” [Make them afraid, Tituba! Give them their money’s worth !... Describe for them the witches’ meetings, each one arriving on her broomstick, mouths drooling with desire at the thought of feast of fetus and newborn babies served with mugs of fresh blood]. While Hester tells Tituba to tell them what they want to hear, she cautions Tituba against betraying other women by giving their names. However, Hester encourages Tituba to go ahead and denounce the names of those women who have wronged her:
--Me conseilles-tu, toi aussi, de dénoncer?
Elle fronça le sourcil:
--Qui t’a donné ce conseil?
Je ne répondis et elle se fit grave: 158
-- Dénoncer, dénoncer. Si tu le fais, tu risques de devenir pareille à eux dont le
cœur n’est qu’ordures! Si certains t’ont fait nommément du mal, venge-toi si cela
peut te faire plaisir. (158)
[“Do you too advise me to give names?
She frowned. “Who gave you that advice?”
I did not respond and she became serious:
“Give names! Give names! If you do, you will become just like they are with a
heart that is nothing but filth! If some of them have done wrong to you, then
avenge yourself if that is what will give you pleasure.”]
Tituba follows Hester’s recommendations and “gives them their money’s worth”, describing at the trials exactly what the Puritans already believe, even if it has nothing to do with the actual events as they occurred. We see how well Tituba has played her role by the response from Parris at the trial: “Bien parlé Tituba! Tu as compris ce que nous attendions de toi” [Well said, Tituba!
You understood what we expected of you]. Through her public confession, Tituba confirms the public identity already given to her by the Puritan community. By writing her story, Tituba, she is able to reveal the private side of herself, but more importantly to reveal the ways in which she herself shaped and informed the views of the Puritan community.
Ultimately, the racial and class differences that would have existed between Hester and
Tituba outside prison are effaced within the prison walls (as also occurs in Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga ). Hester and Tituba achieve a friendship and relationship based upon their identity as women and the condition of their shared oppression. Condé says that she stresses the 159 element that Tituba is a woman more than she stresses the condition that she is black (210). The last earthly interaction between Tituba and Hester is a homoerotic scene:
Cette nuit-là, Hester vint s’étendre à côté de moi, comme elle le faisait parfois.
J’appuyai ma tête sur le nénuphar tranquille de sa joue et me serrai contre elle.
Doucement le plaisir m’envahit, ce qui m’étonna. Peut-être on éprouver du plaisir
à se serrer contre un corps semblable au sien? Le plaisir avait toujours eu pour
moi la forme d’un autre corps dont les creux épousaient mes bosses et dont les
bosses se nichaient dans les tendres plaines de ma chair. Hester m’indiquaient-elle
le chemin d’une autre jouissance? (188)
[That night Hester came to lie down beside me, as she did sometimes. I laid my
head on the calm water lily of her cheek and held her tight. Gently and
surprisingly, a feeling of pleasure flooded over me. Perhaps one can feel pleasure
from hugging a body similar to one’s own? For me, pleasure had always been in
the shape of another body whose hollows fitted my curves and whose swellings
nestled in the tender flatlands of my flesh. Was Hester showing me the path to
another kind of sexual pleasure?]
By creating a homo-erotic scene between Tituba and Hester Prynne, Condé might also be making a tongue-in-cheek association of western feminism with lesbianism as well as separatism.
Upon Hester’s death and Tituba’s return to Barbados, Tituba regrets their separation, although their communication continues in the spirit world: 160
Certes, nous communiquons. Je respire l’odeur d’amandes sèches de son souffle.
Je perçois l’écho de son rire. Mais nous demeurons de chaque côté de l’océan que
nous n’enjambons pas. Je sais qu’elle poursuit son rêve: créer un monde de
femmes qui sera plus juste et plus humain. Moi, j’ai trop aimé les hommes et
continua de le faire. (271)
[Of course, we communicate. I can smell the dried almonds on her breath. I can
hear the echo of her laugh. But each of us remains on each side of the ocean that
we don’t cross. I know that she is pursuing her dream: creating a world of women
that will be more just and humane. Me, I love men too much and continue to do
so.]
As Lillian Manzor-Coats points out in her article on feminist discourse in Maryse Condé’s work,
“The untranslatability of the experiences of black women vis-à-vis white women is beautifully captured in an untranslated – perhaps untranslatable- poetic image of Hester and Tituba on either side of an ocean over which neither one can stride” (9). The two women can communicate, but they are ultimately separated by race and class differences, and by differing opinions on the separation of the sexes. Hester participates in a revolution that is only for women; Tituba participates, at the end of the novel, in a revolution only for black men and women against white colonialism. Their revolutions differ by race and gender (and class). Gender is interrogated in terms of racial/class differences, and the community of women is divided by a chasm that can only be crossed through imagined communication. The shared experiences of being a woman are divided by the differences of racial experiences. “The novel finally suggests that only when 161
women begin to project their own fantasies and begin to work out of a script which does not
encode them as subjects of fear, only then might they begin to escape that ‘wedge between the
prison house of language and the slaughterhouse of fear’” (Manzor-Coats, 9). Condé points out
how white women must acknowledge having played a role in the oppression of black women,
while at the same time opening up the possibility for dialogue between white and black women.
By placing the feminist Hester Prynne in a cell with Tituba, Condé might also be
exploring the parallels between 16 th century “witch” and twentieth century “feminist.” What do these two identities mean in light of historical and political realities? And is there a space for black feminism? Tituba’s race cannot be separated from her gender. Snitgen argues that Tituba is
*not* a feminist, but is it correct to make such an argument? In Parole des femmes , Condé
writes that Caribbean feminism is more subtle than the separatist approach of western feminists:
On chercherait vainement à travers les romans des écrivains féministes des
Antilles l’écho tapageur de revendication féministes et de la haine du mâle perçu
comme dominant. Il s’agit beaucoup plus d’une dénonciation subtile de la
condition des rapports homme/femme, d’une réflexion sur leurs difficultés ou leur
dégradation. L’homme est présenté comme une victime dont le sort se joue en
d’autres sphères et dont les fautes peuvent être expliquées. Par là, cette littérature
féminine a un contenu social qui dépasse le propos apparemment anecdotique de
tel ou tel écrivain. Elle se situe au cœur des préoccupations de l’ensemble de la
société. (39)
162
[One would seek vainly throughout the novels by Caribbean women writers for a
rousing echo of the feminist movement or for any hatred towards the dominant
male. The writing is much more about a subtle denunciation of the condition of
men/women relationships, and about a reflection of both sexes difficulties and
degradation. Men are presented as victims whose faults can be explained. In this
way, this feminine literature has a social component that goes beyond the
apparently anecdotal subjects of this or that writer. The literature comes from a
concern for the whole of society.]
Condé shows how encounters do not always result in understanding and acceptance, but they do help to shape identity. According to Condé, identity is comprised of artificial constructs, and it shifts according to one’s position in culture, gender, and race. Condé says in an interview:
A black person is supposed not to have any history except the colonial one. We
hardly know what happened to our people before the time when they met the
Europeans who decided to give them what they call civilization. For a black
person from the West Indies or from Africa, whatever, for somebody from the
Diaspora, I repeat it is a kind of challenge to find out exactly what was there
before. It is not history for the sake of history. It is searching for one’s self,
searching for one’s identity, searching for one’s origin in order to better
understand oneself. (203-204)
By allowing Tituba to speak for herself, Maryse Condé not only shows how Tituba’s identity was falsely shaped by the community surrounding her, but also how Tituba shaped her oppressors and their view of themselves. 163
Condé reconstructs both a personal history and a collective history. By allowing Tituba to become a speaking subject, we see a reconfiguration of the roles: oppressed and oppressor, good and evil, subject and community. The point of Condé’s narrative is not to privilege Tituba’s identity or Tituba’s history but to contextualize the communal identities and histories that function as a complex web. In this way, Condé also provides Hester Prynne with a voice as a speaking subject—speaking as a liberal western feminist. Hester Prynne highlights the fact that both Tituba and Hester are exiled, isolated literary figures. Hester interrogates the category of
“whiteness” because she represents “darkness” and “immorality” in Puritan society. And yet her white race and higher class are what separate her experiences from Tituba’s. In her interview with Jacquey, Maryse Condé says that the identity quest is necessary for every individual; however, for Caribbean people, it is perhaps even more necessary: “Pour tout individu, il est nécessaire de savoir qui il est; mais cette quête est peut-être plus essentielle pour un Antillais…
Certains ont la chance d’être Antillais en naissant, moi je dirais en parodiant Simone de Beauvoir que je ne suis pas née Antillaise, je le suis devenue” [For every individual, it is necessary to know who one is ; but this quest is perhaps even for essential for the Caribbean…. Some are lucky to be Caribbean by birth; I would say, after Simone de Beauvoir, that I was not born
Caribbean, I became it]. Cameroonian author Calixthe Beyala also follows this philosophy of
Simone de Beauvoir when Beyala writes in Tu t’appelleras Tanga , “on ne naît pas noir, mais on le deviant” (53) [One is not born black, but one becomes it]. Beyala also explores issues of gender, race, and identity as she tells the stories of two women, a white European woman and a black African woman, who, as in Moi, Tituba , meet each other in the space of a prison cell.
164
Tu t’appelleras Tanga
Like Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane , Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga is the
story of one female character’s undoing and another female character’s coming into self-
knowledge as a result of the earlier character’s destruction. The novel also serves as a social
critique of the oppression suffered by powerless women and children. French-Jewish Anna-
Claude comes to West Africa from Paris in her search for an imagined African lover, Ousmane 24 ; as the novel opens, Anna-Claude has been imprisoned for her “mad” behavior. She is described as a subversive and uncontrollable element (“élément subversif et incontrôlable" 16) who must be contained in the prison. Seventeen year old Cameroonian Tanga has also been imprisoned for associating with counterfeiters, and she has been tortured in prison until she is on the verge of death. In the prison cell, Tanga describes to Anna-Claude the process by which she became a woman via the story of her oppressive experience as a poor, black, female. Being black, for
Tanga is neither a color of one’s skin nor a race, but a state of oppression. By the end of the novel, Tanga and Anna-Claude are united by their state of female oppression.
It is important that this interracial encounter takes place within a prison, the space connecting women’s physical containment with their psychological captivity. “L’air est prison, dans la cellule. Murs et femmes, étroitement liés, se livrent aux énigmes du monde, à ses actes secrets” (53) [The air is a prison, in the cell. Walls and women, closely connected, deliver themselves to the world’s enigmas, its secret actions]. Tanga also describes her own body as a prison, and she seeks to escape this physical/psychological oppression through her acts of social
24 Ousmane is also the name of the white female protagonist’s lover in Mariama Ba’s Un chant écarlate . The relationship between Mireille (a Frenchwoman) and Ousmane (a Senegalese man) fails because the couple fails to realistically account for the differences of race, gender, culture, class, and religion. In the end, Mireille goes crazy and kills their child. While Ba shows how a white woman is unable to reflect upon and move past her whiteness, Calixthe Beyala depicts a woman who becomes conscious of and then transcends her white race. 165 and gender resistance. The prison is also symbolic as a place in which Anna-Claude immediately has an experience of oppression and punishment similar to Tanga’s; the prison functions as a site where Anna-Claude loses her white privilege and status. It is under these necessary conditions that Tanga is able to transmit her story and her “being” to another woman, from a black African woman to a white European woman.
Anna-Claude pleads with Tanga to share her story before she dies. At first, Tanga refuses to bequeath her story, but Anna-Claude pleads with her to kill the silence: “Donne-moi ton histoire. Je suis ta délivrance. Il faut assassiner ce silence que tu traînes comme une peau morte…. Tuer le vide du silence” (17) [Give me your story. I am your deliverance. You have to assassinate this silence that you drag like a dead skin… Kill the emptiness of silence]. Finally
Tanga agrees to narrate her story with the condition that Anna-Claude will transcend her whiteness and become Tanga:
Entre en moi. Mon secret s’illuminera. Mais auparavant, il faut que la Blanche en
toi meure. Donne-moi la main, désormais tu seras moi. Tu auras dix-sept saisons,
tu seras noire, tu t’appelleras Tanga. Viens Tanga, donne-moi la main, donne…
Donne ta main et mon histoire naîtra dans tes veines. 18
[Enter into me. My secret will illuminate itself. But first the white woman in you
must die. Give me your hand; from now on you will be me. You will be seventeen
seasons old; you will be black; your name will be Tanga. Come Tanga, give me
your hand, give it to me... Give me your hand and my story will be born in your
veins.] 166
Anna-Claude must be able to “receive” the story of Tanga in order to transcend her whiteness
and become a young, African woman. Part of transcending herself means that Anna-Claude
must listen to Tanga’s story without superiority, pity, explanation, criticism, or trying to relate
Tanga’s experiences to her own: “Anna-Claude se tait…. Elle est bien loin de ces discours
d’intello où se croisent et se froissent des termes en isme, tous ces termes en hachoir qui divisent les hommes, les éloignent de la vie…. Elle plongeait dans les mots. Erigeait des questions, bâtissait des theories” (36) [Anna-Claude is quiet…She is far from the intellectual discourses where terms ending in ism are tossed about, these terms that divide men and distance them from life… She dives into the words. Raising questions and constructing theories]. In the beginning of the novel, Tanga and Anna-Claude struggle vainly to communicate, and their failure to be able to do so is blamed upon their different origins and cultural differences.
Beyala underlines the linguistic differences between Anna-Claude and Tanga: Anna-
Claude speaks from a place of skepticism and analysis, enriched by her French philosopher background. Beyala criticizes the European intellectualism and philosophies in her Lettres d’une
Africaine à ses soeurs occidentals [Letters from an African Woman to her Western ] where she
writes: “Je laisse les theories et le cartésianisme aux intellectuelles. Je ne juge pas, je constate
que le cartésianisme et les sciences qui en découlent ont permis à certaines sociétés, non
seulement d’évoluer mais aussi de dominer le monde” (9). [I leave the theories and Cartesian
philosophy to the intellectuals. I am not judging, I see that the Cartesian philosophy and sciences
that came from it have permitted certain societies not only to evolve, but also to dominate the
world.] In contrast, Tanga argues that one must “marry the word” [épouser le mot] and respect 167
the power of oral transmission. In the beginning, the women’s inability to communicate and
reason in the same way requires the two to find a way to communicate nonverbally.
Tanga changes the forced silence of the prison into a chosen silence that allows for
unspoken communication. Theorist Trinh Minh-ha describes the chosen silence as a “will not to
say or a will to unsay and as a language of its own” (73-74). Tanga shares her story with Anna-
Claude without ever speaking any words: “Et l’histoire de Tanga s’est déversée en elle jusqu’à
devenir sa propre histoire” (19) [And Tanga’s story poured into her until it became her own
story]. Tanga’s story joins the two women together. The recounting of Tanga’s narrative is a
corporal experience: the words leave Tanga’s body and make a place for themselves within
Anna-Claude: “les mots se sont à nouveau ébranlés dans son corps… Un mot, un autre mot
encore, soufflé par le corps de Tanga dans sa chair à elle. Elle se découvre noire, au detour d’un
sentier, d’une souffrance, d’une mort issue des croyances sclérosées" [the words detach
themselves from [Tanga’s] body... one word, one more word, breathed by Tanga’s body into her
own flesh. She finds that she is black, at the bend of a path, of a suffering, of a death issued forth
from ossified beliefs]. Each time Tanga picks up the narration of her story, it connects the two
women. The narration of her story becomes the legacy that Tanga will bequeath to Anna-
Claude. “J’existe donc tu seras… Continue ton histoire. C’est elle qui me guidera, c’est elle que
tu dois me léguer” (188-189) [I exist therefore you shall be… Continue your story. It will guide
me, it is what you must bequeath me]. The words of her story will allow Tanga to continue to
exist after her death through Anna-Claude.
Initially, the white women in the novel try to elide race and focus on the shared experience of oppression among women. When Tanga tells Anna-Claude that she is not from 168 this land and cannot have the same knowledge and experience that is passed from generation to generation, Anna-Claude replies: “Tu sembles oublier que le sang n’est ni blanc, ni noir. Il est tout simplement rouge” (98) [You seem to forget that blood is neither white nor black. It is very simply red]. Tanga doesn’t reply but after a long pause resumes her story. Later, Tanga again brings up the differences in their races and histories. When Anna-Claude says that she forbids
Tanga to die, Tanga smiles and replies: “‘Ton people a su tout definer, tout interdire, sauf ça’ ”
(117) [‘Your people knew how to define everything, forbid everything, except for that’]. Again,
Anna-Claude wants to leave behind her European origins while Tanga argues against the covering over the differences in their experiences:
-Laisse mon people de côté. (Anna-Claude)
-Tu en fais partie, tu n’y peux rien. (Tanga)
-Si. Je vis, je suis, je peux choisir.
-C’est ce qu’on croit, mais…
-Quoi, femme ?
-Dans mon pays, toutes les femmes ne sont pas des Madames et tous les hommes
ne sont pas les Monsieurs. Et chez toi ? (117)
[-Leave my people out of it.
-You’re part of them—nothing you can do about it.
-Yes. I live, I am, I can choose.
-That’s what we think, but…
-What, woman? 169
-In my country, every woman is not Madame and every man is not Monsieur. And
in yours?]
Tanga compares Anna-Claude to Camilla, another white woman and a prostitute living in West
Africa, “Blanche perdue au milieur des désirs africains” (118) [a white woman lost in the middle of African desires]. Both Anna-Claude and Camille came to Africa in search of some romantic notion and unfulfilled desires: Anna-Claude in her quest for her imagined African lover and
Camilla who fell in love with an African man and decided out of boredom to follow him to
Africa and drink cocktails while the houseboy bustled around her (123). Tanga points out that
Camilla and Anna-Claude gave up their lifestyles in Paris and chose to come to Africa, whereas
Tanga had no choice but to accept the life given to her: “L’histoire de Camilla est écrite… Elle est mon futur refusé… On raconte que Camilla était née de parents alcooliques et qu’elle avait passé son enfance ballotée de famille en famille. Plusieurs familles, c’est mieux que rien” (119)
[Camilla’s story has been written…She is my denied future…They say that Camilla was born to alcoholic parents and that she spent her childhood tossed about from family to family. Several families is better than none]. Anna-Claude’s desire to focus upon shared experience rather than difference is echoed by Camilla, who says to Tanga, in reference to their both being prostitutes
“La nuit, tous les chats sont gris” (120) [At night all the cats look grey]. Tanga is intent on the two white women recognizing that while they may have experienced various forms of oppression, Tanga has been oppressed multiply by gender, and race, and class.
Finally nearly two-thirds into the novel, Anna-Claude shares the story of her own oppression as a Jewish schoolgirl in France during WWII: 170
Il avait formé une ronde autour d’elle. Ils la bottaient à tour de rôle en
scandant « Sale Juive! » Des sillons de larmes et de morve craquaient son visage,
creusaient dans sa mémoire un réseau de haine. Combien de coups avait-elle
reçus? Le sens n’existaient pas… Dès ce jour, elle apprit à ne plus être juive, à ne
plus être. (149).
[They had formed a circle around her. They took it in turns to kick her to the beat
of their “Dirty Jew!” Traces of tears and snot were covering her face, hollowing
out a network of hatred in her memory. How many blows did she receive? She
couldn’t say… From that day on, she learned not to be Jewish any more, not to be
any more” (101).
Even though Tanga refuses to initially make much about their shared experiences, Beyala makes a clear connection within the oppression and discrimination Anna-Claude has suffered as a Jew, the oppression Camilla endured as the child of alcoholic parents, and the experience Tanga has had as a young, black, West African girl. “Il faut du sang, encore du sang pour nettoyer la poisse noire, la poisse juive, la poisse arabe” (185) [Blood is necessary, more blood to wash away the bad luck of Blacks, the bad luck of Jews, the bad luck of Arabs]. Both Calixthe Beyala and
Maryse Condé include sympathetic Jewish characters in the novels, whose experiences of racial and religious oppression enable them to empathize with the subjugation of the protagonists. The shared experience of oppression, gendered and racial, Tanga as a black West African girl and
Anna-Claude as a white French-Jewish woman, unites the pair. 171
As in the other novels of this study, Tanga not only passes on her own story to Anna-
Claude, but she tells the sordid stories of other voiceless women and children. Tanga begins her narrative with the story of her mother and grandmother; like Tituba, the story of Tanga’s origins begins with a rape. Tanga’s grandmother was raped by many village men, and this ultimately resulted in her pregnancy with Tanga’s mother. After the rape, Tanga’s grandmother stopped speaking: “Kadjaba réinventa le silence…Elle ne rit plus. « Seuls les chiens aboient », dit-elle”
(43) [Kadjaba reinvented silence… she no longer laughed. “Only dogs bark,” she said]. The violence inflicted upon her silences Kadjaba and she rejects her child (just as Tituba’s mother rejected her):
Cette naissance illégitime empoisonna l’instinct maternel de Kadjaba. Elle
l’envahit, la déposséda de tout ce qui n’était pas elle jusqu’à la poser en éternelle
négation des autres… La vielle la mère, nourrie par sa grand-maman, corrigée par
ses tantes sous l’œil malade de Kadjaba, grandit à la manière des vagabonds. Pas
de paillasson où coucher ses douleurs. Brebis égarée, absente et coupable de
n’avoir su partager le désespoir de sa mère, rongée par le sentiment que cette
détresse, accouchée par sa naissance, demeurait à jamais hors d’elle. (43-44)
[This illegitimate birth poisoned Kadjaba’s maternal instincts. It invaded her,
stripped her of everything that wasn’t herself to the point where she was in eternal
negation of others… Mother old one, fed by her grandmother, corrected by her
aunts under the sick eye of Kadjaba, grew up like a vagabond. No mat on which
to put her grief to sleep. A lost sheep, absent and guilty of not having known how 172
to share her mother’s despair, eaten up by the feeling that this sadness, brought
forth by her birth, would always remain beyond her.]
Beyala shows how violence begets violence, and the loss of the mother creates a chain of destructive behaviors. Tanga’s mother enacts violence on herself, in a way similar to what
Sophie does in Breath, Eyes, Memory (see Chapter Four). Tanga’s mother prevents herself from being raped/violated by someone (like her mother was) by performing violence upon herself:
A l’aube de ses treize ans, elle partit à travers bois, trouva un palmier qui perdait
ses noix. Elle se débarrassa de ses guenilles, ramassa les noix. Elle s’accroupit,
écarta ses jambes. Elle enfouit chaque noix dans son sexe. Elle sentait la brûlure,
la griffure, elle continuait. Quand elle jugea sa coupe pleine, elle les arracha une à
une, elle avait mal, le sang dégoulinait sur ses mains, sur ses doigts. (44)
[At the dawn of her thirteenth year, she left across the forest, found a palm tree
that was losing its fruit. She took off her rags, gathered the nuts. She crouched
down, spread her legs. She pushed each of the nuts inside her vagina. She felt the
burning, the scratching, she continued. When she decided her cup was full, she
pulled them out one by one. She was in pain, blood was dripping down her hands,
her fingers.]
Tanga also performs a similar act when she inserts a large gravel rock inside her vagina, claiming it acts as a poison that will destroy whatever had possessed or would want to possess it:
“Je ramasse une motte d’argile incrustée de graviers. Je l’enfouis dans mon sexe… J’enfouis une vipère dans mons sexe. Il distillera le poison. Il envenimera quiconque s’y perdra. Je brandis 173
pour l’humanité la virginité retrouvée” (152) [I pick up a clump of clay encrusted with gravel. I
hide it inside my vagina… I’m hiding a viper inside my vagina. It will distil the poison. It will
envenom anyone who gets lost in there. I’m brandishing for humanity my rediscovered
virginity]. Tanga celebrates her newfound virginity by asserting her right not to bear children.
Tanga’s relationship to her feminine body and female subjecthood is defined by violence and by betrayal from her family and community. First, she is forced by her mother to undergo the clitoridectomy (discussed below ); then her father rapes her when she is twelve years old and
kills the infant resulting from the rape.
Ainsi de l’homme mon père, qui plus tard, non content de ramener ses maîtresses
chez nous, de les tripoter sous l’oeil dégoûté de ma mère, m’écartèlera au
printemps de mes douze ans, ainsi de cet home mon père qui m’engrossera et
empoisonnera l’enfant, notre enfant, son petit-fils, cet homme ne s’apercevra
jamais de ma souffrance… cette femme ma mère qui toussera discrètement dans
ses pagnes quand elle me verra enfanter l’enfant des oeuvres de son homme. (50-
51)
And so the man my father, who later, not content to bring his mistresses home, to
fiddle with them under my mother’s disgusted gaze, would later rip me apart in
the spring of my twelfth year. And so this man my father who made me pregnant
and poisoned the child, our child, his grandson, this man never noticed my
suffering.. this woman my mother who coughed discreetly into her skirts when
she saw me give birth to the child who came from her husband. 174
Finally Tanga is subjected to prostitution to financially support her family; Tanga’s community’s response is “ce corps, si Dieu l’a fabriqué comme il est, c’est pour qu’il serve” (142) [this body, if God created it to look like this, it’s so that it will be of use]. Tanga’s body and her sexuality are exploited by her family and by society.
Tanga’s father not only rapes her, but her mother goes along with it. The episode is doubly wounding. Beyala shows a society that is not only oppressive to women, but one in which women act as oppressive agents to each other. “Beyala particularly notes that being born after independence completely modifies and shapes her thinking in ways that are different from those of writers of the Negritude era. The oppressor is no longer white but the black brother who lives next door.” (Parekh, 108) The women speak for each other and share each other’s experiences/ oppression, but they also actively participate in acts of female oppression and violence. The main figure of female oppression in the novel is Tanga’s mother. One of the ways in which this is shown is through the clitoridectomy that Tanga’s mother forces her to undergo so that she will be desirable to men. Tanga’s clitoridectomy is performed under the gaze of her mother: “la vieille ma mère m’a allongée sous le bananier pour que je m’accomplisse sous le geste de l’arracheuse de clitoris… Je la vois encore ma mère éclatante… criant à tous les dieux: elle est devenue femme, elle est devenue femme. Avec ça elle gardera tous les hommes…” (24)
[The old one my mother lay me under a banana tree so that I could fulfill myself by the gesture of the clitoris snatcher…. Je see her now, my mother laughing…. crying to the gods: she has become a woman, she has become a woman. With this, she will keep all the men…] By her celebratory words, Tanga’s mother equates being a woman with being a sexual object. Tanga’s reaction starkly contrasts her mother’s, since for Tanga the clitoridectomy is traumatizing and 175 haunting. The excision is not an act of community but one of violence, as is suggested by the words “clitoris snatcher” [l’arracheuse de clitoris]. As Anna-Claude begins to absorb Tanga’s identity, there is an echo of the clitoridectomy scene in the prison when a prison guard threatens to cut off Anne-Claude’s clitoris if she isn’t silent: “on pourrait peut-être lui couper le clitoris”
(69) [we could perhaps cut off her clitoris]. Beyala makes a clear connection between society’s silencing of women’s and women’s sexual oppression. Tanga is cut off from and dispossessed of her own body and voice, and the means for her to find some liberation comes through her physical and emotional and discursive relationship with Anna-Claude.
Beyala’s articulation of a libratory sexual politics requires a definition of womanhood that is not in relation to forced biological maternity. In West African society, womanhood and motherhood are intrinsically linked, which has often been reflected in the literature. Beyala, by way of Tanga, makes the connection between ownership and power of one’s body with the refusal of maternity.
Ebranlant ainsi les fondements de la maternité, les écrivains font disparaître
l’auréole qui illuminait la figure littéraire de la mère africaine dès les débuts de la
littérature africaine d’écriture masculine. Cesser de procréer revient alors à
récuser non seulement cette vision de la mère et la primauté des liens de sang,
mais aussi l’ordre masculin post-colonial en Afrique. (Brière, 66)
[Thus weakening the foundations of maternity, the writers erase the halo that
illuminates the literary figure of the African mother since the beginning of
African literature that came from masculine writing. Ceasing to procreate thus 176
becomes a challenge not only to this vision of the mother and the primacy of
bloodlines, but also to the postcolonial patriarchal order in Africa.]
Beyala also criticizes the way that motherhood has been exalted at the expense of the children.
What has become important is the number of children a woman has, not whether they are cared for or are healthy: “Elle affirme qu’Iningué tout entier envie son ventre qui a porté douze enfants. Dix sont morts? Qu’importe, elle a eu douze enfants quand même.” (92) [She affirms that all of Iningué is jealous of her belly that carried twelve children. Ten are dead? What difference does that make – she still had twelve children.] Children become a measure of security, and therefore it is the quantity of children that is over-valued by the women and by the social institutions. “A Iningué, la femme a oublié l’enfant, le geste qui donne l’amour, pour devenir une pondeuse. Elle dit : ‘L’enfant, c’est la sécurité vieillesse.’ D’ailleurs, le gouverneur en personne médaille les bonnes pondeuses. Service rendu à la patrie” (89-90) [In Iningué, the woman has forgotten the child, the gesture that gives love, to become an egg-laying hen. She says: ‘The child is the security of old age.’ Besides, the governor himself hands out medals to women who are the good hens. For service rendered to the fatherland” (57). Beyala describes how the children are exploited by the families and by the society where children become a commodity or social security.
Tanga’s act of retelling her story is also a way for her to re-experience her childhood. In order to extricate herself from the socially-imposed role of motherhood, she untangles herself from the guilt and responsibilities that her mother tries to impose upon her:
Je destructure ma mère! C’est un acte de naissance. Folie que de croire à
l’indestructibilité du lien de sang! Bêtise de penser que l’acte d’exister dans le 177
clan implique une garantie d’appellation contrôlée! … Je lui échappe, je l’évacue.
Au diable Mâ! Je deviens une tour. J’ai des frontières délimitées. (64-65)
[I’m deconstructing my mother! It’s an act of birth. It’s madness to believe that
the bloodline is indestructible! Foolish to think that the act of existing within a
clan implies guaranteed quality… I escape from her, I dispose of her. Go to hell,
Ma! I am becoming a tower. I have clearly demarcated borders.]
Tanga wants to liberate herself from the traditions that have allowed her mother to suck the life out of her (Tanga describes her mother as a leech who is sucking the life blood from her). The distancing or matrophobia is present in the names Tanga uses to refer to her mother: “la vieille la mère” [the old woman the mother] or “la femme ma mère” [the woman my mother]. Because the role of the mother carries the expectation of teaching and enforcing social mores and norms, the deconstruction of her mother is a deconstruction or dismantling of patriarchal social structures. The rupture of the maternal line allows Tanga the power to be self-generative and to escape the symbolic prison of her family.
Tanga positions herself outside of and within childhood and womanhood. She is the
“femme-fillette” (child-woman). She rejects the forced, biological role of maternity imposed by society and she refuses to reproduce the system against which she is struggling: “Je ne veux pas nettoyer le paysage, je ne veux pas me multiplier… Je ne veux pas prêter mon ventre à l’éclosion d’une vie” (176) [I do not want to clean up the landscape, I do not want to multiply myself…. I do not want to loan my womb to the birth of life]. Instead, Tanga chooses in favor of volontary, 178
non-biological maternity, like Tituba, and adopts the abandoned child Mala. Mala is another
child whose mother abandoned him:
Sa mère qui tenait boutique dans le haut quartier, laissait les hommes
s’interchanger et ondoyer sur elle telles des vagues sur la mer. Il naquit. Elle disait
que l’enfant pour les femmes de son espèce était le « don du mal » et qu’il fallait
« laisser le diable achever son œuvre. » Elle le mit dans une boite en carton, lui
donna l’épouvante à téter, l’enferma dans sa petite chambre et disparut. (82)
[His mother who had a shop in the upper district, let men take their turns and ride
her as the waves ride the sea. He was born. She said that a child for a woman of
her kind was the ‘gift of evil’ and that she needed to ‘let the devil finish his work.’
She put him in a cardboard box, gave him terror to suckle, locked him up in her
little room, and disappeared.]
Tanga says that both she and Mala are “nobody’s children” [l’enfant de personne, 115]. Tanga does not adopt Mala for her own security or for selfish reasons: “ ‘Est-ce que tu ne me prendrais pas par hasard pour ton assurance-vieillesse?’ ‘Non, Mala.’” (114) [Are you taking me on by chance to ensure yourself some security for your old age?’ ‘No, Mala.’] By seeking out an abandoned and uncared for child to adopt, Tanga shows that women can not only avoid inflicting abuses on each other and those who are powerless around them, but they can also undo the suffering of others from such violence.
Tanga shows how women and children have historically been made objects, and they have not had the power over “ who has the power to classify them, why they can classify, and how 179 they classify” (Darlington, 42). “Je suis une enfant. Je n’existe pas” (47) [I am a child. I do not exist.] In Tanga’s world, those who have the power to classify (and therefore exist) are men. As
Tanga says of herself in relation to Hassan (a man who uses her for his sexual gratification), “car je suis femme-fillette, et non la première à habiter dans son lit, une femme-fillette sans rang de classement… je suis de celles qu’il avale et expulse” (73-74) [because I am a girlchild-woman, and not the first one to occupy his bed, a girlchild-woman without rank or classification… I am one of those whom he swallows and expels.] Ultimately, Tanga is used and betrayed and then imprisoned for her refusal to be classified.
Tanga is unable to name herself in the story—to create a meaningful identity within the social systems bequeathed to her. When asked what her name is, she replies “‘J’ai perdu mon nom.’” (163) [‘My name is lost’]. However, through the narration of her story to Anna-Claude, she is able to take control over her identity and to re-name herself as Tanga through Anna-
Claude. The shared space in the prison with Anna-Claude allows Tanga to come into knowledge of herself as a narrated self; through retelling her story, Tanga relives the events of her life that traumatized and oppressed her. Anna-Claude and Tanga create a hybrid, merged identity at the end of the novel through an act of discursive narration, much like the “parler-femme” of Luce
Irigaray: “Il n’y a pas un sujet qui pose devant lui un objet. Il n’y a pas cette double polarité sujet-objet, énonciation/ énoncé, il y a une sort de va et vient continue, du corps à l’autre à son corps” (49-50) [There is no subject that puts before itself an object. There is not this double polarity subject-object, enunciator/enunciated, there is a sort of come and go that continues, from one body to the other body.] At the end of the novel, there is no longer a hierarchy between 180
Anna-Claude and Tanga, as the two have been able to briefly dismantle the systems of power that create such categories.
Chapter Conclusion
While Africanist critics have looked at the phenomenon of black women passing down stories from generation to generation, sister to sister, not much has been done on the passing of stories between women of differing races. Are Beyala and Condé (among other women authors) able to redefine feminine connection outside images of bondage and oppression? Do they point to the similarities of gender oppression or highlight the differences of race? “Devenir femme” is narrated by these two authors as a process that involves building relationships with other women, with discovering the shared oppression, and the quest for a means to resist against this oppression. Just as Tanga uses the presence of Anna-Claude to project a narrative self, so do
Beyala and Condé use the female characters to project their own authorial voices. Maryse Condé said in an interview that she used Tituba’s voice to write a social critique of contemporary
American society: “through her I wanted to talk about present-day America… I wanted to show that the intolerance, prejudice, and racism that victimized Tituba still exist in contemporary
America” (Conversations, 64). In fact, Maryse Condé goes on to explain how Tituba was a metaphor for the Rodney King trial in L.A. (64). Similarly, Beyala says in an interview that she uses Tanga and Anna-Claude to describe the “essential problems” against which the African woman struggles, namely her gender, her race, and her social integration (Kombi, 77). By re- writing Tituba’s conclusion, rather then leaving it at her death, Condé gives Tituba a story after death. And by passing Tanga’s story on to Anna-Claude, Beyala is able to allow her heroine to 181 persist and to continue her ‘silent’ rebellion. Both authors create a novel that allows the female characters to not be objects of writing, but both subjects and objects of their own writing. At the end of the novel, when the chief guard asks Anna-Claude what her name is, her response is:
“Femme-fillette, noire, dix-sept ans, pute occasionnelle” [“Woman-girlchild, black, seventeen years old, whore sometimes’]. The women characters in these novels share their bodies and their stories with their sisters through an act of narration within the delineated space of the cramped prison cell. 182
CHAPTER FIVE:
Mythological and Fantastic Female Communities
The three novels in this chapter, Efuru , Breath, Eyes, Memory , and Moi, Tituba,
Sorcière... Noire de Salem , draw from a concept of female community that is aligned with mythological tales or female characters from fables. Throughout time and geography, there have been stories of fantastic (and often threatening) female communities: Amazon warrior-women,
Greek sirens and harpies, Salem witches. As Carole Boyce Davies points out in “Witchery and
Madness” of Black Women, Writing, and Identity , “witches are the most deliberate violators of societal traditions… it is how society defines those women who break conventions” (74). The identity of the witch occupies a central place in feminist mythology as well as in the writing of feminist theorists from both Europe and North America, including Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray,
Dworkin, Daly, and Butler. Contemporary feminists have drawn upon the witch or sorceress as the representative of the woman who cannot be contained within society; writers have then transformed these transgressive figures into positive figures of female identity. In Hélène
Cixous’ and Catherine Clément’s La jeune née (The Newly Born Woman ), the authors demonstrate how the figure of the witch represents the cultural incompatibility and deviance of the female condition, a figure who will be sent [into protected spaces- hospitals, asylums, prisons] [“des espaces protégés, des hôpitaux, des asiles, des prison” (19)] so that she may be hidden away and kept under restraint. Cixous and Clément address the figures of the witch and the mythological Medusa as social constructions for women who do not conform overtly to 183 patriarchal dominance. The sorceress is both feared and invested with power, so that the witch or sorceress can represent both a strategy of subversion and revolt.
Similarly, Sherry Ortner points out in her study, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to
Culture?” exploring the “universal devaluation of female culture,” that the psychic modes associated with women tend “to stand at both the bottom and the top of the scale of human modes of relating.” In other words, the modes can be seen as either subverting or transcending social categories. Thus, the symbolic categories of witches and goddesses represent the two extremes of this polarized ambiguity, although either category marks women as potentially dangerous. As we will see in the three novels in this chapter, this strategy of subversion or revolt can potentially provide the female protagonists with a role of female empowerment outside of traditional feminine identities, and the women authors explore whether these subversive roles can coexist in society or whether they will lead to the protagonists’ ostracization and/or imprisonment.
The documentary Witches in Exile (2004) offers insight into how the category of ‘witch’ functions in West Africa. In the film, Professor of Sociology G.K. Nukunya’s discusses in one of his sociology classes at the University of Ghana how “witchcraft serves as a means of social control.... The fear of witchcraft accusations regulates people’s behavior. You know that if you seem too quarrelsome, if you are a loner, if you are too rich, if you are boastful, you may be accused of being a witch.” Another student in the class echoes with “a witch is someone you don’t like.” The documentary continues to describe how witches in West Africa are seen as
“those who must be eliminated from society.” People equate witchcraft with evil, and bad times are often blamed on the women. Thus, accusations of witchcraft tend to increase during periods 184 of social upheaval and development, such as at the time of Independence or contemporary periods of financial crisis.
The documentary visits some of the witch villages and witch camps in northern Ghana that have existed for centuries to function as safe houses for those women accused of being witches. The witch camps are a place for those women who are no longer wanted because they do not appear to have any use. One of the women says “when you are of no use to men, they accuse you of witchcraft.” If the woman is young and her husband still likes her, she can be taken to the camps and subjected to the necessary “purification” rituals so that she can return home. If a woman is no longer young or of use to her village, she is left to spend the rest of her days in the camps. One husband is asked why he didn’t bring his wIfé home (she wasn’t very old), and he and the men around him laugh as his friend answers for him: “she can’t have anymore children. That is why she isn’t back.” In 1998, when the women at Kukuo witches’ camp were asked if they would like to return home and were offered the provisions to do so, the women refused to leave the camp. “Being here is better than going back and being accused of witchcraft again.” A local newspaperman explains: “in this place, they have some sort of acceptance, and they have freedom… they are accepted, they form part of the community.” In this way, the witches’ camps have provided a new form of positive female community for the previously ostracized residents.
In this chapter I will explore how the figure of the witch or another mythological woman may provide protagonists with a positive model of transgressive feminine power, as well as an alternate form of feminine community. A priestess in West Africa or the Caribbean may have more social power than what is traditionally accorded to women. In fact, the strongest 185
valorization of female community and feminine power in the three novels, Efuru , Moi, Tituba ,
and Breath, Eyes Memory , is through mythological women’s communities and traditional
goddess stories. In Flora Nwapa’s Efuru , the female protagonist turns to the beautiful and
wealthy water goddess Uhamiri to find spiritual, sensual, and psychological solace that is not
otherwise available to Efuru in her village community. As Gay Wilentz notes in Binding
Cultures, Uhamiri is the female center of Efuru and the driving force in the novel; Uhamiri provides Efuru with a woman-centered function in society while at the same time removing the
insistence on a traditional, biological female function (motherhood) since the goddess denies
children to her followers. In Maryse Conde’s Moi, Tituba, Sorcière , mythical stories, rituals, and
magic are important for Tituba because they are connections to her female predecessors. Tituba
has a fantastic female community comprised of the ghosts of the women who were important in
her lIfé: Mama Yaya, her mother Abena, and her friend Hester. The invisible spirit world of
sisterhood is a source of comfort for Tituba and provides her with a female community where
women are empowered, rather than the disempowerment and lack of female connection she sees
expressed among the women in Puritan society. Any possible solidarity among women based
upon the ideal of sisterhood is undermined by the isolationist and morally superior attitude taken
by the Puritan white women toward Tituba; however, the impossibility of female community
within Tituba’s earthly society contrasts with the experience of feminine community she shares
with her spirit world, a solidarity that transcends age, race, and geography.
Breath, Eyes, Memory similarly uses legends, myth, and Haitian vodou to provide the young protagonist, Sophie, with alternative identities and a better understanding of the community of ancestral women to whom she is connected. In Breath, Eyes, Memory , Sophie’s 186
grandmother tells stories of family legends and traditional vodou myth, like flying on wings of fire and women carrying the world on their heads, all designed to provide Sophie with a better understanding of who she is as both a Caco daughter and a Haitian woman. In the novel, the purpose of mythology and fantastic stories lies in protecting the listener by explaining the “rules” of the world and revealing to the listener where she belongs. The fables are designed to soften harsh realities and allow both the storytellers and audience to share the experience of being women in Haitian society. As such, the mythical stories help to form the structure and history of
Haitian female community as well as provide the listeners with narratives of feminine identity.
Efuru
Like Emecheta’s characters of Obejeta and Nnu Ego in the preceding chapters, Flora
Nwapa’s protagonist Efuru is similarly the highly esteemed only daughter of her respected
father. Also like these other female characters, Efuru is raised without her mother, who dies
when Efuru is born. Also, like most of the female characters in this study, Efuru is not
particularly rebellious; she is eager to fit into the traditional social roles assigned to her by
marrying and having children. However, like many of the other female characters studied here,
Nwapa’s main character Efuru has a complex relationship with the traditions of her society. She
participates willingly in the female circumcision rite that functions to prepare unmarried women
for marriage, and she is also accepting of the practice of polygamy within her own marriage; on
the other hand, she thwarts tradition by arranging her own marriage to Adizua, even though he
cannot afford to pay her bride price. “For the Igbo, there is nothing quite as shameful as a
woman who moves in with a man who cannot or will not pay the bride price” (Unigwe, 25).
Efuru also goes against the practices of most of the other women in her community by refusing 187
to farm and practicing market trade instead. Her trade goes very well, and it is basically by
Efuru’s own work that her husband can finally pay her bride price. Efuru’s husband Adizua
leaves the farm to join in trading with Efuru; however, as Nwapa points out, her husband “was not good at trading. It was Efuru who was the brain behind the business. He knew this very well”
(36). When Adizua leaves Efuru to live with another woman in town, Efuru decides to break from her husband: “to suffer for a truant husband, an irresponsible husband like Adizua is to debase suffering… When Adizua comes back, I shall leave him… I shall go back to my father’s house” (61-62). Efuru refuses to give in to the belief common to her community that a bad husband is better than no husband. “Our ancestors forbid that I should wait for a man to drive me out of his house. This is done to women who cannot stand by themselves, women who have no good homes, and not to me” (63-64). Efuru’s independence and her virtue allow her to stand up for herself; her husband never makes another appearance in the novel.
Efuru marries again and when this second marriage also does not work out at the end of the novel, she returns to her deceased father’s home. She has no familial obligations, no children, no parents, no spouse, and so Efuru will devote herself to the worship of Uhamiri: the water goddess. Uhamiri is the novel’s example of an independent woman. She first becomes a significant part of the novel about midway when Efuru recounts to her father a recurring dream she has been having:
I dream several nights of the lake and the woman of the lake. Two nights ago, the
dream was very vivid…I got to the bottom of the lake and to my surprise, I saw
an elegant woman, very beautiful, combing her long black hair with a golden
comb. When she saw me, she stopped combing her hair and smiled at me and 188
asked me to come in… She beckoned me to follow her… she showed me all her
riches. (146)
After having these dreams about the woman of the lake, Efuru always trades successfully at the market the following day. Therefore, an affiliation with Uhamiri is immediately equated with prosperity and wealth for Efuru, as though Uhamiri “rewards” her followers for sacrificing their maternal roles to follow her. It is not clear why Uhamiri does not live with Okita, ‘the owner of the Great River,’ to whom she is supposed to be married (255). Wealthy and independent,
Uhamiri is revered and worshipped by men and women alike. “She had lived for ages at the bottom of the lake. She was as old as the lake itself. She was happy, she was wealthy. She was beautiful. She gave women beauty and wealth but she had no child” (75). Uhamiri provides an example of an untraditional successful woman in a culture where feminine success is defined by motherhood.
Uhamiri’s childlessness embodies the paradoxical, just like Efuru. While Efuru is the embodiment of female beauty and femininity, she is also compared to a male for her childlessness. “To [the neighbors] Efuru was a man since she could not reproduce” (24).
Uhamiri is seen as the favorite goddess for some women, while at the same time she lacks the maternal role that most defines the women of the community. Not surprisingly, Uhamiri is even seen as “dangerous” by some members of the community. When Efuru becomes a worshipper, one woman cries out in protest:
This is bad. How many women in this town who worship Uhamiri have children?
Let’s count them: Ogini Azogu… she had a son before she became a worshipper
of Uhamiri. Since then she has not got another child. Two, Nwanyafor Ojimba, 189
she has no child at all. Three, Uzoechi Ngenege, no child…. The chances of
[Efuru] ever getting a baby are very remote now. (162)
However, the belief of worshiping Uhamiri as holding negative repercussions for women is
contrasted with the financial wellbeing of the women who follow her: “She is going to protect
you and shower riches on you… Look around this town, nearly all the storey buildings you find
are built by women who one time or another have been worshippers of Uhamiri” (153). Uhamiri
presents an alternative possibility for female success while embodying both female and male
social attributes. For example, as Efuru worships Uhamiri and she becomes more and more
financially successful, she also becomes more logical: “Efuru was growing logical in her
reasoning. She thought it unusual for women to be logical. Usually intuition did their reasoning
for them” (165). Uhamiri valorizes logic and autonomy in her female followers; she is representative of a condition that women can embody without being called what they loathe: a
“male woman”(104).
I find it interesting that Susan Andrade notes that Efuru has no strong female role models:
“Efuru, the character, herself had no strong female role models” (Andrade, 262). Uhamiri is the
female role model for Efuru, and Nwapa uses the goddess to point to traditional “solutions” for
the problems of patriarchal oppression and reducing women to their position as childbearers.
Through the novel’s progression, Efuru gradually moves from heterosexual community into
feminine community. Each of Efuru’s husbands lets her down, whether he is a traditional Igbo
man like Adizua or whether he is a Western-educated, Christianized man like Gilbert. At the
same time, Nwapa also portrays “good” men in each category: Efuru’s traditional father who
speaks openly of his deep love for her mother and proudly discusses Efuru’s mother’s 190
accomplishments; and the kind Western-educated village doctor whom Efuru encounters several
times in the novel. Obviously, the problem for Nwapa is not that men inherently suffer from character flaws or a corrupt nature. Neither is the portrayal so simple as to send the message that
“women are naturally better than men,” since Nwapa also populates the novel with corrupt and harmful women.
Through the story of Efuru, Nwapa shows how women aid in their oppression by either betraying other women or by becoming subservient to their opppressors. Nwapa’s solution to the oppression and suffering is that women should act in solidarity. As Susan Andrade rightfully points out, it is the female community in the village that sustains Efuru (Andrade, 258). Efuru’s relationship with her mother-in-law’s sister, Ajanupu, is much more solid and reliant than any of
Efuru’s marriages; it also spans nearly the entire breadth of the novel and endures long after both marriages have ended. It is Ajanupu who helps Efuru give birth to her daughter and who also cares for Efuru when her daughter passes away. Ajanupu provides Efuru with advice and helps her to overcome difficult situations; Ajanupu is also the person who most vehemently defends
Efuru’s innocence when she is accused of adultery at the end of the novel. Ajanupu is the novel’s strongest example of a traditional woman who refuses to be oppressed. She even resorts to violence when Efuru’s husband, Gilbert, slaps Ajanupu: “Gilbert gave her a slap which made her fall down. She got up quickly for she was a strong woman, got hold of a mortar pestle and broke it on Gilbert’s head. Blood filled Gilbert’s eyes” (217). Even the pestle that Ajanupu hits
Gilbert with for accusing Efuru is a sign of feminine strength and solidarity; it is a domestic tool and is also the tool traditionally used by angry Igbo women when they “sit on” a man (see
Chapter One). The incident between Ajanapu and Gilbert shows that Efuru is moving from 191
heterosexual community into a community of women. It is after this incident that Efuru decides
to become a full worshipper of Uhamiri.
Ajanupu also teaches Efuru how to collect her debts from those who would take
advantage of Efuru. Her economic independence allows Efuru to reach out to the women in her community: she is able to pay for one old woman’s surgery, and she lends money to several other women. Nwapa shows that the economic success of women is not only important for themselves as individuals but for the wellbeing of women as a group. A dibia explains to Efuru that Uhamiri “is very kind to women” (153), meaning that Uhamiri grants prosperity to her followers. However, Uhamiri’s followers are expected to use their financial gain to be kind and generous to one another as well.
The answer to the novel’s enigmatic final question, “Why then did women worship her?”
is clearly that the women worship Uhamiri, in spite of her unwillingness to grant them children,
because of the prosperity, security, peace, and solidarity that her tradition gives her—all of
which can be achieved within or outside the roles of motherhood. Uhamiri does not cruelly force
her followers to choose between maternity or worshipping her; the goddess presents an alternate
success and community for women that is not strictly defined by being a mother.
Moi, Tituba, Sorcière
While Efuru shows the possibility of a priestess or goddess having positive value in an
African community, Moi, Tituba, Sorcière shows how the feminine powers of magic and healing can be seen as dangerous and subversive in the Western community; at the same time, these
powers also provide Tituba with solace and power in her Caribbean community. Like Efuru, 192
Tituba loses her mother at a young age and thus looks to older women in her community for advice and guidance. Neither Tituba nor Efuru take on the traditional role of motherhood afforded to them by their communities, although Tituba does this by choice by aborting her fetus rather than bring another soul into the condition of slavery. Ironically, also like Efuru, Tituba does not seek to actively rebel against her community; her acts of social transgression point more toward her incompatibility with living under the strict limitations of her society rather than demonstrating a willful and rebellious spirit.
Carol Karlsen has argued in her study on the Salem witch trials, Devil in the Shape of a
Woman , that the story of witchcraft is primarily a study of women: “Witchcraft confronts us with ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society, and with women themselves” (xii). In Moi, Tituba , the witch is the embodiment of the other ; Tituba epitomizes sexual and cultural and geographical transgression. Tituba is condemned by the
Puritans for her skin color, as much as for her “excess” of feminine sexuality. Tituba first uses a spell in the novel to seduce John Indian, the man who would become her husband and then who would later abandon her out of self-interest. John Indian is also the first on the novel to call her a witch:
Qu’est-ce qu’une sorcière? Je m’apercevais que dans sa bouche le mot était
entaché d’opprobre. Comment cela? La faculté de communiquer avec les
invisibles, des garder un lien constant avec les disparus, de soigner, de guérir,
n’est-elle pas une grâce supérieure de nature à inspirer respect, admiration, et
gratitude? En conséquence, la sorcière, si on veut nommer ainsi celle qui possède 193
cette grâce ne devrait-elle pas être choyée et révérée au lieu d’être crainte? (33-
34)
[What is a witch? I noticed that coming from his mouth, the word was stained
with disapproval. Why is that? Isn’t the ability to communicate with the invisible
world, to maintain a constant connection with the dead, to care for others, to heal,
wasn’t it a superior gift of nature that would inspire respect, admiration, and
gratitude? Consequently, shouldn’t the witch, if that’s what the person who has
this gift is to be named, be cherished and revered instead of being feared?]
John Indian represents the bridge between the two communities of black slaves and white masters: he holds the slaves’ belief in a positive kind of magic and healing, while also communicating to Tituba the Puritanical belief that all witchcraft was the work of the Devil.
John Indian’s using the term “witch” shows how he has colluded with the colonizers; the witch is allied with all things transgressive, which is perhaps a trait that first attracts John Indian to
Tituba. It is also the reason he will ultimately abandon her to the Puritans so that he may look out for himself.
John Indian is the first to call Tituba witch, and he is also the first to awaken her sexual desires, as well as her desire to please a man and be pleasured by him. The trajectory of identified sorceress and figure of female sexuality function hand in hand in Tituba’s undoing; she is aware that her desire to be desired and her desire to be free are incompatible: “Les esclaves qui descendaient par fournées entières…. étaient bien plus libres que moi. Car ils n’avaient pas choisi leur châmes…. Moi c’était là ce que j’avais fait” (45) [The slaves who stepped down from the ships in droves…. were freer than me. For they had not chosen their chains…. That is what I 194 had done.] Tituba is able to take her body that inspires fear in others and make it desirable, to both men and women through her sexual relations. However, the conflict arises when Tituba’s traditional modes of healing and conjuring spirits clash with her desire for sexual attention.
While the role of healer would traditionally afford an African woman both power and respect from the community, once Tituba leaves her island, her traditional healing skills are in a direct conflict with Western religious tenets in the Puritan community.
Condé is careful to show that Tituba is not a “witch” until she comes into contact with
Christianity and the Puritan community. Then her powers, that were previously healing and spiritual, become evil and satanic. In Parole des femmes , Condé describes witchcraft as:
une religion naturelle basée sur une connaissance intime de la nature et de la vie,
une complicité avec elle… La sorcière n’est pas considérée comme un element
maléfique, mais comme l’intermédiaire naturel entre le monde visible et celui de
l’invisible. (54)
[a natural religion based on an intimate understanding of nature and lIfé, on a
complicity with them… The witch is not considered to be evil but rather as the
natural intermediary between the visible and the invisible worlds.]
According to Condé, in the Caribbean the women who practice communication with the spirit world are not considered outside of society but rather are reserved a place of honor: “une tradition très ancienne qui fait de la femme le véhicule favori des pouvoirs religious” (73) [an ancient tradition that sees women as the favored vehicle of religious powers]. However, in the patriarchal space of Puritan New England, Tituba poses a threat by her mystical religion that empowers women. 195
The irony is that if Tituba is a witch, she is a healing, lIfé-giving one who uses her
healing powers for good numerous times, not the Satan-linked sorceress who cannot exist until
Tituba is exposed to the Puritan world. Throughout the novel, Tituba uses her healing powers more often for good than evil, repeatedly keeping Elizabeth and Betsey Parris alive in the harsh conditions of the New England Puritan community. However, it is the herbal and mystical remedies that Tituba uses on Betsey Parris that ultimately lead to her being accused of and imprisoned for witchcraft. Because Tituba grew up with Man Yaya in the Caribbean and was largely secluded from the white world, she does not know what it means to be an “other” until she marries John Indian and enters voluntarily into his slave world. Once she marries John
Indian, Tituba must convert to Christianity and move to the Puritan village in America; Tituba argues that it is the atmosphere of Salem that makes her perform more and more of her art. “Moi- meme, je m’empoisonnais à cette atmosphère délétère et me surprenais, pour un oui pour un non,
à réciter des litanies protectrices ou à accomplir des gestes de purification” (107) [Myself, I was being poisoned in this putrefying atmosphere and I surprised myself by reciting protective incantations or performing purifying gestures over the slightest thing]. While the Puritans are afraid of Tituba’s healing and seemingly magical powers, they are at the same attracted to them.
They want to use them for their own will, to control Tituba’s power for their own welfare. For example, GoodwIfé Rebecca Nurse asks Tituba to help her punish neighbors whose hogs have ruined GoodwIfé Nurse’s vegetable garden (112). In the Puritan village, Tituba’s powers are seen as evil when they cannot be manipulated and controlled, but they are useful when they can be manipulated for personal benefit and gain for the Puritans. 196
After John Indian, one of the Puritan girls is the next to call Tituba a witch, repeating
words that Tituba had said earlier to Betsey Parris. “‘Tituba, est-ce vrai que tu sais tout, que tu
vois tout, que tu peux tout? Tu es donc une sorcière?’ Je me fâchai tout net: ‘N’employez pas des
mots dont vous ignorez le sens. Savez-vous seulement ce qu’est une sorcière?’” (101). [Tituba,
is it true that you know everything, that you see everything and that you can do everything?
You’re a witch then?’ I lost my temper. ‘Don’t use words whose meaning you don’t know. Do
you even know what a witch is?]. Jeffrey Russel has shown in his study on witchcraft that the
label of witch helped to affirm the boundaries of community and enhance solidarity: “When the
sorcerer is identified as the evil outsider, driving her out of the community or otherwise
persecuting her gives the orthodox a sense… of justification. Once she is identified as a
scapegoat, society can project upon her every kind of repressed evil” (14). The questioning of
whether Tituba is a witch and then later naming of Tituba as ‘witch’ shows the trajectory of the
Puritan girls, and Parris household, to ultimately reject Tituba as an outsider. Tituba must be
defined and contained out of a fear by the Puritans of difference and uncontainability. Tituba’s
skin and her unabashed sexuality mark her as a witch in the Puritan society. “Il y avait deux ou
trois serviteurs noirs dans les parages, échoués là je ne sais trop comment et tous, nous étions
non pas simplement des maudits, mais des émissaires visibles de Satan” (108). [There were two
or three black servants in the community, how they got there I have no idea, and all of us were not simply cursed, but visible messengers of Satan.] Lisa Bernstein discusses how the term
“witch” is shown by Condé as a way in which “dominant discourses construct and manipulate the epithet of ‘witch’ to dominate and contain individuals who are different” (4-5). Tituba is placed in the category of witch as the ultimate category of outsider or ‘other.’ 197
After the initial labeling of witch, Tituba has conversations later in the novel with Hester
Prynne and with her lover Christopher where she asks why she is placed in the category of witch
and what this word means: “‘Pourquoi dans cette société, donne-t-on à la fonction de « sorcière »
une connotation malfaisante? La « sorcière » si nous devons employer ce mot, corrige, redresse,
console, guérit…’” (153) [‘Why in this society does one give the word ‘witch’ an evil
connotation? The witch, if we must use this word, corrects wrongdoing, helps, consoles,
heals…’] The conversation is later echoed with Christopher:
“‘Es-tu une sorcière? Oui ou non?’ Je soupirai: ‘Chacun donne à ce mot une
signification différente. Chacun croit pouvoir façonner la sorcière à sa manière
afin qu’elle satisfasse ses ambitions, ses rêves, des désirs… (225).
[‘Are you a witch?’ he shouted. ‘Yes or no!’ I sighed. ‘Everyone gives that word
a different meaning, Everyone believes he can fashion a witch to his way of
thinking so that she will satisfy his ambitions, dreams, and desires…’] (146).
Tituba feels she is mislabeled as a witch. In the afterword in the English translation of the novel,
Condé answers the question of whether she believes Tituba is accurately described as a witch:
Condé specifies that in Africa the word witchcraft would only be use for someone working evil on individuals and the community: “Tituba was doing good for her community. Could she be called a witch? I don’t think so, and the book is there to prove it” (206). The Puritan relationship to nature is characterized by suspicion and superstition in contrast to Man Yaya and
Tituba who are in community with nature and the spirit world. It is worth noting that Tituba only enters the world of witchcraft through one cruel act, over which she had no control. When
Tituba’s mother Abena is hanged and her adopted father Yao kills himself, Tituba leaves the 198
plantation and is adopted by Man Yaya, a healer who has also lost all her family members at the
hands of the white colonizers and who lives on her own separate from her island society.
The figure of Man Yaya allows Condé to use, both in parody and realistically, the theme of traditional healing skills and knowledge of cultural practices being passed down from one female generation to the next. Man Yaya practices quimbois , which is the Guadeloupean
variation for what is called vodou in Haiti. The people on the island are afraid of Man Yaya for
her supernatural powers, even though Tituba says Man Yaya had only used those powers for
good. “Man Yaya n’avait-elle pas employé son don à faire le bien? Sans cesse et encore le
bien ? Cette terreur me paraissait une injustice” (27). [Hadn’t Man Yaya used her gift to do
good? Again and again for good? The terror of these people seemed like an injustice to me.] Yet,
as they will later do to Tituba in the Puritan village, the community still flocks to Man Yaya for
healing, in spite of their fear. “On la craignait. Mais on venait la voir de loin à cause de son
pouvoir” (22). [They were afraid of her. But they came from far away to see her because of her
power.] Man Yaya teaches Tituba how to use herbs for healing, she teaches her how to
communicate with the spirit world, and teaches her how to perform animal sacrifice. Man Yaya
imparts stories, rituals, and magical ceremonies to Tituba that are to be used for healing and for
the welfare of others.
Man Yaya also teaches Tituba the ability to communicate with the invisible (22). The
use of the invisible world, according to Condé, is intentional to deny any appearance of
verisimilitude in her novel. While the themes of oppression and racism and violence may point
to the nonfictional elements of the text, the repeated instances of the dead communicating with
the living remind the reader that this is an invented text with artistic liberties. Condé 199 intentionally authors a fictional account of a nonfictional character. The importance of the spirit world and its community is that it becomes the primary source of comfort and guidance to Tituba throughout the novel. Tituba learns to make the spirits of the deceased appear at will, and even performs this act to comfort her Jewish lover in America after an Anti-Semitic act robs him of his children. The community of the dead remains close to Tituba, as Man Yaya, Abena, and
Hester continue to guide her. “Je savais que je n’étais pas seule et que trois ombres se releyaient autour de moi pour veiller… Je n’étais jamais seule puisque mes invisibles étaient autour de moi, sans jamais cependant m’oppresser de leur présence” (25). [I knew I was not alone and that three spirits surrounded me to watch over me…. I was never alone because my invisible spirits were all around me, never oppressing me, however, with their presence.] Unlike the feminine community in the Puritan village where women are pitted against women and must struggle against each other for their very survival, the feminine community that Tituba enjoys with the spirit world is one of comfort and support: “Man Yaya m’apportait l’espoir et Abena ma mere, la tendresse” (137). [Man Yaya brought me hope and Abena, my mother, tenderness.] Also, just as
Tituba is saved by Man Yaya’s healing powers, Tituba designates her own successor whom she will continue to train even after her own death. In this way, Tituba valorizes a lineage of female wisdom and the transmission of female healing from generation to generation.
Communication with the spirit world is Tituba’s skill of learning how to read the invisible. It also allows Tituba to relate differently to memory; for her, past, present, and future are all one and she can mediate between the various spaces. The idea that Tituba is narrating her story from the spirit world allows her to transcend the concept of time and history as a continual presence. During her lIfé, Tituba narrates her own development by choosing how she responds 200
to the ghosts, usually largely ignoring their advice to her. For example, when Tituba meets John
Indian, her mother appears to her. “Je ne l’avais pas appelée et je compris que l’imminence d’un
danger la faisait sortir de l’invisible” (33). [I hadn’t called her, and I understood that an imminent
danger had brought her out of the invisible world.] Tituba’s communication with the spirit world
and her sorcery are the constants that carry her through the loss of her mother, the loss of her
country, and the absence of a sense of belonging.
According to Michelle Cliff, women of color, like Tituba, suffer being doubly displaced,
as both black and female. “Objectification is ‘the process by which people are dehumanized,
made ghostlike, given the status of Other… The actual being is then denied speech: denied self-
definition, self-realization” (35-40). Therefore, in the title, Tituba re-asserts herself, from the
category of other, as a speaking subject: Moi, Tituba. Tituba’s titular identity, in its original
French as opposed to the English translation, puts “witch” ahead of “black.” The title literally
translates to “I, Tituba, Witch…. Black [Woman] of Salem.” The title is perhaps Tituba’s most
rebellious act where she asserts herself as identifying with the very category that has marked her
as outsider. Condé creates Tituba as a mythical heroine, if not accurately historical. According
to Alain Brossat, the uniqueness of the Caribbean is “precisely the absence of a precolonial
homeland to which the West Indian can refer as though to his own history… When West Indian nationalism wishes to evoke the historical roots of its fight, they are hidden and dispersed; they can only refer to myths, to an imagination which is more parabolic than historical” (43-44).
Other theorists have suggested that the mythic imagination drawn from folklore and fantasy comprises an important aspect of African-Caribbean writing, as it draws from European, Asian, and African influences to create a sense of origin or beginning. The novels from the Caribbean 201
are woven with African and Antillean oral tales, traditional sayings, slave histories, and literary
predecessors in a way that evokes the type of métissage that Lionnet refers to as a mark of
Caribbean women’s writings. According to Lionnet, women’s writing in these postcolonial contexts shows how the subject is “multiply organized” by “braiding all the traditions at its disposal” (19). This notion of métissage and the mythic imagination is particularly evident in
Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory where Danticat braids the voices of multiple characters and intersperses them with French, Kreyol, and English language, vodou and Catholic traditions, and the myths and stories from Africa, Europe, and Haiti.
Breath, Eyes, Memory
Breath, Eyes, Memory is a story of women and women’s acts of storytelling; it opens
with a dedication to “the brave women of Haiti, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins,
daughters, and friends, on this and other shores.” Sophie Caco, the protagonist, narrates the lives
of four generations of Haitian women and the relationships amongst them. Sophie leaves her
family and community in Haiti at age twelve to move to New York City to live with the mother
she has never known. Like Tituba, Sophie, is born as the result of an act of rape perpetrated
against her mother. However, this time the rape is not violence inflicted by the white master;
Sophie’s mother is raped in a cane field by one of Haiti’s infamous Tontons Macoutes when she
is sixteen. Like Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat draws from historical and personal events to
weave a fictional narrative that is interspersed with historical events and mythical tales.
Sophie’s story begins with the Tontons Macoutes who themselves occupy an almost
“mythological” place in Haitian history. During “Papa Doc” Duvalier's regime, the longest in 202
Haitian history, he kept troops of unpaid volunteers, known as Tontons Macoutes, who were
given license to torture, rape, and kill people at will. When Papa Doc died in 1971, his nineteen-
year old son “Baby Doc” took over the dictatorship; however, even after Baby Doc was
overthrown in 1986, the Tontons Macoutes still terrorized the Haitian people, which is where
Breath, Eyes Memory derives its realistic examples of violence and civil unrest. For example, as the twelve-year old protagonist Sophie is driven to the Port-au-Prince airport from where she will leave Haiti to live with her mother in New York City, she sees students protesting, cars in flames, and soldiers shooting bullets and tear gas. On the airplane, Sophie sits next to a boy whose father has just been killed in the demonstrations. The novel covers the period of the
1980s to the mid-1990s, and allusions to political events keep the readers grounded in the historical realities of the period.
In the novel, Sophie describes how the Macoutes stroll around the villages and marketplaces doing evil at will, neither ashamed of their actions nor afraid of the consequences, confident that they will neither be questioned nor held accountable. Their violence is whimsical and terrible, and because they follow no known rules and do not act rationally, no one is safe.
Sophie tells the reader that the Macoutes committed their violence acts without shame or secrecy:
[They] did not hide. When they entered a house, they asked to be fed, demanded
the woman of the house, and forced her into her own bedroom. Then all you
heard was screams until it was her daughter’s turn. If a mother refused, they
would make her sleep with her son and brother or even her own father. (139) 203
Sophie’s conception occurs when her mother, Martine, is raped as a teenager in a cane field by a masked Tonton Macoute: “A man grabbed me from the side of the road, pulled me into a cane field, and put you in my body” (75). After Sophie’s birth, Martine tries to escape her memories of the rape by fleeing to New York City, and Sophie is raised for her fist twelve years by her aunt and grandmother in a Haitian village.
When Sophie turns twelve, her mother sends a one-way ticket for her to leave her Haitian village and aunt and grandmother behind and come to New York City and join her. During her first night in New York City, Sophie is made aware of her mother’s fragile psychological state.
Before her migration to the United States, Sophie has known her mother only through “the picture on the night table by Tante Atie’s pillow” (8). Once Sophie moves to America, she learns that her mother Martine has had constant nightmares of the rape; Martine’s nightmares make her scream “as though someone was trying to kill her” (48), and Sophie’s legacy is that her mother’s nightmares originate from the night she was conceived. Sophie’s face is a constant reminder of her mother’s rape. Each of them will have to reconcile with her memories regarding the other. Sophie will have to come to terms with the fictional, idealized image she had of her mother and with her mother’s nightmares that she has inherited; Martine will have to come to terms with her rape by reconciling with her family and with the soil of Haiti.
Martine passes her fears on to Sophie whom everyone says looks just like the rapist
(since she doesn’t look like anyone in her family). Sophie’s geographic and emotional exile force her to come to terms with her identity as a Caco woman, and as a Haitian living in
America, by exploring her lost origins (with her country and her mother). Sophie’s attempt to navigate a relationship with her mother also mirrors her attempt to develop a relationship with 204 her mother-country. Until she knows her mother’s story, she is unable to claim her heritage and her place in the community of Haitian women. Sophie learns to bring together her fragmented identity by coming to a place of understanding regarding the women around her. As JennIfér
Rossi points out in her article on Breath, Eyes, Memory , Sophie’s healing takes place by creating a new identity for herself (internal narrative) while communicating her identity and story to others (external narrative) (205). Sophie comes into a healed knowledge of self by coming to terms with her memories and the legacy of memories her mother has passed on to her. As
Sophie tells her story, and her mother’s story, and her aunt’s and grandmother’s stories, the external narrative begins knitting together her fractured internal narrative. Giving testimony, of her story and others’ stories, becomes an act of resistance and a performative of communal healing. The story isn’t told linearly, but moves back and forth across the ocean and is narrated through fragmented events and multiple voices.
The act of storytelling has several important purposes in the novel. First the Caco women in Breath, Eyes, Memory use it to transmit a heritage of resistance. Danticat shows how the older generation uses stories and mythical tales to provide the young girls with accounts of superhuman, cunning, and powerful women, such as “the people of Guinea who carry the sky on their heads…. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything” (25) and the women of
Haiti who are so strong that “only a mountain can crush a Haitian woman (198). Storytelling also takes the place of lost mothers and motherlands since it recreates ties to mother Africa (as in the story about the people of Guinea) and strengthens the intergenerational networks by binding the women together. Sophie explains at the end of the novel how the stories help to emphasize the important link between mothers and daughters: “it was neither my mother nor my Tante Atie 205 who had given all the mother-and-daughter motifs to all the stories they told…. It was something that was essentially Haitian. Somehow, early on, our song makers and tale weavers had decided that we were all daughters of this land” (230). In the Haitian village where Sophie grows up, oral tradition is the primary locus of collective consciousness, and the transmission of narratives from one generation to the next performs both a cultural and maternal function, recreating ties to a lost motherland and strengthening kinships between mothers and daughters.
The Caco women’s storytelling also has a purpose of aiding with the women’s survival and enduring oppression. Tante Atie tells Sophie stories about her birth in order to protect her from the truth. “One time I asked her how it was that I was born with a mother and no father.
She told me the story of a little girl who born out of the petals of roses, water from the stream, and a chunk of sky. That little girl, she said was me” (47). The longest mythical story occurs halfway in the novel, told by Sophie’s Grandma Ifé to all the village children about a lark that charms a young girl through a gift of pomegranates. The lark tells the girl that he wants to take her to a kingdom far away. When she refuses, the lark looks so sad that she changes his answer and climbs on to his back. However, once she is on his back, the lark tells the young girl that he is taking her to a king far away who must have her heart or he will die. The girl wisely tells the lark that she has forgotten her heart at home and must go back for it. When the lark takes her home, she runs to her village, leaving the lark to wait for her forever (124-125). The story is told to the village children as a dual message about the simultaneous safety and imprisonment that home and family offer to girls. It shows how home is sanctuary for young girls who are easily tempted and manipulated, but the story also shows how home can become a prison since now the girl can never leave her village. Grandma Ifé tells the story as a message to Sophie that she will 206
need to learn to balance her need for the safety and security of a homeplace with her need for
freedom and movement. Sophie must come to terms with her identity as a Haitian woman living
in America, while finding a sense of origin and rootedness in the myths and nostalgic stories told
to her as a child.
The second purpose of the folk stories is a way of teaching girls to conform to the
traditional social roles assigned to them. Tante Atie tells Sophie that when she was a girl,
Grandma Ifé described how each of her ten fingers has a purpose:
It was the way she [Atie] had been taught to prepare herself to become a woman.
Mothering, Boiling, Loving, Baking, Nursing, Frying, Healing, Washing, Ironing,
Scrubbing. It wasn’t her fault, she said. Her ten fingers had been named for her
even before she was born. Sometimes, she even wished she had six fingers on
each hand, so she could have two left for herself. (151)
The stories also function to prepare young girls for a reality where they are not valued as much
as boys or men. We see this in the story that Grandma Ifé tells about a woman who gives birth at
night. If the baby is a boy, they will leave a lantern on and the father will stay up all night with
the new baby boy. If it is a girl, the lantern will be turned off and the mother will be left in the
darkness with her girl (146). The women also use story-telling to pass on sexual mores. As a
young girl in her village of Haiti, Sophie hears the story of “a poor black girl” who is killed on
her wedding night by new husband, “an extremely rich man” (154). He had chosen to marry her because “she was untouched.” On the night of their wedding, the new bride does not produce the blood-spotted sheet her husband has wishes to proudly display to prove to the community that he has deflowered his bride. To obtain the desired blood spots, the groom cuts his bride “between 207
her legs.” But when he gets enough “to impress the neighbors,” he can’t stop the bleeding, and
his bride is ultimately “drained of all her blood. Later, during the funeral procession, her blood-
soaked sheets were paraded by her husband to show that she had been a virgin on her wedding
night” (155). The purpose of the story is a cautionary tale to young girls to prove to them the
necessity of remaining pure and chaste; it also teaches the young female audience that a girl’s
value is located in her body, and therefore extreme measures can be taken to protect the
“commodity.”
The stories about women’s bodies link the physical to the concept of female purity and
self-worth. Grandma Ifé tells Sophie that a young girl’s chastity affects the entire family and its
reputation. The extreme suffering caused to women by the “virginity cult” (as Sophie call it
[154]) is most painfully expressed through the cultural practice of “testing” that takes place in
the novel. Testing is described as the insertion of the mother’s pinky finger into her daughter’s
vagina to verify that her hymen is still intact. Grandma Ifé tells Sophie that it was necessary for
her to test Martine and Atie for the sake of the entire family: “From the time a girl begins to
menstruate to the time you turn her over to her husband, the mother is responsible for her purity.
If I give a soiled daughter to her husband, he can shame my family, speak evil of me, even bring her back to me” (156). Grandma Ifé fears transgressing the traditional practices that have oppressed her, her daughters, and her granddaughter, and therefore she continues the practice in spite of the suffering it causes to her family. She explains to Sophie that the purpose of testing is to safeguard the bride-to-be’s chastity and that it is a mother’s duty to keep her daughters pure for their husbands. Grandma Ifé tells Sophie that the testing has been conducted for the good of her daughters. However, the irony, as Sophie points out, is that testing the Caco women has 208 done nothing to keep the women “safe” and is essentially purposeful-less in their cases. Even though both daughters, Martine and Atie, have been forced to endure testing by Grandma Ifé,
Martine is raped at age sixteen and Atie’s suitor abandons her for another woman. Therefore, the act of testing has no value for them and for their bodies. And while each generation admits to the great psychological and emotional pain, they continue to do it to the younger generation because it was done to them and they have been told it was the right thing to do. A mother's testing of her daughter is hurtful even as it expresses her own hurt and her mother's before her.
While the act of rape is one account in the novel of violence against women by men, the act of testing is a cycle of violence among women, passed down from one generation of women to the next. Atie admits to screaming while Grandma Ifé tested he r (85) and Martine admits that the “one good thing” about being raped was that it made the testing stop (170) . The cycle of physical and emotional violence is passed down by the women, even as they pass on the stories that they tell during the actual act of testing. Sophie is told stories while her mother tests her as a distraction. “These women tell stories to their children both to frighten and delight them. These women, they are… the night, the faces that loom over you and recreate the same unspeakable acts that they themselves lived through” (233). Martine replicates her own sexual trauma, of the testing and of the rape, on her daughter under the auspices of safeguarding her virginity; she forces Sophie to experience the same sexual violence and rape that Martine had endured as a teenager.
Sophie endures the testing for a couple months, and then remembers how the act of rape ended her mother’s testing. Thus, she rebels against her mother’s testing by breaking her own hymen, which, even though it resulted in her spending two days in a hospital with stitches, 209
Sophie describes as “breaking manacles, an act of freedom” (130). However, the attempt to
claim agency over her body comes at a high price: first, it contributes to the phobia and pain she
later experiences when having sex with her husband; secondly, it dictates that she must give birth
to her daughter by caesarian section. When Sophie rips her hymen with the pestle, she destroys
the means her mother has had to make sure that her daughter adheres to Haitian sexual codes of
behavior in America. It is also significant that Sophie breaks her hymen with a pestle: a symbol
of women’s domesticated space, the tool that has signified female community as the women in
Sophie’s grandmother’s village would congregate together for “pounding millet in a large mortar
with a pestle” (22), and a tool that Sophie had previously used to cook all Martine’s favorite
meals in New York City. “I even used the mortar and pestle to crush onions and spices to add
those special flavors she liked” (80). Just as the act of testing is a link back to Haiti and the
negative traditions that were passed on there from mother-to-daughter, the pestle is also a link
back to Haiti and the memory of food gatherings and meals shared together. Sophie uses the
pestle, which has served to connect Martine and Sophie back to Haiti while in America, to
violate herself and these traditional sexual codes that have imprisoned the women of her family.
When Martine performs the testing on Sophie, Martine uses stories to distract her daughter. Again, the act of story-telling serves the additional purpose of de-emphasizing oppression and pain that women must endure. “She told me stories while she was doing it, weaving elaborate tales to keep my mind off the finger, which I knew one day would slip into me and condemn me” (155). Sophie learns to “double” while she is being tested by her mother, to separate from her body and imagine all the pleasant experiences she left behind in Haiti.
According to Danticat, “doubling” is Sophie’s way of gaining strength. “Sophie is saying, ‘I’ll 210
gain strength. This is my body, but I will go somewhere else. The core of me is somewhere else.’
… Doubling acknowledges that people make separations within themselves to allow very painful
experiences, but also the separation allows people to do very cruel things” (385). As Danticat
points out, doubling, like storytelling, can be both positive and negative: positive in that it allows
Sophie to escape a painful reality; negative in that people in the novel also use it to do violent
and oppressive acts. Lastly, the theme of doubling also highlights the book's emphasis on duality
through twins, lovers, doubles, halves, and wholes.
The twins, or Marassas, in the Haitian practice of vodou are a set of forces or contradictions: good and evil, happy and sad. The Marassas are a separate class of being that is quite distinct from the other vodou gods and goddesses, known as loa . In her interview with
Renee Shea, Danticat says that the Marassas are a part of an African tradition where there are twin deities:
In the tradition of the Ibegi in Africa, twins are considered very special, in some
cases to be very powerful...Marassas in common language means twins… I
wanted to use all the connotations of twins in the story. Going back to the mother-
daughter relationship, the idea is that two people are one, but not quite; they might
look alike and talk alike but are, in essence, different people. (385)
The Marassas are ancient beyond reckoning; they are mythical lovers who are so close as to share the same soul. The Marassas hint at the twinned nature of human beings, a counterpart to the vodou practice of doubling , as practiced by Sophie . The worship of the Marassas is a celebration of man's twinned nature: half matter, half metaphysical; half mortal, half immortal; half human, half divine. Martine's wish is that she and Sophie could be like the Marassa. 211
However, Danticat demonstrates how Martine’s desire for twinning with Sophie is problematic.
It does not allow Sophie to experience her identity as separate from her mother, and enables
Martine to more easily pass on her nightmares and pain to her daughter.
In her study Reclaiming Difference , Carine Mardorossian points out the similarity in the
Marassas story to the myth of Narcissus, particularly in the theme of reflections in mirrors and water. Martine is also linked to the story of Narcissus by her love for daffodils (a species of narcissus), and so we see that Martine shares a yearning for an identity that will restore a sense of wholeness to her. Martine explains to Sophie that they can “become the same person, duplicated in two:”
The Marassas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person,
duplicated in two. They looked the same, talked the same, walked the same.
When they laughed, they even laughed the same and when they cried, their tears
were identical. When one went to the stream, the other rushed under the water to
get a better look. When one looked in the mirror, the other walked behind the
glass to mimic her. What vain lovers they were, those Marassas . Admiring one
another for being so much alike, for being copies… You and I we could be like
Marassas . (85).
Martine tries to create in Sophie the marassa twin who will restore this united identity to her fractured self, and Sophie herself starts to blur the lines between herself and her mother:
Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat wondering if my mother’s anxiety was
somehow hereditary or if it was something that I had “caught” from living with
her. Her nightmares had somehow become my own, so much so that I would 212
wake up some mornings wondering if we hadn’t both spent the night dreaming
about the same thing: a man with no face, pounding a lIfé into a helpless girl.
(193)
Nancy Gerber points out that Sophie’s bulimia might also be related to her ambivalent
relationship with Martine. When Martine first moves to New York City, she tells Sophie that she
had gained sixty pounds as she was overwhelmed by the volume and variety of food available.
She stuffs herself full of food, as she is afraid that the food will somehow cease to be available:
“To have so much to eat and not eat it all. It took me a while to get used to the idea that the food
was going to be there to stay. When I first came, I used to eat the way we ate at home. I ate for
tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, in case I had nothing to eat for the next couple
days” (179-180). Sophie mirrors Martine’s bingeing, as a way to reenact what Martine has
experienced, but then purges, as if trying to get rid of the mirrored behavior.
When Sophie has sex with her husband, she returns to the experience of doubling that she
used to perform when her mother tested her. Sophie imagines being somewhere else and caring
for her mother. “I would visit her every night in my doubling and, from my place as a shadow
on the wall, I would look after her and wake her up as soon as the nightmares started” (200).
Sophie’s identity becomes so merged with her mother that she feels connected as her mother’s
marassa. “We were twins, in spirit. Marrasas ” (200). In the first half of the novel, Sophie moves toward an understanding of how she is connected to her mother; the second half of the novel narrates Sophie’s learning to define and accept her identity as separate from her mother.
As a young girl in Haiti, Sophie had imagined her mother as Erzulie, the Haitian Goddess of Love whose roots go back to West Africa. The goddess Erzulie represents passion, femininity, 213
and motherhood. She represents paradox in that she can be a coquette with many husbands or the
Virgin Mary. For the young Sophie, Erzulie is the personification of beauty, generosity, love,
sensuality; she is invoked as a symbol of female courage, desirability, and strength. “She was
the healer of all women and the desire of all men… Even though she was far away, she was
always with me. I could always count on her” (59). She is Sophie's ideal mother, and Sophie is
initially disappointed when she meets her mother and discovers that Martine is nothing like what
Sophie had imagined. Much of the novel is the story of Sophie and Martine coming to terms with
their expectations of each other.
At the end of the novel, Martine commits suicide when she finds out that she is pregnant.
This second baby brings back all the fears and nightmares from the rape, and Martine is
psychically unable to cope with the flood of emotions. When Sophie chooses her mother’s
funeral outfit, she returns to the initial childhood image she had of her mother and so chooses an
outfit that reflects the goddess Erzulie:
I picked out the most crimson of all my mother’s clothes, a bright red, two-piece
suit that she was too afraid to wear to the Pentecostal services… She would look
like a Jezebel, a hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them
her slaves, raped them , and killed them . She was the only woman with that
power. (227)
Dressing Martine as Erzulie also recalls a fable remembered by Sophie when she is in the process of tearing her hymen with the pestle. In the fable, a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years comes to Erzulie for guidance; in order to stop the bleeding, the woman will have to be transformed from a human being to another life form. The woman chooses to become a 214
butterfly, and she never bleeds again (87-88). When Martine’s boyfriend comments on the color
of the funeral outfit Sophie has chosen for Martine, Sophie’s answer recalls this fable of the
woman who becomes a butterfly and never suffers again. “‘Saint Peter won’t allow your mother
into Heaven in that,’ he said. ‘She is going to Guinea,’ I said, ‘or she is going to be a star. She is
going to be a butterfly or a lark in a tree. She is going to be free’” (228). Martine’s death marks
her final extrication from the psychological oppression that her geographical exile could never
remedy. Sophie and Martine are both the woman who cannot stop bleeding, as Martine cannot release her psychic pain over the rape and Sophie suffers from a perpetual guilt for what her mother has experienced as a result of Sophie’s conception.
The story of the woman who perpetually bleeds likens the woman’s body as a site of oppression and lack of control. This is also emphasized by the fact that Martine, Grandma Ifé, and Tante Atie all have tumors in their bodies. The physical betrayal and oppression suffered by the women of the Caco family tells a story of the woman’s body as victim to acts of oppression and to bodily invasion. Indeed, Sophie’s own masochistic act with the pestle and her cycle of binging and purging point to a sense of desperation at gaining control over one’s body. Sophie reveals to her grandmother that the experience of testing was the worst thing that has ever happened to her and that she has nightmares about it every time she is with her husband. For
Sophie, the testing is just as psychologically traumatic as Martine’s rape was. Ifé tells Sophie that she must let go of the pain and liberate herself; she then draws Sophie’s attention to Ti
Alice, a girl of fourteen who lives in the village and is walking home that evening. Grandma Ifé tells Sophie that when Ti Alice gets home, her mother will “test to see if young Alice is still a virgin. The mother, she will drag her inside the hut, take her last small finger and put it inside her 215 to see if it goes in. You said the other night that your mother tested you. That is what is now happening to Ti Alice” (154). The story of Ti Alice shows that the burden of testing is not a secret suffered exclusively within the Caco family, but it is a burden that all the women in the village share. At the very least, they are all expected to use their ten fingers and to be pure and not disgrace their families. Testing is not a burden unique to Sophie; however, the solution to
Sophie’s problem, as pointed out by Grandmother Ifé, is only her own responsibility. No one else can do it for her. As Grandma Ifé says to Sophie “You cannot always carry the pain. You must liberate yourself” (157). The female body in the text is the locus of oppression, but the end of the novel points to the body also as the site of liberation. Female sexuality in the novel can be read as a symbol of the Haitian women’s attempts to formulate empowering identities.
In America, Sophie meets regularly with a sexual phobia group, showing her ability and willingness to use the situation of her exile from Haiti to break from the traditional bonds that would have been oppressive and use alternate, less traditional ways to find healing. The group is comprised of a variety of women from different class and ethnic backgrounds, all non-
Caucasian: including Davina, a Chicana woman who was raped for ten years by her grandfather, and Buki, an Ethiopian woman whose grandmother “had cut off all her sexual organs and sewn her up, in a female rite of passage” (202). The therapist herself is a black woman who had spent two years in the Dominican Republic with the Peace Corps. All the women have suffered at the hands of family. The novel makes it clear that while women have largely been the source of
Sophie’s pain, she also seeks out women to help her heal. Sophie brings her statue of Erzulie to her sexual phobia meeting as a representation of her idealized mother. At one of the final meetings, the group burns the names of those who have wounded them and releases balloons. 216
Through this act, Sophie begins to understand that her mother didn’t mean to hurt her and that her pain is linked to her mother’s pain: “I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt too” (203). Sophie realizes that she should not feel guilt for her anger at the testing, and that she is capable of being the one to stop the generational testing. Sophie acknowledges that it is up to her to make sure that her daughter never lived with nightmares and never burned her mother’s name.
Her experience of exile from Haiti helps Sophie learn to navigate what aspects of Haitian culture to celebrate and which ones to leave behind. She does not forget how to speak Creole and can still prepare the traditional dishes of her mother country; however, she marries an African-
American man and vows never to continue the tradition of testing on her own daughter. Unlike
Sophie, Martine brings much of her psychological oppression with her to New York City and continues to suffer under the weight of it. Martine tries to hide her own class background through skin lightening creams and by disguising her Haitian accent. Her message on her answering machine is in perfect English and French, “painfully mastered, so that her voice would not betray the fact that she grew up without a father, that her mother was merely a peasant, that she was from the hills” (223). Martine imposes onto Sophie all of her girlhood dreams that were cut off by her rape. “You will become the kind of woman Atie and I have always wanted to be.
If you make something of your life, we will all succeed. You can raise our heads” (44). Sophie is the sole bearer of her mother’s, aunt’s, and grandmother’s dreams. She learns that her mother
Martine and Tante Atie “always dreamt of becoming important women” (43), but they “had no control over anything. Not even this body” (20). In an interview with Renee Shea, Edwidge
Danticat says “Often all we know about being women, we pick up from our mothers” (383). For 217 the first half of the novel, Sophie has only learned about nightmares, self-inflicted pain, and the body’s betrayal from her mother.
The second half of the novel begins as Sophie returns to her grandmother’s village in
Haiti for the first time with her infant daughter, Brigitte. Sophie arrives confused about her body, her sexuality, and her marriage. She returns to the soil where her mother, aunt, and grandmother became women and the place from which she was torn just before the onset of puberty. She tries to return to her childhood, and puberty has represented her time of problems and aloneness in NYC. For the Caco women, Haiti has represented different experiences: for
Martine, Haiti is a place of nightmares. For Tante Atie, Haiti is a place that never can be left because of duty. And for Sophie, Haiti will be a place of memories and healing. When Sophie takes the bus from Port-au-Prince to her grandmother’s village, the bus driver comments on the flawlessness of Sophie’s Creole. Sophie still knows her mother tongue, and so she has not forgotten her memories or upbringing in Haiti. It is further demonstrated that Sophie hasn’t lost her roots when she cooks a traditional Haitian meal for Atie and Ifé. This contrasts Martine who has left behind Haiti to cook meals like spaghetti in New York City. Sophie admits to her aunt and grandmother that she hasn’t spoken to her mother since she left. Atie responds: “That’s very sad for you since you and Martine don’t have anybody else over there…. (Sophie) It’s a place where you can lose yourself easily” (103). Unlike Haiti, New York is a place where community isn’t available, where roots are shallow, and where people are lost.
Throughout the course of the novel, Sophie crosses the Atlantic four times. The first time is when she leaves Haiti for New York City and leaves behind her innocence and childhood in
Haiti. During the second trip, Sophie returns to Haiti as a young mother to confront becoming an 218
adult. One of the first observations Sophie makes in the village of Haiti is watching the female
street vendors. “The female street vendors called to one another as they came down the road.
When one merchant dropped her heavy basket, another called out of concern, " Ou libéré ?" Are you free from your heavy load? The woman with the load would answer yes, if she had unloaded her freight without hurting herself” (96). The women of Haiti carry heavy burdens, literally and figuratively. The market women's cry is symbolically rich and resonates with much of the Caco women's story, itself a passage into freedom. The cry is also echoed in the final pages of the novel when Sophie returns to Haiti for a final visit to bury her mother. The village congregates on the walk to the grave, and all the women in the family throw handfuls of dirt on the coffin.
Sophie begins to run through the cane fields, to the site where Martine was raped, and Sophie begins to beat the cane stalks. She enacts violence against the site of terror for her mother and herself, instead of continuing to take it out on their own female bodies. Grandmother Ifé and
Tante Atie shout to Sophie, “ Ou libéré!” (233).
The market women's cry "Ou libéré?" opens and closes Sophie's passage into
womanhood. At its first appearance, Sophie is a woman by society's standards: she has left
home, has gotten married, and has had a child. However, she has not successfully integrated her
identity as a Haitian-American woman. At the second invocation in the book's last chapter,
Sophie has made a final trip back to Haiti for Martine's funeral. Grandmè Ifé tells Sophie that a
daughter is not a woman until her mother has passed on before her. As her mother is laid to rest,
Sophie comes fully into womanhood. The market women’s cry contrasts between Sophie's epic
attempts to free herself from the burdens of family inheritance and the market women's quotidian
business. The contrast between a life’s work and a daily habit also reflects the epic quality of 219 daily life, and the extent to which freedom is a matter of the everyday. The daily, familiar cry of
"Ou libéré?," which in the market women's case simply reveals that one more trip has been successfully been completed, is set against the unuttered reply that Sophie will give to this question on the novel's last page. The echoing of Ou libéré throughout the novel also contains a subtle indication of the dynamics between the Caco women; like the market women who cannot help each other carry or unload, the women can simply ask after each other. Sophie learns that though others may be responsible for one's personal burdens, reconciliation is largely a personal affair. Freedom may be a rallying cry for mobs, families, and democracies, but the means to liberation remains an individual path.
Grandmother Ifé sees in Brigitte, Sophie’s daughter, a miraculous amalgamation of her family's faces where all of the kinship lines can be seen in one face. Brigitte represents all the
Caco women, similar to how Sophie had represented her mother’s, aunt’s, and grandmother’s dreams. Brigitten represents new beginnings and hope; Sophie will tell her own stories to her daughter to pass on the legacy of Haitian women. She is now a female creator, as a mother and as a storyteller. “The tale is not a tale unless I tell. Let the words brings wings to our feet” says
Grandma Ifé (123). Through communal storytelling, Sophie overcomes her own painful memories, as well as the women’s memories around her. Sophie understands that in order to come to terms with whom she is as an individual, she must identify herself within the context of her feminine community. Her return to Haiti and reestablishment into her community there allows her to find her place in the story of women and to then rewrite this story. Sophie’s liberation allows her to understand the story of other women that she had not previously 220
understood. It also enables Sophie to insert her own story of identity into the larger collective
story of feminine identity.
Myriam Chancy writes that there are four distinct features to Afro-Caribbean women’s
writing that confront the theme of exile: alienation, self-definition, recuperation, and return (xxi).
The recuperation of history, of origins, and of community, all help the female characters to
evolve in their definitions of self. For Sophie, it is her physical return to the site where her
grandfather died and her mother was raped, a return that allows her to validate her origins and
come to a state of understanding of who she is as a Caco woman. Sophie’s last name, Caco, is
the name of a scarlet bird, “a bird so crimson, it makes the reddest hibiscus or the brightest flame
trees seem white” (150). The cacos were also “African slaves who successfully resisted slavery
during the Haitian war for independence” (Gerber, 70). The last name seems fitting for these
generations of women who must fight for their independence and who are noted for their ability
to survive amidst oppression. Sophie creates a narrative thread to unite the women in her family:
her grandmother, mother, aunt, and daughter, as well as the “brave women of Haiti.”
Conclusion
The three novels in this chapter gather the narratives and myths of various female characters to emphasize the themes of community and feminine collectivity. Sophie weaves the threads of multiple stories in the fabric of her own narrative, just as Tituba weaves the threads of past, present, and future together. The myths and folktales teach a message of collective resistance through individual survival tactics and morality tales. The stories connect the female 221
protagonists to family, to the feminine community, and to the women who inhabit the stories and myths that have been passed down from generation to generation. By claiming her right to narrate her story, Sophie heals her fragmented identity, just as Tituba claims her right to tell her story in her own voice and Ajanupu stands up to correct the stories being disseminated about
Efuru. In this chapter, the authors show how women’s community is explicitly portrayed as the means to achieve relief through a symbolic reunion with the self and with the other women from which they have been exiled.
222
CHAPTER SIX:
The Narrative Weave of Community or the Tisseroman
In these postcolonial novels of development authored by women writers, we often find a female protagonist who weaves her narrative with the voices and stories of other women characters. The female narrators and protagonists interpret and give meaning to other women’s lives based upon fragmentary moments found through personal journals, shared encounters, and oral accounts passed down among generations of women. In these novels, female characters are reliant upon each other for subjecthood that is achieved through a dialogic experience that creates narrative communities. The women authors narrate a performance of subjectivity by taking the story of Other(s) and making it the story of Subject(s). The authors affirm their own feminine voices through the acts of writing and thus inscribe themselves, their protagonists, and their historical and fictional precursors into literary subjecthood.
Rather than create one singular subject or narrate the linear development of one character, the female authors studied in this dissertation instead compose a narrative made of interwoven female voices and stories. The authors leave behind the one-voiced, singular development of the traditional Bildungsroman for a multi-voiced, pluralistic development of numerous characters over various locations and time periods. This narrative quilt of story-weaving, or tisseroman as I will call it, is a characteristic shared by the novels in this dissertation. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the outcomes of this narrative strategy and to discuss the possibilities and 223
potentialities derived when women tell each other’s stories, both from within the narrative and
outside it.
Contemporary theorists have advanced a view of culture as “a multivalent weave of
dominant, residual, and emergent strands that are often in tension with one another.” 25 Such a view of culture as a multithreaded weaving implies a view of the dominant as no longer a closed and exclusive totality, but rather as a complex weave of diverse strands or voices. This notion follows along the lines of Françoise Lionnet’s theory of métissage or Homi Bhabha’s notion of hybdridity and liminality. Hybridity and interweaving is a technique that works very well for these postcolonial women writers. Their novels rewrite subjectivity as an open, interwoven, braided narrative. Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido describe the “quilted narrative” in their introduction to Out of the Kumbla as a “braided or woven” narrative that “alters the language and mode of fictional discourse.” 26 The novel becomes the perfect vehicle for
hybridity and interweaving as the novel permits different genres and voices to co-exist within it:
the epistle, journal, lyric poetry, songs, short stories, monologues. Thus, the novel itself
performs and narrates a blurring of borders.
In the novels of this study, feminine characters are reliant upon each other for a
subjecthood that is achieved through dialogic experience. The linguistic philosophy of Russian
theorist Mikhail Bakhtin is most helpful for thinking in terms of how a dialogic disrupts the
notion of the self as a centered, unified subject. Bakhtin’s theory of subjectivity is one that
criticizes the notion of a singular, cohesive subject, and instead offers the theory of co-existent
subjects whose positions are taken in relation to, rather than in opposition to, various discourses
25 Nancy Fraser, Revaluing French Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 18. 26 Carole Boyce Davis and Elaine Savory Fido, Eds. Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990), 6. 224
in the world. By exploring subjectivity through the dialogic relationship, Bakhtin’s definition of
self is one that is in constant transition as it is always in dialogue with other selves. For Bakhtin,
it is the explicit and implicit interplay of voices that create a self:
In real life people talk most of all about what others talk about—they transmit,
recall, weigh and pass judgment on other people’s words, opinions, assertions,
information…every conversation is full of transmissions and interpretations of
other people’s words… the ideological becoming of a human being, in this view,
is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others. 27
Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism provides a way in which women’s voices can be heard as they
“assimilate the voices of others” and write themselves back into the dialogue. As Susan Andrade
has pointed out, Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism is useful for novelistic criticism as it
“emcompasses the response of one text to another (intertextuality) and the free play of
contradictions within a text (heteroglossia).” 28 Bakhtin’s theory is similarly constructive for
postcolonial narrative studies as it allows for a model of subjectivity that, rather than exclusively
privileging race or gender or nation, takes into consideration intersecting ideologies of race,
gender, class, language, as well as their connection with history and nation.
The dialogic work does not merely correct, build upon, or silence previous works of
literature or other authors; it responds to and is informed by previous texts and authors. For
example, Caribbean author Maryse Condé returns to Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in Condé’s novel Moi, Tituba where Condé retells Hester Prynne’s story in Hester’s own voice
(as mediated by the black Caribbean female protagonist, Tituba). Similarly, Nigerian author
27 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 338, emphasis mine. 28 Susan Andrade, “Rewriting History, Motherhood, and Rebellion: Naming an African Women’s Literary Tradition.” Research in African Literatures 21.1 (1990): 95 . 225
Buchi Emecheta entitles her novel The Joys of Motherhood in an explicit connection to the
Nigerian mother text, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru. According to Ellen Moers’ study Literary Women, the fictional narration and inclusion of other women’s stories within the female novel of development reflects the literal practices of women writers. 29 These female authors constitute their own creative and generative tradition by drawing inspiration from each other’s works. As
Abena Busia describes it, “The desire to speak is first generated, and then enabled by the presence, literal or spiritual, of another woman.” 30 Nina Auerbach similarly writes, “the unformulated miracle of the community of women is its ability to create itself.” 31 Just as female protagonists draw from the stories of other female characters, so female authors garner confidence from each other’s work and make connections among the multiple female voices.
The female authors in this study weave together the traditions of popular oral story- telling with classic literary writing. Traditionally, the motivation for women’s storytelling in much of West Africa and the Caribbean was to develop in its young audience both a “collective and individual identity”—a sense of where the child comes from as a group and unique.
“Storytelling was seen to be a part of orality and was linked to female narration and to amusement and didacticism for pre-adolescents.” 32 The matriarch in the family would serve as the “master” storyteller, with the purpose being to transmit knowledge and preserve culture amongst the younger generation. This figure “uses her storytelling to artistically convey information to younger generations about the culture and worldview, norms and values, morals
29 Ellen Moers, Literary Women (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 43. 30 Abena Busia, “Rebellious Women, Fictional Biographies,” Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia . ed. Susheila Nasta (London: The Women’s Press, 1991), 89. 31 Nina Auerbach, Communities of Women (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 11. 32 Ousseina Alidou, “Gender, Narrative Space, and Modern Hausa Literature,” Research in African Literatures . 2002 Summer, 33 (2), 145. 226
and expectations.” 33 In her autobiography, Buchi Emecheta writes about her moment of self-
discovery that took place while her “big mother” was telling the story of Buchi’s birth to all the
village children, marking this moment of self-discovery in the midst of family, clan, and village.
It was at this moment, Emecheta writes, that she learned she was a “significant person in our
community.” 34 Women authors, like Buchi Emecheta, engage in the individualistic activity of
writing while simultaneously engaging with a community of women writers and female
characters and women readers. The tisseroman is a genre that by its very nature perhaps best explores the weaving of multiple voices that lead to the protagonist’s coming into understanding of her place as an individual within a larger community.
One of the possible benefits of the narration of multiple stories is that it allows for an acknowledgment of the multiple discourses that function together to weave a sense of self and
“an-other.” By focusing on an interweaving of subjectivities, these authors write a subjectivity that is not based on the recognition of the other as an object but as an-other subject. As Mary
O’Connor points out in her study of subject and voice in black American women’s writing: “The more voices that are ferreted out, the more discourses that a woman can find herself an intersection of, the freer she is from one dominating voice, from one stereotypical and sexist position.” 35 We can particularly find this coming into freedom in the protagonist of Breath,
Eyes, Memory by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat.
In Danticat’s novel, the young Haitian protagonist Sophie (an echo of the young
Danticat) comes into selfhood as the women around her share with Sophie the stories of the lives
33 Ousseina Alidou, “Gender, Narrative Space, and Modern Hausa Literature,” Research in African Literatures . 2002 Summer, 33 (2): 137-153, p.139. 34 Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water (Oxford: Heinemann, 1994), 9. 35 Mary O’Connor, Feminism, Bahktin, and the Dialogic , eds. Dale Bauer and S. Jaret McKinstry (Albany: SUNY, 1991), 202. 227
of her mother, aunt, grandmother, and other women in her Haitian community. Sophie’s
grandmother Ifé tells stories of family legends and vodou myth with the purpose of transmitting to Sophie a better understanding of who she is as both a Caco daughter and a Haitian woman.
By coming into an appreciation of the lives of the women around her, Sophie begins to escape from the ideologies that have previously imprisoned her and thus comes to see herself as another subject. In Breath, Eyes, Memory , the sharing of stories protects the listener by explaining the
“rules” of the world, by softening harsh realities, and by allowing both the storytellers and
listeners to share their experiences as women, thus giving Sophie a better understanding of the
community of women, present and past, to which she is connected. The multiple stories help to
form the structure and history of Haitian female community as well as provide the young female
audience, Sophie, with models of feminine identity and with the history and roots of her Haitian
community.
For the women characters who die in these texts, it takes another woman/author to tell her story. This conflates narrator and narrated, speaker and listener, author and audience; in other words, it breaks down the categories of Self and Other. We find examples of this in several contemporary postcolonial novels: in Guadeloupean/Senegalese author Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s
Juletane , the character-reader Hélène uses Juletane’s journal to share both Juletane’s and
Hélène’s stories, as well as to tell the stories of other unnamed African women. In Cameroonian author Calixthe Beyala’s novel Tu t’appelleras Tanga, the protagonist Tanga tells her story to her
French-Jewish cellmate, Anna-Claude. Since Tanga is illiterate and unable to write her story, she
must transmit it orally to Anne-Claude who will then be equipped to pass on Tanga’s story to a
wider audience. Tanga, like other female characters, performs the creation of female solidarity 228 by including the narratives of other women’s existences in her own story- telling. Tanga’s “I” is woven together with the other female voices that populate her story and cannot speak for themselves, as Tanga tells her grandmother’s story, mother’s story, and friend Camilla’s story.
Through her narration, Tanga (re)produces a community of women who can empathize with each other’s sufferings.
Bakhtin argues that the author’s voice blends with, contradicts, and emerges throughout the novel, as the author creates characters with fully articulated and autonomous voices of their own. “The author does not speak in a given language (from which he distances himself to a greater or lesser degree), but he speaks, as it were, through language, a language that has somehow more or less materialized, become objectivized, that he merely ventriloquates.” 36 The author “ventriloquates” the character voices; one of the strongest examples of this ventriloquism is Condé’s Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem where Condé writes the fictive autobiography of Tituba, a historical figure from the Salem witch trials. Condé is able to preserve her own function as author without undermining at the same time the power and presence of her character’s voice since it is the protagonist’s voice that the author hopes to uncover. Condé, the author, functions as interpreter, mediator, and translator to rehabilitate the voice of her character. Since Condé withdraws herself as the authority of the story (she is not the
“I” to whom the story belongs), she must find other ways to legitimize the narrative.
How does the author preserve her own function as author without undermining at the same time the power and presence of the character’s voice, since it is the protagonist’s voice that the author hopes to uncover? In Moi, Tituba , Condé gives herself narrative authority by telling
36 Bakhtin, 299. 229
the readers that Tituba told Condé “things she had confided to nobody before.” 37 The author
becomes both the mediator of the protagonist’s story as well as the interpreter. Condé functions
as interpreter, mediator, and translator to rehabilitate the voice of her character. She uses the
epigraph to switch between I = Tituba and I = Condé. “Tituba and I lived for a year on the
closest of terms. During our endless conversations, she told me things she had confided to
nobody before.” 38 It is presumed that Tituba’s story can only be told because of the hours of
“conversation” between her and Maryse Condé. At the end of the novel, “I” returns to Condé: “I
myself have given her an ending of my own choice.” 39 Condé is the author of the book, while
Tituba is the author of her story.
In her essay “Rebellious Women: Fictional Biographies,” Abena Busia addresses how
narration can become a significant act of rebellion:
The novels explore the ways in which women realize the shape of their lives, and
the inter-relation between this realization and the nature of their stories, thus
demonstrating recognition of the context in which their voices must be heard.
The ability to inhabit their own stories, and to become the subject of their own
histories can be of itself an act or gesture of rebellion… The desire to speak is
first generated, and then enabled by the presence, literal or spiritual, of another
woman. 40
The rebellious, constricted self becomes an articulate, speaking self. Calixthe Beyala’s Tanga
shares her story with Anna-Claude as a deliberate act of rebellion and subversion. Maryse Condé
37 Maryse Condé, Moi, Tituba, Sorcière… Noire de Salem (Paris: Editions Mercure de France, 1986), 11. 38 Condé, 11. 39 Condé, 183. 40 Abena Busia, “Rebellious Women, Fictional Biographies,” Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia . ed. Susheila Nasta (London: The Women’s Press, 1991), 89. 230
gives the previously silenced Tituba a voice, and Tituba purposely sets out to undo the stories
that others had “woven” about her 41 , as demonstrated by the almost defiant “I/Me” in the title
Moi, Tituba, Sorcière . Tituba also tells her mother Abena’s story, her substitute mother Man
Yaya’s story, the Puritan wife Elizabeth Parris’story, and Hester Prynne’s story: all as part of her
own narrative. As Susan Andrade has pointed out in her study of Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of
Motherhood :
If the act of writing is one of the most powerful means by which women can
inscribe themselves into history, then the acts of African women writers
inscribing themselves and (re)inscribing their precursors into literary history
functions as a powerful response to … the exclusions of Africans from history. 42
Maryse Condé responds to Tituba’s exclusion from Western history, and the African slave
Abena’s erased story, and Hester Prynne’s silencing by allowing each of them to retell their stories in their own voices as woven together by Tituba’s narration. According to Madeleine
Borgomano, the “I” in ‘autobiographical novels’ by Francophone women writers rarely refers back to a particular individual but to the voice of a representative:
Le ‘je’ de l’autobiographie renvoie… très peu à une personne particulière
affirmant son individualité ou son originalité (comme c’est souvent le cas dans
l’autobiographie occidentale); il ne se donne pas comme la marque d’une voix
unique et exceptionnelle mais bien plutôt comme la voix d’un représentant, d’un
41 Condé, 11. 42 Susan Andrade, “The Joys of Daughterhood: Gender, Nationalism, and the Making of Literary Tradition,” Cultural Institutions of the Novel (Durham: Duke UP, 1996), 252. 231
délégué. Il est même souvent traversé par tant de codes et de stéréotypes qu’il
finit par devenir le plus opaque des masques. 43
[The ‘I’ of the autobiography refers rarely back to a particular individual,
affirming his individuality or originality (as is often the base in Western
autobiography); it doesn’t pretend to be a unique and exceptional voice but rather
the voice of a representative, of a delegate. Often, it is crossed by so many codes
and stereotypes that in the end it becomes the most opaque of masks.) (trans
mine)
The female protagonists in the novels, as well as the female authors, use the singular stories of
the protagonist to simultaneously narrate the experiences of the oppressed, of the voiceless, and
of the forgotten.
Just as female protagonists weave into their narratives the stories of other female
characters, so female authors constitute their own creative and generative tradition by drawing
confidence from each other’s work. Donna Stanton refers to this as the autogynography, the text
that generates the female subject. 44 The community of women writers sustains the community of
women who exist within postcolonial female novels of development. These women writers use
intertextual strategies that may revise canonical texts, as in Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (that
rewrites Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre from a Caribbean perspective) or Maryse Condé’s Moi,
Tituba, Sorcière ; or they may revisit previous literary works to expand them and carry them
43 Madeleine Borgamano, Voix et Visages de femmes dans les livres écrits par les femmes en Afrique francophone (Abidjan : CEDA, 1989), 13. 44 Domna Stanton, The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice of Autobiography from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century (Chicago: D.C. Stanton, 1987). 232 further, as Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta draws the connection between her novel The Joys of
Motherhood and Efuru, by the mother author Flora Nwapa, in Efuru ’s last lines: “She had never experienced the joys of motherhood.” The women authors may also revisit moments of feminine history that have been silenced, as Buchi Emecheta does in The Slave Girl through allusion to the Igbo Women’s War of 1929 to show a powerful illustration of the collective action and power of women.
For the woman writer, writing can be both an act of resistance and of empowerment. It reveals the relations of power and resistance that constitute the women authors as well as the female subjects in their texts; the narration of female biography also often involves rewriting history and tradition. However, the point of the novels of this study is not to depict successful female rebellion, but to allow women to “speak in their own voices even as they adhere to the tenets of patriarchal tradition.”45 Buchi Emecheta’s Nnu Ego speaks from within the traditions that contain her, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane writes her diary against the traditions that threaten her. Access to language and access to writing is often portrayed for female postcolonial writers as a metaphor for access to control of one’s life: “control over one’s economic destiny, one’s body, and one’s sexuality.” 46 The rebellious, constricted self becomes an articulate, speaking self. Writing is a performative act that provides women with a space where the female writer can locate and position her identity quest. By telling untold stories and re-narrating other stories, postcolonial women writers are able to undermine the centrality of the masculine West in literature and deny the exclusionary atmosphere of a male-dominated
45 Katherine Fishburn, Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-Cultural Conversations (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995), 107. 46 Abena Busia, “Rebellious Women, Fictional Biographies,” Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia . ed. Susheila Nasta (London: The Women’s Press, 1991), 92. 233 profession. The women authors narrate a performance of subjectivity by taking the story of
Other(s) and making it the story of Subject(s). The authors affirm their own feminine voices through the acts of writing and thus inscribe themselves, their protagonists, and their authorial precursors into literary subjecthood. The women authors affirm their own voices through the act of writing while participating in a female collective that binds protagonist to author and author to author.
In these novels, the female ‘I’ is a subject woven of various selves: “its threads, its life- lines, came from and extended to others. By the token, this ‘I’ represented a denial of a notion essential to the phallogocentric order: the totalized self-contained subject present-to-itself.” 47 By privileging the female voice, the authors create dialogic communities where female voices speak and are recognized and heard. The notion of community is essential to Bakthin’s theory of dialogism, and this community can be a site of repression, containment, marginalization, subversion, or liberation. The dialogic community offered by Bakhtin offers a way to think of how language can disrupt. It allows the reader to engage with the text in a dialogue as well as to observe the dialogue of voices contained within and without the novel. In the novel of female development, female voices are dependent and build upon each other as they are interwoven in the telling of multiple stories. Rather than focus on individual development as does the traditional Bildungsroman, these postcolonial female novels of development point towards the building of solidarity among women— and the vehicle best suited for the telling of these stories of feminine community and female subjecthood is the tisseroman .
47 Domna Stanton, The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice of Autobiography from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century (Chicago: D.C. Stanton, 1987), 16. 234
CONCLUSION
In Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject Carole Boyce Davies asserts that black women’s writing “should be read as a series of boundary crossings and not a fixed geographical, ethnically, or nationally bound category of writing” (4). By conceiving of identity in terms of multiple communities and (re)locations, one possible result is that the black female refuses to be subjugated. This is similar to what Paul Gilroy argues when he asserts routes over roots, and argues that displacement and exile is ‘the basis of a privileged standpoint from which certain useful and critical perceptions of the modern world become more likely”
(111). Interestingly, the theme of exile is prevalent in nearly all of the novels studied in this dissertation, and, not unrelatedly, nearly all of the authors are writing “in exile” from their countries of origin. Edwidge Danticat and Maryse Condé write about the Caribbean from the
United States, Myriam Warner-Vieyra looks back to Guadeloupe from Senegal, Buchi Emecheta writes about Nigeria from England, and Calixthe Beyala writes about Cameroon from France.
Nearly all of the novels discussed in this dissertation draw upon experiences of migrancy: from the village to the city, across countries, and across oceans. The books build bridges between the First World and the Third World, between the village and the city. The authors deconstruct notions of home and exile by portraying how one can be exiled at home and be at home in exile. These authors demonstrate that the experience of exile can be potentially liberating for those women who use territorial displacement as a way to escape social oppression and find new routes/roots for identity; however, physical and/or emotional exile, as we see in 235
some of the novels in this dissertation, can also become too isolating for some to endure without
successfully establishing ersatz communities in their new villages, cities, or countries. The
authors stage the conflicting and coexisting desires to belong and to be free. They move us away
from notions of national identity based on language or territory and into models of identity that
are formed by dynamic models of feminine community.
In the novels in this study, the concept of selfhood is recovered through relationships to
one another, and through an identity that is both individual and communal. Katherine Frank
writes in “Death of the Slave Girl” that there is an antagonism between the African woman’s
identity as an African and as a woman: if an African woman chooses female independence and
self-sufficiency, she must leave her homeland and traditional values; if she chooses her African
roots, than she gives up any chance of feminine liberation. However, I would argue that neither
Emecheta nor Nwapa nor Condé nor Danticat nor Beyala are saying that women must choose
one identity over the other. These authors are pointing to the bringing together of multiple
identities: they have created traditional characters who act in nontraditional ways, and
nontraditional characters who refuse to transgress their traditional beliefs. When exploring
questions of identity both at the collective level and at the individual level, what we find is that
the latter is inextricably linked to the former. The failure to centralize identity can lead to a de-
centered and fluid identity, where no pre-conceived barriers limit the possibilities for self-
defined subjecthood. On the other hand, decentralized identity can also lead to the failure to
define subjectivity and ultimately to madness and self-destruction, as we clearly see in Juletane .
In all the novels in this study, a young female central character comes to maturity during a period of cultural change (pre-colonialism, colonialism, and postcolonialism). None of the 236 female characters are particularly rebellious (here we find prostitutes as in Cyprian Ekwensi’s
Jagua Nana ). They are not exceptional women. The point of these novels of female development is not a depiction of a successful female rebellion, but to allow women to speak in their own voices. Nnu Ego speaks from within the traditions that contain her, Tituba is given a voice to go back into history and insert her story, Tanga speaks through Anne-Claude, and
Juletane writes her diary against the traditions that threaten her. Many of the protagonists in this study are outsiders: oppressed, objectified, and voiceless. They are marginal figures with limited options for selfhood and social acceptance. These girls and women are peripheral within the communities in which they live through race, gender, age, education, and class. The crisis, then, is the limited potential the young female protagonist has in finding a position of significance and visibility within a society that renders her silent. The potential transition from invisible to visible explains why the novel of development or tisseroman can be a more promising choice as the narrative model for the voice of the outsider.
The novels in this study point to the collective possibilities for identity rather than subject-development remaining an individual enterprise. As we have seen, unlike the Western
Bildungsroman that emphasizes individualism and separateness, the story of the development of the female protagonist’s quest for independence in these novels stresses a larger participation with family, society, and nation. The writers define female individuals as bound to their social units: family community, village community, and nation community. Françoise Lionnet writes in her article “Dissymmetry Embodied” that it is important “to continue speaking of community, and to attempt to find a common theoretical and ethical ground from which to argue for political solidarity without either objectifying the ‘other’ woman or subsuming collective goals under the 237 banner of sameness” (20). The novel of feminine development is a genre that by its very nature perhaps best explores the place of the individual within her community. This dissertation brings together works not for their Africanness or Caribbeanness, but it brings out an intertextuality that reflects “the interstices in ideologies and cultural values from which these novels come.” 48 In
Culture and Imperialism , Edward Said advocates a “comparative, or …. contrapuntal perspective
… to see several cultures and literatures together” (43). By bringing these nine novels together, we see the shared tensions at play in the lives of multiple female characters: tradition and modernity; oppression and liberation; exile and nationalism. Each novel in my dissertation is implicitly and explicitly read against the others to establish the intertextual dynamic and dialogic.
Anne Hermann points out that the “dialogic resists the reconciliation of opposites by insisting on the reciprocity of two or more antagonistic voices” (15). Dialogism is grounded in the belief that meaning is not inherent in the text but is contextual; in this way, my analysis has been grounded in historical and cultural conditions, as well as preceding literature.
According to Ogundipe-Leslie, African women have always known “that they [are] members of a community and they always insisted on their rights… they always recognized that they [are] women and they have their own women’s world” (“African Literature” 12). The women authors addressed in this dissertation affirm their own voices by writing while participating in a female collective that binds protagonist to author and author to author. In the novels of this study, female characters are reliant upon each other for a subjecthood that is achieved by re-creating the women as subjects in their own narratives. They initiate each other into subjecthood though a dialogic experience that creates narrative communities. The authors
48 See Françoise Lionnet “Geographies of Pain,” p. 136. 238 use these imagined and hybrid communities to think “beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities” to attend to the in-between spaces where new identities are formed. 49
49 In The Location of Culture , Homi Bhabha addresses the idea of identity and community, p.1. 239
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Curriculum Vita Gretchen Elizabeth Kellough
MAJOR PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS Postcolonial Studies / Gender Studies / The Novel / Eighteenth-Century French Literature
EDUCATION: Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies, June 2008 Dissertation: “The Tisseroman : The Weaving of Female Selfhood within Feminine Communities in Postcolonial Novels Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Teaching Certificate in Gender Studies , Northwestern University M.A. in French and Francophone Literary Studies, January 2003 Northwestern University, Evanston, IL A.B. in American/English Literature and French Studies, May 1999 Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA Academic Distinction and honors in both majors: GPA (French) 3.95, (Eng.) 3.8
TEACHING EXPERIENCE: Adjunct Lecturer , Comparative Literature, Northwestern University, Fall 2005, Fall 2007, Spring 2008 Visiting Faculty , French, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL Jan-May 2007 Instructor , English, American River College, Sacramento, CA, Fall 2002- Summer 2004 Teaching Assistant , French Literature, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Fall 2001- Spring 2002 Instructor , French, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Sep. 2000-June 2001 First-Year French Language, College of Arts & Sciences
TRANSLATION: Instructor , School of Music, Northwestern University, Jan 2007- present • Instructor for French to English translation proficiency course for graduate students in the School of Music. Write and administer language proficiency exams as well as lead weekly tutorials. Market Alliance International , Chicago, IL. September 2004 – March 2005 • Translating product packaging/brochures and merchandise advertisements. French to English, Spanish to English, and Italian to English. Northwestern University , Theater Department, Evanston, IL. Spring 2002 • Translating University contracts for summer performances with Avignon Theater Festival. French to English.
PUBLICATIONS: • “The Narrative Weave of Community in the Tisseroman” in Oral and Written Expressions of African Cultures (publication forthcoming with Carolina Academic Press).
CONFERENCES (PRESENTER): 261
• Invited to present “Changing Feminine Communities in the Works of Nigerian Author Buchi Emecheta” in the “Urban Identities” panel at the African Literature Association Conference, April 2008 • Presented the “Narrative Weave of Community in the ‘ Tisseroman ’ ” in the “Literature and Liberation” panel at the “Popular Cultures in Africa” conference at the University of Texas, Austin, March 2007 • Presented “Community of the Exiled or the Loss of the Mother” at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Jan. 2007 • Presented “Legs of Auschwitz” at “Spectrality and Hauntedness” conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles, April 2001 • One of three American fellowship recipients to attend UN-sponsored conference and workshops on “Gender and Sexuality” in Dakar, Sénégal, June-July 2000 • Presented “Authority through Authorship: Women’s Writing” at “Writing Taboos” conference at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, April 2000
CONFERENCES (ORGANIZER): • Organizer and presenter for Northwestern “New TA Workshop and Training Conference,” September 2007. Led morning workshop for new TAs in Philosophy, Languages, and Literature and afternoon workshop on “Strategies for Success” • Organized Northwestern international conference on “Family, Law, and Sexuality,” March 2002
GUEST LECTURES: • Lecture presentation on practice of polygamy and feminine communities at Chapin Residential College, March 2008 • Organized a special performance of “The Vagina Monologues” for a human sexuality class at College of Lake County, March 2008 • Presented “Me and My Three Wives,” incorporating research on West African polygamy with travel photos from Senegal, to students at Willard Residential College, October 2007 • Presented research on gender rights and female reproductive health, as well as study abroad opportunities, in West Africa to students at Willard Residential College, October 2006 • Presented “Fantasies of Containment in Three Novels by Emile Zola” at Faculty-Graduate Student Colloquium, May 2001
ADVISING / MENTORING: • Teaching Assistant Fellow , Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University. June 2007-present. Outstanding advanced graduate students are selected in a competitive process that looks at demonstrated excellence and creativity in teaching. Fellows organize and lead workshop conference for new TAs in fall quarter. Continued mentoring of TAs throughout year. • Faculty Liaison, Mentoring undergraduate students through the Faculty Fellow Liaison Program at Willard Residential College, September 2006-present • Assistant Master , Willard Residential College, Northwestern University. Sep. 2006 – present. Responsibilities include mentoring undergraduate students, planning and coordinating faculty lectures and off-campus activities, overseeing Master Staff budget, and serving as a liaison between students and faculty
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PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS Modern Language Association African Literature Association