WRITING THE HEROES LEARNED FROM THE FOREMOTHERS: ORAL TRADITION AND MYTHOLOGY IN MARIA CAMPBELL'S HALF-BRED, MAXINE HONG KINGSTON'S THE WOMAN WARRIOR EAVAN BOLAND' S OBJECT LESSONS A Thesis submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Jeanie Wills Fall 2000 © Copyright Jeanie Wills, 2000. All rights reserved PERMISSION TO USE In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection . I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor who supervised my thesis work, or in his absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission . It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or in part should be addressed to : Head of the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 i Abstract The following study compares and contrasts the ways three women writers craft narrative selves in their autobiographical texts . Each of the women, the Metis author Maria Campbell, the Chinese-American writer Maxine Hong Kingston, and the Irish lyric poet Eavan Boland, calls on oral techniques to write her autobiography. The study examines how each of the women draws on the oral traditions of her mother-culture, subsequently using characters from culturally distinct mythologies to express her own growth as writer . The methodologies that inform this study are a combination of postcolonial theories about identity and language, and closely related feminist theories about power relations between women and colonialism and women and patriarchal power . Structuralist and feminist theories about mythologies, as well as analysis of the psychodynamics of orality have also influenced the analysis undertaken in this thesis . The research conducted provides evidence that each woman writes a narrative self structured on the framework of the heroic, but infused with culture- specific heroic characters and characteristics from the mother-culture's oral traditions. Maria Campbell's Half-Breed shows distinctly oral influences both in its narrative structure and in its characters . For example, by comparing Maria's character to Wesakaychak's character from Nehiyawak Trickster cycles and other Native North American Trickster cycles, the study shows how Campbell's character resembles the character from oral tales . The Trickster, and consequently, Maria, destabilizes boundaries and unsettles domains of knowledge, therefore, questioning colonial and patriarchal discourses and imagery. In Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston likewise battles limiting stereotypes held by both her Chinese-American community and the mainstream 11 community she inhabits . The character Maxine imagines herself as both woman warrior and a warrior poet, characters she hears about from her mother, and in the process of chronicling her own training as a woman warrior, she also chronicles her training as a word warrior. Eavan Boland, in Object Lessons unsettles the conventions surrounding the hero-bard whose shadow falls over Irish lyric poetry. While she is marginalized in different ways than either Campbell or Kingston, she shares their desire to show women as active agents in their own lives . These writers show that foremothers exist in other storytelling traditions, even if the textual record does not reflect the influence that female storytellers have had on it. As the women (re)construct themselves in their autobiographies, they work within and against conventional Western heroics, building characters who enrich and redefine what it means to be heroic. 111 Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the guidance and support of my thesis supervisor, Ron Cooley, without whose help I would still and forever be in the rough draft stage . Your critical suggestions, encouragement, and advice made this thesis possible . Thank you Ron. Janice Acoose, sister graduate student, teacher, and friend has also provided support and expended energy in reading my thesis, offering comments and suggestions, and engaging in lively discussions . Meegwich, Janice. I would especially like to acknowledge and thank Maria Campbell, whose story telling first motivated my interest in orality and mythology, and whose autobiography seeded this thesis . Maria has not only generously spent time in discussion with me, but has also offered excellent advice, warm encouragement, and gentle instruction . Thank you Maria; you are an inspiration . I also thank Dr. A.J. Harding for inviting Ms. Campbell to his mythology class . Additionally, for their comments and discussion, I thank my thesis committee. Specialist reader Dr. Hilary Clark's extensive notes, close reading and scrupulous attention to detail have helped immensely. I am also grateful to Dr. Ron Marken who encouraged my interest in oral traditions in his Irish Literature class, and whose comments on this thesis have offered me new insights into Indigenous and Irish literature. I thank my external examiner, Dr. Pamela Downe, whose gracious questions allowed me to talk about my material comfortably. My committee's insights and questions have helped me understand my project in new ways . I am privileged to have such careful commentary . Finally, I am grateful to the Department of English and the College of Graduate studies for their professional and financial support . Their funding, through scholarships, Graduate Teaching Fellowships, and Writing Centre employment, not only made graduate studies possible, but also has given me invaluable and practical experience in the writing centre and the classroom . iv To my friend, partner, lover, and husband John who never doubted . Thank you. V Table of Contents PERMISSION TO USE i ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv DEDICATION v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi I . THE USE OF ORALITY IN THREE WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 1 1 .1 . ORALITY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY : WRITING THE HEROIC 1 1 .2. ORALITY AS DECOLONIZATION 7 1 .3. MYTHOLOGY AS DECOLONIZATION 11 1 .4. HEROIC AS DECOLONIZATION 15 2 . THE TRICKSTER CHARACTER IN HALF-BREED 19 3. THE WORD WARRIOR IN WOMAN WARRIOR 38 4. THE HERO-BARD IN OBJECT LESSONS 58 5 CONCLUSION 78 WORKS CITED 83 vi Chapter One The Use of Orality in Three Women's Autobiographies 1.1 Orality & Autobiography : Writing the Heroic While it is impossible to "write" an oral tradition, it is possible to write from oral tradition, translating oral form and content such as mythological archetypes to text. Although an author cannot precisely capture the story-teller's tone of voice or other physical expressions, or the quality of the story's silences, she can make use of both conventions and practices of oral story telling, and the characters and events from oral stories . Maria Campbell's Half-Breed, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior : Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, and Eavan Boland's Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time illustrate some of the roles oral art forms play in autobiographical writing . Campbell, Kingston, and Boland use a heroic quest pattern to reclaim the heroic from a Western world where the hero is predominantly masculine. Although historically patriarchal discourse has commonly paired the masculine and the heroic, these women authors use the quest pattern to write autobiographically, demonstrating that the pattern does not belong exclusively to male characters. In reclaiming the heroic from Western patriarchal discourse, the women are working with English literary conventions from their dominant cultures. For example, Elleke Boehmer asserts "the majority of narratives of empire involved masculine heroes" (9), and explains that "travellers and colonizers transferred familiar metaphors, which are themselves bridging devices, to [new] contexts" (14). Unlike the old heroes of empire, Campbell, Kingston, and Boland emphasize the role gender plays in their lives as they transfer metaphors that are familiar to the dominant culture (the hero & 1 quest) to new contexts (racialized women) . By translating their own familiar cultural oral conventions to text, they bridge the gap between their marginalized oral cultures and the dominant textual cultures. In the process, they transform the familiar literary questing hero by infusing and enriching the image with their own gender and culture- specific perspectives, and they transform the heroic from their oral cultures by writing it down. Campbell, Kingston, and Boland construct selves within a framework of the heroic by honouring oral traditions learned from foremothers, resisting the colonizing forces of the dominant cultures that each inhabits. Each author creates what Bruce King describes as a "usable past or a cultural tradition" (1115), as a context for her own artistic growth and development . In some ways, these women's writings are comparable to the "new literatures" that accompany "nationalist movements," in that their autobiographies present "representative subject-matter, local language usage, local history . and demands for social justice ." Additionally, the texts recognize a "national mythology . [document] local ways," and reject "middle-class colonial values" (King 1115). For example, Campbell's narrator speaks representatively for "Half-breed" women, asserting in the Introduction that she writes to "tell you" what "it is like to be a half-breed woman in our country" (2), and thereby articulating her life as distinct from lives lived in the dominant culture. In the process of "telling" her life, she documents language use in her "Road Allowance" community, and offers local history.