When I read Edwidge Danticant's novel Breath, Eyes, Memories two articles from my freshman year women's studies class came to mind. The first was about oppression. The author (Sorry, you'd have to ask Katie for the name) distinguished between "suffering" and "oppression", dramatically, but thoughtfully defining oppression as being choiceless, cornered, pressed, blocked. I felt that this novel showed how women, not to mention postcolonial women, are so deeply oppressed. First, I thought about the prevalent theme of men's ownership of women, especially physical. Martine is never free from the invasive rape, more so than I have ever experienced in a literature, or anyother recounting. Between the rape and the testings done by her mother, she never fully feels that she is anything more than a tortured object, thwarting her from loving anyone or living happily. This directly ties into the second article I remembered from freshman year, which was about anorexia. The feminist perspective of anorexia is, according to the article, that women become anorexic because they feel so greatly that their body's are not their's and therefore want to destroy that body. Martine's eating disorder and the way she completely tears apart her body in the end of the novel reflect her physical self-hatred.
In conclusion, the aspect of breath, eyes, memory that struck me the hardest was the fact that not only were these women's bodies sacrificed without their agency to society and men, but to each other. Sophie and Maritine both shared their bodies with eachother, despite their desire to be separate. Maritine sees Sophie as a manifestation of her strife and depression, while Sophie goes as far as experiencing the rape of her mother. Its amazing how mothers and daughters emotional connection can push them together through a forced physical connection.
2 comments:
I found it interesting that you comment that Sophie experienced the rape of her mother. I felt that Sophie was experiencing this in her own relationship with her husband and her inablitity to see him as worthy man and herself worthy of such praise. Everytime she was with him it was as if she was being raped, she closed her eyes did what she believed was her duty. However, I do disagree with your last statment about how their emotional connection can push them together. I believe that they were unconsciously pushed together because it is evident at the end of the novel that Sophie is very upset and disturbed by her mother's suicide, but throughout most of the novel Sophie denied her mother even when her mother began to open up to her. Their bond as mother and daughter was not evident until the very end of the novel. In fact it was their physcial connection that drew them so far apart. I was confused about Maritine's motives for "testing" Sophie. After enduring such a torturous act herself, she inflicted on her daughter very late in life without much warning. In addition to your comment about men's ownership of women during this time of postcolonialism, it is interesting to see how this then affected women's relationships with others. The article for Friday by Young states that, "I cannot understand another as he or she understands him or her self, because he or she does not completely understand himself or herself" (311). The result of this opression by men and other aspects of soceity during this time were that woman did not have a sense of self, especially Maritine and Sophie. Maritine and Sophie had difficulty relating to each other because neither one of them even knew themselves, so it was impossible for them to understand the other. I believe that this is what caused many of the relationship problems with Maritine.
I guess what I meant, but obviously explained poorly, was that despite the dysfunction in their relatioship and the lack of sharing, Maritine and Sophie still experience eachother through physical means which connect them. So that, though they can not lovingly understand eachother, they can not help being drawn together by experience.
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