Stories of growth: Caribbean Women Writers (2)

1
Stories of growth Caribbean Women Writers (2)

• Olive Senior Michelle Cliff

2
Outline

• Caribbean Women Writers Major Themes
• Michelle Cliff Introd.
• Abeng Chap 15-17
• hunting scene and its reasons
• bathing scene and what it reveals gender and
  race
• the issue of languages
• Olive Senior Introd.
• Bright Thursday
• color scheme and education
• the fathers (lack) of influence

3
Caribbean Women Writers Major Themes

• female Bildungsroman
• stories of growth and development--national or
  racial allegory the personal as the political
• racial and class issues and the process of
  socialization
• Gender stereotypes and inequality
• Mother Country vs mother land (relations to the
  Caribbean landscape)
• education and mother-daughter relationship--usual
  ly alienation
• the grandmother as the positive figure

4
Working Miracles Womens Lives

• absent father (mother)
• child-shifting (adoptions Bright Thursdays
  adopting to fill in an empty space for the
  grandparents 210)
• Single mothers as breadwinners (1/2 of the
  Caribbean households are headed by women)
• Outside children -- children born out of a
  fathers stable residential union legitimacy is
  not an issue
• Olive Senior, Working Miracles Womens Lives in
  the English-Speaking Caribbean (Chapter 1)

5
Michelle Cliff--Introduction

• born in Jamaica, educated in the US and UK and
  now resides in the USA
• works
• Abeng (1984) our excerpt
• No Telephone to Heaven (1987)
• White Creole Identity
• My family was called red. A term which signified
  a degree of whiteness. . . . In the hierarchy of
  shades I was considered among the lightest. The
  countrywomen who visited my grandmother commented
  on my 'tall' hair - meaning long. Wavy, not curly
  (Cliff, 1985 59).

6
Michelle Cliff--Major Themes

• Interaction of gender, sexual, class, racial
  identities
• the issue of language
• the importance of history and oral culture
• colourism or color prejudice in Jamaica
• the issue of passing (129)
• Passing demands a desire to become invisible. A
  ghost-life. An ignorance of connections.
  Passing demands quiet. And from that
  quiet--silence. --Passing

7
Cliff on Clare Savage

• Clare Savage "is an amalgam of myself and others,
  who eventually becomes herself alone. Bertha
  Rochester is her ancestor.Her name, obviously,
  is significant and is intended to represent her
  as a crossroads character, with her feet (and
  head) in (at least) two worlds.
• Clare a light-skinned female who has been
  removed from her homeland in a variety of ways
  and whose life is a movement back, ragged,
  interrupted, uncertain, to that homeland. She is
  fragmented, damaged, incomplete. (e.g. her
  missing her mother)

8
Cliff on Clare Savage

• Savage Her surname is self-explanatory. It
  meant to evoke the wilderness that has been
  bleached from her skin, understanding that my use
  of the word wilderness is ironic, mocking the
  masters meaning, turning instead to a sense of
  non-Western values which are empowering and
  essential to survival, her survival, and
  wholeness. ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads
  Character" 264-5)

9
The Meaning of Abeng

• Abeng is an African word meaning conch shell.
  The blowing of the conch
  called the slaves to the
  canefields in the West Indies. The abeng has
  another use
  it was the instrument used by the Maroon
  armies to pass their messages and reach one
  another. --Abeng

10
Characters in Abeng

• (colonists planters) Samuel Judith
• Judge Savage

• (landed, red) Albert Mattie Freeman

Boy Savage

• Kitty Freeman

• Clare Savage Jennie Savage
• Ben (Cs cousin) Joshua (half cousin)

• Miss Ruthie (squatter, black) Zoe
• the cane-cutter
• Mass Cudjoe (the pig)
• Old Joe (the bull)

11
Abeng our excerpt

• Chap 15 hunting episode
• The natural world outside the plantation
• Clare and hunting pp. 114 (Clares memory)
• Zoes persuasion against hunting. Pp. 116
• Bathing pp. 119 (Clares reflection)
• Cane-cutters interruption

• Chap 16 implication and causes of Clares acts
• Why shoot?
• Robert
• Clare
• Boy vs. Kitty
• Chap 17 consequences
• Zoes thinking
• Clares facing the grandmother

12
Abeng Starting Questions

• Why do you think Clare wants to go hunting?
• Why is the cane-cutters sudden presence so
  embarrassing?

13
The Hunting Episode in Context

• The history of natural lives//colonialism pp. 112
  
• the origin of the pig--the native of the island
• the Maroon ritual and gender differences
• the mongoose
• from India (112)
• the true survivor (113)
• symbolic meaningabout hunting and survival how
  the natural habitat has been changed by colonial
  practices
• Does Clare enjoy killing wild animals? What is
  the symbolic meaning of this hunt for Clare? pp.
  114, 115,

14
Clares motivation

• She does not enjoy hunting (e.g. experience of
  eating goat and roasted birds)
• Wanting to eat the pigs testicles and penis
• Kitty, Kitty Hart, Anne Frank, Doreen Paxton
• Joshua and Bens hunting for a pig.

15
Clare and Zoe

• What are the differences between Zoe and Clare?
  How are they similar to or different from
  Antoinette and Tia?
• Zoe
• calls Clare town gal? class difference
• is afraid of being thought of as Guinea warrior,
  not gal pickney. (117-118) ? gender limitation
• Clare
• split limited (119)
• recognize her selfishness her lack of
  understanding of property and ownership
  (121)Clares alienation from the native code
  unconscious of her own class privilege

16
Zoe Clare (2)bathing scene

• What is the significance of the bathing scene
  (119-120, 124) in the episode? Is the relation
  between the two girls lesbian?
• Why is Clare so afraid of being seen by the
  cane-cutter?
• Why does Cliff follows it with a narration of
  battyman in Ch. 16?
• How does the family describe the battyman
  Robert (125-126)? What has happened to him?
  What is the connection of Roberts story with the
  relationship between Clare and Zoe?
• What divides Clare and Zoe?

17
Zoe Clare (2)bathing scene

• Communication Self-definition p. 120 124
• Robert and the American negro //
• Clare and Zoe ? transgression of racial
  boundaries p. 127

18
Clares Split Racial Identities

• Boys teaching of race and color and lightening
  (127)
• Kittys influences
• Kittys cherish of darkness (127-128)keep
  darkness locked inside (129)melancholic
• Kittys dream of setting up a local school
  (129-130)--her distrust of British education and
  love of black culture--Daffodils vs the Maroon
  Girl (129)
• Kittys preference for the darker daughter Jennie
  (129) and Clares sense of alienation from the
  mother (128) Clares love for Zoe
  (131)
• Thinks Clare likes passing (129)

19
Languages--English and Patois

• What kind of language does Zoe use? What is the
  significance of different languages in the novel?
  (e.g. Clare to Zoe, to the cane-cutter, and to
  Ms. Mattie) (122, 134).

20
Olive Senior an Embodiment of Conflicts

• The daughter of peasant farmers, she grew up,
  after four, with well-off relatives whose
  lifestyle was the opposite of what she had known
  as a child. ? tension between two different
  households, between rural and urban settings
• ? two Jamaicas (source http//www.nalis.gov.t
  t/Biography/bio_OLIVESENIOR_Jcanauthor.htm ) 

21
Bright Thursdays--Genealogy

• Dolphie Watson Miss Christie
• Mina Bertram Myrtle Johnstone
• (white U.S.) (brown)
  (dark)
• Laura 2 sons (2
  fathers)
• (Bertrams Mistake Bertrams stray shot)
• A childs perspectivea gradual process of
  alienation

22
Bright Thursdays--Questions

• Why is Lauras story not like ours visits of our
  grandparents?
• If we divide up the story into the beginning,
  middle and end, where is the middle part in
  which the action starts?
• Why does the story have a long introduction?
  What does the intro. show about Laura? Why does
  she feel alienated from her siblings? What is
  she afraid of?
• What is the significance of the photographs,
  mirror, the mountains vs. the wide open space,
  and the clouds?
• What does the ending mean?

23
Color System in the Caribbean Society

• Ms. Christie Dying to raise their color all of
  them (199)
• The color triangle white
• brown
• dark

24
Bright Thursday intro.

• Intro. Pp. 194 - 207
• Myrtle as a single mother
• Myrtles view of Lauras father (p)
• Myrtles dream (197-98 200)
• Myrtle vs. Ms. Christie (pp. 198-99)
• Laura in the two households
• at her mothers p. 200
• at Ms. Christies p. 195 196

25
Contrasts between the two households

• Mountains vs. hills pp. 203 204
• ? sense of insecurity

26
Space and its Symbolic Meanings

• Spatial imagery
• Lauras sense of displacement
• transported from mothers house to fathers
• out of place or no space (photos on the
  bureau195)
• Lauras sense of inferiority
• enclosed and protected(mothers house in the
  mountains, hemmed in 203)
• empty space (the dinning table 196 fathers
  house 204-05)
• fear of open space ( blue bowl 204-205)
• Fear of bright Thursday 206-207 (the bus)
• Need protection and safety from the earth
  (digging potatoes 207)

27
Middle part

• The father present only as a photo 208 few
  fathers around
• dreaming about being rescued by her father
• will bring nothing but bright Thursdays (208)

28
Ending final revelation and initiation

• Color hierarchy p. 210
• A story of disillusionmentthe breaking up of her
  hope and dreamsbloody bastard (211)
• Turned into an orphan

29
References

• Cliff, Michelle. "Clare Savage as a Corssroads
  Character." Caribbean Women Writers Essays from
  the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn R.
  Cudjoe. Wellesley, MA Calaloux, 1990. 263-68.
• Michelle Cliff http//www.cc.nctu.edu.tw/pcfeng/C
  liff/Cliff.html