For our narrator Sophie, a movement forward is one that brings changes, that allows her to move away from the things of the past and offers her a closer step to a future with freedom. However as the story moves along, it seems that no matter how much progress Sophie seems to make, the troubles of her past keep her from traveling forward. Time passes, but with it does not come change and being around her family doesn’t help the situation.
Sophie’s grandmother is the epitome of tradition. She comes across as a lady who knows her place in life and follows it, a person who even though she might not agree with how things have to be, will do little to break free from old customs. In fact, the story she tells to Sophie and the boys about the little girl and the lark can be seen as a reflection of what she feels is a women’s position in life. Even more so because the story comes to the reader right after Sophie and her have a conversation about Sophie’s troubles with her husband and with her mother’s testing.
According to her grandmother’s story, “little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don’t want to lose them” (125). In other words, the one thing that women have to call their own, is the heart. The heart is the one thing that they should treasure and hold onto. If what grandma says in her story is true, then it labels everything other than the heart as something not precious and not belonging to them. The idea that this posits is a troubling one because it conflicts with everything that Sophie has been fighting against. It puts women in the position of objects, first property of their mother and then property of their husbands.
Keeping along with the idea of women as objects, we come across Tante Atie’s recollection of what she was taught when preparing herself to become a woman. She gives the example of the ten fingers and how each finger had a purpose, “Mothering.Boiling.Loving.Baking.Nursing.Frying.Healing.Washing.Ironing.Scrubbing” (151), all things having to do with taking care of someone else and not herself. She then states that, “Her ten fingers had been named for her even before she was born” (151) which demonstrates the inevitability of it and her inability to have any control over it. Furthermore she says, “Sometimes, she even wished she had six fingers on each hand so she could have two left for herself” (151) reiterating the idea that women are not their own property, but a means for someone else.
At this point in the novel, her family does little to provide solace for Sophie who is struggling to find her place in life. Although she seems to be moving forward, having some sort of progress along the way, her inability to be her own person, but instead the product of her mother, grandmother, husband and others will keep her from being free. Or, can the gaps in the structure of the novel where she keeps information from the readers be seen as Sophie’s way of claiming freedom?
On one hand I think you are correct to say that woman are treated like property: first belonging to their mothers then like pink papers they are passed on to their husbands. On the other hands I see Sophie’s return to Haiti and a way of reclaiming her possession of her family there. Also when her mother comes back their reunion signifies Sophie’s decision to acknowledge her mother. When Eliab asks her if that woman belongs to her she responds with “sometimes I claim her.” (p. 166) I think that is a good example showing how sometimes it is the mother that belongs to the daughter. This question of where one belongs and who claims who comes up frequently.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that her family's actions are draped with traditional values, but seeing as how Sophie, who is living in a more modern time where cultural traditions seem to diminish as Sophie grows into her own woman, not controlled so much by her mother and grandmother, who desired to create a perfect lady out of Sophie for someone like her husband to marry. However, Sophie's level of freedom (or potential lack thereof) differs between her mother, grandmother and aunt and her husband, as life with her husband maintains a different level of responsibility. It seems as if that a freedom has been achieved from her mother and grandmother in marrying her husband, but perhaps another level of freedom has yet to be reached.
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