Ana-Mauríne Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt positions the female body as the scene where lives are interconnected across history and as a dissertation of the human condition. Her protagonists, Micaela and Miriam, tell a story of love, struggle, and survival that echoes the historical significance of slavery and the Caribbean middle passage across time and space. Divided into several sections based on time and location, one particular period in Lara’s novel connects Micaela and Miriam’s experiences most closely with slavery as a whole. After a voyage across the Mona Strait as an attempt to escape from the conditions in the Dominican Republic, they find themselves captured, trapped in a brothel, and forced into prostitution. Many parallels can be drawn to interpret Lara’s use of the brothel as a metaphor for the slave ships used to travel across the original Middle Passage, including the comparable use of people as commodities, the specific imagery and language Lara uses, the historical narrative presented at the beginning of each section, and the larger themes in which identities were simultaneously stripped by oppression and also preserved within the context of community and spirituality.
In Erzulie’s Skirt, the reader sees two disoriented women awaking to the harsh reality that they have been tricked and imprisoned after their voyage. They are then locked in a concrete room with nothing but their clothing and two beds, forced to work as prostitutes for the personal gain of a racist woman named Delia. In the brothel, Micaela and Miriam are made to allow men to enact their sexual desire and unnatural fetishes, and if they dare to resist or refuse, they are beaten nearly to death. In the most obvious way, this position mirrors the treatment ...
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... as well as that of Micaela and Miriam. To remember is to retain power and identity. To forget is to lose power and be subject to imposed identities. By using the agency of memory, slaves were able to preserve personal histories, ancestral tradition and a sense of communal power. Erzulie’s Skirt helps to explore modes of resistance to oppression, how religion plays a part in resistance and identity preservation, and how past and present journeys are connected. The loss and renewal of faith, the physical abuse and the mental oppression experienced by Miriam and Micaela directly imitate the same injustices felt by those who suffered across the Middle Passage, providing evidence for the idea that the brothel is a metaphor for a slave ship and supporting that the purpose of literature is to maintain the interconnectedness of lives despite the distance of time and space.
Another issue that the writer seemed to have swept below the carpet is the morality of women. First, women seemed to have been despised until they started excelling in mass advertising. Also, the author seems to peg the success of the modern woman to clothing and design. This means that women and cloths are but the same thing. In fact, it seems that a woman’s sex appeal determine her future endeavours, according to the author. It is through this that I believe that the author would have used other good virtues of women to explain
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
Briefly, the choice of the ladies in their clothes, show their personality. Men in the asylum are wearing the same clothes and they are messed-up. Even a prostitute wears clean and tasteful clothes, some showing their womanly figures while some hides theirs. To conclude, the usage of superiority of male sexuality over female authority, matriarchal system that seeks to castrate men in the society, mother figures as counterpart of Big Nurse and “Womanish” values defined as civilizing in the novel shows us the role of woman in society in those times.
Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story! This book was meant to teach the reader about the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised. The book is significant in the sense that it gives even the current generation the knowledge of slavery, how it happened and the reason for slavery.
The author faces both gender and religious oppression in her home. At first, the author seems like she was a young and immature child, getting an occasional whipping every so often, that she is “used to.” This was partly due to the fact that the author did not act like what a girl should. The author states that she was
Upon returning to the Dominican Republic after many years, Yolanda decides to take a trip across the island––something her family views as ridiculous. “‘This is not the states’ . . . ‘A woman just doesn’t travel alone in this country.” (9) This quote highlights the sexism inherent in Dominican society. Yolanda’s family is asserting that women are not individuals capable of taking care of themselves. On another hand, Yolanda’s close friendship with Mundín causes tensions as their mothers confront them about crossing gender lines. “My mother disapproved. The outfit would only encourage my playing with Mundín and the boy cousins. It was high time I got over my tomboy phase and started acting like a young lady señorita. ‘But it is for girls,’ . . . ‘boys don’t wear skirts.’” (228) This is an example of how Dominican societal norms and gender roles have impacted the sisters. Yolanda and Mundín were the only boy-girl playmates out of all the García children, yet this was frowned upon by both of their parents as to not impede the seemingly inevitable growth of Yolanda’s femininity, and conversely, Mundín’s masculinity. Moreover, this shows how societally-prescribed gender roles were instilled in Yolanda at a young age. However, this is not the only way in which women’s freedoms are
Symbolism is the key to understanding Sandra Cisneros’ novel, “The House on Mango Street”. By unraveling the symbolism, the reader truly exposes the role of not only Latina women but women of any background. Esperanza, a girl from a Mexican background living in Chicago, writes down what she witnesses while growing up. As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Esperanza hardly comprehends the actions that take place around her, but what she did understand she wrote in her journal. Cisneros used this technique of the point of view of a child, to her advantage by giving the readers enough information of what is taking place on Mango Street so that they can gather the pieces of the puzzle a get the big picture.
The notion of slavery, as unpleasant as it is, must nonetheless be examined to understand the hardships that were caused in the lives of enslaved African-Americans. Without a doubt, conditions that the slaves lived under could be easily described as intolerable and inhumane. As painful as the slave's treatment by the masters was, it proved to be more unbearable for the women who were enslaved. Why did the women suffer a grimmer fate as slaves? The answer lies in the readings, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative which both imply that sexual abuse, jealous mistresses', and loss of children caused the female slaves to endure a more dreadful and hard life in captivity.
Junot Diaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is focused on the hyper-masculine culture of the Dominican, and many argue that his portrayal of the slew of women in the novel is misogynistic because they are often silenced by the plot and kept out of the narration (Matsui). However, Diaz crafts strong women, and it is society that views them as objects. The novel recognizes the masculine lens of the culture while still examining the lives of resilient women. In this way, the novel showcases a feminist stance and critiques the misogynist culture it is set in by showcasing the strength and depth of these women that help to shape the narrative while acknowledging that it is the limits society places on them because of their sexuality
After reading the slavery accounts of Olaudah Equiano 's "The Life of Olaudah Equiano" and Harriet Jacobs ' "Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl", you gain knowledge of what slaves endured during their times of slavery. To build their audience aware of what life of a slave was like, both authors gives their interpretation from two different perspectives and by two different eras of slavery.
This theme is evident in the doubling of stockings with the girl’s natural black legs. The red stockings, which represent sexual, material desires, are contrasted with the natural, elegant beauty of the legs of the black girl. The stockings highlight only the legs, separating them from the girl as a whole and allowing for easier objectification, specifically by young white males. However, the girl knows this, as she has put the stockings on and is being told so by the narrator, who represents the black community. The narrator also clearly recognizes the girl’s beauty, and her beauty is further highlighted in the fact that she is clothed in silk, which relates to royalty and comfortability.
Eliza Fenwick’s novel Secresy portrays the image of an innocent female that is kept locked up and out of the social world; the problems that arise when this innocent female attempts to break out of this social location reveals the major oppression of the female society in the late 18th century. Females are kept in their own social sphere through oppression by males, and when secluded females enter into male spheres they cannot endure this change and end up severely damaged or dead. Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy shows the seclusion, oppression, escape, and death of Sibella, the innocent female.
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
The subjugation of women is a key theme across my three chosen texts, Othello, The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights, that is presented both subtly and obviously through forms of physical, sexual and mental denegation. As a subtler example of subjugation, each woman is ultimately controlled and manipulated by a male figure, whether it be through Othello’s suppression of Desdemona upon believing she is unfaithful, Heathcliff’s domination over Isabella or Tom Buchanan’s economic control of Daisy via his financial stability within a class defined society. This confirms Evelyn Cunningham’s perception that, “Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors”, notably in the way that women’s roles are dictated and restricted by the domineering, patriarchal men in their lives, however there are still aspects of female rebellion in each of the texts.