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Patriarchy in women in society
Patriarchy in our society
Patriarchy in our society
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Some of the trauma that is attributed to the Caco women in Breathe, Eyes, Memory stems from Haitian history, particularly the rape of Martine by a Tonton Macoute soldier and the trauma of slavery that the older generation share. On the narrative level, as the story progresses we can see accurate historical events happening in the background such as when Sophie is leaving for New York and there are revolts happening against Francois Duvalier and when a Tonton Macoute kills market vendor Dessalines. Haiti is a nation formed by former slaves and was the first country that was granted its independence through slave revolts. During slavery to be considered white or light skinned enough to pass as white was seen as the crème de la crème and gave …show more content…
a person more value as a human being. How race and skin color was viewed in Haiti at that time had a lot to do with the events such as slavery that occur in Breathe, Eyes, Memory. As such an vast part of Haitian history, slavery has embedded itself in the identity of the Caco women and is a huge part of the trauma that they face. In order to be able to understand the complex issues and trauma that each Caco woman internalizes and experiences it is necessary to analyze the different sources of these traumas and what trauma really means.
In her book Trauma and Experiences Cathy Caruth discusses that trauma is not something that is experienced when the event first happens, but instead it is something that occurs only after the traumatic even has come and gone. She writes “The historical power of trauma is not just that the experience is repeated after its forgetting, but that it is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all. (Caruth, 8). While a person undergoes a traumatic event the trauma is not only associated with the event but also to the recollection of the event. The Caco women in Breathe, Eyes, Memory undergo both traumatic events but also trauma through the recollection of these …show more content…
memories. Haitian female sexuality is one of these sources that functions as the catalyst for the trauma that all the Caco women go through.
These ideals of how the women should be and behave constantly changes throughout time, therefore making it impossible for the women to meet expectations. The ideas of sexuality in the postcolonial context in Haiti stem from the Vaudo religion. Erzulie “the lavish Virgin Mother” (Danticat, 80) is a deity that is very important to the Caco women. Erzulie is used a form of patriarchal power over these women that they turn internalize and perpetuate. Gerda Lerner in her text The Creation of Patriarchy defines patriarchy as “the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general” (Lerner, 239). The men hold all the power over the women and it is they who decide which women are worthy and which ones are not. They do this by insisting that their women stay virgins “Haitian men, they insist that their women are virgins and have their ten toes” (Danticat, 189). They insist on this virgin ideal and it is upheld, the women have no control over their own
sexuality. According to Tante Atie, each finger had a purpose. It was the way she had been taught to prepare herself to become a woman. Mothering. Boiling. Loving. Baking. Nursing. Frying. Healing. Washing. Ironing. Scrubbing. It wasn’t her 38 fault, she said. Her ten fingers had been named for her even before she had been born. Sometimes, she even wished she had six fingers in each hand so she could have two left for herself. (Danticat, 189) The women are taught these basic skills to prepare themselves for motherhood and being a wife. They are groomed for these roles from birth, seen only as comparable as servants for the house and nothing else. They are given no power over their dreams and identity, of who they wish to be. It is also from birth where we are shown their value in life. In the novel Grandma Ife tells Sophie the story of what happens when a child is born. She tells Sophie how “If it is a boy, the lantern will be put outside the shack. If there is a man, he will stay awake all night with the new child.” (Danticat, 182). Sophie then questions her about what would happen if the baby that is born is a girl, to which she replies “If it is a girl, the midwife will cut the child’s cord and go home. Only the mother will be left in the darkness to hold her child. There will be no lamps, no candles, no more light.” (Danticat, 182). With this story Grandma Ife is showing Sophie the difference in reaction to people towards men and women, where they rejoice for the young boys and men but to them women are beneath them and not worth their time. The women only bring value to the household when they marry well.
"Postmemory" describes the relationship that the "generation after" bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to experiences they "remember" only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. (Hirsch 2016)
Ida Fink’s work, “The Table”, is an example of how old or disturbing memories may not contain the factual details required for legal documentation. The purpose of her writing is to show us that people remember traumatic events not through images, sounds, and details, but through feelings and emotions. To break that down into two parts, Fink uses vague characters to speak aloud about their experiences to prove their inconsistencies, while using their actions and manners to show their emotions as they dig through their memories in search of answers in order to show that though their spoken stories may differ, they each feel the same pain and fear.
In the films Paradise Bent, Muxes–Authentic, Intrepid Seekers of Danger and the Gender and Sexuality section of Explorations in Cultural Anthropology explore the identification of gender and sexuality (Croall and Altmann 2000)(Islas 2006)(Boyd and Lassiter 2011). The introduction to gender and sexuaity in the book Explorations in Cultural Anthropology, Boyd and Lassiter (2011) discuss how once a baby is born, they are being socialized “into one of the two ‘appropriate’ roles- male or female” (Boyd and Lassiter 2011: 218). The baby is expected to meet the expectations he/she is born into (Boyd and Lassiter 2011). For example, in the films, it is greatly commented by the muxes and fa’afafines that they didn’t follow the gender ideologies, the
The novel deals with the pain and pleasure of the past and present and how that effects the identity construction of an individual. The ethnic/racial identity of an individual can be influences by the complexities of a post-colonial society filled with social clashes, inferiority, and the othering of individuals. The novel focuses on the Haitians who have migrated to the Dominican Republic to escape poverty but are still alienated and devalued because of their poor economical conditions. By migrating to the Dominican Republic and crossing the boundary between the two countries they are symbolically being marked as ‘other’ and seen as ‘inferior’ by
... Joyce Dorado. "Who Are We, But For The Stories We Tell: Family Stories And Healing." Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, And Policy 2.3 (2010): 243-249. PsycARTICLES. Web. 2 May 2014.
Haiti is one of the most unusual countries in Latin America as it is the only French-speaking nation in the Caribbean as well as the first to receive its independence. Haiti’s most unique characteristic, however, is in regard to race. “The population of Haiti on the eve of the French Revolution was made up of over 90% black slaves, with whites numbering only about 40,000 out of a total population of 519,000” . This large disparity can be explained due to the fact that, at one time, Haiti was one of the wealthiest places in the world during French colonization. At the time of the French Revolution in 1789, the sugar production of Saint Dominique exceeded that of all the British West Indies, and on the eve of the revolution the colony accounted for more than one-third of the foreign commerce of France. “Saint-Domi...
2.1 Demonstrate understanding of the differences in the perception and expression of trauma in relation to intersections of diversity with families and other populations.
Repressed memories is a topic that has been an ongoing dispute among some, however ac...
Marianismo and machismo are the traditional gender roles in Latin America. Marianismo is the aspect of female gender roles while machismo is the aspect of male gender roles. The key belief of machismo is that men hold supremacy over women. For the most part these gender roles conform to traditional understanding of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity. There is only one key contradiction I found when it came to traditional understandings of sexuality, masculinity and femininity. Some people may confuse the meanings of gender, sex, and sexuality. Gender is what a person chooses to define themselves as: masculine or feminine. Sex is biological: male or female. Sexuality is then defined as the expression of sexual interest. These three words connect to one another.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines trauma as a very difficult or unpleasant experience that causes someone to have mental or emotional problems usually for a long time (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2015). From a medical perspective trauma is describe as severe damage to a person’s body. Trauma can be cause by multiple factors in a person life. Trauma could stem from a distressing experience of a physical or psychological nature. In recent years’ major natural disasters and acts of terrorism have become more prominent and devastating creating long lasting traumatic effects in individuals lives. Trauma can have a lasting negative impact on a person’s life. The lasting effects of trauma can have a negative effect in development as well as
The reading Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System by María Lugones stated the idea of heterosexuality is a modern invention which dated back to the late nineteenth century. Therefore racism and heterosexual could not exist without each other even though their views are different towards race, gender, and sexuality. In the meantime, the author adjusted to the point of views brought into mention by Anibal Quijano who created the coloniality of power. Coloniality of power being the “basic and universal social classification of the population of the idea of race [and gender]”. For which the authors realize the concepts of gender and race are similar in some ways. “Understanding these features of the organization of gender in the
When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,
Recovered memories of childhood trauma and abuse has become one of the most controversial issues within the field of psychology. Controversy surrounding repressed memory - sometimes referred to as the memory wars – reached its’ peak in the early 1990s, where there was a rise in the number of people reporting memories of childhood trauma and abuse that had allegedly been repressed for many years (Lindsay & Read, 2001). There are a number of different factors that have contributed to the dispute surrounding recovered memories. Firstly, there is an ongoing debate about whether these types of memories actually exist or whether these accusations arose as a result of suggestive therapeutic procedures. In particular, this debate focuses on two main
In the production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, trauma played a huge role in the lives of some of the characters. Characters such as Hamlet, Ophelia and even Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude displayed effects of trauma within this production. Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. Brooke Sanders came and explained how people are affected by traumatic events in their life time whether it has to do with death, family issues, or just dealing with issues in life, period.
Sexuality has become one of the key determining factors in one’s gender. While many want to initially say that gender is solely based on sexual orientation fail to take in to account many cultural practices, which not only influence gender, but create certain gender roles. The initial creation of Mexican gender roles, as Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez suggests, is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church “over the course of almost five hundred years,” created beliefs that virgins are desirable and that a non-virgin is of a lower moral class (38). From this Mexican women began maintaining their virginity, not because of the moral implications, but because of social mobility. Virginity has been created to be something beautif...