The Caribbean regional colonial imperialism produced institutions and movements that deeply affected and continue to affect the lives of Caribbean women. Caribbean women’s literature represents sexual violence and the ideological appropriation of gender identity, gender roles, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and culture and class. The impressionable and forming years of an individual are too often controlled by what society feels correct is based on gender, race and culture. Although one may not behave as their society feels is appropriate, in no way should this result in making someone feel less or wrong because they are of color, female and strong-minded.
One identification category that affects Clare’s identity is gender, specifically how restrictive gender roles disempowered her. Clare Savage is a light-skinned, twelve-year old, middle-class girl who grew up in Jamaica in the 1950s. She lives in a conservative and heterosexist society where they are strict on gender roles and norms. Clare tried to find her own identity and place in her culture; however her mixed heritage creates some problems for her and one of those problems is how she is faced with gender roles. Cliff states that “Clare’s relationship with her father took the form of what she imagined a son would have, if there had been a son” (Cliff 9). When Clare spent time with her grandmother, she usually played with her friend Zoe, but Zoe was not around so she spent time with her cousin Joshua. However,
Miss Mattie told Clare that she could not partake in or watch the boys destroy the hog because that is not what girls do. Cliff states, “They (the boys) had the power to hurt her because they were allowed to do so much she was not - she was supposed to be h...
... middle of paper ...
...ruck down, especially after trying to play the role of a son by killing a wild pig which resulted in the death of Miss Mattie’s bull. She was challenged with her parents pulling her in different directions with her father wanting her to ignore her black roots but her mother wanting her to remember her roots. Clare was sent off to live with Mrs. Phillips due to pressures her parents felt based on gender, race and ethnicity of whom and how Clare should behave. Imagine being restrained by the fine lines that are drawn by a society which forms one to be someone they are not or because the actions of those who are superior push or mold you into someone who is a stranger. Finding one’s identity, with the added expectations based on gender, race and culture, is extremely challenging and confusing. Clare’s challenges, in the 1950s, are real and prevalent even today.
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
Clare longs to be part of the black community again and throughout the book tries to integrate herself back into it while remaining part of white society. Although her mother is black, Clare has managed to pass as a white woman and gain the privileges that being a person of white skin color attains in her society. However whenever Clare is amongst black people, she has a sense of freedom she does not feel when within the white community. She feels a sense of community with them and feels integrated rather than isolated. When Clare visits Irene she mentions, “For I am lonely, so lonely… cannot help to be with you again, as I have never longed for anything before; you can’t know how in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I o...
In Nella Larsen’s Passing, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry show us a great deal about race and sexuality in the 1920s. Both are extremely light-skinned women of African-American descent. However similar they appear to be, their views on race, a very controversial issue at the time, differ significantly. Clare chooses to use her physical appearance as an advantage in America’s racist and sexist society, leaving behind everything that connects her to her African-American identity. She presents herself as an object of sexual desire, flaunting herself to gain attention. Irene is practically the opposite, deciding that she wants to remain with the label of being black. She is subtle with her sexuality, never attempting to use her beauty to gain advantages. Linking these two women is a strange relationship, in which Clare and Irene both view each other in a sexually desirable way. Nevertheless, even with that desire for Clare, Irene obviously holds some contempt for her through jealousy, to the extent of wishing that she were dead. This jealousy is also based on social status. Irene is jealous of Clare’s ability to succeed, even though she may not know it. The root of Irene’s jealousy of Clare is in these three ideas of race, sexuality, and class, making Irene despise someone who she obviously also loves.
Anna, looks back on her past relationship with a man named Jeff, and juxtaposes that with her current husband, many years later: Peter. She reflects back on her youth when she was with Jeff, and the time that they spent with her friend Gwen and her boyfriend Chuck. The first instance of imposed gender norms is that of Anna’s memories of Gwen and Chuck’s interactions. “She always called him ‘honey’ or ‘hon’. He called her ‘babe’. I could imagine Jeff calling me anything” (Wallace, 315). The difference between Anna and Mathilde being that Anna, though she recognizes these gender norms and conforms, she does not want to adhere to them. Whenever confronted with a gender norm she tackles it the best she can, even rejecting the norms whenever possible. When Jeff attempts to mimic Chuck, Anna shuts him
15. Burton, Richard D.E. Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition and Play in the Caribbean. (1997). Cornell University Press.
Haiti is widely known as a poor country with the peasantry sitting on the bottom rung of the social ladder. There are many things can make you a second class citizen, such as the color of your skin, the amount of money or property you own, where you were born, or your gender. Gender roles and marginalization have existed in Haiti existed since the era of slavery and the issues have persisted throughout the country’s post-revolutionary history. In more recent history, there have been more Haitian women who have become politically active and a Haitian feminism movement has emerged. In this paper, I will explore the various ways in which Haitian women have been continuously marginalized since the revolution and the ways in which the contemporary feminist movements have been integral to recent improvements in conditions for Haitian women.
...s appealing it is not without consequence. Clare, and those who choose to pass, are not free to embrace their whole identity and will always remain a threat to those they come in contact. Clare exemplified the archetypal character of the tragic mulatto, as she bought tragedy to her own life and all those she came in contact. Clare’s presence forced Irene to contend with feelings of internalized racism, and thus feelings of inferiority. Through diction, tone, and imagery Larsen makes it luminous to readers that "passing" may seem glamorous, however, the sacrifice one makes to do so is not without consequences for themselves and those they care about. Larsen does not allow her readers to perch on the belief that once a member of the dominate group ones life is not without pain and suffering. Every action, even those that seem to make life easier, have consequences.
Female children born into low income families in Jamaica and other islands of the Caribbean are burdened with a stereotype that their male counterparts will never know. When faced with the gender oppression their society has constantly been feeding, and the fact that so many women must act as the single financial heads of their families, many women of the Caribbean must settle for low paying occupations associated with 'female' or domestic labor. For women born into families at the bottom of the economic ladder, there is little hope of social mobility or escape from the fist of poverty. In most cases, the cycle continues to feed itself from mother to daughter. In my paper I will demonstrate this cycÀle by examining the Caribbean women's role in the family as head of the household and the education, employment and survival strategies characteristic to many of these women. I will conclude my paper by discussing some of the new organizations and movements that have surfaced in the Caribbean within the past thirty years that are fighting for women's empowerment.
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
The story is told in first person through Tangy Mae Quinn, the darkest child of Rozelle Quinn. Rozelle is a light-skinned woman with ten children by ten different fathers, who separates her children based on skin color. She shows favoritism to her lighter skinned children and hatred to her darker skinned children. This is important because the story takes place in Parksfield, Georgia in the late 1950’s, right before the civil rights movement. It starts off with Rozelle Quinn teaching Tangy Mae how to clean her employer’s house because she believes she is going to die over the weekend. News of Rozelle “dying” spreads throughout the town and even beyond which brings her oldest child, Mushy, back into town. It is later revealed that Rozelle is only acting as if she is dying because she is pregnant. While in town, Mushy promises her siblings that she is going to save them from the abuse of Rozelle, but says Tarabelle has to be first due to Tarabelle’s exposure to prostitution. Months after giving birth to her child, Judy, Rozelle kills her by throwing her off the stairs. After this incident, the children slowly start to leave her although Tangy Mae and Laura stay by her side. After majority of her children have left, Rozelle is diagnosed with insanity and is forced to move in with Mushy. By the end of the story, Tarabelle is killed by a fire started purposely by her mother; Tangy Mae has graduated high school and taken Laura with her to cross the Georgia border.
As much as men are working, so are women, but ultimately they do not face the same obstacles. For example, “Even if one subscribes to a solely economic theory of oppression, how can one ignore that over half of the world's workers are female who suffer discrimination not only in the workplace, but also at home and in all the areas sex-related abuse” (Moraga 98). This gives readers a point of view in which women are marginalized in the work place, at home, and other areas alike. Here Moraga gives historical accounts of Chicana feminists and how they used their experiences to give speeches and create theories that would be of relevance. More so, Moraga states how the U.S. passes new bills that secretly oppress the poor and people of color, which their community falls under, and more specifically, women. For instance, “The form their misogyny takes is the dissolution of government-assisted abortions for the poor, bills to limit teenage girls’ right to birth control ... These backward political moves hurt all women, but most especially the poor and "colored." (Moraga 101). This creates women to feel powerless when it comes to control one’s body and leads them to be oppressed politically. This places the government to act as a protagonist, and the style of writing Moraga places them in, shines more light to the bad they can do, especially to women of color. Moraga uses the words, “backward moves”
In the novel “Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha” the author and anthropologist L. Kaifa Roland describes her journey in Cuba and the different people she encounter with that describe to her the life of a citizen in Cuba. Throughout her stay in Cuba, Roland describes the different situations people go through in Cuba economically and gender wise. She also mainly describes “La Lucha” which in the book is identified as the struggle people face and go through every day in order to get by in Cuba economically. However, the thing that caught my attention the most in the book was how women get mistreated and seen by people differently. Through my paper I am going to be discussing how women in Cuba get discriminated not just by their color or where
In her younger years, Jane shows that girls do not need to follow society’s normalities through the defiance of her aunt, Mrs. Reed. As a young orphan, Jane lives with her aunt and her three children, and due to Jane’s “plain looks” and “quiet yet passionate character,” she is disliked among the entire Reed family (Gao). Her cousin, John, constantly reminds her of her social standing, calling her a “dependent” who should not “live with gentlemen’s children” like her cousins (Bronte 10). Rather than acting in accordance with her cousin, Jane, in rage of how she is treated with “miserable cruelty” (Bronte 36), Jane compares him to a “murderer...a slave driver...like the Roman emperors” (Bronte 10). Because of her refusal to submit to John Reed’s aggressiveness and accept that she is lesser than him and his family, Jane is punished for the night by her Aunt Reed. Mrs. Reed’s punishment of Jane demonstrates her part in the oppression ‘machine.’ Mrs. Reed should have understood Jane’s refusal to be docile, being a woman herself, but ...
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Acceptance of who we are plays a large part in the overall theme of “rite of passage” in the story. The young girl is opposed to the thought of working for her mother at the beginning, but eventually comes to a realization that it is her pre-determined fate to fit the mould of the gender stereotype. Through the girl’s hardships, she accepts the fact that her younger brother, Laird, is now the man that his father needs for help, and she takes her place in womanhood. The story embodies gender identity and stereotypes, as a young child moves into adulthood. The fact that our rite of passage is unavoidable proves that we must all go through our own journeys to find our own true identity.