Women’s Cultural Dualism 

Women’s Cultural Dualism 

The substantial sex discrimination, brought about by the sexual mores, wants women to be stated as inferior to men who considered them as incapable to perform works requiring muscular and intellectual efforts. So household and mothering are the appropriate occupations that should be relegated to them. From Sonia Sanchez in the 1960s and on, female writers try to bring changes in the appreciation and judgment of the status of women. In the 1960s change was the mood of the day. These ideologies of “change” continue to nurture the inspiration of the following trends of writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor… All of them long for the wiping of the identification made for their shakes and against their will. They express commitment to the issue of specific women from sexuality to household responsibilities and commitment in politics. The cultural bondage of being categorized a sex object raised by Naylor in her works as well as Alice Walker’s womanism does not say the contrary. Contextualizing the identification of women in this period which sees the proliferation of works based on the empowerment of black women to build up a reverse over patriarchal dominance; the reverse also extents itself to give women’s twofold determination of their fight for self-identification. Women are conscious of their intersectional position which will have it that women be touched every discriminatory aspect: gender, sexism and racism. Within each clarification, they seem to suffer the most. This position of African American women is paraphrased in the analysis by Hull, Smith and Scott in these words “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men…” Women are supposed to set barriers for their protection, defending their status of women in a patriarchal society but also their status of women within women who are invaded by the complex of superiority of white skin. Master II Dissertation 2012 6 Numerous female writers see the necessity to identify themselves as both American and member of an ethnic group (the descendants of ancient black slaves from Africa so to say). This ideology of black two-ness is of predominant belief of Dubois in his “Double consciousness” – this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others –in which he supports the two-ness of being an American and Negro at the same (an allusion to the African origins) in these “two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”. Or again Reverend Jesse Jackson who vehicles the same ideal identification “we are African Americans and not afro Americans”3 . His historical coinage of back identification in the American soil tells much about their full belonging to both Africa – the land of their forbears and America as well; because “this land is[theirs] by right of birth, this land is[theirs] by right of toil” (Sandifer Jawn)4 Naylor understands that her self-definition as an African and an American woman as well is made possible simply because there is a faith that unity and diversity are supposed to be mutually compatible but supportive of liberty. Some aspects facilitate the naturalization of black women in full citizen. For Naylor it is not because women are in a process of naturalization, of acculturation that are obliged to give up their religious, languages, memoires, customs, foods or whatever they care to preserve in the African folks; but on the contrary the preservation of important practices should be encouraged for example the healing power with Mama Day and with Mattie Michael or again that “Angel food”… It is yet aspects that with little efforts of harmonization will give a better usage of things or a better understanding of elements around them. The mixing of modernity and tradition shows truly failures; the downs mostly weigh in the modernism—which dig a wide gap between the cultures—because the Americans are immigrants, always set in motion. Their changing of conditions facilitates their uprootedness. The alienation is mostly registered in The United States. It is very hard to place people in fluid society or people to place themselves in it. The fairness of culture should be selective. Naylor settles a model of bridging two cultures: Kiswana in The Women of Brewster Place and Cocoa in Mama Day. Even though she advocates the return back to some folk practices, 3 Dommerges, Pierre. « Les USA a la recherche de leur identité rencontre avec   Naylor wants that harmful power be banned from acculturation. The racial and ethnic disadvantages blocked the assimilation to this acculturation; such disadvantages include discrimination. It may appear sometimes as institutional barriers which mostly engenders the stagnant or downward situation for black people. The analysis of the author tackles directly the feminist isolation of black females in the mainstream. Consequently women speak with two voices, for instance in the historical culture of feminism of Combahee River Collective statement of the 1977, they conveyed distinct points of views. The women of color speak from an anger and pain that reveal nearly ineffable experiences of injustice, discrimination and segregation but also motivated themselves to strengthen the fight against such undesirable experiences. Whereas the white women within seemed to convey the necessity of a mere expression of their desire to be integrated. Naylor’s study about the identification of women is all fours with Arthur Mann’s analysis. Mann dissects into four aspects with respect to the ethnic identifications of women among individual: the total identifiers—life within ethnic group, with their own kind within their pocket. Mainly, social and economic reasons lead these people live together. Live in such communities is the result of a lack of choice “they clung to the stress with the desperate acceptance that whatever was here was better than starving southern climates they had fled from. Brewster Place knew that unlike its other children, the few who would live forever were to be the exception rather than rule since they came because they had no choice rule and would remain for the same reason.”(WBP p6) Brewster Place or Willow Springs are communities and places where women provide mutual helps in order to identify themselves in terms of economy and isolation. In the first definition what can be deducted is that the women depicted, in both the novels, are very poor and oppressed. Then there is what he calls the Partial Identifiers. Brewster Place is an example, Willow Springs as well. Here, it is the color black which is pointed up, as Mann qualified it: ethnicity is measured. But above all their female race is very significant in that self-identification. They also constitute of African Americans who retain ties to their ancestries. The ancients’ practices are mothers of ethnic beliefs which strengthen their neighborhood. This constituent of black self definition can be classified in what he calls disaffiliates. Mann’s Master II Dissertation 2012 8 point of view shows its similarity to Naylor’s view in this characteristic which is proved by certain characters in Brewster Place who have come to Brewster not because it is their will but by the force of nature. Besides, he states “they are the same as ethnic groups. But unlike the others, disaffiliates are not tied to common ancestry”. And at last there is what he defines as hybrids which show mixed ancestry. This aspect illustrates the realities of the ‘melting pot’ in the United States and the originality of their blackness; there exist others who are blacker in the descent than others. Each of these categories is objected to special identification in the American soil. Referring to the black people, the three first categories represent the realities of the black women in both places: Brewster Place and Willow Springs. But in connecting the thoughts, the self-definition of the inhabitant of Brewster Place and Willow Springs seems to be more adequate with their categorization in the disaffiliates for they are the same as ethnic groups, like a tribe firstly but also the women of Brewster Place as well as these of Willow Springs are not tied together by common ancestry. In Willow Springs, taking the case of Miranda or Abigail or Cocoa —who are of the same familial line—benefit the appropriation of the island and characters like Ruby, Frances …are just like strangers in island. 

 The Recourse to African values

 The Women of Brewster Place have made of this place a milieu which reflects with exactitude their motherland in cultural practice. Their flash-back to cultural Africa is somehow a means to show their relativism to their African identity. It is such a context of conservatism of customs and ways that their Africanism is well portrayed. The creation of a homeland away from home is determinant in the expression of their belonging. Naylor transplants the literary inspiration of her counterparts in orientation of a black to his/her culture and in the strengthening of their African and American identity. In both the women of Brewster Place and Mama Day, she succeeds in representing theological three constructs that help them in their identification: cultural identification, cultural memories and cultural rituals. In the cultural memories, it is very important that analysis should be aware of the place women should cope with in the society from the beginning. As we know, women are the sources of almost every starting of life. Women, like in many societies, have been culture inventors and ritual initiators since the beginning of human social history. So, it is not Master II Dissertation 2012 9 Brewster Place and Willow Springs that will prove the contrary of women primordial role in socialization and cultural preservation or coining. Here in both Naylor’s works an invention of culture by characters may be seen as an exaggeration but they succeed in reminding the old practices to African children of the diaspora and in conserving what have left from that culture; for that African culture is a collection of fragments due to oral transmissions by African griots and ancestors’ storytelling. That trends to omit sometimes important details. The writings were difficult for them in the past. Mama Day, in Brewster Place and Mama Day in Willow Spring are initiators of every kind of rituals. Very much similarity in the ritual they practices, all of them try to bring back to life their children respectively Lucielia and Cocoa by the help of the protagonists. Naylor reminds women that if life is bettered, it is because they bear hands for its improvement. But if there is a reverse situation it is because they do not show fight against anything for the bettering of things. Naylor hints that a woman has always been a fighter and should hold on that fight or revolution mood for her surviving. Women used to be like an elephant very difficult to be forced into sexual interaction. This vulnerability of women of nowadays is the source of their misrepresentation, of their oppression of their submissiveness as remote-controlled. As it was the mood of those period, feminist writers in the redefinition of their being has not found better than empowering themselves. The proliferation of work on women spirituality is to refashion themselves in creating archetypal image that nurture women identification in the cultural Africa as conjurers, protectors endowed with strong and powerful abilities. Yet, Naylor as well as her counterparts are not exaggerating the holistic representation of the ancestral figure, that these women want to resemble are pure realities of African powers. For example in traditional society the old women are the protectors of the customs or the holders of the spiritual powers like the conjured power with Mama Day and the evil power like the cast of spell as well in Naylor’s narration it is a conjuration of an “Ugly” woman. Since the practice is evil and harmful, in Africa and southern America as well, their vision of the detention of that harmful power is similar in depiction and the beliefs. Naylor does not fail to display important cultural and traditional details to strengthen the Africanism of these women, besides the quintessence in the definition of women’s origins lies in revealing the ritual practices Mama Day or Mattie Michael leads in their society; these ritual practices make the richness of the heritage but also they draw these women closer to their ancient practices and heritages proving that prime importance played by the ritualistic Master II Dissertation 2012 10 heritage. In the religious worshipping for instance these women in either Willow Springs or Brewster place trusted mostly the practices of voodoo– in certain circumstances– than Christianity: the newly adopted and revealed religion. Naylor is conscious that her African heritage is valorous. She even details the least of the African practices in the women she depicts, since the richness of their cultural knowledge hold them to their Africanity and fulfill the other part of their complex identity as being at the same time African then American. Culture in Naylor’s work tends to be approximately similar to the African practices. The powers endowed to women make certain Senegalese people to be part of these cultural details, the striking example that can be enumerated from the spiritual power given to women but not ordinary women, it is power given to extraordinary women who like Mama Day are conjure women. They have the abilities to communicate with the superpower with nature, even understand nature to the point that it informs them the coming events. They become predictors. These are realities that can be found in the Serere or Joola’s societies. The saltigué for example, are very famous in the Senegalese society because of their predictions about the future. In the Joola society women are not only predictors but also protectors with the complicity of those rituals they call kanankor – which stands for spiritual protection. Like Mama Day, they look after the whole community and its progenies. They are very vigilant in the detection of a cast spell. In the same vein of similarity to the Senegalese practices of power, the purging away of the cast spell is ensured by traditional culinary power like the “angel food” (WBP 77) used by Mattie to bring Ciel back to life. In Brewster Place and Willow Springs, the development of the Serere or the Joola women’s rituals takes control and protects all the women. These organizations of women result in structural power for women’s defense. In the United States Naylor is fond of the creation of a new world that can ensure the continuum of African American cultural legacy. She qualifies it as a gift to their coming children; and for this gift of heritage may be interpreted by “lead on with light”; a way to shed light for these inheritors in Willow Springs since Sapphira passes away the gift of legacy are only important if “it came to from the earth and the work of your own hands” (MD 110)5 for it is only in this case that they can identify themselves in order to prevail over man.

THE MATRIARCHAL DOMINANCE 

 The best means to challenge the total patriarchal dominance in the African American societies is to settle a reverse discrimination in the favor of women. The reverse is a change into matriarchal dominance. For Naylor, to force the decay of patriarchy, she seems to advocate the establishment of communities where women, instead of being relegated to the periphery, they cope with upper stage of the hierarchal ladder. Women are not only decision makers but turn the places they occupied as women’s dominations. 

 Brewster Place and Willow Spring, Feminized Districts

 On interrogating children from this place about the characteristic of places where they live, you should expect an answer such as the places where we come from the fathers never come back. The sisterhood aspects within African American localities is neatly proved and provoked by the irresponsibility of men, always missing or shunning their responsibility as soon as their libido is satisfied. Sometimes, men take their leave just in front of a paternity they should be undertaking for years. Even though they do desire a socialization with their male partners or their husbands, it becomes very difficult because all the good men are either dead or waiting to be born (WBP 64), you can find a man to have a baby but you can’t find him to take care of it (p91). The example is drawn from the attitude of Bruce’s father who went out for a carton of milk and never came back (WBP 113). But this stereotype occupation of Brewster Place is the outcome of cultural, economic poverty imposed to them. Culturally they are stereotyped in a complex of inferiority which deprives them from every kind of progress, it discourages them to think about means of earning their living and ultimate destination and solution is to escape from the many eyes which will be firing them everyday inquisitively in a quest for something to fill their bullies. And yet these men have nothing to supply the need of the family. In certain circumstances Eugene prefers not to do better than to lie about his intention to abandon his companion and family forever. Considering the peopling of Brewster Place, it is occupied by women simply because it is the only world where they can feel themselves; it is in Brewster Place where their quest for autonomy is expressible. Women look for a world where dignity can be gained and access   to opportunity to earn an adequate living since that novel is deeply inspired from the events of feminism that are to turn their life less complicated and less frustrated by the antagonisms of race, class and gender. All these women come from different areas and different backgrounds fleeing far away from the patriarchal world where they are voiceless and where they should always be victims. The world Brewster Place is just how Hine describes it as a culture of dissemblance among Black women ( Hine 292)6 , for him in creating this shield, African American women have put up a protective barrier that supports the theory of relative exile from the rest of the community( 292), even though that separation, hinted by “the Wall” is settled by oppressors – the whites or people like CC Baker and gang – who saw terror in Brewster Place, women turn everything to their advantages while playing and trying to beat the oppressors (the patriarchs) in their own game. They shield their truth of their inner life and selves from the oppressing forces. As well as Fuller, Naylor prefers a total independence from men bond. It is like she is saying the relation with men is a kind of oppression or imprisonment which tends to foster the mismanagement of the wide spreading of all the women’s struggles. Fuller Sarah Margaret states that “no married woman can represent the female world, for she belongs to her husband. The idea of woman must be represented by a virgin”. (p223)7 In Mama Day the lead is taken by an unmarried woman like in Brewster. Furthermore, Naylor proves the desire to break even the least possible connection to men by the help of these women (Theresa and Lorraine) who do not want to be attractive to the eyes of men, preventing themselves to be “nice girls” (WBP 130). Since the book total feminism lures a thought to the period of the development of women’s Renaissance ideology of self redefinition or against self consciousness. All these women do everything to chip off the true women block; they seek to resemble the ideal woman at any cost. It is in this aspect the role of grandmother is determinant in the society. Drenched in Light8 will not say the contrary with the depiction of the characters playing the role of daughter and grandmother, and the grandmother teaching 6 Hine, Darlene Clark. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” Eds. Ellen Carol Dubois and Vicki  the womanish attitude. Iris, an eleven year-old girl whose grandmother wants her to be a lady spends much energy trying to keep her from being too womanish, she defends her from playing with boys, not to sit with her knees apart, nor to jump in all passerby’s face. The lesbians in the same vein otherwise galvanized that womanish attitude. They want to propagate the issue of feminist. Theresa one of the lesbians galvanizes his mate in these words “Lorraine, you are a lesbian-a dyke, a Lesbos, a butch…” She wants a total separation from everything that has a correlation with patriarchy, even her reading is Womanist. The author shows that total womanization in her reading of the magazine copy “Mademoiselle”. Lorraine goes further then, she tries to have some morphological transformation while advocating to reduce their “hips and something” (WBP 136). The cutting of every kind of relationship to men is illustrated in Brewster Place women by the solution of Ben who lives by his side. Ben is not fully welcome to this society. Or again Mattie, the experienced one in the society shows her disapproval toward men’s presence. Her exile from her previous world is due to her father’s beatings provoked by her early pregnancy. She displays that almost all the endurances women suffer from are provoked by men. Once in Brewster Place, why going again and getting in touch with the generators of women’s problems? To paraphrase her answer to Ciel’s grandmother who advises her to look for a man and to make her living in these words “No young woman wants an empty bed year in year out”(WBP 37) and the answer is “My bed hasn’t been empty since basil was born” (p38). Mattie even reluctantly accepts the presence of Eugene in the life of Lucielia; as well as the boring presence of Dc. Buzzard in Mama Day.

 Women Leadership

 The concept of leadership of women could be defined with the theme of motherhood well analyzed throughout the women of Brewster Place, but more particularly in Mama Day, a Mama of whole society. As well as Mattie, Mama Day is not a biological mother, but she is the leader of the women in willow spring and Mattie, of Brewster Place. The name ‘Mama ‘fits very well to Miranda because of her own experience. She is forced to raise her sister, after her mother’s suicide, she becomes ‘Little Mama’ (MD 89) while she was immature. This is the starting point of motherhood in Mama Day, she is now given that chance to be the mother of everybody in society, ‘everybody’s mama now’ (MD 89) because of her multiple 15 roles as midwife leader, a community leader which expands the traditional ideas of motherhood- she must care for everyone else’s children. Mattie and Mama, in their position as surrogate mother respectively in Brewster Place and willow spring become community mother and play an important role in comforting the young women and being there in need or in time of crisis. Mama is the one to whom everyone rushes in case of problem. For Mattie it is quite the same as even the author herself notes in an interview with Carabi (1992)9 , “what is extraordinary about Mattie is that, in spite of having many problems, she is generous and calm-almost magic yet very human. She allows people to feel free in her presence. Like an earth mother, I guess”. Though in these communities of women, they (Mattie and Mama) become survivors and givers of advice. The respects and great authorities they gain from the communities are due to their experiences their ages added to their mystic and to their images as wise women and eternal mothers– as Willow Spring island defines Mama as to be about as “close to eternity [ as] anybody can come” (MD 7 )– they are secret holders. The metaphorical concept of maternity involves the female leadership and the biological motherhood in any taken society. In Willow Spring the dominance of women can’t but stage women at the place of leaders, women are holding the authority like in Mama Day – when mama says no everybody says no (MD 6). She is as the supreme leader of the island. As well as Mama Day, Mattie embodies the point of convergence of the people in the community in search of advice, protection or experiences and knowledge. In the biological motherhood, it is obviously normal that a woman copes with every leading rule in the family. Cora lee for example is given the authority of her family of seven children by men who quit them all and leave them by their own fates. As well as the committed women of the feminist movement era, Kiswana longs for the independence from the patriarchal domination. In this world, her agreement with women in this locality can reverse patriarchal dominance into matriarchal leadership. The book is itself a feminist work and achievements because it is on all fours with the ideal of the feminist, all of them denounce the discrimination based on gender sexism. But note that the book is closer to the womanist point of view defending also gender but above all  race. The womanist which is a by-product of the feminist seeks to heighten the status of women which were always at the periphery. It was very difficult for women to stage themselves in the top of the society and to show the importance they have within the society, with their literary works. Naylor, helped by her characters she endows with power, justifies that women’s inequity to men is not likely to last. It is in the same vein with all the female and feminist writers, freedom fighters, activists, so forth, who advocate that women would rather have a new sense of pride and selfhood. She understands extremely the ideology of the feminists. Like all the feminists, Naylor does no longer want women to be regarded at the lower stage of the societal ladder of hierarchy. She raises the consciousness of women to the cultural bondage of being categorized as a sex object. This is the reason why almost all her works influence the powerful women– always leaders of her fictional communities—to prove the contrary of these prejudices and stereotypes. With the generation of Naylor, things became less difficult than their predecessors whose fight against the tradition of women being written about in literature by men was of long-term. The misogynist attitude of men prevented them from publishing their works. Writers like Chloe Anthony Wofford, Gloria Jean Watkins Elaine Potter Richardson thoughtfully changes their name respectively into Toni Morrison, Bell Hook and Jamaica Kincaid, to have their books published or to paraphrase Toni Morrison that is the time for them to be their interpersonal authority- she states “our silence has been long, we have always been spoken or we have been spoken to […] today we are taking .back narrative, telling story”- Morrison; Newsweek, 44 All these authors, by the help of their main characters, yield strong female characters capable to lead a society without males. They forge a generational kinship between women and offer women – from the same characteristic like Brewster or Willow Springs – a revelatory look at the folk ancient practices, like the gathering into community deeply rooted in the African ways and customs. In these communities, Naylor dissects every possible relationship based on sisterhood that she thinks will provide comfort, liberty and joy for all of them while preserving the authorities they lacked in previous patriarchal communities.