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India and the Diasporic Imagination

 | 
Rita Christian
, 
Judith Misrahi-Barak

From Diasporic Dis-Locations and Re-Locations to Diaspora as Thirdspace

‘Two Bo-rat Can’t Live in the Same Hole’1: Revis(ion)ing Indo-Caribbean Female Subjectivity in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge

Simone A. James Alexander

Résumé

Providing a clear-sighted analysis of the absence of Indian women in postcolonial discourse, Verene A. Shepherd points to the widely accepted belief that Indian women ‘functioned largely in the private, domestic sphere, under the control of Indian men in the patriarchal Indian family system; that they were subsumed to their male counterparts in the economic and social spheres and did not merit separate treatment in the historiography’ (234). Indo-Trinidadian author, Ramabai Espinet, in her debut novel, The Swinging Bridge, addresses this neglect. Offering a much broader perspective of Indian women’s reality, while according them the status of speaking subjects, Espinet engenders resistance in her female subjects. Unearthing Indian female subjects from oblivion necessitates that the novel’s protagonist, film researcher, Mona Singh, perform an excavation of sorts. Hence, in exhuming the women in her family whose lives are shrouded in silence and secrecy, Mona engages a politics of resistance, captured in the idiom ‘two-bo rat can’t live in the same hole’. Of noted relevance, this idiom is appropriated from the masculinist discourse. Reinforcing patriarchal rule and order under his roof, this phrase, during the ‘big row’, was uttered as an ultimatum to her brother, Kello, by their father, Da-Da. Mona narrates that the ‘big row’ had transformed Kello into a man ‘even though he was only nine years old at the time’. Appropriating this highly-charged masculinist narrative to script a narrative of her own, Mona defies and defiles patriarchal and cultural expectations of Indian womanhood, of female subjectivity and sexuality. This essay chronicles Mona’s revision and reappropriation of the master narrative. Further, it demonstrates how she renegotiates Indian women’s subjectivity by refuting the patriarchal construct of the ‘fallen woman’ (the binary of entrapment), widow or whore, accorded the Indian woman who dares to defy male authority.

Texte intégral

  • 1 This idiomatic Caribbean phrase has various equivalents. For example, ‘two big woman can’t live in (...)
  • 2 Shepherd points out that the research on Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese women surpass that of I (...)

1Drawing attention to the increasing interest of scholars whose research examine ‘the history of immigrant, specifically Indian, women in the Caribbean, ’ Verene A. Shepherd readily admits that there still exists ‘some imbalance in the research, with, understandably, more focus placed on the experiences of African-Caribbean women than on other groups’ (233).2 One of the reasons Shepherd cites for the absence of Indian women in postcolonial Caribbean (specifically Jamaican) discourse is the presumptive belief that Indo-Caribbean women ‘functioned largely in the private, domestic sphere, under the control of Indian men in the patriarchal Indian family system; that they were subsumed to their male counterparts in the economic and social spheres and did not merit separate treatment in the historiography’ (234). This presumption is finally being laid to rest by scholars and authors alike. One such Caribbean author who addresses this dismissal of Indo-Caribbean women as she challenges some of the traditional beliefs is Indo-Trinidadian author, Ramabai Espinet. In her debut novel, The Swinging Bridge, Espinet offers a much broader perspective of Indo-Caribbean women’s reality while according them the status of speaking subjects. Rescuing her female subjects from oblivion necessitates that the novel’s protagonist, film researcher Mona Singh, perform an excavation of sorts. Hence, in exhuming the women in her family whose lives are shrouded in silence and secrecy, Mona engages a politics of resistance, captured in the idiom ‘two-bo rat can’t live in the same hole’ (16).

2Notably, this idiom is appropriated from the masculinist cum nationalist discourse. Reinforcing patriarchal rule and order under his roof, this phrase, during the ‘big row’, a verbal-turn-physical altercation between father and son, was uttered as an ultimatum to her brother, Kello (Kelvin), by their father, Da-Da (Nizam Maharaj). In her analysis of the ‘big row’, Brinda Mehta concludes that the ensuing violence was symptomatic ‘of the older man’s social disenfranchisement and frustrated dreams’ (20). Appropriating this highly-charged masculinist discourse to script a narrative of her own, Mona defies and ‘defiles’ patriarchal and cultural expectations of Indian womanhood, and of female subjectivity and sexuality in general. This essay chronicles Mona’s revision and re-appropriation of the master narrative. Further, it illustrates how Mona renegotiates Indo-Caribbean women’s subjectivity by refuting the patriarchal construct of the ‘fallen woman’ (rand), the title with which the female subject is saddled upon becoming a widow. Mehta demonstrates how this term is one of double entrapment that precariously positions the Hindu woman on a tightrope. ‘Widowhood’, she contends ‘is the ultimate devaluing of Hindu women’. The prevailing belief is that a widow has ‘lost her resale value within a patriarchal economy of exchange as she has been “contaminated” by a previous marriage that had compromised her virginity and claims to Brahmanic purity’ (6). At the same time, as a result of their ‘civil status as single, unattached women’, widows are accorded ‘the added stigma of whoredom in the absence of male partnership’ (6). This double significance becomes known to Mona as she searches for a clue to the term: ‘In a book about Christian converts in India I saw that rand meant widow, but also harlot.’ (275)

  • 3 Lokaisingh-Meighoo’s larger argument is that to equate indentureship with slavery is to deny or dep (...)

3Hence, in piecing together the disparate and truncated lives of the women in her family, Mona identifies how the patriarchy establishes a ‘new’ male order in the New World as it attempts to keep Indo-Caribbean women in a stranglehold of continued bondage. In exacting revenge on these ‘own-way women who had tasted freedom and refused to bargain for less’, Indo-Caribbean men, in Mona’s words, ‘band[ed] together for strength, these jahaji bhais devised new codes that would force women down on their knees, back into countless acts of self-immolation’ (297). Quoting Rhoda Reddock, Tejaswini Niranjana reminds us that in the reconstitution of the ‘Hindu and “Indian” family “tradition” won out’ (73). Hence, Indo-Trinidadian women also underwent subjugation, so much so ‘that their options today are not much different from those of women in India who have not shared their history’ (73). In this regard, this reappropriated tradition maintained systems of oppression. Along these lines, ‘the stories about immoral Indian women’ are the result of ‘the construction of a new patriarchy’ that presides over ‘the closure of the question of women’s agency, or “freedom denied”’ (73). The overriding argument here is one of shared oppression. Although Indo-Caribbean women do not have a shared history with women from India, ‘” tradition”’ nevertheless won out in the end and was able to subjugate women’ (73). Nevertheless, as newly arrived immigrants, Indo-Caribbean women were forced to adjust to their new landscape. They did so by carving a distinct female space that was ‘informed by the system which was left behind in India and the condition in the new society which either facilitated or prevented change’ (Mohammed 1995: 34). In this sense, indentureship engendered both the retention of specific cultural practices and the renegotiation and reconfiguration of the Indian female subject. In her analysis of the gendered negotiations of Indians in Trinidad, Patricia Mohammed is quick to point out that ‘Indian women began to wield power that they did not and could not possess under the conditions of the dominant gender system which defined life in India’ (39). She goes on to say that this self-reconfiguration is derived from Indo-Trinidadian women’s ‘new wage-earning status and their sexuality’ (39). Both Lomarsh Roopnarine and Sean Lokaisingh-Meighoo add to this discourse in their unanimous conclusion that ‘indentured servants were not entirely suppressed by the indenture system’ (Roopnarine 2007: 87). Actually, Lokaisingh-Meighoo argues that Indians in the Caribbean were in favor of a reformed indenture rather than its abolition (186).3 In a similar vein, Roopnarine unearths the source of Indo-Caribbean women’s power by demonstrating how they skillfully negotiated what he calls the ‘Third Space between European imperialist patriarchy, at the top, and East Indian patriarchy, at the bottom, as a place of agency to articulate and maintain their cultural identity’ (87). As an independent, autonomous female subject, Mona is the embodiment of this self-transformation.

4As both witness to and victim of an oppressive male-dominated system, Mona from a tender age decides to register resistance. Interestingly and effectively, she chooses the highly-charged masculinist space as her site of resistance, an act that not only challenges, but also ascertains women’s presence in this master discourse. Significantly, this ‘infusion’ of the master discourse comes on the heel of Kello’s premature entry into manhood. In her account of the ‘big row’ Mona narrates that it had transformed Kello into a man ‘even though he was only nine years old at the time’ (16). Initiated by Da-Da’s plan to sell the family’s property and move to the commercial city of San Fernando, the ‘big row’ was further ignited by Kello’s (the son) reckless decision to not abide by the ‘rule of the father’ and follow the hierarchical rank of patriarchal conduct and authority. Instead he did the unthinkable and challenged parental, but more importantly, patriarchal authority, exacerbating the conflict that climaxed when he verbally indicted Da-Da as an unfit spouse and head of household. The greatest insult was leveled against Da-Da when Kello questioned his fatherly role and obligation:

You want to kill your family! You is a nasty nasty man! I shame to call you my father! You is a beast—you is not my father! Is all the rum you drinking have you so! And why we must suffer so! Why Muddie must suffer so! You think I too small but I not small, you hear? I know my mind. (21)

5Kello’s criticism has both personal and political ramifications, functioning as an affront to patriarchy: while women are presented as dependent and defenseless subjects, men are constructed as valiant soldiers and defenders of their wives and children. Whereas Kello’s assertive cum offensive phrase ‘you think I too small but I not small’, reaffirms Da-Da’s inadequacy as head of the household, it accentuates Kello’s dependability as he undergoes a role reversal from son to father/defender. Furthermore, labeling Da-Da as ‘nasty’ (and the attendant shame) can be interpreted as a feminizing act. In this regard, Da-Da is linked to the deviant woman (this concept is given full attention later in the essay) whose impurity and polluted status precede her.

  • 4 Additionally, Da-Da’s exhibition of male assertion fortifies his role given that his prior unmitiga (...)
  • 5 In the presence of his father, Pappy, Da-Da’s claim to manhood diminishes. The ‘big row’ ended with (...)

6 Nevertheless, in an effort to salvage his male authority and reaffirm his position as the head of the household, Da-Da counters Kello’s assertion of manhood with verbal and physical assault: ‘Yuh little bugger, you, playing man for me! I go show you who is man today’ (21-2; emphasis added). Da-Da’s choice of words ‘little bugger’, and ‘playing man’ diminishes Kello’s assertion of maleness; in actuality it dwarfs him in his father’s image, his father’s more resounding (verbal and physical) demonstration (I go show you who is man today) of manhood. Concretizing his role as the ‘man of the house’, Da-Da informs a new-found relative that his household will not be subject to victimization of any kind, ‘not as long as I name man’ (224).4 Furthermore, the phrase ‘playing man’, establishes that Kello’s assertion of manhood is performative, a temporary staging of masculinity. In contrast ‘today’ emphasizes the present, Da-Da’s presence. All the same, the loaded references ‘playing man’, ‘who is man’, as well as the adjective ‘big’ as in ‘big row’ serve as reinforcement of patriarchal might and power. It is worth mentioning that the ‘big row’ was put to an end by the family’s senior patriarch, Pappy (Ganga Singh), the father of Da-Da and grandfather of Kello.5 Kello himself later cedes to this higher power. Acknowledging the effectiveness of the ‘long arm of the law’, he readily admits that ‘it was Pappy’s stick that saved me’ (206). The phallic-like ‘stick’ reinforces the potent masculine imagery.

7Women become buried under these potent images and expressions of masculinity. They are further obfuscated by a plethora of verbal and physical insults hurled at them by their male counterparts to ensure that they remain in their ‘rightful’ place. A case in point are the carefully-chosen words Da-Da uses in berating Mona for attracting the eyes/attention of a shopkeeper. Leveling accusation against her for soliciting male attention, Da-Da’s anger is palpable: ‘Move, quick sharp! Get in de car and stay there, you little bitch. Flaunting yuhself up and down looking for man. All yuh lil girl so damn ting with all yuh self. Stay dey and keep yuh lil tail quiet, yuh hear’ (174; emphasis mine)? Encoded within the words ‘flaunting’ and ‘bitch’ is allusion to promiscuity and wanton sexuality, linking Mona to the rands, the widows/whores whose contamination is used to justify male abuse and derision. Mehta argues that this bond ‘between women and adolescent girls [is meant] to demonstrate how both groups have been socially disinherited by patriarchal gender infringements that associate widowhood and desertion from an unwanted marriage with a violation of normative expectations of respectability’ (23). Interestingly, Mona is regarded as the predator, embarked on unrelenting pursuit of men (male attention), an act that attests to her deviance. ‘Flaunting’ herself, she uses her body as bait. Da-Da’s continued verbal onslaught on Mona, his referencing the practice of ‘low-down womanhood’ as he accuses her of ‘looking for man’ and ‘taking man on the sly’ further illustrates her alleged deviance (140).

8Expressions such as ‘little bitch’, ‘lil girl’, and ‘lil tail’ locate women in perpetual infantilism, in perpetual dependence on male counsel and guidance. At the same time, ‘bitch’ and ‘tail’ stress women’s lascivious propensity. The eponymous protagonist of Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, demonstrates how relentless effort has been made to contain (her) perceived wanton female behavior: ‘My whole upbringing had been devoted to preventing me from becoming a slut’ (127). Repetitive reminders of what constitutes good female behavior are employed as preventative measures to becoming a slut. In like manner, Da-Da’s repeated verbal attack of Mona is to prevent her descent into whoredom. In withholding the masculinist agenda, these ‘diminutives’ are not only meant to diminish women’s self worth, but they are also employed as a means to control and regulate female sexuality. As evidenced, adolescent girls are expected to be paragons of virtue and are accordingly socialized to achieve this ideal.

  • 6 The novel demonstrates that the migratory journey from India to the Caribbean was accomplished main (...)

9While the concept of ideal womanhood is without question modeled on Victorian ideology of chastity and purity, Mehta reveals an added dimension of ‘normative Hindu moral codes’ to which Hindu women are expected to subscribe, that of ‘purist Brahmanic ideals’ (22). Shedding light on the machinations of patriarchal control, Mehta reminds us that ‘purist values are encoded within a patriarchal contract of male guardianship confining Hindu women to a sexual protectorate regulated by the obsessive moral control of the father, son, or husband in an attempt to safeguard the “integrity” of the Hindu household’ (22). Da-Da’s affirmation of his role as the head of the household, his acquisition of the enviable status of man, simultaneously substantiates his role as perpetrator of patriarchal violence. While not admitting victimization from outside forces—Da-Da rejects the social victimization he experiences in his newly adopted home, Canada—Da-Da’s role as victimizer remains intact, mandated by patriarchy, or more specifically by the Brahmanic social order.6 Consequently, Da-Da’s assertion of male dominance elicited the revealing comment from Mona: ‘The old fire and brimstone Da-Da’ (224). The biblical idiom recapitulates patriarchal wrath for sins committed, that is, for not adhering to the law and order of the father. In essence, Da-Da is positioned as the almighty (powerful) father of his household, safeguarding the integrity of his household. Da-Da’s wrath to the non-conformists is tangible.

10 Ironically, Da-Da’s threat that was meant to reaffirm patriarchy instead creates a gulf of separation between father and son, signaling Kello’s severance from both the father and enforced patriarchal law. Rather than align himself with male dominance, Kello empathizes with female suffering and subjugation, embodied in Muddie, his mother, as he demands of his father: ‘Why must Muddie suffer so’ (21). Acknowledging the non-deferential and differential treatment accorded women, Kello, fondly reminiscing on the unbreakable bond he shares with his sister Mona, is cognizant of the limits and limitations placed upon women: ‘Mona, you’re so close to my heart. We’re so close we could be twins. Except that you were born after me, you’re a girl, and we grew up so different. You took the brunt of it for all of us’ (158; emphasis added). Mona is quick to call attention to this gender imbalance:

  • 7 Having being previously married, to a woman, fathered two children and divorced, Kello has embarked (...)

Kello had taken what he wanted from the world. He had wanted to change his fate; he had wanted to unyoke his destiny from Da-Da’s. He wanted money and had found it; he had closed his hands. He wanted love and freedom in love, and in meeting Matthew I guessed that he had finally found it. (160)7

11Furthermore, the gendered difference is reiterated by Kello’s statement of lament. He commiserates: ‘I know your cross, Mona, I know it’ (158). The word ‘cross’ carries both an abstract concept that encapsulates life’s trials and tribulations and a biblical connotation of pain and suffering. Despite Kello’s show of empathy, the cross is Mona’s (and women’s in general) to bear or carry. Accordingly, Mona gives an account of female subservience from a personal standpoint, suggesting that it is so woven into the fabric of society that it has become a birthright:

There I was, always nearby when Muddie called, born a fool, ever-willing to please people—to curtsey and smile and present a bouquet because I was asked, to cook and clean because I was asked, to sort and pack up the jumbled bric-a-brac of our lives in Trinidad, and now to unpack those same boxes. My unexpected bitterness, so deep and unfocused, surprised me. (160)

12Mona’s resentment is fuelled further by the fact that women themselves are complicit in their own oppression. She is chastised, derided by her school principal, Miss Boodram, for aspiring to greater things—she petitioned to enroll in both arts and sciences field—beyond the domestic sphere: ‘That Mona again? Why she feel she so special? Why she can’t do what the other girls doing? In life you have to choose. You can’t have everything’ (176). Paradoxically, while putting forth the notion that one can exercise freedom of choice, Mona’s choice (of non-conformity) is dismissed, deemed subversive. Interestingly, this cross bearing imagery starkly contrasts with the earlier imagery of fire and brimstone, and establishes an unambiguous binary of victim and victimizer. Interestingly, a young minister uses the scripture to interpret women’s role in society. Reminding women of God’s will: ‘God created us to be fruitful and multiply’, he issues a warning ‘about hellfire and the evils of onanism’ (237). As expected, this scriptural interpretation reinforces female subservience. While suffering is located within the female/domestic domain, power is routinely constructed within a masculinist framework. The symbol of crucifixion, the cross underscores women’s victimized, subaltern status; fire and brimstone signify men’s violent and evil power.

  • 8 Afflicted with full blown AIDS, Kello has been relocated to a hospice where he is preparing for imm (...)

13The ‘big row’ served as initiation, a rite of passage for Kello, who in conversation with Mona confirms: ‘That was the day I really left. Da-Da always said that two bo-rat can’t live in the same hole. This is why I had to leave. Either he would have killed me or I would have killed him’ (16). Kello’s departure was not only physical but emotional as well as he tried to establish a clean break from the past: ‘I never saw [Da-Da] again. I have nothing of his, Mona, not a single thing’ (159). Despite the fact that the reference to possessing nothing of his father’s is material, it also implies distance from Da-Da’s masculinist philosophy. Even so, migration—in spite of spatial and temporal distance—does not alter the men’s claim to male supremacy. In what appeared to be a rare moment of perceived reconciliation, Mona and Muddie quickly arrived at the following conclusion: ‘Muddie and I exchanged glances as we looked at Kello and Da-Da facing each other down, one dying, the other grown old. I felt we were thinking the same incongruous thought about how no way could two boar-rats live in the same hole’ (150-1; emphasis added).8 More precisely, migration does not diminish male desire to possess and control. Framing possession and ownership within a strictly masculine domain, Mona draws attention to the vastly contrasting perspective on land ownership between the men in her family and herself. Reiterating that land possession is a male preoccupation, or more poignantly, a patriarchal obsession, Mona muses:

  • 9 Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that (male) power has experienced a shift in favor of a more b (...)

I couldn’t help trying to tell [Kello] how ownership meant nothing to me. I wondered to myself about the men of the family and their different responses to land. Pappy had felt all along that our land should never have been sold, while Da-Da, always reaching for the big kill, had seen that country property as impediment to his mobility upwards and townwards. Of course, the land was no longer in the countryside, so Kello was showing good business sense. But beyond that, I thought, he was manifesting a powerful masculine drive to possess, to control even in the face of a terminal illness. (56; emphasis added)9

  • 10 Hosein, Shaheeda. “A Space of Their Own: Indian Women and Land Ownership, 1900-1945.” www.landofsix (...)

14 Mona’s generic use (without a modifier) of the word ownership draws a clear, gendered distinction between the paths and purpose of land acquisition. Whereas men were seen as the ‘rightful’ inheritors of land, and land possession signaled wealth and power, women/widows had to endure a protracted period of ‘contestation and appeal’ to obtain their husbands’ land.10 With women’s increased participation in and control of the land-production process, we witnessed the emergence of ‘the strongest feminist identities [among] women who were able to combine land acquisition, its economic use, and a traditional domestic role.’ (Ibid.) Lending validity to Mona’s observation about the male or masculine desire to possess, Kello reveals that his desire for land was propelled by the need to establish roots. Reflecting briefly on whether his children will understand or appreciate the value of land (possession), he nonetheless decisively and almost immediately concludes: ‘It doesn’t matter. My seed exists. It’ll surface in time. Nothing perishes’ (166; emphasis mine). The coinage ‘seed’, evocative of the male sperm, has phallic connotation. Its germinating characteristic evokes male potency. In this regard, male possession of land mirrors their possession of and their desire to control women. This line of reasoning is further crystallized by Uncle Baddall’s sexual proclivity that remains unchecked, extending to his propositioning his own niece as he promises to ‘scatter his seed’ (237). In Mona’s view, the drive for sexual control, for power, for money is an innate masculine trait. Identifying the mercenary motivation of the male members of her family, Mona expounds that ‘Kello was a money hound. Even from his sickbed he spent part of every day counting money on his laptop and making notes in a ledger that he kept near him at all times… Da-Da loved money too’ (160, 161). Mona’s quest for female autonomy necessitates that she chooses a divergent path, becoming a self-professed boar-rat like her brother: ‘ [Kello] and Da-Da still couldn’t live in the same house. Neither could I at that time’ (161).

  • 11 See Ifi Amadiume’s Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (1987).
  • 12 Although used distinctively to investigate the flexible gender system in Nnobi’s (Nigerian) Ibo cul (...)

15Hence, Mona’s appropriation of this masculinist language signals her obvious identification with authority, privilege and power. In her assessment of gender as performance in Ibo society, scholar Ifi Amadiume concludes that ‘women could play roles usually monopolized by men and were classified as males for the purpose of power’ (back cover).11 Mona therefore inhabits the role of a ‘male daughter’, to borrow Amadiume’s coinage (90).12 From an early age she recalls her disdain for women’s absolute relegation to the domestic sphere. Recapping a memorable conversation that she shared with Muddie as a young girl coming-of-age, she nostalgically reminisces:

We would have long conversations about life and the future. She would listen without interruption to how I planned never to marry and always to live a free life. I didn’t want any husband telling me what to do. Why was it that everybody had to have a husband? What was so great about that? As far as I could see, men had all the benefits of marriage and women had all the work, all the washing of pots and diapers and stinky babies’ bottoms. (192)

16Hence, Mona is on a path to challenge rigidly feminized roles. Her alliance with (symbols of) power creates visible difference and disjuncture between her and her sister, Babsie. Claiming autonomous subjectivity, she expresses: ‘I knew if I had been a butterfly like my sister Babsie instead of an old boar-rat just like Kello and Da-Da, my own life would have been different’ (16-7). She later intimates that Babsie adopts and embraces a compromised identity, never knowing ‘that special thrill of ownership’; choosing instead ‘to assert her place as everybody’s favorite baby girl; no wonder she remained a butterfly’ (17). By remaining a butterfly, Babsie never left the cocoon: the comfort and protective gaze of her father; she was ‘a butterfly in a house of sex and indulgence’ (224). Her delicacy, her softness, her ability to easily assimilate bears resemblance to the imagery of the fragile, appeasable butterfly that seamlessly adopts and adapts to nature. As ‘everybody’s favorite baby girl’, Babsie is a ‘social butterfly’ in the sense that her socialization is modeled on accommodationist ideals. In essence, her notion of self is constructed within the framework of mimicry and conformity to patriarchal rule and order. Her conformity—the image of dependency and infantilism— is adequately documented by Mona who calls attention to Babsie’s comfort with being ‘everybody’s favorite baby girl’. Moreover, as a ‘social butterfly’, Babsie is indisputably female/feminine, a fact that catches Mona’s attention and that occasions her veiled acknowledgement that had she taken the path of conventionality that Babsie had, her life would have been different. Rather, Mona chooses to ascertain her difference. Besides, this butterfly trope evokes traits of female gentility and subjugation in contrast to the potent masculine image/definition of the boar rat. For this reason, the image of gentility and immaturity encompassed in the construct ‘baby girl’, locates its adversarial equivalent in the coinage ‘boar-rat’.

17Da-Da reinforces the treasured propriety that Babsie embodied in a reconciliatory conversation with Mona in which he attempts to explain his despotic treatment of her:

I tried my best not to restrict Babs. But I didn’t worry about Babs the way I worried about you. You were always so own-way, I thought it was so easy for you to get on the wrong track. What on de ground is dog ownPlenty women just went to the dogs. (209; emphasis mine)

  • 13 This is a popular Caribbean idiom that signifies that one has reached the bottom of the pit or has (...)
  • 14 Ganesh, Maya Indira, ‘Fundamentalisms and Sexuality’.
    www.openspaceindia.org/essays_30.htm

18 One cannot help but notice the gendered contrast between the idioms ‘playing man’ and ‘own way’. While the term ‘playing man’ signals the affirmation of one’s identity, individuality, and sexuality, and is seen as a routine male coming-of-age act, the latter term, or its equivalent ‘playing woman’, intimates a woman’s looseness, her unbridled sexual proclivity that must be contained at all cost. Da-Da concurs that it was so easy for you to get on the wrong track, whereby ‘easy’ and ‘wrong’ capture the loose moral character of the female subject. Furthermore, this wantonness establishes the female subject as the scum of the earth, as she is no longer befitting of an upstanding male suitor, but instead she ‘has gone to the dogs’.13 Interestingly, the odds of the female subject avoiding the pitfalls of degeneracy are frighteningly slim. Or more pointedly, immorality seems to be an innate female characteristic, as Mona is reminded that plenty women just went to the dogs. Herein, the word ‘just’ not only calls attention to the inborn immoral trait, but it also reinforces the ease of inhabiting this decadent space. By the same token, being ‘own way’ threatens the male social order of purity and propriety. Mona’s assertion of her sexual desire and independence, that is, her choosing her own way, is accordingly met with ridicule. At the same time, male desire to keep women in a perpetual state of infantilism intensifies, resulting in increased routine surveillance (dubbed as protection) of the female body. Maya Indira Ganesh duly reminds us that ‘the uncontrolled woman, the woman with rampant sexuality, is the most tangible symbol of chaos, and the easiest to control’.14 She adds that male control of female sexuality goes beyond the personal as men’s private desire to control is constructed within the framework of state control.

  • 15 Quite aware that the term fundamentalist/ism has acquired new meaning in the post 9/11 aftermath, m (...)
  • 16 Significantly, the gasoline that Da-Da used to set Mona’s dress ablaze was used to treat the dog’s (...)
  • 17 Da-Da’s suspicion of Mona’s wanton behavior is fuelled by her courtship of a man of Creole (African (...)

19 Not surprisingly the desire to control female sexuality is built in to the (masculinist) language. Manhood is proved by physical strength, namely by fighting, drinking liquor and the rampant use of profanity. Kello’s attempt at ‘playing man’ is seen as a coming-of-age act, an assertion of masculinity. Standing up to Da-Da, Kello exercises autonomy. Furthermore, he ascertains and asserts his male power by not only engaging Da-Da in a fist fight, but also by rivaling his verbal assaults with a litany of profanity of his own. Nevertheless, a clear double standard is at play here. Mona being ‘own way’ provokes male scrutiny and derision. She is linked to the rands whose sexual deviance and promiscuity is a given, evidenced by Da-Da’s foregone articulation: ‘What on de ground is dog own… Plenty women just went to the dogs’. Mona’s connection with the rands is rendered more palpable in her earlier pronouncement that men in their execution of female subjugation ‘would force women down on their knees back into countless acts of self-immolation’ (296). Da-Da, in this case the enforcer of patriarchal law and order, is the oppressor who espouses fundamentalist views:15 ‘Da-Da’s words terrified me. All my fears about drunkenness and cussing and beatings and brushing cutlasses wielded by overpoweringly strong men rushed over me. And Da-Da was one of them’ (209). Da-Da’s outburst validates Ganesh’s line of reasoning that the state’s crusade in controlling female sexuality is symbolic because ‘it is set against the backdrop of Hindu notions of purity and pollution that grow frighteningly more strident, as fundamentalism uses the bodies of women as the locus of control’ (ibid). True to description, Da-Da literally forces Mona to walk on her knees (emphasizing her degraded status and further lending validity to the claim that ‘women went to the dogs’)16 as punishment for two counts of patriarchal infraction: first, for wearing the same shift dress that had attracted the shopkeeper’s attention, and second, for courting Carlos Antonio Gonzales (Bree), an individual of suspicious character, a Creole.17 After an evening of drinking with friends, Da-Da’s anger is unleashed as he physically attacks Mona ‘and tore the back of the shift off my shoulder. “You little bitch. You ho. What the hell you doing again in that ho dress? You aint’ find you attracting enough man already?”’ (178). Although spared by Muddie from being stripped naked, Mona is not spared the public humiliation. She is later forced to witness her father setting her dress afire—she literally faces the fire, a symbolic immolation—while on her knees. Furthermore, the image of Mona forced to walk on her knees across the yard as her father mouths the words ‘Little ho’ (179) reaffirms female genuflection. Da-Da’s foregone conclusion about ‘women gone to the dogs’ is endorsed/echoed by a passerby, a young boy— not yet man—who has already mastered the language of female subjugation as he hurls these accusatory words at Mona: ‘Ay, girl! Whey you do? You take man or what?’ (180). Mona’s insatiable character and predatory role as pursuer is encapsulated in the phrase ‘you take man’. Interestingly, female punishment is neatly scripted within the masculinist discourse so that the punishment fits the crime of female insubordination, as intimated by the young boy’s rhetorical response.

20Mona soon finds out that fundamentalist views are wide-spread as she is accosted by a total stranger, a taxi driver. Assigning blanketed deviance to all Indo-Caribbean girls and using Mona as a conduit to censure female subjects and to register male disgust and disapproval, he issues a cautionary message:

Indian boy go ketch hell jes now. Nowadays all de girls going in for Creole boy. Watch dem nuh, in dey tight tight skirt and tight pants, looking for Creole boy. Indian boy eh good enough for dem. Indian boy go see real trouble jes now, yuh go see. (172)

21As intimated, the sole object of Indo-Caribbean women’s desire is Creole boys, who they specifically and relentlessly target by adorning ‘provocative’ attire. Da-Da’s palpable disapproval of Mona’s choice in apparel reinforces this declaration: ‘You aint’ find you attracting enough man already?’ (178) While Indo-Caribbean girls’ reckless and wanton behavior justifies men’s derision and subsequent violence, the more potent image here is men’s routine construction as victims. Similar to their Indo-Caribbean male counterparts, Creole men suffer victimization at the hands of women. In turn, Indo-Caribbean men are regarded as objects of exchange, as Indo-Caribbean women are now desirous of Creole men. Furthermore, in both scenarios, men are represented as victims, who are given no alternative but to retaliate in order to safeguard male honor, dignity, and pride. In accordance with the masculinist agenda, the well-scripted master tongue assigns the status of victimhood to unsuspecting men: ‘Indian boy go see real trouble jes now, yuh go see’ (172). However, hidden within this masculinist language is a real threat (captured in the phrase ‘yuh go see’) to noncompliant women, who are unmistakably the ones who will ‘see real trouble jes now’.

22Subscribing to this masculinist agenda, the female victim, doubly victimized, not only internalizes but also perpetuates her victimization out of fear and shame. Thus, she becomes complicit in her own undoing. Mona’s reaction to the taxi driver’s verbal assault bolsters this line of reasoning:

I felt almost naked in the shift dress. My bare legs were exposed; I wished now that I had not shaved them… I felt subdued and full of a trepidation that was hard to place… His words had frightened me in a way I could not explain…. I suddenly felt a deep wave of shame, remembering how the shopman had looked at me. (172-3, 175)

  • 18 As intimated earlier, Mona was the victim of continued molestation by her uncle, Baddall. She was a (...)

23Noticeably, Mona experiences common fear of both her father and the taxi driver, indicative of a shared fundamentalist view regarding the control of female bodies. This unmistakable fundamentalist presence gets reinforced by Mona’s recollection of the shopman’s suggestive gaze. Furthermore, the fundamentalist goal of making women’s bodies the locus of control is successfully achieved. Subdued, Mona now views her body as no longer pure but polluted. The once shaved legs intended to promote female beauty is now regarded as offensive; nakedness is now a source of shame. This body ‘exposure’ reeks of pollution. Mona’s impurity manifests itself further by the washed out flowers that were once emblazoned on the dress that Da-Da labels a ‘ho dress’. Whereby the flowers are representative of female sexuality, Mona’s wearing of the ‘ho dress’ intimates deviant sexuality. The juxtaposition of the faded flowers with Mona’s white school blouses—symbolically the flowers left a permanent stain on Mona’s white school blouses—reaffirms that female sexuality is ‘deeply influenced by notions of purity and pollution.’ (ibid.) This permanent stain alludes to the irreversible loss of (childhood) innocence. Furthermore, the washed out flowers signals Mona’s symbolic deflowering, foreshadowed by her earlier reference of experiencing nakedness under the male gaze.18 She articulates this loss of innocence in the following revealing statement: ‘This laundry disaster reduced me to one school blouse. But not only were my blouses ruined; it seemed that everything had changed all at once’ (176). In like manner, attired in the ‘ho dress’, Mona was reduced to a whore. Comparable to the ‘ho dress’, the ruined blouses become the personification of the fallen woman, the rand. By the same token, the laundry reference establishes the need for female chastity and purity. As evidenced, these successive male outbursts, the first by a complete stranger, the taxi driver, immediately followed by Da-Da’s, reveal men’s tyrannical and fundamentalist perspective.

24While inappropriate female attire is purportedly presented as the root cause for male resentment, the real transgression is Indo-Caribbean girls’ pursuit of Creole boys that not only marginalizes, but also deprives Indo-Caribbean men. Kello exposes as well as challenges this naked truth—male deprivation and marginalization—in a verbal exchange with Da-Da:

Ask Mona to forgive you, Da-Da. Tell her why it really happened— you know why it happened. It wasn’t about any old dress, it was about her black boyfriend. The red boy she was in love with. I wasn’t at home but I heard… You are a racist, Da-Da. You with all your high talk about equality for everybody. (207)

25Overhearing this conversation between Da-Da and Kello, Mona readily acknowledges that Kello had once again set himself apart from the male hegemonic order:

Kello had said the unsayable. Da-Da had never directly punished me about Bree. The kneeling on the gravel, the burning of the shift dress, all of it was about Bree, we both knew that, Da-Da and I, but we had remained locked in silent complicity. Kello had smashed open that locked box. (207)

  • 19 As purveyors of fundamentalist beliefs, the men believe that it is their role to protect and defend (...)

26In the given situation, Kello challenges the fundamentalist views by breaking the silence around male control of female sexuality. In like manner, the patriarchal code of conduct is breached not only by Mona’s courtship of a black boy, but also by her subsequent sexual liaisons with him. Furthermore, this ‘transgressive’ relationship fiercely interrogates the existing male social order and hierarchical structure. Noticeably, the once treasured relationship that Indo- and Afro-Caribbean men shared as victims of unconscionable Indo-Caribbean women gets reconfigured. Consequently, Indo-Caribbean men, in a show of ethnic allegiance, have taken control of the reins as they assert themselves as the exclusive possessors of Indo-Caribbean women.19 Ganesh is quick to point out that the ‘possession of women is a potent weapon in consolidating power’ (ibid.). In this regard, Indo-Caribbean men’s proverbial ‘call to war’ ensures racial purity.

27Numbed by the experience of her symbolic immolation, Mona admits: ‘I felt no pain, no shame, nothing. I was wandering alone in a land without water or light, with little air to breathe. I was strangling and beginning to gasp’ (180). The imagery of strangulation implies imminent death by way of suffocation. Here again, the female body is figured as the locus of control. Nevertheless, Mona’s conscious decision to refuse the burden of shame intimates rebirth or self-renewal. Consequently, the lack of light is the inevitable darkness that precedes birth. By the same token, the welcome solitude that Mona experiences is a hallmark of her new-found independence that she unreservedly articulates in the following statement: ‘It would not be long now. I would live my own life. I would escape the way Kello had’ (180).

28As a single, independent woman, Mona routinely repudiates the ‘Victorian ideology of the “proper gender order”’ (Shepherd 1995: 240). In an ironic twist, her violation serves as the impetus for change and self-renewal: ‘The day I really knew I had to escape was when I was eleven. I was sure because Muddie herself confirmed it. It was the day I escaped from rape and probably murder’ (40). This raw experience has propelled Mona on her quest for individuality, for a life undefined by patriarchal dictates. Debunking the notion of the ideal woman as mother and wife, she rejects categorically the ‘models of domesticity, motherhood, and companionate marriage that would make the Indian woman a citizen of the “New World”’ (78). Her categorical rejection of ‘proper’ womanhood is encapsulated in the following quote:

The thought of marriage or domestic life still filled me with irrational feelings of dread, even towards Roddy with whom I was deeply involved. I had always refused the idea of marriage. Not love, never that. But marriage with its eternal domestic trappings seemed like certain death, even in that far-off time with Bree. (181, 185-7; emphasis mine)

29Stressing the gendered difference in the perception of marriage, Mona views marriage as a form of entrapment, a death sentence for women, while men are the sole beneficiaries of this union. The feeling of dread expressed in the above quote adequately documents Mona’s resistance to this institution tailored for and by men. Marriage is a contractual obligation that binds the woman to the man. The reverse does not hold true:

If I had married Bree, he would have been my eternal love while I turned slowly into a wife and mother, forever coping, forever keeping everything in balance, managing everybody’s lives, living in the real time between his hardness, his hard decisions, his hard eyes, his hard body that I would never forget. (189; emphasis added)

30Mona’s reference to ‘eternal love’ lends further credence to marriage as an oppressive institution. Lomarsh Roopnarine concretizes Mona’s observation regarding the limits of married women and marriage: ‘Once married, [women] were expected to regard, rhapsodize and treat their husbands in accord with the orthodox Hindu tenets. Women were expected to be faithful to their husbands at all times’ (95). Furthering his argument, Roopnarine reminds us that this demonstration of female loyalty and dependence is in keeping with one of the ‘Laws of Manu [that] states that women are incapable of taking care of themselves, and therefore they have to depend on the male gender to survive: their father before marriage, their husband after marriage and their son when their husband is no more’ (88). Roopnarine’s insightful observation reinforces my earlier argument that women were expected and perceived to be perpetually infantile. Along these lines, the continued references to Bree’s ‘hardness’— his hard decisions, his hard eyes, his hard body—has a dual purpose. In the first instance, it accentuates female dependency. In the second case, it draws attention to and at the same time accepts his (Bree’s and male) sexuality, his potent masculinity, clearly establishing how male and female sexuality are constructed differently. Hence, male sexuality remains under the radar and accordingly is not featured ‘in the purity-pollution equation’ (ibid.). While refusing the loss of personal freedom in marriage, Mona readily embraces the sexual freedom of love relationships: ‘I had always refused the idea of marriage. Not love, never that.’ Mona’s pursuit of pleasure outside the institution of marriage evidences another grave patriarchal infraction. As Ganesh points out: ‘The pursuit of pleasure is considered one of the most dangerous—to individuals and to a society’ (ibid.). By male-design, ‘sexuality circumscribed within marriage and procreation is acceptable’ (ibid.). Choosing to remain single and at the same time refusing to become a mother, Mona breaks away from societal conventions of the ‘good’ mother/ ‘good’ wife paradigm, despite the fact that her choice positions her ‘further toward the pollution end of the pollution-purity continuum’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, Mona remains firm in her conviction. Marriage therefore, in her summation, is not a prerequisite for love or sexual relations, despite Indo-patriarchal insistence on equating these.

31While it is true that migration for Hindu women involved compromising their hinduness, it is equally true that the migratory spaces have also provided Indian female subjects the opportunity to revise and reaffirm their sense of self, that is, their self-worth. Underscoring some of the benefits that female migration engendered, Mehta points out that:

[…] for many women in particular, enduring the hardships of the kala pani was a worthwhile risk to take because it offered the potential for renegotiations of gendered identity within the structural dissolutions of caste, class, and religious boundaries that occurred during the transatlantic displacements. (24)

32Mona’s rejection of the covenant of marriage, her assertion and practice of sexual freedom, her love for someone of another ethnic group, all serve as testimonials to the ‘dissolutions of caste, class, and religious boundaries’ (24). To this list I add race and sex. Taking the proverbial bull/boar by the horn, Mona charts a new beginning, keeping in mind the parting words of Kello: ‘But you are free, Mona. You can do anything you want. Just do it, that’s all’ (201). And Mona has done it! Defying all expectations of Indo-Caribbean female propriety, restraint and domesticity, Mona revises and revisions what it means to be Indo-Caribbean and female. Indeed she gives the idiom a test run, confirming that ‘two bo-rat can’t live in the same hole’.

Bibliographie

Works Cited

Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books, 1987.

Birbalsingh, Frank. ‘Interview with Ramabai Espinet’, in From Pillar to Post: The Indo-Caribbean Diaspora, Frank Birbalsingh, ed. Toronto: TSAR, 1997; 162-97.

Christian, Rita. ‘They Came in Ships: Indo Caribbean Women and Their Construction of Safe Spaces in the Caribbean’, in Transport (s) in the British Empire and the Commonwealth, Coll. Les Carnets du Cerpac n° 4. Michele Lurdos & Judith Misrahi-Barak, eds. Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2007; 157-183.

Espinet, Ramabai. The Swinging Bridge. Toronto, Canada: Harper Perennial, 2003.

Ganesh, Maya Indira. ‘Fundamentalisms and Sexuality’. 30 Sep. 2009. www.openspaceindia.org/essays_30.htm.

Hosein, Shaheeda. ‘A Space of Their Own: Indian Women and Land Ownership, 1900-1945’. 30 Sep. 2009. www.landofsixpeoples.com/ news02/ns205268.htm.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Plume, 1991.

Lokaisingh-Meighoo. ‘The Diasporic Mo (ve) ment: Indentureship and Indo-Caribbean Identity’, in Nation Dance: Religion, Identity, and Cultural Difference in the Caribbean, Patrick Taylor, ed. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001; 171-192.

Mehta, Brinda. Diasporic Dislocations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2004.

Mehta, Brinda. ‘Engendering History: A Poetics of the Kala Pain in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge’. Small Axe 21 (October 2006): 19-36.

Mohammed, Patricia. ‘Writing Gender into History: The Negotiation of Gender Relations among Indian Men and Women in Post-indenture Trinidad Society, 1917-47’, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspectives, Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey, eds. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995; 20-47.

Niranjana, Tejaswini. Mobilizing India: Women, Music, and Migration between India and Trinidad. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh. Indo-Caribbean Indenture: Resistance and Accommodation, 1838—1920. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2007.

Shepherd, Verene. ‘Gender, Migration and Settlement: The Indentureship and Post-indentureship Experience of Indian females in Jamaica, 1845-1943’, in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspectives, Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey, eds. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995; 233-257.

Shepherd, Verene. Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002.

Notes

1 This idiomatic Caribbean phrase has various equivalents. For example, ‘two big woman can’t live in the same house’, ‘two man-rat can’t live in the same hole.’

2 Shepherd points out that the research on Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese women surpass that of Indo-Jamaican women. She accredits this fact to the significantly larger populations of Indians that were imported to Trinidad and Guyana.

3 Lokaisingh-Meighoo’s larger argument is that to equate indentureship with slavery is to deny or deprive Indians in the Caribbean of agency.

4 Additionally, Da-Da’s exhibition of male assertion fortifies his role given that his prior unmitigated power has been neutralized, if not subsumed, in his newly adopted home, Canada, in the face of crippling racism and discrimination.
This assertion can be interpreted also as a bid for participation or inclusion in the discourse of the new nation-state.

5 In the presence of his father, Pappy, Da-Da’s claim to manhood diminishes. The ‘big row’ ended with Pappy administering a few blows of his own in response to the violence meted out by his son to his grandson.

6 The novel demonstrates that the migratory journey from India to the Caribbean was accomplished mainly by Brahmanic widows. Verene Shepherd points to the fact that the organizing principles of Brahmanic social order that accentuate caste and class engendered the subordination of women. See Shepherd’s Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean (2002).

7 Having being previously married, to a woman, fathered two children and divorced, Kello has embarked on another quest for freedom to love in his relationship with his partner, Matthew.

8 Afflicted with full blown AIDS, Kello has been relocated to a hospice where he is preparing for imminent death.

9 Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that (male) power has experienced a shift in favor of a more balanced wealth or asset distribution. Realizing that his end is near, Kello notably designates Mona power of attorney to oversee the land dealings in Trinidad, signaling transfer or distribution of power. Additionally, Bess, Mona’s cousin, becomes the sole inheritor of (their) Grandma Lil’s property.

10 Hosein, Shaheeda. “A Space of Their Own: Indian Women and Land Ownership, 1900-1945.” www.landofsixpeoples.com/news02/ns205268.htm. Hosein claims that women’s possession of land was framed in the larger legal illegitimacy of Hindu and Muslim unions.

11 See Ifi Amadiume’s Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (1987).

12 Although used distinctively to investigate the flexible gender system in Nnobi’s (Nigerian) Ibo culture, the coinage ‘male daughter’ is very pertinent to this discussion in that it sufficiently captures the resistance and resilience that Mona displays in challenging the masculinist tradition. It also bears weight in Kello’s appointing Mona as power of attorney of the family land.

13 This is a popular Caribbean idiom that signifies that one has reached the bottom of the pit or has sunk to an unimaginable low.

14 Ganesh, Maya Indira, ‘Fundamentalisms and Sexuality’.
www.openspaceindia.org/essays_30.htm

15 Quite aware that the term fundamentalist/ism has acquired new meaning in the post 9/11 aftermath, my use of the term nonetheless is more culture-specific in reference to the practice and spread of cultural extremism. It has less to do with extremist religious groups.

16 Significantly, the gasoline that Da-Da used to set Mona’s dress ablaze was used to treat the dog’s fleas.

17 Da-Da’s suspicion of Mona’s wanton behavior is fuelled by her courtship of a man of Creole (African) descent, Bree (Carlos Antonio Gonzales).

18 As intimated earlier, Mona was the victim of continued molestation by her uncle, Baddall. She was also a victim of an attempted rape.

19 As purveyors of fundamentalist beliefs, the men believe that it is their role to protect and defend their tradition.

Auteur

Seton Hall University, USA
PhD is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Africana & Diaspora Studies, at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey where she also teaches courses on African-American literature, Caribbean literature, and women writers. Her book Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women was published by the University of Missouri Press, 2001. In addition, she has published articles and book chapters on Kamau Braithwaite, Maryse Condé, Paule Marshall, and Jamaica Kincaid. She is also the recipient of several fellowships in support of her research. She has also authored ‘Walking on Thin Ice: The Il/legitimacy of Race and Racial Issues in the Classroom’ that appeared in The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Identity, and Authority in the Academy (SUNY Press, 2003), and Caribbean Women Writers and Activism: Amy Jacques Garvey, Claudia Jones, and Audre Lorde.
Forthcoming in African-American Review is her article titled ‘M/Othering the Nation: Women’s Bodies as Nationalist Trope’ in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory; and ‘Gendered Resistance: Folklore as Poetic and Political Tool in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory’ in a special issue of Black Praxis. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Migrating Bodies: Women Writers Narrating Diasporic Subjects.

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