Breath, Eyes, Memory Women and Femininity

Martine's conversation with her daughter degenerates quickly into a strange and frightening assessment of what it means to her to be a woman in a sexual relationship. For Martine, violence is ever present, even in the case of finding someone to be your shadow or Marassa. She is trying to convince Sophie that she'll only be safe if she commits herself to a lifetime relationship with her mother, since any relationship with men can only end one way. It isn't healthy, but it's certainly a reflection of Martine's early experiences.

Sophie recounts the story of the woman who could not stop bleeding and asked the goddess Erzulie to intervene and help her. In a telling moment, Erzulie explains that if she wants to stop bleeding, she can no longer be a woman. For Sophie and the women of her family, then, to be a woman is to suffer—and not just any kind of suffering. This is the real soul-wrenching, body-tearing kind of suffering that makes life nearly impossible. As such, the woman in the story chooses to opt out and live her days as a beautiful butterfly. Sophie falls back on this story of transformation when she has to face her mother's suicide.

In our culture, we joke about the "horror" of seeing our mothers or grandmothers naked. But for Sophie, the vision of her grandmother's body allows her a moment of reflection on the bodies of the women in her family. Sometimes, things go awry—as in Ifé's hump and Martine's breast cancer. But these are things that the women cover up and don't show to world. All the general public ever sees is their endurance.

Atie sounds off on the injustice of being a woman in her culture. And more than that, she articulates her disappointment in the cultural norms: she believed that if she did all the right things, she would be rewarded with the usual things in life. But she's learned that sometimes, all the things a woman endures does not get her what she wants or deserves. There's no further lesson here: we're just meant to let that sink in.

We really don't need to draw a point about the injustice of this unequal treatment; that's obvious. But we'll just point out that this kind of valuation builds on Sophie's quiet assessment that being a woman is problematic, even a negative. It's as though her culture simply doesn't know what do with women, so they hide them away in the darkness.

Again, Sophie observes that there is no space in her culture for a woman who steps outside her expected role. The folk tale symbolizes hurtful male behavior that ends up not only damaging women, but also crippling an entire society (we are assuming that the husband in the tale did not intend to kill his wife). It is worth noting that many of the marriage folk tales recalled by Sophie are rife with violence against women, which also makes an impression on her thinking about her place in society.

Atie uses a traditional educational tool (the names of the fingers) to point out how the cards are stacked against Haitian women before they're even born. She emphasizes that a woman's life is often not her own, since she isn't given the option of choosing anything for herself or for her own pleasure. But Danticat does give Atie the power to articulate her displeasure over this situation, which is a hopeful opening for Sophie, who has the opportunity to lead a different life.

Ifé states her case for virginity testing, in response to Sophie's questions. Sophie, Atie and Martine have clearly been traumatized by this practice, but Ifé wants Sophie to understand the absolute importance of "cleanness" for a young Haitian woman. It's the obsession with a woman's virginity that ultimately becomes problematic for Sophie, who can't bring herself to have a relationship with her husband because she's learned that female sexuality is a dirty thing that must be denied.

The Caco family really is a network of strong women: we very rarely hear anything about the patriarchs of the family, as if they never were there. This bleeds over into the conception of the afterlife, Guinea, the place where the women in the family will reunite. Spirituality in this work is very strongly feminine as well, with the goddess Erzulie ruling over Sophie's understanding of what it means to be a woman and a mother.

Sophie chooses an outfit for her mother to be buried in that she knows will turn heads. But at this point, she cares very little for public opinion. She wants people to see power when they see her mother's corpse, perhaps because her mother had so very little of it in her lifetime. Sophie wants her mother's body to show outwardly what she feels was hidden during her lifetime: strength, endurance, power over herself and the others around her.