Although Sophie Caco was raised by her aunt, Tante Atie until she was 12, a psychological connection created between Sophie and her natural mother, Martine, a bound that traveled beyond the distance that separated them, a bound that was in their genes. The inheritance is by far the predominant theme of Danticat’s novel and it explores how the familial past can influence one’s future.
As a teenager, Martine was continuously the subject of her mother testing her virginity. The author somehow suggests that this is a common practice in the Haitian families, although she addresses a letter to Sophie, at the end of her book, wherein she clearly states that “Of course, not all Haitian mothers are like your mother. Not all Haitian daughters are tested, as you have been” (236). Martine’s mother, Grandmé Ifé created a psychological burden for her daughter, which later developed into affecting the woman’s mental peace. However, as Martine herself explains, while talking to Sophie, her mother did not keep this habit for a very long time, as she did not have to, because Martine was attacked and raped by an unknown man, at the age of 16.
This event actually left her pregnant with Sophie, who inherited the physiognomy of her mother’s attacker. Returning to Martine’s mental peace, she carried the phobia of her mother’s testing of her virginity and the rape of which she had been a victim, throughout her life. These aspects in her life were more than just phobias; they were entrenched in her personality, and could not allow her to carry on with her life and to forget her past.
What is even more confusing about Martine’s social development as an adult is that she herself has inherited her mother’s mania of testing her daughter to see if she is still a virgin. Following her familial path, the woman continued Grandmé Ifé’s custom of repeatedly subjecting Sophie to the virginity tests that she, as a girl, used to hate so much. This odd reaction illustrates just how powerful the woman was affected by this custom. In her rage, she could not consider that she would be causing the same anguish, torment and frustrations to her daughter, as her mother provoked her by this testing.
This turn of events, wherein the tormented daughter becomes the mother who torments her own daughter is a dramatic moment in the novel and it indicates the continuity of the familial burden from generation to generation.
As briefly stated earlier, Sophie was the image of the person who conceived her. Not her mother, but her mother’s attacker. She inherited his physical traits and this added to Martine’s torments, as her child would always remember her of her suffering. This was like a course for Martine that she could not get away, just as she could not get away of her faith of continuing her mother’s testing custom.
These subconscious forms of frustrations alimented the woman’s wretched and unfortunate existence, as she was permanently haunted by nightmares, she could not rest, always having her past haunting her.
These indications that the author presents in her novel make Martine the character who best illustrates the theme of inheritance and its burdens. Nonetheless, Sophie is also affected by these burdens, just because she is so much connected psychically and emotionally with her mother. This might suggest, as the author indicates, through the story line, that Sophie would be following the same path in life as her mother, continuing her anguish and her torments.
Nevertheless, Danticat introduces another theme that practically saves Sophie from having the same fate as her mother. Identity, self-awareness, getting to know oneself and conquering over one’s fears and inherited ghosts of past is what the author suggests that would change Sophie’s fate from resembling to her mother’s.
In a desperation moment, Sophie takes her fate into her own hand. She refuses to let herself again submitted to her mother’s testing of her virginity and she takes her own virginity, using precisely her mother’s spice pestle to break her hymen (87). This action is the result of the desolation that determined Sophie to feel ashamed about her body, to wear a burden of the abuse of her body.
This moment is another turning point in the novel, suggesting that people can become masters of their own identities. As this is not as easy as it may look, Sophie passes through hard times in finding herself. She becomes attached with her neighbor Joseph, an older musician, who is kind to her and loves her, but she cannot find it in her power to commit to a relationship with him, because she is ashamed of her body, as an outcome of the continuous violation of her intimacy, because of her mother’s tests. She leaves Joseph, with whom she had eloped after her mother threw her out of the house when she had discovered that Sophie had lost her virginity, and goes back to her aunt Atie.
She makes serious efforts for overcoming her fears and frustrations imposed by her inherited traits, both physical and psychical. The fact that she was the daughter of the man who aggressed her mother and that she resembled with him and not at all with the members of her family was a real frustration for Sophie and so it was, as already explained, the virginity tests and the inheritance of her mother’s nightmares, which expressed her anguish, pain and obsessions.
Sophie overcomes her fears and insecurities by going back to the place she was raised, in the quest of her identity. She understands that in fact she ran away from her fears and comes back and faces her subconscious, by going to therapy, admitting that she has a problem, and determined to treat her mind and soul, to wash them of the shame.
This theme is hence, best supported by Sophie, but her aunt Atie is also an important character of the novel, used by the author to express this theme. Atie is a mature woman who remained virgin and illiterate. She has her own mind, considering that there is a time for everything and that her time for learning how to read has passed, and now she has to devote herself to the housework and to carrying for her niece, Sophie. She accepts who she is and she does not follow the ghosts of the past, as her sister Martine does, but she does follow a dream of winning the lottery, who she considered it “was like love. Providence was not with her, but she was patient” (Danticat 6).
This is actually a symbolic representation for hope, that the author uses to describe Tante Atie. The woman did not lose her faith in ever finding her love, as she permanently hoped that she would win the lottery, which never happened. Nevertheless, the woman knew who she was, and the author reveals her as a wise woman, self-conscious, even if she was illiterate and still a virgin.
A subtheme of the identity theme is the doubling, which again, is best expressed by Sophie. The girl detaches herself from personality when subjected to the virginity tests. She blocks her feelings, her mind, departs from her identity and becomes an object of her mother’s rage and frustrations.
Likewise, Sophie is also doubling when she is involved in sexual relationships with Joseph. She takes her mind of the person who she is, because she is embarrassed of her body and she feels that the sexual touches represent a violation of her intimacy. This feeling was inducted again, by the testing experience, which she considers “I hated the tests. It is the most horrible thing that ever happened to me” (Danticat 156).
The author utilizes the literary technique of narrative parallelism through which she manages to indicate that Sophie considers herself the representation of Martine’s past, as she does not resembles at all to anybody in her family, which indicates that she inherited the physical traits of her mother’s rapist. Likewise, the author manages to indicate that Sophie is aware of the fact that Marc, her mother’s lover represents Martine’s present.
Danticat uses specific techniques for elaborating on the theme of the inherited doubling. Mothers transfer their frustrations to daughters and together with these frustrations they also relegate their torments, directly or indirectly. The testing represents both the frustration and the torment that the Haitian women usually transfer from mother to daughter, and it was no exception for Grandmé Ifé and Martine or Atie, as it was no exception for Martine and Sophie.
An indirect transfer of frustration, fear and anguish, specific to Martine and Sophie, is at psychological level. The two women have common feelings, emotions, which indicate that they share the same fears and other negative sensations that feed the agony in their lives. This is the author’s indication of the fact that Sophie was carried in Martine’s womb and that she is carrying her mother’s pathos after they were separated, when Sophie was born.
Danticat uses the legend of Marassas to express how the Haitian women perceived the relation between mother and daughter: “As she tested me, to distract me, she told me ‘The Marassas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person, duplicated in two. They looked the same, talked the same, walk the same’” (84).
This local legend has the purpose of illustrating the bounds that hold capture a daughter to her mother, bounds that will end up in devouring the girl, by permanently erasing her personality and by transforming her into her mother. But since this is an inherited tradition and the mother herself is transformed into her own mother and each mother had become her mother, on and on, what does the transformation actually represent? In who do the girls actually transform, who do they become?
They might become the expression of their culture, a culture that no longer fits the social standards, if it ever did, a culture which causes serious problems to women’s identity, a culture that needs to be confronted for stopping the transfer of frustration, anguish, fears, and other negative sentiments from mother to daughter.
The virginity tests outline another theme of the novel: the obsessions, which are like ghosts in Caco family. Martine is obsessed by two traumatizing experiences, which caused her to lose her self-control: the virginity tests that her mother exposed her to, and the rape which she had been a victim of. Sophie was also obsessed with the virginity tests and with the fact that she was the “fruit” of the aggression against her mother, knowing that she was constantly reminding her mother of her aggressor. Nonetheless, Tante Atie was obsessed with the idea of winning the lottery and she permanently bought tickets, always thinking and hoping that she will win.
The author outlines the feminine obsessions, which can be categorized as gender obsession, which reflects the fears and incertitude of women. They also reflect cultural background of the women who are the subjects of these obsessions. As such, the author indicates that it is a common practice for the Haitian mothers to test their daughters to see if they are still virgins.
“‘Did you ask your grandmother why they test their daughters?’ She asked? ‘To preserve their honor’” (Danticat 208). This is what Sophie reveals to her therapist, exposing a cultural inherited tradition, transmitted from generation to generation and absorbed within families like unwritten laws. However, these laws caused severe traumas to girls who were subjected to the tests, influencing their psychodynamics, in terms of social development.
This tradition also represented a social tool of dehumanizing women, from early ages. This would have consequences in the gender representation in society, as it would determine women to be submissive and permanently connected and respectful of their traditions, which would only hold them capture to obsolete prejudices, meant to dominate them and to manipulate and control their identities. The indication according to which women’s honor stays in their virginity is archaic and does not do justice to this gender, because their honor is socially perceived solely through their sexuality.
The themes evolve and change throughout the novel, they interact and create dynamism for both characters and the structure of the novel itself. There are turning points that announce the character’s transformation, and there are dramatic moments that indicate the key – moments in the book. Such moments are Sophie’s remembering of the testing of her virginity that she was repeatedly subjected to by her own mother: “The veil that always held my mother’s finger back every time she tested me. My body was quivering when my mother walked into my room to test me” (Danticat 88). The suicide of Sophie’s mother was another key moment in the novel, indicating two aspects: first, that she could not have continued living a life in agony and she found her peace outside this world; second, that Sophie was liberated by the burden of carrying further her mother’s torments and fight for her own life, for normality, so that she would not transmit all the cultural related customs to her daughter.
The language that the author uses for situating the story and for describing her characters is a combination of narrative, poem, song (“Death is the Shepard of man and in the final dawn, good will be the master of evil” (Danticat 5)), which comes from a mix of ideological, religious, and cultural background of African, American and Caribbean influences. As the main characters are the representatives of the Caco family, solely women, the author explores the language from a feminine perspective, as the expression of the three cultures that influenced women’s believes and their communication style.
“Breath, Eyes, Memory” is the novel of the African women, of their oppressions, of their burdens carried from generation to generation. Tante Atie tells her niece Sophie that in the past the Black women would carry heavy baskets upon their head. This is a metaphor that the author uses for illustrating that Black women are accustomed with carrying their burdens, just as they are accustomed with holding on to their torments and transferring them to her daughters. The haunting memories of the past blend with historical, religious and cultural identity of the Black women and express the social transition from obsolete customs to modern eves that has the purpose of allowing women to accept themselves as individuals.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York, Vintage Books. 1994. Print.
