Edwidge Danticat’s novel, The Dew Breaker is a collection of stories that connects the different characters through a shared traumatic past. In the chapter, ‘The Bridal Seamstress’, the author deals with the issue of trauma in the past, how it is experienced, understood and looked at by the victim and an onlooker . The author brings together two women, one an older Haitian woman, Beatrice who has moved to the United States and the other, Aline-a young American-Haitian. Aline, the younger Haitian American is a journalist-intern and is asked by her editor to cover the story of the retirement of a prominent bridal seamstress in the community. During the interview Beatrice tells Aline that a guard tortured her for refusing to dance with him all those years go, but still lives in an empty building close by to keep an eye on her. Aline has never known the traumatic incidents first hand and finds it difficult to understand Beatrice, the bridal seamstress when she talks about the torturer living next door. But later on Aline understands why Beatrice retires and also understands the significance of the ‘torturer living next door’. This brings about a transformation in Aline and her realization is brought about in the line maybe ‘she herself was one of them’. It is also through Aline that the reader understands more about Beatrice and her behavior.
Aline almost abandons her interview and tells her editor that she thinks Beatrice is a little ‘nutty’, when Beatrice is not coherent in her talk and answers Aline’s questions with more questions. Aline in the beginning does not also believe Beatrice when she says that the torturer lives next door. Although Aline thinks it is a simple interview with a retired seamstress, she realizes that the reasons for the retirement are not simple but rather complicated. Beatrice retires because she cannot go on any longer and believes that stopping her work would somehow release her from her traumatic past. “I’m not going to make any more dresses, she says. The next time I move, he won’t find out where I am (Danticat 137) - Beatrice genuinely thinks that the guard (who she imagines to be her neighbor) would no longer be able to find her if she retires. She also claims that she finds him living on her street every time she moves. It is because the guard has inhabited her mind and is a product of her hallucinatory remembering. Maybe she is also trying to make a conscious decision to get out of her traumatic past. ‘He’ is the image of the guard. He exists in Beatrice’s mind and it is enough to convince her that he is for real. Although he was real during her youth, since then he exists as an image that symbolizes the entire trauma she has been through. The guard through his torture has pervaded Beatrice’s past and present. He is also a symbol of the trauma that Beatrice is not able to shake off. Beatrice makes a reference to the guard many times throughout the interview and he in his real and imagined forms shapes Beatrice’s life.
The trauma she suffers in her past manifests itself in her everyday life. The images of her torture, of her soles being whipped, and the guard who did it to her does not leave her. When describing the incident, Beatrice tells Aline that he (the guard), “whipped the bottom of my feet until they bled. Then he made me walk home, barefoot (Danticat 132).” Beatrice undergoes this torture because she refuses to dance with the guard as she already has a boyfriend. She then shows Aline her scars which serve s a constant reminder of her past. The guard’s presence embeds within the deepest recess of her heart. He and his actions become an unforgettable presence in her life. She relives her past everyday and that is what makes her claim that the guard-torturer is her neighbor from next door. As to why she retires Beatrice tells Aline, “In all that time, I’ve sewn every stitch myself. Never had anyone helping me. Never could stand having anyone in my house for too long. Now it’s become too hard. I’m tired (Danticat 126). Beatrice’s retirement is in a way forced. Troubled by her past, she is unable to develop any real relationships in her present. She is single and childless. Her work gives her a patterned existence and enables her to hide her past trauma in work. But she can no longer go on as her trauma and behavior induced by paranoia have made her physically weak. Beatrice very vividly describes the guard for Aline. She says, “We called him them chouket lawoze,” “They’d break into your house as the dew was settling on the leaves He was one of them, the guard (Danticat 131). When line asks her how she could know for sure that it is the same person and how she could remember the face, Beatrice tells her that no one could have had her attention that much and no matter how much he had changed, she would remember him from anywhere. This shows that the incident of torture is deep seated in Beatrice. She is unable to shake it out of her life and the trauma of the incident continues on in her present too. For Beatrice the guard is not just a person who had tortured her in the past, but a manifestation of her past in her present. In the beginning of the interview, this reference to the guard is what makes Aline suspicious and a little skeptic of Beatrice. These lines when Beatrice describes the guard are also interesting because it is the first time in the book that the author introduces the word Dew Breaker in the book. She also uses the Creole word for Dew Breaker and leaves it at that without translating. Perhaps she does it to retain the original meaning of the word or maybe she does it to let the reader know that Aline and Beatrice speak Creole and maybe they are not as disconnected as they seem to be at the beginning of the story.
When the interview is at its initial stages Aline is disconcerted with Beatrice as she keeps stopping the interview abruptly be it to ask questions, change the topic, and make coffee or to go on a walk. Since Aline has not experienced any of the traumatic incidents herself, she confuses the meaning in Beatrice’s speech. She also mistakenly thinks that the guard was Beatrice’s lover. The author brings out that Aline has trouble reconciling her sheltered life with that of a Haitian from an older generation (who has been through an abusive regime) when she says, “Aline was tasting spirits in the coffee, but couldn’t identify which” implies that she senses a connection, but cannot recognize it as Haitian (Danticat 123).” A completely different upbringing from that of Beatrice also ensures that Aline is largely unaware of what had happened during those times. "Growing up poor but sheltered in Somerville, Massachusetts, Aline had never imagined that people like Beatrice existed, men and women whose tremendous agonies filled every blank space in their lives. Maybe there were hundreds, even thousands, of people like this, men and women chasing fragments of themselves long lost to others. Maybe Aline herself was one of them (Danticat 137-138).” Although Aline cannot understand Beatrice’s experiences in the beginning, she does later on and although she does not experience it firsthand herself, she does not feel disconnected from it either. Aline grows up sheltered not knowing for years what the previous generation has gone through. She cannot imagine the torture they had to endure and the traces of which they still carry. Although she cannot understand the cause of the agony as she does not experience it herself, she slowly makes sense of the pain and it is in that moment that she relates herself to Beatrice and other people like her.
For Beatrice, the trauma is a part of her everyday life but for Aline it eventually makes her realize that she sees a bit of herself in Beatrice and people like her. Beatrice is more or less resigned to her past and fate when she says, “Everything happens when it’s meant to happen” (Danticat 125). She has suffered enough in her life because of the guard and now she is tired. She feels now that the time to free herself of her shackles has come. She retires not only because she does not want to work anymore but also because she does not want to think about her past anymore. Aline wants to become a serious journalist at the end of the interview as she wants to talk on behalf of everyone who cannot speak for themselves. The experience of trauma is not the same for the victim and the onlooker, but it does affect the onlooker (the listener) and makes the two of them look at life in different ways. For Beatrice the trauma is very much in the present and not a thing of the past. For Aline, Beatrice’s recounting of the past trauma shows her a path for the future.
Although the chapter is titled, ‘The Bridal Seamstress’ the chapter is very much about Aline and her conflict. She acts as a connection between the various themes in the chapter. There is the generational disconnect, the cultural disconnect and the trauma. Although Aline is of Haitian Origin, she has not lived through the regime and cannot relate much with the trauma caused by it. But at the end of the story Aline realizes that Beatrice is not so different from her. Although it is just Beatrice who goes through the torture and lives with the trauma of it, Aline too recognizes it towards the end but in her own way. This recognition changes how Aline views Beatrice. From being nutty or just the old woman she was assigned to interview, Beatrice transforms into a Haitian who could hold a mirror to Aline’s past. Although she does not completely understand Beatrice’s troubles Aline empathizes with her. Beatrice’s behavior is not nutty but paranoid as a result of the traumatic experience form her youth.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York: Vintage Books. 2004. Print.
