Unity in Diversity, Volume 1 : Cultural Paradigm and Personal Identity [1 ed.] 9781443867290, 9781443845946

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Unity in Diversity, Volume 1

Unity in Diversity, Volume 1: Cultural Paradigm and Personal Identity

Edited by

Julitta Rydlewska and Barbara Braid

Unity in Diversity, Volume 1: Cultural Paradigm and Personal Identity, Edited by Julitta Rydlewska and Barbara Braid This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by Julitta Rydlewska and Barbara Braid and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4594-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4594-6

CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Julitta Rydlewska Part One: Ethnic and National Identity Chapter One ............................................................................................... 11 The Dougla in Trinidad: Omitted or Denied? Ferne Louanne Regis Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27 The Vampiric Diaspora: The Complications of Victimhood and Post-memory as Configured in the Jewish Migrant Vampire Simon Bacon Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 43 Popular Romance and Cultural Identity in Gloria Naylor’s “Mama Day” Karen Sanderson Cole Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 61 The Importance of Inclusion: Polish Pilots in War-Time Britain Joanna Witkowska Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 89 The Haunted China: the Ghost Image in Amy Tan’s “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” Hui-Lien Yeh Part Two: Gender Identity Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 107 “Who Devours Whom?”: Oppression and Eating Disorders in Margaret Atwood’s “The Edible Woman” Barbara Kijek

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 125 “The Crimson Petal and The White”: (Neo-)Victorian Female Insanity in the Light of Feminist Disability Studies Barbara Braid Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 149 Gender Identity in Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”: A Matter of Unity or Diversity? Diana Ismail Contributors ............................................................................................. 165

INTRODUCTION JULITTA RYDLEWSKA

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (King Lear, 1.4.221)

“Who am I?” The answer to this question, either verbalized or sensed only, is one of the most important issues a human being has to address in life. This is a question about possessing the continuous self, about the internal concept of oneself as an individual. How do we learn who we are? Margaret Mahler, a Hungarian-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, focused in her research on the question of how children attain their sense of individuality. She proved that the process of the formation of individual identity begins at about the age of six months. At this time the toddler enters the phase of separation-individuation which is marked by the development of ego, cognitive abilities and mastering communication with others (Mahler 1975). The child becomes aware of and interested in the surroundings and as it learns to walk and talk it becomes increasingly curious and anxious to explore the surroundings. Though it differentiates itself from its mother and gets more independent of her, it uses its mother as the point of reference. Then comes the stage of first crisis when the child is torn between staying connected with its mother and venturing forth into the unknown. The next major identity crisis comes, according to Erik Erikson, with the age of puberty (1968). Erikson conceived 8 stages of psychosocial development, the fifth one, beginning with puberty and ending with adolescence, is marked by polar attitudes creating a conflict of identity vs. identity confusion. Young people are confused about the roles they play; ponder on who they are or whom they are going to be; quite often they ask the question ‘where do I come from?’ They wonder if their parents are their biological parents or maybe they were adopted or mistakenly exchanged in the maternity ward. Many psychologists, Erikson included, believe that personality development takes place through a series of crises that must be resolved and internalized. The holistic personality theory oxymoronically called Theory of Positive Disintegration authored by Polish psychologist and psychiatrist Kazimierz Dąbrowski implies that

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Introduction

personality development is possible thanks to disintegration of primary structures in preparation for the next developmental stage. After the initial spontaneous and chaotic phase of the process we arrive at a stage of conscious auto-creation in which internal conflicts and identity crises trigger personal growth. The theory was conceived and developed in the 1960s and 1970s, however interest in it has been revived and practical implications of the proposed solutions are being sought for in the fields of psychology and education, particularly in Canada and the USA. In today’s rapidly changing world, due to the pace of life and the increasing sense of instability, identity crises seem even more common than before.

“Simply the thing I am / shall make me live” (All’s Well That Ends Well, 4.3.327-8)

Total congruence of personality, behaviour and identity can be desirable but are not attainable. The image of the self undergoes changes with time and the individual’s experience. Carl Rogers, an American counselling psychologist, postulates that, paradoxically, we can change only when we fully accept ourselves as we are (1989). A practical implication of this postulation can be found in the modern media: the (unconditional) positive regard for oneself is the starting point of the metamorphoses presented in the life-style TV shows of Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, and Gok Wan. The participants are women who disapprove of their outer appearance and desperately want a transformation from the ugly duckling into the beautiful swan. Before they are advised on what to wear and how to wear it they are told and taught to love their bodies and be proud of themselves. What the presenters try to do is to instil in the participants the knowledge that the perception they have of themselves is not genuinely their own, but it is only a reflection of a culturally and socially constructed image of the woman; that their guiding thoughts are about what they should and not what they want to be. At the end of the show we can see a new, attractive and self-confident woman, presumably a person who has just constructed her new self. Surely we can suspect that for the sake of the show, to some degree at least, the whole situation and the metamorphosis are directed. However, it is the therapeutic message which is passed on to the audience that matters. Inner consistency, when treated instrumentally, can be seen as a mere tool which helps the individual go through life, make decisions or perform actions. What happens if the knowledge (cognition) about oneself or the environment, the set of values and beliefs, is not consistent with the knowledge of the person’s performance, feelings or thoughts? How to deal

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with such a psychological discomfort? One of the ways to get away from this trap is to rationalize the inconsistencies: […] the person who continues to smoke, knowing that it is bad for his health, may also feel (a) he enjoys smoking so much it is worth it; (b) the chances of his health suffering are not as serious as some would make out; (c) he can’t always avoid every possible dangerous contingency and still live; and (d) perhaps even if he stopped smoking he would put on weight which is equally bad for his health. So, continuing to smoke is, after all, consistent with his ideas about smoking (Festinger 1985, 2).

However, such attempts to rationalize the inconsistencies are not always successful – the “nonfitting relations among cognitions” (Festinger 1985, 3) remain, to produce what Leon Festinger calls cognitive dissonance. Let us imagine a person who has some cognition which is both highly important to him and also highly resistant to change. This might be a belief system which pervades an appreciable part of his life and which is so consonant with many other cognitions that changing the belief system would introduce enormous dissonance. […] Let us further imagine that an event occurs and impinges on this person’s cognition creating strong dissonance with the existing cognition (1985, 198-199).

George Talbot, a leading character from Philippa Gregory’s historical novel The Other Queen, experiences a crisis of confidence in his own powers, a crisis of his self-identification as the Earl of Shrewsbury, an independent, honourable, loyal and dutiful peer of England. He is chosen as the host and jailor of Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth I orders to be beheaded after 16 years of keeping her in custody at the expense of the Talbots. The assignment, initially seen by George Talbot and his businesswoman/developer wife Bess as honour and privilege turns into a burden which ruins their fortune. I am nobody’s agent. I am no bought opinion. I am no hired blade. I am neither Cecil’s spy nor executioner. I wish to God that I were not here in London, on this bad business, but home at Chatsworth House with my darling innocent wife Bess, in the simple country and far away from the conspiracies and perils of court. I can’t say that I am happy. I can’t say that I like this. But I will do my duty–God knows that I always do my duty (Gregory 2011, 4).

The man who used to be his own master realizes that he does not have any control over the events which happen in his environment, the information that reaches him, the political plans of the queen and the pivotal role she has designed for him. The official custodian of Queen

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Mary becomes her secret friend and admirer, ruining his marriage and his inner consistency. Grounded in his own sense of identity, he feels at loss when confronted with his own emotions and new expectations created by the politics of the state and the plotting of the Scots Queen. I am not myself. The thought checks me as I go down the creaking stairs and let myself out of the front door. A sentry in the doorway gives an awkward salute as he sees me and lets me go by. I am not myself. I am not the husband that I was, not the servant of the queen. I am not longer a Talbot, famed for loyalty and steadiness of purpose. I no longer sit well in my clothes, in my place, in my dignity. I feel blown all about, I feel tumbled over by these great gales of history. I feel like a powerless boy (Gregory 2011, 227).

Experiencing cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of human existence. “In place of ‘dissonance’ one can substitute other notions similar in nature, such as ‘hunger’, ‘frustration’, or ‘disequilibrium’” writes Festinger (1985, 3). The emotional discomfort triggered by holding inconsistent attitudes (cognitions) or the inner conflict resulting from the inconsistency between beliefs and overt behaviour leads to attitude modification so to make the belief pattern congruent with own behaviour or new cognitions, thus to re-defining of the self. The frequency of occurrence, direction, success or failure of this process depends on many factors. Such an act of disintegration/re-integration has been a recurrent motif in culture and literature from King Oedipus, to Hamlet and Macbeth to The Star Wars trilogy.

“Thus I play in one person many people / And none contented” (Richard II, 5.5.31-32)

The self-defining process, the discovery of the self takes place in the context of culture and society. The impact of social experience is felt across the whole lifespan. Socialization exerted by parents, family and friends, acculturation to stereotypes and limited and limiting roles, inheritance of local identity and cultural myths, acknowledgment of the legacy of history contribute to the formation of poly-identity comprised of personal, racial, national, group or gender identities. The formation of identity is an ongoing process in which the knowledge of the self stands in relation to the society. One of the proposed distinctions concerned with identity that can be found in modern psychology is the distinction between personal identity and social identity. On the one hand an individual has

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knowledge about his/her own feelings and needs, on the other hand perceives himself/herself in the social context, and is aware of social requirements in the form of ‘social laws’ and practices, expectations and desires of close community. The name which is given to us on the day of birth is emblematic of our identity. Numerology, an ancient based method of fortune-telling attaches a series of digits to a person’s name to reveal the person’s true nature or predict the future. The act of changing one’s name into a new one for some people maybe a manifestation of breaking with their previous life and identity they do not accept, for others, like artists, assuming a pen or stage name may stand for acquiring a new public image, their artistic identity. One of the elements of marital rites of passage the bride is supposed to go through in patriarchal society is to give up her family name and assume the name of her husband–her tribal affiliation, her sense of belonging to a particular social group and her erstwhile identity have to change. However, today’s growth of gender awareness and its legal recognition allow women to retain their maiden names on marriage as an overt manifestation of their personal identity. Social pressure or stimulation may lead to mental transformations resulting in dissolution of the previous identity and a new self-definition. Torture used in witch trials in pre-modern Europe led not only to false confessions and accusations, but it could also make the victim believe to be a witch. Several young girls of Salem, stimulated by voodoo tales, claimed to be possessed by the devil. Their subsequent and indiscriminate accusations resulted in the execution of innocent people. The community of Salem responded to the psychosocial situation with general public panic. The fear sprang from the system of beliefs held at those times– witchcraft worked because the persons involved believed in it. Surely, public executions of witches were used by the authorities as a means to threaten and intimidate the local people, but they could also give them a sense of belonging to a particular community, the community of ruleabiding non-witches. Past and present, mass events create and sustain social identity. Sports and culture shows, fundraisers and even house parties all help in understanding of the self as a social being. National identity is inseparable from history–it has its roots in religion and politics of the past. The relationship between the individual and the community is embedded in historical moments, myths and rituals which resonate with other societies. Being an “ideological construction by which [a nation] defines its difference from its neighbours and from the rest of the international community” (Howells 2005, 11), a nation’s identity is construed in relation to some unifying symbols specific of the national

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heritage, though it is “an increasingly difficult thing to do in the late modern world of global communications and transnational economic relations” (Howells 2005, 11). The central symbol for Canadian culture is wilderness and the myth of survival, a multi-faceted and adaptable idea, a survival of the early settlers in the face of hostile elements but also survival of a crisis or disaster; for the Americans this is the symbol of the frontier, a flexible idea that suggests a place which is new and where the old order can be discarded and life is expanding; the English culture is unified by the island, a self-contained body politic, evolving organically, with a hierarchical structure (Atwood 1972, 31-32). Polish culture and national identity would evolve around partitions, wars and uprisings, the Romantic heritage, and more recently around the Solidarity movement and the person of John Paul II. Will people continue making historical sense of their lives out of material and symbolic aspects of national heritage? Will pan-European identity or global consumer culture replace the national ones? Maybe we shall witness a resurgence of nationalisms in the years to come. Or maybe we shall simply learn how to peaceably and comfortably function simultaneously in more than one culture, just as we learn how to perform different roles in life. Formation of identity, either personal or social, is a cumulative and inexorable process.

“What is your substance, whereof are you made?” (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 53.1)

The essays in this collection explore the issues of multiple social and ethnic identities. The contributors are scholars of multicultural experience who employ different interpretative strategies indicative of different backgrounds and interests. Offering literary, cultural, social, and historical perspectives the essays discuss issues related to the fields of contemporary literature, (popular) culture, gender studies, sociology, and history. The first group of essays by Ferne Louanne Regis, Simon Bacon, Karen Sanderson Cole, Joanna Witkowska and Hui-Lien Yeh examine the topics of ethnic and national identity. Simon Bacon bases his discussion of difference and otherness in the film The Breed directed by Michael Oblovitz. In this vampire narrative set in a dystopian future vampirism metaphorically conflates with Jewish Diaspora. The newly emergent vampire community, excluded from the human, normalized society, is exiled into the otherness. Considering the category of otherness in relation to diasporic identity the author concludes that collective identity is constructed by forms of experience that interrelate memory, history and

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belonging. Ferne Louanne Regis’s essay explores (from historical and modern perspectives) the marginalization of the Douglas in the society, literature and popular culture of today’s Trinidad. This ethnic group of mixed African and Indian descent, though present in Trinidad from the end of the 19th century, is not seen as a collective identity. The ambiguous position they have in the society limits their impact on their environment. Though the Douglas are no longer totally omitted in the public discourse, their position still remains ambivalent. Maintaining the sense of national identity in the times of a crisis is the concern of the essay by Joanna Witkowska. Examining the accounts of those involved, the author describes the experience of Polish pilots who found their temporal home in Britain during World War II. Though plunged into a different and unknown culture and facing the threat of death in combat, they managed to retain their identity of Polish fighter pilots, which they manifested in their behaviour, thus preserving their personal and professional integrity and fighting with the misconceptions about Poles. Karen Sanderson Cole and Hui-Lien Yeh in their studies of two novels investigate the issue of ethnic identity. Gloria Naylor’s novel Mama Day (Karen Sanderson Cole) combining African oral tradition with elements of European romance shows how these traditions can be creolized in the context of a new World. The central romance of two Black characters serves as a vehicle for fashioning a new identity of African Diaspora out of cultural patterns and stereotypes. The ghost in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter (HuiLien Yeah) is not a mere superstition but an intermediary in the process of retrieving ethnic identity: it represents the protagonist’s otherness and, metaphorically, Chinese American ethnicity. The three final essays by Barbara Kijek, Barbara Braid and Diana Ismail address the question of gender identity in literature. Representing feminist disability studies, in her reading of Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White Barbara Braid talks about “pathologisation of the female identity” in (Neo-)Victorian society resulting from the society’s exorbitant demands, norms of femininity, and stifled lifestyles which lead to “madness”–cases of eccentric or unfeminine behaviours. In the textual analysis of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman Barbara Kijek presents the woman as a consumable commodity in patriarchal society which traditionally constructs the man as a carnivore and the hunter and the woman as the game and prey. But eventually the female protagonist manages to reintegrate her mind and body to become a “subject and consumer herself.” Successive editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass are the concern of Diana Ismail, who investigates how female and male attributes are characterized by the poet. The analysis of the text from

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the point of view of the use of vocabulary, figures of speech and images brings about the conclusion that gender in The Leaves of Grass appears to be a flexible concept as no strict boundaries between the male and female are found.

References Atwood, Margaret. 1972. Survival: a Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: Anansi. Erikson, Erik. 1968. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton. Festinger, Leon. 1985. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gregory, Philippa. 2011. The Other Queen. London: Harper Collins. Howells, Coral Ann. 2005. Margaret Atwood. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahler, Margaret. 1975. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant. New York: Basic Books. Rogers, Carl. 1989. On Becoming a Person. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

PART ONE: ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

CHAPTER ONE THE DOUGLA IN TRINIDAD: OMITTED OR DENIED? FERNE LOUANNE REGIS

The development of modern Trinidad dates to the late 18th century when the then Spanish administration invited French Antillean planters to settle in the island. Since then, development has been accompanied by continual contestation for power and access to resources between Spaniards, French, and the British who captured the island in 1797, groups of West Africans who came as slaves and as free men, Indians who came as indentured labourers between 1845 and 1917, and members of other smaller racial/ethnic groups. The Indians and the Africans, the two largest groups, have been involved in direct contestation for several decades and this has marginalized the Douglas, the offspring of Indo-African unions. The comparatively recent academic preoccupation with ethnicity and the corollary preoccupation with establishing right to presence have generated a considerable corpus of texts in social history. Professional and amateur historians have published biographies, autobiographies, family studies and histories of the clan and of the tribe. Celebrations of anniversaries of arrival have generated copious documents. Social scientists have also tested their numerous hypotheses about the multiple complex processes of Creolisation. In the press of ethnic concerns, however, the Douglas have been almost completely overlooked in some cases and deliberately marginalized in others. The chapter establishes the historical antecedents for the marginalization of the Douglas and their ambiguous position in today’s society. It begins by mapping the entry of East Indians into Trinidad as the background to establishing the position of Douglas in the social pyramid which perpetuates to some extent the classical race-ethnicity-class divisions inherited from slavery, indentureship and colonialism.

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The Dougla The term Dougla derives from the Indic dogla which is defined by Platts (1884, 534) as a person of impure breed, a hybrid, a mongrel; a twofaced or deceitful person and a hypocrite. In its transplanted usage by the Indians in Trinidad and Guyana, however, the term Dougla is employed to designate the offspring of an Indian and an African (Creole) and previously meant “outcaste” (Malik 1971, 20). Our ignorance of the fine details of social life among the indentured Indians who migrated to Trinidad between 1845 and 1917 denies us knowledge of the period during which the term Dougla was applied to the first generation Indo-Africans but by 1933, the term appeared in mainstream creative writing as the descriptor for such children. Through continued processes of semantic expansion and later amelioration, however, the term now denotes “all persons of mixed African and Indian descent” (Alleyne 2002, 236). A Dougla is, therefore, the offspring of any of the following combinations: African mother/ Indian father; African father/ Indian mother; African mother/Dougla father; African father/ Dougla mother; Indian mother/ Dougla father; Indian father/ Dougla mother; Dougla mother/ Dougla father. While genotype and phenotype dictate that a Dougla is the offspring of African and Indian lineage, the degree of this mixture is always a cause for contention and raises a major problem in the business of establishing a distinct Dougla identity. Rahim (2007) asserts that it is the degree of Indianness that is the major element in the ascription of Dougla identity but perception and self-perception similarly play critical roles in assessing the Dougla identity. Age, class, education, gender, regional location and sex also figure prominently in perception and self-perception and it is not certain how many of those categorising themselves in the official censuses as “Mixed,” “Other” or “Not stated” may be counted as Douglas by others including Douglas. Trinidad’s hypersensitivity to colour is another determinant. Light-skinned Douglas may well escape the designation but their darker skinned counterparts–who in some cases may be their relatives–may be unable to do so. Douglas’s perception of themselves also creates the problem of identity and linkage. At any point in time Douglas can align themselves to one ancestor group or the other without claiming a

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separate identity. On the other hand, because of personal circumstances and experiences, Douglas may disavow either community and declare themselves Trinidadian, thus claiming a national identity as an ethnic identity, as happens in Belize for reasons of affirming allegiance to national sovereignty (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985, 232-243). Dougla identity is therefore polymorphous and adds another layered dimension to a society described by some as plural and by others as stratified.

The Coming of the Indians The early 19th-century Trinidad was a plantation economy based on the labour of enslaved Africans. Emancipation in 1838 precipitated fears among British planters that they would be forced out of sugar production. Instead of rationalizing their methods of production they chose to persist with the time-tested practice of deploying cheap reliable labour especially during the period of harvest. China, Madeira, Africa, Venezuela and the British West Indies were tapped as labour sources. Between 1853 and 1866, 2048 Chinese labourers arrived to work on the estates mainly in Central Trinidad, while between 1846-1859 some 1300 Portuguese labourers were recruited from the archipelago of Madeira off the Atlantic coast of North Africa (Ferreira 1994, 17). Between 1841 and 1867, over 10,000 freed and re-captive Africans from Sierra Leone, St Helena and the Kru coast near Liberia added to the ethnic complexity of the island (Warner-Lewis 1991, 14). Wood (1968) reports that from the end of 1839 to the end of 1849, 10,278 British West Indians immigrated to Trinidad. India, however, proved to be the most suitable source for plantation labour and some 145,000 East Indians were introduced into Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. Throughout the 19th century increasing numbers of indentured Indians opted to make Trinidad their new home by accepting the government’s grant of land in lieu of a return passage to India. Like foreigners to any country, the Indians who lived in Trinidad in the 19th and early 20th century initially formed a closed community. This enabled them to preserve and maintain their languages, culture and religious rites and rituals. Their spatial and occupational segregation ensured the retention, reinterpretation and in some cases fossilisation of major cultural practices. Their intercourse with other ethnic groups, however, added to the population of mixed individuals and their intercourse with Africans birthed the Douglas with whom they had shared an ambivalent relationship throughout the years.

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Most conventional scholarship follows Donald Wood’s (1968) lead in denying Indo-African sexual unions until the end of the 19th century. Wood reproduces a 19th century document which is often cited as the major evidence of Indian attitudes towards the Africans during indentureship: Some [Indians] who had returned to Calcutta from British Guiana were asked by the protector of Immigrants there what they thought of Africans. “They spoke of them with the greatest disgust, saying they are a coarse woolly headed race, more like monkeys than human beings and that they never associated with them in any way” (138).

To this Wood adds, “There seems no reason to believe that the Indians who went to Trinidad thought any more favourably of their neighbours” (1968, 138). Wood also notes that as late as in 1871, 26 years after their arrival, “Dr. Henry Mitchell [Protector of the Immigrants] believed that no single instance of co-habitation with a Negro existed among the 9,000 male and female indentured labourers” (1968, 138). The information supplied by Wood functions as the basis for the denial of the Dougla presence in the 19th-century Trinidad. The historical accounts and commentaries, which testify to Indian sexual self-restraint where Africans are concerned, are countered inadvertently by John Morton, the Presbyterian missionary who proselytized the Indian immigrants of South and Central Trinidad particularly. In 1876 he recorded that “A few children are to be met with born of Madras and Creole parents and some also of Madras and Chinese parents – the Madrasee being the mother” (qtd. in Moore 1995, 238). Morton surmises that the dark-skinned Madrasee women who cohabited with Creoles and Chinese were enticed by the creature comforts which could be provided by African drivers and stock-keepers and Chinese shopkeepers. It is not outside the realm of possibility that some of those “darkskinned Madrasee women” who cohabited with Africans may themselves have been Douglas. Fitz Baptiste, reporting on his study tour of India, testifies to evidence of an ancient Dougla tradition inside India and concludes that from the geographical location of this tradition, “We may well have to consider that indentures who came here would have some kind of mixture” (Duke-Westfield 1997, 10). There are, however, no historical reports or accounts that suggest there were any persons who were dougloid. One wonders if those recording the arrival and settlement of the Indians wrote off the Douglas as madrasse because of their dark skins and curly hair. One wonders even more at the status of these Douglas who would have formed part of the group of Indian indentured labourers: what was life like for them given the ambivalence of their

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ethnic make-up and the negative and pejorative connotations signalled by this make-up?

The Comparative Invisibility of the Douglas In Trinidad where being of mixed ancestry is sometimes looked upon as the characteristic of the true indigene, Douglas in general still wear the stigma associated with the mutual aversion shared by some Africans and Indians. Indo-Trinidadian historians studiously ignore the Dougla presence and we are indebted to foreign Trinidadianists like Niehoffs (1960) and Malik (1971) for their illumination of Indo-Trinidadian perspectives on this seemingly taboo group. Ramesar, who married into the Indo-Trinidadian community, accepts the reality of inter-racial sexual relations in the early 20th century although she seems reluctant to acknowledge the Africans as sexual partners for the Indians and does not ever mention the word Dougla in her detailed study of the Indians in Trinidad between 1880 and 1946 (1994). In her study, the Dougla presence is hidden in the generic term “Indian Creoles”, a term which, as Kuczynski points out, was used in the 1946 census to refer to “persons of mixed East Indian origin, on the whole people who had an East Indian father or an East Indian mother only” (339). Examining the statistics which testify to Indian-African sexual liaisons in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Ramesar is quick to point out that the percentages were less for the Indians than for the Chinese. Subscribing to the traditional myths of Indian purity and perhaps of anti-African bias, she points out that inter-racial sexual relationships happened more readily in the city of Port of Spain and on estates in places like Cedros on the southwestern promontory than on the sugar estates in Central Trinidad where the majority of Indian communities were located. Contrary to Ramesar’s opinion, however, the demographic evidence indicates African-Indian unions even in areas dominated by the Indians, a fact confirmed in Harewood’s assertion that “[t]he pattern for the Mixed ethnic group is generally similar to that of the population of African descent” (1994, 105). Although Ramesar offers the explanation that the Indian fathers of mixed race children in urban areas were “probably westernized individuals who sought educated spouses”, she concedes, “changed social relationships had also affected the lower levels in society”(1994, 146). This too is countered by other evidence. Thomasos’ short story “The Dougla” (1933), C.L.R. James’ “Triumph” (1929) and his novel Minty Alley (1936) as well as Alfred Mendes’ novel Black Fauns (1935) demonstrate that inter-racial mixing was not necessarily inspired by social climbing. In their works

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Chapter One

Douglas formed part of Black lower class urban society where their presence occasioned no particular comment about their ethnicity. In point of fact, they are presented as deracinated individuals engaged in the amoral struggle for survival which was the lot of the lower class Africans in Port of Spain. The 19th-century attitudes to Douglas still inform the thinking of some Indians. In 2005 while delivering the feature address at the official launch of the Indian Arrival Day Heritage Village set up by the El Dorado Shiv Mandir, Elizabeth Rosabelle Sieusarran, a lecturer at the then School of Continuing Studies at the University of West Indies, said: In our quest for establishing unity among our people it is imperative for us to note a rapidly increasing phenomenon from the rise of a western system of education and the consequential westernisation of the Indian community. This has resulted in the prevalence of inter-caste, inter religious and interracial marriages. The Indian community has to decide how to handle the offspring of this significant group locally referred to as douglas. Do we accept them or ostracise them? Whatever course is adopted, the fragmentation of the Indian community must be avoided. Above all, […] Our ancestors gave their blood and we have laboured to enrich our country. We live in a multi-cultural society and co-existence is a necessary ingredient for our success in the future (Bowman 2005, 5).

Although Sieusarran invites her audience to reflect upon the problems caused by westernisation, she reduces all of these to the fragmentation caused by “the prevalence of inter-caste, inter-religious and inter-racial marriages”. She then ignores the progeny of the many Indian-non-Indian relationships who are visible on the social landscape, and targets the Douglas as the source of the problem of fragmentation within the Indian community. While this acknowledgement of the existence of the Douglas and of their organic connection to the Indian communities goes beyond the traditional Indian perception of their community, Sieusarran’s statement is rooted in the 19th-century prejudice against Indian cohabitation with Africans. According to the report, at one point during her address she stopped and looked around the mandir allegedly to see if there were any Douglas present. This action and the general tone of her address indicate that the Dougla is still perceived as a problem by some Indians even while they advocate co-existence in a multi-cultural society.

Mixed, Other or Not Stated? What is perceived impressionistically as a growth in the population of Douglas is not represented in the official censuses which mystify the

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situation of the growing Dougla population. Kuczynski points out that the 1931 census noted that 1713 persons were born to Indian fathers only while 805 were born to Indian mothers only: a total of 2518. Clearly much had changed since the days of John Morton, or conversely Morton may have misrepresented the complicity of Indian males in miscegenation. While Kuczynski’s statistics implicate both males and females in the business of miscegenation, with males twice as likely to co-habit with non-Indians than females, they do not inform us of the race of the other parent. Kuczynski also points out that in the 1946 census East Indian Creoles were explained as “persons of mixed East Indian origin, on the whole people who had an East Indian father or an East Indian mother only” (1953, 339). For this category he gives the number of 8406 without providing the information about the sex of the parents as he had done for the 1931 census; he also does not inform about the race or ethnicity of the other parent. Harewood (1975, 96) informs us that these 8406 souls were included in the category “Mixed” where they joined a total of 70,369 mulattoes and other people of mixed racial ancestry. The ill-defined categories “Other” and “Not Stated” read suspiciously as attitudes to enumeration by ethnicity rather than a declaration of belonging to any of the categories recognizable by phenotype and “identified by others, as constituting a category distinguishable from other categories of the same order” (Barth 1969, 10-11) hold sway. The Douglas were lost in all of this. The national population census of 2011, however, includes under the umbrella category “mixed” a separate sub-category which recognises this particular mixture. Although it fails to employ the term Dougla perhaps because of a taboo against its usage in formal documents and situations, the fact that the authorities have acknowledged Douglas as a group is a welcome step.

The Dougla in the Social Structure Although Morton confirmed a Dougla presence in Trinidad as early as 1876, Douglas were and still are never truly seen as a collective identity. This is so because of the absence of identifiable locations and of distinguishing cultural features. Despite what seems to be a relaxation of hostility to mixed marriages (St Bernard 2000) and despite the declaration by Alleyne (2002) about the potential benefits of hybrid groups, Douglas are not specifically designated in the most recent official census as constituting a marginal ethnic community or even a biracial minority group. They are denied that corporate identity because of what Schilling-

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Estes (2004) describes as the dominant culture’s belief that “‘authentic’ tribal groups must be of homogenous rather than multi-tribal origin” (167). It is quite possible that the failure on the part of officialdom to register the Douglas as a group may have resulted in the failure of the Douglas to recognize themselves as such. Lacking official recognition and sharing the categories “Mixed” and “Other” with individuals of any of the numerous permutations possible may have been a factor in their failure to declare themselves an ethnic group or a biracial minority. Douglas are a relatively new addition to the social landscape and their ambiguous positioning has denied them the chance to impact their social environment in the way other late arriving immigrant groups have done. Trinidad has been described as a plantation economy and society in the sense that the hierarchy which governed the plantation during the period of colonialism is still in evidence today (Best and Levitt 2009). Socioeconomic status is no longer dependent solely upon race, ethnicity and colour but these are still important determinants of social position. Most of Trinidad’s recent social history is characterized by a continuous contestation for power and access to resources on the part of the groups that make up the society. Douglas, who did not form a group, were marginal to the contestations of the 19th and early 20th centuries when tensions centred around the attempts by the white plantocracy to constrain the emerging black and brown meritocracy (Brereton 1979). As individuals, Douglas too were granted the vote when the granting of universal adult suffrage in 1946 elevated the African-Indian contestation to the national stage but the subsequent ethnicisation of politics removed them even further from the centre of national affairs. This marginalisation is adequately captured in calypsonian Dougla’s “Split Me in Two” (1961) which highlights the predicament of the Dougla in a situation in which ethnicity was becoming more assertive and aggressive as the two major groups sought to position themselves advantageously in the soon-to-be-independent Trinidad and Tobago. Despite the promises of constitutional independence the social and economic inequalities of colonialism persisted. The Black Power Revolution of 1970 symbolized the ethnic and also class-based contestation between Black and White but the Indians read in Black Power’s acceptance of African identity markers, a summons for the reinvigoration of their Hindu selves (Vertovec 1992). Regis (2002, 40) notes that in the post-1970 revitalization of Hinduism, “‘Indian’ became synonymous with ‘Hindu’, an exclusionary identification which marginalized the urban pro-PNM Muslims and Christians.” It also further marginalized the Douglas whose part African heritage renders them suspect to many Indians.

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In the post-1970 period the “seasonal rhetoric of race relations was replaced by a metadiscourse of race” (Harney 1996, 37) as African-Indian contestation dominated social and even cultural life. This was dramatised in the late 1980s when a heated debate arose after the National Alliance for Reconstruction, the government of the day, proposed a plan for compulsory national service. This proposal foundered because purists, actuated by their own fears, anxieties and insecurities, represented it as a reprehensible scheme for enforced miscegenation. The term douglarisation, the process by which Douglas are birthed, was bandied about as potentially the most unwelcome outcome of the plan as spokespersons claiming to represent silent masses of Indians and Africans engaged in a protracted debate (Regis 2002, 49-69). This debate ignored the sensitivities of Dougla individuals: no collective Dougla voice emerged to participate in the prolonged national debate; also, Douglas were not invited qua Douglas to publicly pronounce on the issue. In Trinidad despite the presence of numerous individuals of mixed ‘race(s)’, group theory based on race and latterly on ethnicity still holds sway (Best 1991). Mixed individuals have always been free to choose the group to which they belong or the group which accommodates them. The absence of an ancestral, or better, of one ancestral homeland which functions as a symbolic homeland and source of inspiration and consolation may have also militated against the formation of a Dougla community. Unlike other recognised ethnic groups Douglas lack an organization and a headquarters, and this further contributes to the absence of a recognised community. It is still too early to gauge the impact of official recognition in the 2010 census and in other sociological and political polls.

Portrayals in Literature and Popular Culture Although Douglas are present in the creative writing of the 1930s, Dougla identity as a social construct was not the central issue in those works even when major characters were Douglas. Douglas are marginal even in the Calypso, the popular song-dance art form which originated in Trinidad. Although the Calypso claims justifiably to be “an editorial in song of the life that we undergo” (Duke 1967, “What is a Calypso”), the Dougla as a theme or subject is largely absent despite the fact that several competent Dougla singers such as King Iere, Dougla, Young Killer, Kenny J and Skatie have graced the calypso stage from the 1920s to the present. The neglect of the Dougla is even more remarkable when one considers Louis Regis’ affirmation that “Calypso fictions and

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narratives venture into vitally important areas of social discourse which because of unspoken protocol of civil discourse remain sensitive areas of darkness” (1998, 31). The national debate on douglarisation in the late 1980s generated only a few calypsos which is a surprising development given the intensity of the debate and the number of individuals making public statements. A measure of the society’s general indifference to the Dougla question is the general lack of public response even when calypsos on the Dougla are popular or controversial. In 1961, calypsonian Dougla, whose sobriquet reflects his acceptance and affirmation of his identity, composed and performed “Split Me in Two” in which the narrator represents the situation of the Dougla as one of isolation from or of dangerous neutrality between the warring Africans and Indians intent upon positioning their group strategically in the soon-to-become independent state. Dougla’s protagonist recounts situations which may be characteristic calypso fictions or exaggerations, and may not have been the life experiences of Dougla himself who was a native of Belmont, a tolerant district of Port of Spain. The narrator/protagonist of “Split Me in Two” describes his childhood as one of loneliness: “always by myself like a lil monkey/ Not one single child wouldn’t play with me”. He narrates a traumatic and perhaps fictional incident in adulthood when warring Africans and Indians equally but separately beat him as a member of the rival group. In the final stanza, however, he redeems Dougla identity in terms of its ability to boast not one heritage but two. This well-composed calypso elevated him to national Calypso King, the most prestigious award in calypsodom. This public recognition and acclaim, however, did not promote any sustained national interest in the predicament of the Douglas; neither did they promote the emergence of a collective Dougla voice. Neither did a voice emerge when the debate on douglarisation claimed the attention of the national community in the 1980s. Instead, calypsonian The Mighty Composer, a member of the African Advancement, an organization opposed to racial inter-marriage, wrote “Douglarisation” which argues for “peaceful co-existence” and “mutual respect and cooperation” but insists, “Douglarisation is bending nature’s laws”. Like Morton and Ramesar, Composer cannot countenance the possibility of disinterested love across ethnic boundaries and barriers. The ambivalence towards Douglas is evident in all quarters. A decade later, Brother Marvin projects Dougla identity in his “Jahaaji Bhai” (1996) but, perhaps conscious that a party with its centre of gravity in the Indian communities had ascended to government, subsumes this Dougla identity in Indo-Trinidadian identity and his privileging of the

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latter at the expense of African identity embroiled his beautiful calypso in a mega-controversy. Marvin intended the extremely popular “Jahaaji Bhai” to unite the ethnic groups based on the shared experience of immigration, but his third stanza sparked controversy: For those who playing ignorant Talking ‘bout true African descendant If yuh want to know the truth Take a trip back to yuh roots And somewhere on that journey Yuh go see a man in a dhoti Saying he prayers in front a jhandi

Some Pan African activists repudiated this stanza and by extension the entire calypso while the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, which claims to represent Hindu Trinidad, invited Marvin to their annual Phagwa (Holi) celebrations and crowned him their Monarch in a political ploy perhaps meant to compensate for his not winning the Calypso Monarch title. The Africans and Indians, caught up in the heat of their personal argument, ignored the fact that the calypso began as Marvin’s affirmation of his Dougla identity. As happened in the late 1980s, the Dougla voice was not invited to mediate the dispute between the Africans and Indians or even to speak for the Douglas as a group. The Dougla dilemma, as some term it, is not seen as a national issue. In spite of its intent, “Jahaaji Bhai” exemplifies the peculiar situation that the inevitable mixing of the African and Indian has not made circumstances any less rigid but in fact has conjured up even more complex issues of ethnic loyalty.

Emergent Dougla Identity Reddock’s (1994) essay is the first academic study on the Douglas. The paper highlights the concerns of the people of mixed African and Indian descent in the face of inter-ethnic conflict which underlies many social relations in the country and which escalates during periods of political or economic crisis. It also purports to “give expression to a reality which for too long has existed in the shadows of our being” (1994, 99). Reddock concludes that Dougla and douglarisation connote different things for each donor group. For some Indians douglarisation represents “increasing domination for Indians by an inferior cultural group, the Africans in a (sic) Afro-Creole dominant society. While for some Africans it represents one solution to the present problem of racial tension” (1994,

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123). Additionally, some see douglarisation as a reality while others treat it as a metaphor. Reddock confirms that, for most of their existence, Douglas did not make their voice heard as Douglas about the issues in the country that were affecting them. Even when they were the subjects of discussion they were generally objectified and treated dismissively and negatively. In fact, Douglas generally fail to speak up as individuals or as representatives of a silent unnumbered minority. This noticeable silence is a phenomenon contrary to standard practice in Trinidad where self-declared spokespersons aggressively claim to represent sections of the masses on all issues and especially the pervasive ethnicisation of same. Although Trinidad is a society where “ethnicity permeates all of society’s social, cultural, political and economic institutions and practices” (Yelvington 1993, 1) concerns about Dougla identity do not play a central role in the daily corporate life of the nation. In all fairness, however, it can be pointed out that mixed race individuals operate as individuals, making their separate peace with the system and negotiating their separate paths to success or survival through the entanglements of ethnic contestation. Revising the essay in 2000 Reddock voices the opinion that the ascension of a largely Indo-Trinidadian administration could bring about “an entirely new range of responses to Douglarisation as some of the concerns of Indo-Trinidadians are recontextualized” (332). Unfortunately, her projected response to Douglarisation did not materialise. In point of fact, the controversy centring on Bro Marvin’s 1996 calypso “Jahaaji Bhai” highlighted the continuance of the African-Indian contestation and the continuing marginalization of the Douglas. Reddock is overly optimistic about the prospects of Dougla identity and its future positive role in the society. She argues that prior to the historic Indian ascension to office in 1995: tentative emergences of the long-silenced ‘Dougla’ voice were beginning to emerge. Much of this was more implicit than explicit. Over the decade a well-developed genre of what could be termed ‘Dougla music’ had developed, sung by persons of different ethnicities (193).

To her way of thinking this “Dougla voice” manifested in the calypsos and soca-songs which incorporated Indian words, rhythms and topics and Indian instruments. She declares that the emergence of this “Dougla voice” was fulfilled in soca chutney. In support of her claim she examines the careers of Dougla calypsonians Chris Garcia and Brother Marvin and credits their successes to their transgressive lyrics and music which appealed equally to members of the two rival ethnic communities.

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Given her definition of Dougla music, however, Reddock should have dated the emergence of this phenomenon at least to some calypsos of the 1930s and 1950s, to the more complex fusions emerging from neighbouring British Guiana in the 1950s, and more directly to Lord Shorty’s rhythmic transgressivity of the early 1970s in Trinidad which resulted in sokah, as Shorty terms the fusion between Calypso and Indic music. He thus differentiates Sokah from soca, originally the fusion of Soul and Calypso, which he also developed. Reddock’s optimistic response towards Marvin and Garcia fails to take into consideration the whimsicality and fickleness of Carnival audiences and inexcusably neglects to note their precipitous decline. She also does not engage chutney soca, which is touted as fusion music but which is perceived as an Indian appropriation of soca beats designed to establish an Indian presence in Carnival. Though researchers and laypersons alike have offered different conclusions about Dougla identity and the role of Douglas in their host societies (Ferne Regis 2010) Douglas too hold various and at times opposing positions about their role and identity. Reddock’s (1994) essay cites a range of negative responses regarding the experience of being a Dougla while my own research conducted in 2001-2010 has unearthed neutral and even positive sentiments. It is possible that time may be the critical factor affecting this outcome. Many older Douglas who are conscious of the word’s etymology and who may have experienced first hand the consequences of being caught in the middle of opposing groups seem to resist the designation. The generation birthed after 1970, however, who are further removed from that reality appear to accept the title with relative ease. Perhaps this acceptance also relates to a global paradigm shift where mixed-race groups are now asserting themselves into their social landscapes. The convenient appropriation of Dougla identity by people who do not seem to be Douglas attests to the metaphorical qualities the term has assumed in some circles. Puri (2004) uses it as a “rich symbolic resource for interracial unity” (221) capable of “unmask[ing] power and symbolically redraw[ing] lines” while the producers of a magazine entitled ‘dougla’ accept it as a mentality rather than an ethnicity. Taken together these statements plus official recognition in the most recent census testify to the extent to which the Dougla is assuming a place on the social landscape but even with this progression there still lurks a general sense of ambivalence towards the group. While they are no longer totally omitted many still choose to deny Douglas a place within the

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society. As Alleyne (2002, 252) and Reddock (1994, 124) posit only time will tell exactly how these emergences will unfold.

References Abdulah, Norma, ed. 1985. Trinidad and Tobago 1985. A Demographic Analysis. UNFPA Caricom Secretariat. Allard, Francesca. 2000. “The Evolution of Parang (Music and Text) in Trinidad from 1900-1997.” MA diss. UWI St Augustine. Alleyne, Mervyn. 2002. The Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World. Barbados: UWI Press. Anthony, Michael. 1967. Green Days by the River. London: Deutsch. Barth, Fredrik. 1998. “Introduction.” In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, edited by Frederik Barth, 10-11. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland. Best, Lloyd. 1991. “The nine political tribes of Trinidad and Tobago.” In Social and Occupational Stratification in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, edited by Selwyn Ryan, 145-146. UWI St Augustine: ISER. Best, Lloyd, and Kari Polani Levitt. 2009. Essays On the Theory of Plantation Economy. Jamaica: The University of the West Indies Press. Black, J. K. et. al. 1976. Area Handbook for Trinidad and Tobago, Foreign Area Studies, American University Washington D.C. Bowman, Wayne. 2005. “Dougla Dilemma” Trinidad Express, May 16, 5. Brereton, Bridget. 1974.“The Foundations of Prejudice: Indians and Africans in 19th Century Trinidad” Caribbean Issues 1(1): 15-28. —. 1979. Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brereton, Bridget. 1981. A History of Modern Trinidad 1783-1962. Kingston: Heinemann. Capildeo, Surendranath. 1991. “Hinduism in Trinidad and Tobago.” In Social and Occupational Stratification in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago, edited by Selwyn Ryan, 331-36. St Augustine: ISER, UWI. Daly, Vere. 1975. A Short History of the Guyanese People. London: Macmillan Education. Das, Shyam Sundar. ed. 1968. Hindi shabd sagar. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha. Duke-Westfield, Nicole. 1997. “Jahaaji Bhai lives: UWI historian finds evidence of ancient Dougla tradition inside India.” Sunday Express, 9 Feb, 10.

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Ferreira, Jo-Anne. 1994. The Portuguese of Trinidad and Tobago: Portrait of an Ethnic Minority. St Augustine: ISER, UWI. Harewood, Jack. 1975. The Population of Trinidad and Tobago. Paris: C.I.C.R.E.D Series. Harney, Stefano. 1996. Nationalism and identity: Culture and the Imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora. Kingston: The Press UWI. James, C. L. R. 1999. “Triumph.” In The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, edited by Stewart Brown and John Wickham, 35-49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —. 1971. Minty Alley. London: New Beacon. Kuczynski, R. R. 1953. Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire. Volume 3. West Indian and American Territories. London: Oxford University Press. Le Page, R. B. and Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Look Lai, Walton. 1998. The Chinese in the West Indies 1806-1995: A Documentary History. Barbados: The Press, UWI. Malik, Yogendra. 1971. East Indians in Trinidad: A Study in Minority Politics. London: Oxford University Press. Mendes, Alfred. 1984 Black Fauns. London: New Beacon. Niehoff, Arthur and Juanita Niehoff. 1960. East Indians in the West Indies Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Public Museum. Noel, Jesse. 1972. Trinidad Province of Venezuela: History of the Spanish Administration of Trinidad. Caracas: Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia. Platts, John T. 1884. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English. London: W. H. Allen & Co. Puri, Shalini. 2004. The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post Nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity. New York: Palgrave. Ramesar, Marianne. 1994. Survivors of Another Crossing: A History of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880-1946. St Augustine: School of Continuing Studies. Rahim, Jennifer. 2007. “Travesao, Three into One Can’t Go.” Paper presented at the Asian Experience in The Caribbean and the Guyanas: Labor, Migration, Literature and Culture, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, November 1-3. Reddock, Rhoda. 1994. “Douglarisation and the Politics of Gender Relations in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago: A Preliminary Exploration.” In Contemporary Issues in Social Science: A Caribbean Perspective, edited by Ramesh Deosaran, Rhoda Reddock and Nassser

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Mustapha, 98-127. St Augustine: Department of Sociology, UWI. Revised and republished in Caribbean Sociology: Introductory Readings ed. Rhoda Reddock and Christine Barrow, Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner, 2001. —. 2000. “Jahaji Bhai: The Emergence of a Dougla Poetics in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago”. In Identity, Ethnicity and Culture in the Caribbean, edited by Premdas, Ralph R., 185-210. St Augustine: UWI. Regis, Ferne Louanne. 2010. "Integration, Neutrality or Separate Identity: 1970 and the Dougla." Paper presented at Reflections, Relevance, and Continuity: Caribbean and Global Perspectives of Black Power, University of the West Indies St. Augustine, Trinidad, September 1819. —. 2011.“The Dougla in Trinidad’s Consciousness.” History In Action 2(1). http://hdl.handle.net/2139/11131. Regis, Louis. 1998. “The Anatomy of Controversy.” Caribbean Dialogues 3(4):31-38. —. 2002. “Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Post 1970 Calypso in Trinidad and Tobago.” PhD Diss. UWI St. Augustine. Ryan, Selwyn, ed. 1991. Social and occupational stratification in contemporary Trinidad and Tobago. St Augustine: ISER, UWI. Sander, Reinhard, ed. 1978. From Trinidad: An Anthology of Early West Indian Writing. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Shorty, Garfield Blackman. 1979. “Interview with Roy Boyke: Man of the Mantra.” Trinidad Carnival, 72-76. St. Bernard, Godfrey. 2000. “Ethnicity and attitudes towards interratial marriages in a multicultural society: the case of Trinidad and Tobago.” In Identity, Ethnicity and Culture in the Caribbean, edited by Ralph Premdas, 157-184. St Augustine: School of Continuing Studies. Vertovec, Steven. 1992. Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socioeconomic change. London: Macmillan. Warner-Lewis, Maureen. 1991. Guinea’s Other Suns: The African Dynamic in Trinidad Culture. Dover, Mass: The Majority Press. Williams, Eric. 1982. History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago. London: Deutsch. Winer, Lise. 2009. Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago. Montreal: MQUP. Wood, Donald. 1968. Trinidad in Transition: The Years after Slavery. London: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER TWO THE VAMPIRIC DIASPORA: THE COMPLICATIONS OF VICTIMHOOD AND POST-MEMORY AS CONFIGURED IN THE JEWISH MIGRANT VAMPIRE SIMON BACON

[R]ecent intercultural and multicultural feminist theory constructs possible post-colonial, nongeneric, and irredeemably specific figures of critical subjectivity, consciousness, and humanity - not in the sacred image of the same, but in the self-critical practice of 'difference', of the I and we that is/are never identical to itself, and so has hope of connection to others (Haraway 1992, 87). Lieutenant Bergin "I guess we're gonna miss the good old days?" Detective Spooner "What good old days?" Lieutenant Bergin "When people were killed by other people!" (I, Robot 2004)

The very nature of the vampire can be seen to embody both the violence of history and the recurrence of traumatic memory, not just through the act of their “turning”, and the constant re-enact of this event in the course of their subsequent feedings but also in their extreme longevity. More often than not the results of this are separation and segregation leaving the vampire permanently exiled from its former state and as “otherness” incarnate, outside and excluded from human, normalised, society. Whilst some vampire narratives continue to conform to this more essentialist view of the revenant, see for example the films Let the Right One In (2008) by Tomas Alfredson, Let Me In (2010) by Matt Reeves and the novels in The Strain Trilogy (2009-2010) by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan others offer a very different perspective. These more “porous” texts allow for the possibility of reintegration, or suturing, of such social and temporal disruptions, and, subsequently, disavow such

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easy solutions looking for ways to create spaces of negotiation and agency. Cinematic representations such as Perfect Creature (2006) by Glenn Standring, Daybreakers (2009) by the Spierig Brothers, and even the Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (2008) in particular, begin to explore ways that this might be accomplished envisioning possible states beyond simplistic binary systems. However, it is to an earlier film I wish to turn; one that offers a somewhat more radical take on these issues. The Breed (2001) by Michael Oblowitz, rather uniquely, conflates vampirism with the Jewish Diaspora, and subsequently, not only complicates notions of victim and victimizer but also ways in which histories. and identities, can become unstabilized and fluid categories. Such de-essentialisation points the way toward a more open reading of memory and history that, through mutual recognition, no longer divides and differentiates along ethnic, racial, and nationalistic lines but allow for a wider conception of integration; what we might consider as a more enunciative approach to the idea of unity in diversity. Avtar Brah concisely sums up such a holistic view thus: “what is humanity if not an intricate mosaic of non-identical kinship?” (1999, 6). The film is set in a distant and dystopian future which harks back to Eastern Europe of the late 1930's.1 Here society is divided, not along racial or ethnic lines, but by genetic difference – as such it is not the vilified Jewish Diaspora that is marginalised but the newly emergent vampire community. Although largely peaceful and wishing for integration into the wider community they are excluded and forced to live separately and apart in run down ghettos outside the main city. However, tensions between the two communities are beginning to rise with a series of unexplained deaths. The plot escalates this with the death of Phil, the partner of Detective Stephan Grant, one of the main characters played by Bokeem Woodbine, by the mysterious and anonymous killer who we recognise only because he is dressed in a homburg and a long black coat. As a consequence Grant is teamed up with a new partner, Aaron Grey, played by Adrian Paul. Their early antagonism is only increased when Grant discovers that not only Grey but also his partner’s killer are in fact vampires. Up to this point Grant had been largely unaware of the “other” community living within the city, and his necessary submersion into this “unknown” world in pursuit of his partner’s killer only increases his hostility towards the vampires. As the film progresses it is revealed that the antagonism and fear that is developing between the two communities has seen the human 1

See also Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) for a similar dystopian vision of the future and also Alex Proyas Dark City (1998) which infers a less explicit connection between vampires and Jewishness.

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government, largely configured here as national socialist totalitarian state, develop a virus that would kill all vampires if they should threaten or harm the wider human population. In a further plot twist however, the vampire leader Cross has, unbeknownst to the government, persuaded the human head scientist, Dr. Fleming, to mutate the biological weapon so that it will only infect humans with the deadly toxin, with the only antidote being vampire blood. Consequently, all humans, other than the small percentage that are naturally immune, will become vampires too. This spiralling web of deceit and suspicion is only ended by the capture of the murderer and the exposing of the potentially genocidal plot. This hard won conclusion is only made possible by the growing trust and friendship that has developed between the two detectives, and Grant's blossoming love for the female vampire, Lucy Westenra. The film utilises the ideas of diaspora, identity and memory on many levels, not least the dichotomies around that of Jewish identity itself. As observed by Virinder Kalra, Raminder Kaur, and John Hutnyk, “the term diaspora was first used to describe Jewish people, a group that in certain contexts appear as ‘white’ and in another appear as racialized ‘others’” (2005, 3). Consequently this simultaneously identifies both the anxieties and traumas which are equally embodied within the figure of the vampire – in being human but not human, dead but not dead, thus creating the kind of self-alienation and the uncanniness of the self as explained by Julia Kristeva in her essay The Powers of Horror (1982). Here social identity is founded upon the necessary abjection of the Other but it also points to the violence enacted in the creation of such borders of inclusion and exclusion. Diasporic identity, then, embodies both the violence and the multiple levels of imposed and self-exclusion involved within the establishment of identity across borders against what can be considered the “home” nation. As further explained by Kalra, Kaur, and Hutnyk: [t]he nation is the foil against which we attempt to delineate various conceptualizations such as “diasporic consciousness,” “multivocality” and “deterritorialization.” Each of these notions attempts to unsettle and unpack the problems associated with having multiple belongings or no sense of belonging at all (2005, 4).

This sense of “unsettling” borders between belonging and not belonging is also reiterated within the style of the film itself. Utilising the configurations of the detective genre, and more specifically, that of film

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noir, it quickly establishes notions of good and bad, light and shadow and the dark mirroring of society.2 As noted by Eric Lott: film noir's relentless cinematography of chiaroscuro and moral focus on the rotten souls of white folks…obliquely invoked the racial dimension of this figural play of light against dark…[revealing] the "dark" side of the white Western self (Lott 1997, 543).

The film purposely plays with this dialectic inferred in such distinctions, revealing the ambiguities and anachronisms rather than confirming its original implicit categorisations. The ‘good’ or ‘white’ cop in The Breed is African American, and his character within the film revealing that the dark reflection of the “white Western self” is even whiter than the image it mirrors. Also the vampire, often a figure characterized as the continuation of white European hegemony or the progenitor of a Nazi style system of eugenics, as in del Toro’s recent vampire novels mentioned above, is constructed as a far more liminal figure. The vampire detective is called Grey for good reason; indicating a name and identity of the twilight, where all cats look the same and edges blur and melt.3 Additionally, whilst noir specifically spoke of an almost spiritual divide within American society where “white” is good and “black” is evil, or ungodly, then the white Other, as configured both by the Jew and the vampire mentioned above, becomes excluded from society as morally black. Diawara Manthia points out that “[a] film is noir if it puts into play light and dark in order to exhibit a people who become ‘black’ because of their ‘shady’ moral behaviour” (1993, 262). So whilst the narrative continues the trope developed in such films as In the Heat of the Night (1967) by Norman Jewison, where difference and otherness is specifically conflated with the African American experience of racism and exclusion, The Breed rather views such social abjection on a more diverse level beyond one discrete grouping. Discrimination is not confined to one particular ethnic or collective identity rather a difference within temporal experience, mortal and immortal. As such, it posits difference as a purely social construct that

2

The connection between vampires and the detective are well established with television series featuring both such as Forever Knight (Cohen & Parrott 19921996), Ultraviolet (Ahearne 1998), Blood Ties (Mohan 2007), and Moonlight (Koslan & Munson 2007-2008). 3 The phrase ‘All cats look grey in the dark’ is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, see Stacey Schiff, 2005, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America., New York: Henry Holt, 236. But also appears in John Heywood's book of proverbs (1546) as 'When all candles be out, all cats be gray.'

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relies not on race, colour or creed but on arbitrary categorisations of “them” and “us.” This is further shown by the diverse ethnic make-up of each community. This is shown most tellingly within the vampiric diaspora where the traditional default positioning of becoming undead is seen to be predominately white. The three cinematic versions of Richard Matheson’s vampire novel I Am Legend (1954) are perfect examples of this motif, in particular in Boris Sagal’s Omega Man (1970).4 Here all humans that become infected and subsequently change into “Brothers” (vampires) are shown in think white makeup, regardless of their original ethnic background, a situation that is often commented on in relation to the Cullen family in the Twilight Saga films of Stephenie Meyers highly popular novels.5 Here, although collectively signified as Jewish of Eastern European descent by their homburgs and long black coats, the actual ethnic make-up is far more varied and so we see that they are also exampled as French (Boudreaux), Italian (Fusco), and even Chinese, as seen in Lucy Westenra, played by Bai Ling. Equally the human society, whilst constructed as nominally white European, almost Aryan, are also shown as African American (Grant) and Asian (Seward). The identity of the diaspora then begins to speak more of a collective constructed through the violence inflicted upon them rather than any biological or cultural affiliation. Consequently this positions them as a community created and bound in and by trauma; the traumas of the past that are continually reenacted in the present. Jeffery Alexander talks of such ties in the introduction to Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity where ”members of a collective feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories for ever, and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (Alexander et al. 2004, 1). This is further elaborated upon by historian Ron Eyerman who notes how the past continually shapes the way the present is experienced “from this perspective, the past is a collectively shaped, if not collectively experienced, temporal reference point, which is formative of a collective and which serves to orient those 4

There is an interesting parallel here in relation to Obliwitz’s film as the vampire epidemic in Matheson’s novel is caused by an unknown virus, not unlike the one threatened for release in The Breed. 5 The cinematic versions of Meyer’s novels are: Twilight, dir. By Catherine Hardwicke (Summit 2008); The Twilight Saga: New Moon, dir. by Chris Weitz (Summit 2009); and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, dir. by David Slade (Summit 2010). The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Parts 1&2, dir. by Bill Condon were released in November 2011 and November 2012 respectively.

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individuals within it” (Eyerman 2004, 162). This sense of being trapped in time is of course re-iterated in the film’s vision of a future based in the mise-en-scene of the past; a traumatic event creating a world that cannot escape itself.6 However, The Breed rather than reinforcing the sorts of homogeneity and normalisation of ideology that can be seen to have created the violence of perimeters and exclusion in the first place, focuses on the ways that individual memory and trauma reflect, interpret, and shape that of the collective. This symbiosis between individual and group memory and trauma is shown in the figure of Detective Aaron Grey and, specifically, in the details of the forever repeating and reappearing violence of his past. This too strengthens the narrative ties to the Jewish Diaspora and their identity through collective memory for Grey suffers from recurring flashbacks to events that took place during the Second World War. After various hints and deliberations the film finally shows us the cause of Detective Grey’s continuing and growing agitation. Through his mind’s eye we see Aaron and his family fleeing from a Jewish ghetto in Poland as the Nazi soldiers round them up to be sent to extermination camps sometime during the Second World War.7 Although they manage to elude capture by escaping into the surrounding countryside, the bitterly cold Polish winter claims both his wife and child. Clutching forlornly onto their dead bodies, Grey too is on the point of expiration until the imposing figure of Cross arrives. Dressed in the distinctive long black coat and homburg, and which he continues to wear in the film, the now-leader of the vampire community, offers Aaron the chance of survival and the possibility of revenge. Of course, survival in this case means being turned into a vampire and as such it signals the moment that Grey himself becomes immortal. Yet it is also the moment of trauma that Grey will never be able to overcome when he is literally exiled from himself. The violence of the act of being “sired,” or turned, constitutes a rupture in both memory and history. As explained by Juliet Mitchell:

6

The sense of eternal recurrence within the film is also brought out by the intertextuality of the character names used; Lucy Westenra and Seward from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, Orlock from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu, and Calmet being the name of the Jesuit priest that chronicled the ‘vampire plague’ that spread through Eastern Europe in the early 18th century. 7 Apparently some scenes from the movie were actually filmed in a former ghetto in Eastern Europe, though the location is unspecified, and Obliwitz’s father himself survived the persecution of European Jewry at that time.

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[t]rauma makes a breach that empties the person out… The event that breaches constitutes an erasure of the self, which then survives by following old patterns in which recognition is both essential and elusive. The old pattern can only repeat and reinstate itself; it cannot change because it cannot be historicized-it cannot become part of the past which it is, because it is being used as the present which would otherwise be empty without it (1998, 131).

He becomes both trapped and defined by this inescapable moment where he lost his family and himself, and is forced to continually re-enact the rage that it engendered. We see this when he tracks down the Nazi soldiers that he holds responsible for his family’s death and, in an uncontrollable rage, kills them, and subsequently in the ensuing and continuing “bloodlust” that sees him re-enacting this revenge over and over again. Contained within this is a further point of separation, which is also part of the experience of exile, and that is victimhood. Mitchell further observes “where a person is blasted by an event, they have to represent their presence by a previous experience in which they were a victim; victimhood is the only way in which this absence can be actualized” (1998, 131). As such the immortality of the vampire becomes an escapable act of separation and eternal recurrence, reflecting that of the diaspora itself. The violence of Grey's “siring” exiles him both spatially and temporally, creating an ever-present event that he cannot escape; a memory that continually breaks into the present, re-enacting its violence over and over again. In this sense the immortality of the vampire an inescapable present, a present that began at the moment of his conversion. Havi Cavel, in quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein, identifies a similar property in terms of human experience: immortality is possible, Wittgenstein argues, as long as we live in the present. If we have no sense of past and future and do not experience the passing of time as a progression towards death then we become eternal. “If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present” (Carel 2006, 173).

Grey is locked outside the continuum of humanity and belonging because of the “immortal” event that has separated him from the flow of the past into the future. This is further emphasised in the fact that Grey does not “pass on” this traumatic, and temporal, infection leaving him, as it were doubly cursed. Simultaneously, this makes him both victim and victimizer but also that which is exiled and that which exiles, consequently placing him beyond nation and time and locking him outside of both.

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The ramifications of this are increased by the extrapolation of Grey’s individual experience onto the wider vampire community, marking equivalence between individual and collective experience. A similar connection as that is made by historian Cathy Caruth in her work on Freud, where singular traumatic events are inextricably linked to those of the wider community. She notes that “Freud's central insight, in Moses and Monotheism, [is] that history, like the trauma, is never simply one's own, that history is precisely the way we are implicated in each other's traumas” (Caruth 1991, 192). As such, Grey’s connection to a specifically Jewish past and the Holocaust directly connects the vampire society to the same trauma and memory. This is reinforced through the figure of Cross, who, as mentioned before, is the leader of the vampire ghetto of “Serenity”, and also the “sire” of Grey, making him the “real” and metaphorical father of them all. His identification as a Lithuanian Jew then makes them all, if only symbolically, children of a Holocaust survivor which creates a series of equivalences between vampirism and Jewish experience within the film. This is sense of memory, or identity, through blood finds further resonances in the work of Marianne Hirsch and her notion of “postmemory.” As she explains in her essay “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile”: [p]ostmemory is a powerful form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation. That is not to say that memory itself is unmediated, but that it is more directly connected to the past. Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are displaced by the stories of the previous generation, shaped by traumatic events that can be neither fully understood nor re-created (Hirsch 1996, 662).

Interestingly Hirsch formulated the term with the children of Holocaust survivors in mind and it implicitly intimates the notion of being able to “pass on” memory in some way. This ties in very strongly to the way memory is seen to be passed on through blood in the figure of the vampire. The past, as embodied in the “siring” revenants blood literally infects that of the recipient so that they possess, or are possessed by the others remembrance. Whilst each vampire’s birthing may be different they all share the violence that precipitated it as well as the blood of the father that proffered the “dark gift.” Both signal irrevocable traumas that changed the very nature of those that it was perpetrated against, forming bonds of identity through common experience whilst also configuring them as somehow beyond time and place. As Holocaust survivor and writer Elie

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Wiesel asserts: “the Holocaust transcends history” (1985, 158), subsequently placing it as an event outside of time and one that can never be changed or forgotten. As such, there becomes a symbiotic link between the event that creates the bonds of a community and that community’s ability to move beyond that event. Made the more problematic as that point of connection, though still very present in the consciousness of the one that experiences it, is in fact no longer physically there; as a site in either actual or temporal space it no longer exists. Hirsch sees this inevitable separation as an inherent part of such passed on memory “[t]his condition of exile from the space of identity, this diasporic experience, is characteristic of postmemory” (Hirsch 1985, 662). This notion of “exile” then places the vampire as a being locked into a sense of identity that is not of its own making, that is given to or forced upon it creating an awareness of the alienation it has not just from the life before the “event” but the life that continues around it now. Necessarily then the vampires, and in particular in the figure of Grey, examples the way that eternal recurrence and re-enactment of the original trauma creates a self-imposed exile that, whilst constructs a sense of identity that binds him to a community, also disavows any notion of belonging that would connect him to a “homeland,” and in some respects, even to himself. The same binding can be seen to be produced within the Jewish Diaspora: which Jane Amery describes thus “the Holocaust epitomized that "solidarity in the face of threat" which has become a defining characteristic of post-Holocaust Jewishness” (Amery 1986, 58). Yet this communal binding can also point to a historically collective one which reifies identity and memory effectively making it “undead.” Read in this way both sides, diaspora and home-nation, effectively essentialize themselves through the de-limitations of the past which can only configure integration as an act of assimilation or supremacy. Within this memory becomes configured as indivisible and hegemonic, inviolable and dominating. Historian Michael Rothberg sees such a situation as one where “memory [is seen] as a form of competition...[where there are] only winners and losers in the struggle for collective articulation and recognition” (2009, 5). In the film, the vampire leader, Cross, recognises this situation when he says “the two species cannot exist together.” What he actually means is that the two different histories, or collective identities, human and vampire cannot exist together. This configures the seeming incompatibility of differing temporal experience and its associations with identity and memory. For both Cross and the totalitarian human government identity is connected directly to an individual’s experience of time; humans are seen as beings that move in the constant flow from past to future and with a sense of memory, and subsequently belonging, that

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comes from a continual and developing process of cross referencing which allows for notions such as “self” and “home” to evolve as the subject itself changes. However for the vampire this process is quite literally frozen in time; one particular moment in time that replays itself over and over again. As such any form of identity or selfhood can only ever be experienced in relation to that moment; a moment to which one cannot return. The impermeable fence that becomes erected between the undead and human communities then can be seen to be one of belonging and exile where the vampire will never be allowed, or allow itself, to be at home.8 This sees the undead past as being constructed as a place that humans cannot return to but simultaneously a place that the vampire cannot leave. The virus that is due to be released, then, becomes a metaphor for this process where assimilation equals the death of individual and separate identities. The “turning” of the human community would signal the supremacy of the past, fixing it forever; the traumas of history would remain “undead” to be eternally resurrected and re-enacted. Post-memory would become a self imposed and inescapable feedback loop of the same event happening over and over again, fixing both individual and communal identity indefinitely whilst also alienating the self from time and history. However, the representation of the vampire within the film, particularly in the figure of Grey, complicates and ultimately offers a way beyond such memorial stagnation. The antagonistic duality of his character, of a virtually schizophrenic identity oscillating between predator and prey provides the potentiality, not only for his own release and self-reparation from this stasis, but also signals the same opportunity to that of the larger diasporic community. These same tensions are seen in the collective identity of Second World War Jewish memory. Robert Wistrich sees “[t]he paradox of Israel being both a nation of victorious conquerors and heirs of a people who had barely survived a holocaust [a state which] is unparalleled in any other country” (1997, 17). This position is also uniquely embodied within the figure of the vampire as seen by its being simultaneously victim and victimised which holds it in state created in time but which consequently also places it outside of time. Concurrently constructing a form of universality, and conversely a singularity, which threaten to disavow any engagement with other events and identities exactly because of its discrete 8

A sense of this can be seen in many vampire films and narratives where the revenant requires soil from the ground where it was buried, its “homeland”, to be placed inside the coffin within which it rests. As such it never leaves “home” but is never actually home mirroring its equivalent positioning between alive and dead; “undead” then consequently equals “unhome” or Freud’s “unheimlich” (unhomely).

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state of uniqueness. Two events at the end of the film manage to reveal the possibility of a way beyond this memorial “dead end” and they are made manifest through a self, and also a collective, reflexivity that negotiates alterity through the recognition and acceptance of difference rather than through the abjection of otherness. The first is seen when Detective Grey is imprisoned by Cross in a glass case with his partner Grant. Aaron has been injured and so his body urgently requires the ingestion of human blood to assist in the regenerative process. They are kept apart only by a clear divider and which Cross has kept in place just long enough so that the vampires craving for his partners blood has reached irresistible levels. The satiation of the ever-increasing blood-lust within him would see, once again, the re-enactment of the traumas of the past, thus indicating his inability to ever escape or move on from them. This would prove Cross’s earlier pronouncements to be right that humans and vampires cannot mix and that they do in fact comprise incompatible levels of experience and identity: they are from different worlds that cannot co-exist. Grey, though, recognises this, and rather than satisfying his desire for blood and consequently freezing him in time, breaks out of the case entirely, avoiding Grant, and kills the vampire leader Cross instead. In this one action he shows that the violence of history can be utilized and controlled and not just blindly repeated. This comes through recognising the de-limiting nature of the trauma that forms the core of his own identity, and subsequently that of the history within which he has trapped himself. This realisation reveals that rather than his actions, and his sense of self, being dictated by the past, he can control and direct it himself. As a result seeing it not just as a moment outside of time but within and for all time, encouraging what Ann Micheals sees as an “empathy and a responsibility to the past…[where] moral choices are eternal [and] individual actions take on immense significance no matter how small” (1998, 159). Aaron Grey's rejection of Cross’s hegemonisation of memory, even though a small act, marks the breaking of eternal recurrence, and enacting what Rothberg sees as, the “multidirectionality” of the flow of time. Here multidirectional memory, or identity in, and through, time, “acknowledges how remembrance both cuts across and binds together diverse spatial, temporal and cultural sites” (Rothberg 2009, 11). The past is no longer fixed in an ever-repeating present, as a memorial singularity that allows nothing to escape, but recognises its place as an enunciative concentration between the past and the future. Here of course these “points” themselves that remain potentialized and open to change through interpretation and inter-relations. As such, Grey’s action uses the violence of a dominating history against itself showing that diasporic

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identity need not only be manifold and monadic, fixed and unchanging, but is in a constant state of flux that is complex, diverse and individually determined. Secondly, Grant's relationship to Lucy Westenra, and his growing friendship and partnership with Grey shows that identity formation through differing experiences of time, or “durees” can also co-exist. The plotline sees Steve Grant and Lucy Westenra declare their love for each other but it is discovered that he is one of the few humans that is immune to the vampire virus. The consequence of this is that Grant will continue to age, whilst Lucy remains eternally young. As such his far shorter life span will mean that not only his experience of time and memory but also the foundations of his identity formation will always remain temporally and historically “other” to both Lucy and his detective partner Aaron. This too could enact an essentialisation of subject identity establishing a hierarchy of memory and history which would disavow any notion of integration and/or hybridity. Once again this would conform to Cross’s earlier notions of incompatibility where one identity must be dominant over the other. However, their unequivocal acceptance of this different experience of life and existence reveals recognition of otherness that embraces difference not in spite of itself but because of its alterity. This acceptance finds the “ties that bind” not just in commonalities but in the acknowledgement of difference too. Thus allowing for hybridity beyond concepts of national, and even diasporic identity, seeing diversity as an inherent and indeed vital part of any terms of unity. Michel Laguerre further sees this as an inherently political positioning that: compels us not only to de-essentialize and re-conceptualize the concept of the nation because of the mobility that diasporic politics adds to the seemingly circumscribed character of the politics of the nation-state, but also to do away with any monolithic notion of diaspora (2006, 163).

Here all terms become relative and all borders and identities are negotiable and enunciative, but in such open categorisation can we even speak of unity or does the dispersal of diaspora into infinite diversity signal the death of any notion of belonging or home? Does Grey’s example of self exile through trauma become inevitable whether we are in or outside time and does identity in and through history become a memory to which we can never return? In conclusion, the metaphorical equivalence between the vampiric and the Jewish Diaspora, within the film, whilst being open to claims of seeming bad taste, can also be viewed as allowing for a wider consideration of areas of equivalence that both complicates and opens up the boundaries

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of temporal and spatial identity. Identity here is constructed by the forms of experience that interrelate and coalesce around notions of memory, history and belonging. The vampire's nature as a returning revenant embodies not only the recurring trauma of an unchanging and singular past 'feeding upon' the present but the inherent violence of the essentialisation of categories of otherness and exile within society and in relation to what can be seen as diasporic identity. The equivalence that can be exampled between vampirism and the creation of difference, or the ‘otherness’ of victimhood, is made clear in Alisse Waterston’s description of such dispossessive processes: It seems to me that key steps in the manufacturing of difference include: demonization, dehumanization, displacement, self-loathing, assimilation (internalization) In diaspora, people are not so much looking for their long lost home, as seeking a place to be and to belong. For individuals and their cultural groups, violent contact produces a crisis of identity-of meaning. Who am I in relation to the other and to my past self? (1995, 55).

The figure of the vampire explicitly creates these points of crisis and anxieties of identity being both the product and producer of its own selfexile. Aaron Grey, however, offers a path beyond this which exists both as history and memory, as a collective reification but also individual experience. This “middle-path” is not one of mediocrity or generalisation but rather one of interrelatedness. As explained by Saul Friedlander: The closer one moves to the middle ground, that is, to an attempt at general interpretations of the group's past, the more the two areas-distinct in their extreme forms-become intertwined and interrelated (1993, vii).

This expresses a growing reciprocity between individual and collective experience and that between memory and history, describing an inherent implication, or almost ethical responsibility, as noted earlier by Michaels, implicit to the very nature of that relationship. This middle ground, or grey-area, is made symbolically manifest within the figure of Aaron Grey as he becomes the focal point through which all the differing histories and memories within the film are seen to pass. Within this the present has a responsibility both to the past and to the future describing the kind of multidirectionality that Michael Rothberg speaks of. He sees such ethical and hybrid reflexivity as not just essential but virtually inevitable due to what he calls entanglement: We cannot stem the structural multidirectionality of memory… it is not possible to do so. Memories are mobile; histories are implicated in each

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Chapter Two other. Thus finally, understanding conflict entails understanding the interlacing of memories in the force field of public space. The only way forward is through their entanglement (Rothberg 2009, 313).

Again this speaks of a middle path and a way of mediation which describes a concentration rather than a dilution. This constitutes an idea of partners together that are stronger through union rather than a weakening because of “mixing” or incorporation; describing a focal point that itself can be seen as a form of becoming. Such types of becoming are described by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, that do not speak of “supermen” but of exceeding the limits of hegemonic proscription or identity formations outside collective reification and in the realm of individual agency. They describe it thus: A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle. A becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two; it is the inbetween, the border or line of flight or descent running perpendicular to both (Deleuze and Guttari 1987, 293).

Ultimately, then, what can be taken from the film is that the vampire describes the unit within unity; the individual memory and moment that defines the whole. In claiming responsibility of its past it also becomes responsible for its future. In so doing it opens the way for a multitude of such becomings and individual and collective negotiations of the diverse diversities that can negotiate and coalesce around collective responsibilities and entanglements. As a result the vampiric diaspora shows that to truly belong to a place, a time, or a people one must first possess oneself.

References Filmography Daybreakers. 2009. Directed by the Spierig Brothers. Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate. 2010 (DVD). In the Heat of the Night. 1967. Directed by Norman Jewison. PLACE? Mirsch Corporation. 2003 (DVD). I, Robot. 2004. directed by Alex Proyas. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox. 2004 (DVD). Omega Man. 1970. Directed by Boris Sagal. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers. 2000 (DVD). Perfect Creature. 2006. Directed by Glenn Standring. Roc Media. 2007 (DVD).

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The Breed. 2001. Directed by Michael Obliwitz. Los Angeles, CA: Motion Picture Corporation of America. 2001 (DVD).

Works cited Alexander, Jeffrey et al. 2004. Cultural Traumaand Collective Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Amery, Jean. 1986. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realitites. New York: Schocken Books. Brah, Avtar. 1999. “The Scent of Memory: Strangers, Our Own, and Others.” Feminist Review 61: 4-26. Caruth, Cathy. 1991. “Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History.” Yale French Studies 79: 181-192. Carel, Havi. 2006. Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger. New York: Rodopi. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.. Del Toro, Guillermo and Chuck Hogan. 2009. The Strain. London: Harper Collins Publishers —. 2010. The Fall. London: Harper Collins Publishers. —. 2010. The Eternal Night. London: Harper Collins Publishers. Eyerman, Ron. 2004. “The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory.” Acta Sociologica 47(2): 159-169. Friedlander, Saul. 1993. Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Haraway, Donna J. 1992. “Ecce homo, ain't (ar'n't) I a woman, and inappropriate/d others': the human in a post-humanist landscapes.” In Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and J.W. Scott, 86-100. New York: Routledge. Hirsch, Marianne. 1996. “Past Lives: Postmemories in Exile.” Poetics Today 17(4): 659-686. Kalra, Virinder S., Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk. 2005. Diaspora & Hybridity. London: Sage Publications. Laguerre, Michel S. 2006. Diaspora, Politics, and Globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lott, Eric. 1997. “The Whiteness of Film Noir.” American Literary History 9(3): 542-566. Manthia, Diawara. 1993. “Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema.” In Shades of Noir, edited by Joan Copjec, 261-78. London and New York: Verso.

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Matheson, Richard. 1954. I Am Legend. London: Gollanz. Meyer, Stephanie. 2008. Breaking Dawn. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Michaels, Ann. 1998. Fugitive Pieces. London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks. Mitchell, Juliet. 1998. “Trauma, Recognition, and the Place of Language.” Diacritics 28(4): 121-133. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonisation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Waterston, Alisse. 2005. “Bringing the Past into the Present: Family Narratives of Holocaust, Exile, and Diaspora: The Story of My Story: An Anthropology of Violence, Dispossession, and Diaspora.” Anthropological Quarterly 78(1): 43-61. Wiesel, Elie. 1985. Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel, edited by Irving Abrahamson. New York: Holocaust Library. Wistrich, Robert S. 1997. “Israel and the Holocaust Trauma.” Jewish History 11(2): 13-20.

CHAPTER THREE POPULAR ROMANCE AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN GLORIA NAYLOR’S “MAMA DAY” KAREN SANDERSON COLE

Ashcroft and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back (1989) note that one of the primary concerns of emerging post-colonial societies is that of interrogating their “cultural and linguistic” forms of expression in relation to those that have been inherited from the colonial power. This creolization which can be defined as the process of fashioning a singular identity, out of “cultural patterns of varied social and historical experiences and identities [...]” (Balutansky and Sourieau 1998, 3) involves a delicate balance between a complete rejection of an identity imposed through a western inheritance and one arrived at as a result of transforming and expanding this identity. Counter-discourse within the African diaspora then, looks at the ways in which writers – both men and women – have attempted to propose alternative ideologies to subvert the dominant discourse of imperial rule which were aimed at controlling subjugated peoples. It involves re-negotiating inherited norms and ultimately crafting an independent form – distinctly one’s own. This re-negotiation also takes place in popular culture and, more specifically for the purposes of this chapter, is examined through the case study of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. Though not a romance according to the established criteria, it contains a sufficient number of romance elements to warrant a closer examination of the way in which the relationship of two of the central characters is presented. In this text the stereotype of popular romance as “disguised, sugar coated conduct books” (Heyn 1997, 71) is discarded in favour of an exploration of its possibilities as a form through which the infinite capability of the human spirit to transcend the bleakness of the social or physical circumstances (Campbell 1986, xi) can be expressed. Mama Day is also distinctive in its effort to combine both African oral

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traditions and Euro-centred romance traditions. Through the central romance between two Black characters, questions about identity, place, and relationship – both individual and societal – are raised. Romance ultimately becomes a metaphor for how the Blacks interrelate and more intimately see themselves in the world.

Ideology, Popular Romance and the Construction of Stereotypes Popular romance has had significant implications for the history of colonialism in the New World particularly in the 18th century where it became an important strategy in incorporating the newly freed population into the discourse of the civilized society. This integration was mediated through the figure of the mixed-race woman inserted into the literature as the love interest of the white male. This “embracing of the other” was particularly evident in the transracial stories that flourished at this time, though “the Odyssey and the Aeneid” had established a foundation on which this colonial version of romance would be built (Pratt 1992, 96), the tradition established was one where the interracial couple came together in a relationship that challenged the status quo, yet in the end was resolved with each party returning to the fold of his/her racial group (Pratt 1992, 97). Examining the operation of popular romance within the colonial society thus necessitates an interrogation of the ideology of the time. This is of interest since western imperialism has resulted in a situation where “European bourgeois values... [are]... seen as the universal norm” (Ngugi 1997, 17). Examining the link between ideological representation in literature and social practice is based on the premise that: Literature results from conscious acts of men and women in society. Being a product of their intellectual and imaginative activity, it is thoroughly social. The very act of writing, even at the level of the individual implies social relationship [...]. At the collective level literature re-embodies in word-images the tensions, conflicts and contradictions at the heart of a community’s being and becoming (Ngugi 1997, 4).

Ideology is concerned with the ways in which people are controlled by their beliefs. More than two hundred years after the end of slavery, literature continues to play a significant role in cultural imperialism which “distorts a people’s vision of their place in history and of the reality of the world around them” (Ngugi 1997, 30). These ideas form the basis of what is considered “acceptable” within the society, and the manner in which things are done. In the colonial context, the force of ideology is strongly

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tied to its racist base so that what is considered right or ideal, is primarily embodied in images of whiteness. Thus, exploring the popular romance form remains important for “sisters were spoon-fed the same Cinderella pabulum that little White girls gobbled up. And for better or worse, our expectations of romance grew out of the Eurocentric cultural mythology that permeates this society” (Campbell 1986, 264). Wherever stereotypes exist, they exist to homogenise a group. Popular romance because it is predicated on the stereotypical and thus the ideology of a society, becomes a suitable site from which to propose important shifts in this ideology. A stereotypical cluster of features is associated with popular romance which reflects western society’s views about the physical characteristics, breeding, social stature and moral qualities associated with masculinity and femininity. A man’s strength of character for example is typically seen in his jawline which can be described as “strong,” “chiselled,” or “square.” His physical strength and aggression are encoded in adjectives that describe him as “insolent,” “bold,” “dangerous.” His power is also symbolized by a “thick head of hair,” “wide brows,” and “large eyes.” The male protagonist must also be able to comfortably provide materially for the female protagonist. In presenting the romance of a black man and woman, Naylor re-writes these socially entrenched expectations.

Reclaiming Identity through the Elements of the Romance Popular romance that is counter-discursive, has a certain orientation to the issues highlighted above. This orientation, however, has to be carefully organised within the framework of the genre. Specifically, the romance between the two protagonists, George and Ophelia (more commonly known as Cocoa) is divided into two parts. Book 1 spans their first meeting, the courtship period and the first four years of marriage. Book 2 begins with their visit to Willow Springs and culminates in Cocoa’s illness and George’s death. Their story is told through what they say about themselves in their first-person narrations and through what others say about them in the third-person narrated sections which also convey the story of other major characters. How the male and female protagonists are portrayed is an important element of establishing the popular romance frame. In the character of George there is a change in the physical characteristics and the breeding associated with the male protagonist, and a stronger emphasis on the moral qualities and social stature. In his own words, he is “already made”. He has an engineering degree and is climbing the corporate ladder at his firm – not bad for a boy who grew up in a statefunded home for boys. He is the self-made man – the epitome of the

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American dream – but the physical strength associated with the male protagonist is missing. George has a weak heart. This, coupled with his upbringing, determine his personal philosophy – only the present has the potential: “When I left Wallace P. Andrews I had what I could see: my head and my two hands [...] No rabbit’s foot, no crucifixes – not even a lottery ticket” (Naylor 1988, 27). He is financially comfortable yet miserly; when he is first introduced to the reader it is as he not only picks his teeth with a plastic straw but also sits comfortably, in an environment described as a “Third Avenue dump” (Naylor 1988, 1). George is however redeemed by his sensitivity. Recalling his unpopularity with the girls at college, he observes that: I was one of the quiet ones who thought them beautiful, even with the polished iron webbing around their hearts. I understood exactly what they were protecting themselves against, and I was willing to help them shine that armour all the more, to be the shoulder that they could cry on when it got too heavy – if they had only let me in (Naylor 1988, 32).

There are also defining characteristics for the female protagonist: youth, the symmetry of her physiognomy, and the unquestionable fairness of her skin. Body size is important. The observation is made that Thinness is a socially recognized sign, for class status, sexuality, grace, discipline and “being good”, whereas fat is now a categorical derogative for those stigmatized as stupid, sick, self-indulgent, neurotic, lazy, sad, bad and invariably ugly. All such associations, images and prejudices have coalesced into a modern image of good looks, physical size and social consequences – a body of culturally specific beliefs that both reflect and reinforce the sexual, racial and economic politics of the time (Caputi and Nance 1992, 295).

In the characterization of Cocoa, Naylor meets key elements and reinterprets others. Cocoa is a thin, light-skinned, black woman. Fairness and thinness have seldom been features associated with non-white women. Gilman (1985) observes that in the 19th century, “slimness” and a “narrow pelvis” were accepted as evidence of racial superiority. Conversely the traditional big hips and large breasts of the black woman were seen as evidence of abnormality. Skin colour has also been a highly debated issue among the blacks. In a predominantly black community, “brownness” continues to be prized. In Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks the darkskinned protagonist observes her husband’s reaction to the light-skinned belle of the ball:

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What I am inside, what is really me he likes okay. But he keeps looking at my color which is like a wall. He has to jump over it in order to meet and touch what I’ve got for him. He has to jump away up high in order to see it. He gets awful tired of all that jumping (Brooks 1990, 119).

Even as late as 1997, in Trinidad and Tobago, Latischa Bartholomew writes about the conflict between who she is inside and the expectations of the wider society: I’m either too black or not black enough [...] my main issue is that I feel that I always have to prove myself either as a true sister, or as a well-bred woman with fine background and standing. Amazing but true, I am both these things- but people expect me to be either one or the other (Trinidad Express 1997, 3).

The significance placed on skin colour has its parallels in contemporary American society: Some African-American singles say that in African-American personal ads, people still ask about skin complexion and length and texture of hair. A brown-skinned Sister complained that her fairer-skinned Sisters are all married with children, “while our medium brown and dark-brown friends are still searching” (Kinnon 2000, 54).

In the portrayal of Cocoa, Naylor reverses the notions of the privileges associated with skin colour and explores the need to move beyond the concept of self-worth as the sum of one’s physical characteristics. The fairness and thinness prized in the white community and even among some members of the black community become a source of confusion and shame for Cocoa. In fact, her nickname “Cocoa” is given in an effort, her aunts say, “to put some color on her somewhere”. Cocoa’s aunt recalls “the little girl running home crying and almost taking off her middle finger with a butcher knife, fearing she really had the white blood she was teased about at school – she wanted red blood like everybody else” (Naylor 1988, 39). Even as an adult, Cocoa struggles to make peace with her “no tits, no ass, no color” (Naylor 1988, 20). This is also seen in explicit statements such as: It was awful growing up, looking the way I did, on an island of soft brown girls, or burnished ebony girls with their flashing teeth against that deep satin skin. Girls who could summon all the beauty of midnight by standing, arms akimbo, in the full sun (Naylor 1988, 332-233).

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This self-alienating debate points to the destructiveness of colorism and of idealized forms of beauty: “Idealized beauty can turn the uninitiated against themselves, their children, their lovers, even their culture [...] it has the power to destroy the potential for love” (Heinze 1996, 15). Through the struggles of the female protagonist to accept her physical self, the importance of developing within the black community forms of resistance against debilitating stereotypes is suggested. Another characteristic element of popular romance is the first meeting of the lovers. In Mama Day, this characteristic encounter proceeds through a violation of expectations which undercut its typical impact. This is achieved through a process of de-emphasising the female protagonist’s appeal. It is the dark-skinned waitress who serves George at the diner who keeps him from noticing Cocoa. In George’s own words, “I remembered the waitress well. The dark brown arms, full breasts, the crease of her apron [...] in that swing against a hip that could only be called a promise of heaven on earth.” (Naylor 1988, 28). This description of the dark-skinned woman alludes to the traditional image of the black woman as “sexually exciting” in the fullness of her figure. The romance of George and Cocoa carefully rejects this stereotype. Eventually, George does notice Cocoa, and her “high cheekbones,” “pointed chin” and skin “that’s tinted from amber to cream as it stretches over the lean bone underneath“ (Naylor 1988, 27) which are attributes of the traditional romance heroine but what strikes him about her is not so much her physical form but a nagging feeling which “is so strong, it almost physically stops me. I will see that neck again” (Naylor 1988, 27). It is this feeling that rescues this meeting and reasserts the aura of romance to the first meeting. Thus by the time that George meets Cocoa for the second time that day, when he turns out to be the one interviewing her for a job, he says “I must have looked as if someone had stuck a knife into my gut, because that’s the way I felt” (Naylor 1988, 28). George does not give Cocoa the job, but does invite her to dinner, but once again, romantic expectations are not met. The protagonists in the romance often share a number of qualities that help to strengthen the initial attraction between them. With George and Cocoa, dinner only serves to underscore in her mind at least, that “being human beings was about the only thing we had in common” (Naylor 1988, 60). Commenting on the relationship between the couple, one writer believes that “The most striking dichotomy that George and Cocoa represent is [...] the clash between rationality (non-belief) and emotion (belief) [...] She feels things intensely, while George thinks through everything in great detail” (Harris

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1996, 95-96). This clash is symbolic of a larger struggle for identity within the text – between oral and non-oral ways of apprehending the world.

The Oral Tradition, Community and the Construction of Identity The construction of identity has implications for the mode of transmission of the romance. Many forms of counter-discourse that employ romance elements, operate essentially through a scribal tradition or, a scribal tradition infused with elements of orality. For yet others, as is evident in Naylor’s work, the oral tradition is of crucial importance. It may seem to be a contradiction in terms to speak about the presence of features of orality in writing when one of the defining qualities of oral literature is that it is spoken. But this may in fact be a very limiting interpretation of orality: “In interpreting verbal utterance, we can be called on to interpret oral performance or to interpret text. The two activities are different, but not entirely different. Oral discourse thus commonly interprets itself as it proceeds” (Ong 1986, 149). Orality in text then may be linguistically marked by a number of features such as sentence fragments, comma splices, creole intrusions and also by an ambiguity that infuses Standard English words with a creole sensibility. These features make Mama Day “one of the most strikingly effective examples of the intersection of African-American written and oral traditions” (Harris 1996, 55). Yet it must be borne in mind that the oral tradition is not confined to African-based cultures. Rabine (1985) writes about the preservation of the Celtic legends which form the basis of Tristan and Iseult in oral form by druids and by an official class of bards called fili. In this regard, the epic and the romance in the medieval period are essentially performative, and as such these texts “[...] consist of a series of semi-independent shorter narrations (episodes), each of which has a coherent macro-structure not dissimilar to that of conversational texts [...]’’ (Fleischman 1990, 90). This same conversational aspect, is evident in the relationship of George and Cocoa, With third parties listening to their conversations the exchange between George and Cocoa can be compared as well to the dynamics in a game of the dozens, where onlookers pass judgment on the quality of the exchange and challenge the participants to higher levels of verbal achievements (Harris 1996, 93).

The traditional intimacy of the couple in popular romance is established through shared conversations indicated by turn-taking and repetition.

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Cocoa starts the story, George picks it up even repeating the same phrases: “OUR WORST FIGHT EVER. And it was all your fault” (Naylor 1988, 230). This is first used by George to give his version of why the misunderstanding occurs and then it is echoed by Cocoa who gives a different set of reasons. Repetition has a twofold function. It highlights the difference in perspective between the lovers and helps to foster a sense of the intimacy of the recollection. Repetition also draws links to the oral tradition: as part of the act of storytelling “the narrator relies on repetition or refrain both to speed the tale’s movement and to give the audience a comforting sense of ‘familiarity’ and identification with the material” (Campbell 1986, 16). The illusion of conversation is also aided by the consistent use of the present tense in examples such as “I know, I know”; rhetorical questions confirm a listening presence, “I sound awful don’t I” (Mama Day 1988, 17). Fleischman (1990) notes that in the medieval narratives, these types of phrases serve to remind listeners of the performative aspect of the text. Another aspect of the importance of the use of the first person and multiple points of view is to show that all characters who speak have an equal voice in the matters dealt with in the novel. Therefore they are not all judged by an omniscient author or single character (Roller 1986, 62). To follow the romance of George and Cocoa then, necessitates an understanding of the fact that their relationship represents but one episode of the related narratives. The significance of this alternating perspective in the formulation of identity, is underlined by the fact that “[ ...] everyone’s experience is a microcosm of the whole society, and each memory must be woven into the patchwork” (Adisa 1998, 114). Silence is also a significant aspect of conversation in the novel. As if to underline the significance of silence, Naylor in an interview has said that as a child she learnt “that there are reliable ways to ‘listen’ to someone without using your ears [...]. The voice I have found in my fiction owes a great debt to these people and my learning to ‘hear’ this way’’ (Naylor 1995, 193). Silence is an integral part of Naylor’s Afro-centred world view as it points to the value placed on non-traditional sources of knowledge. It also counters the traditional view of Afro-American silence. The significance of this to identity lies in the fact as Rigney has observed, “[h]istorically, the dominant culture has enforced black female silence through illiteracy as well as through hysteria” (1991, 3). Silence in the text becomes a mode of empowerment and not disgrace. The communal voice in the novel intones: “Think about it: ain’t nobody really talking to you. Really listen this time: the only voice is your own” (Naylor 1988, 10). The introductory narrative highlights the fact that readers of any text “hear” the

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words in their minds. The story begins “Willow Springs. Everybody knows by nobody talks about the legend of Sapphira Wade” (Naylor 1988, 3). The preliminary pages of the novel also acknowledge the failure of Reema’s boy to “ask” the right questions: “The object lesson is that Reema’s boy sacrifices folk traditions, his ability to see without seeing and hear without hearing, for an alien version of his own culture’s reality’’ (Harris 1996, 66). Thus silence becomes an important means of highlighting the importance of listening to other perspectives besides our own. Learning how to listen is an important part of claiming an identity but identity is also shaped by connection to others. To a people who through a history of slavery have suffered the consequences of the destruction of family ties, the novel forms a significant avenue for transmitting values and spiritual strength. Naylor appropriates for her characters a tradition seen in the work of writers like Faulkner, Wells and others, genealogies and backgrounds which establish a sense of history and continuation – a sense of historical significance (Gandesberry 1996). Tracing a lineage back to a definable point is important in a community where the experience of slavery has been one of dislocation and loss: “Black American women [focus] on Africa not only as historical ancestor, political ally, and basis for ideological stance but as part of a continuum in which Black women before the slave trade and since have recorded cultural history and values through their stories’’ (Wilentz 1992, xii). Thus like the Greek chorus, the community provides the “society’s expectations of what [is] proper [...] against which the actions of the main characters will be judged’’ (Grimas 1975, 62). The community of Willow Springs exists connected to but distinctly separate from the mainland. It cannot be inscribed in the American geography as the communal voice observes: “It ain’t in no state” (Naylor 1988, 5). In fact, the population reject any kind of American filiation by tracing their ancestors back to Wade, the first and last white master, who was Norwegian, and to Sapphira Day, his slave, who was African […] the people of Willow Springs have in fact colonized and invested their own territory (Christol 1997, 160).

The community serves an important function against the backdrop of a wider society that is characterised by its absence. This lack is evident in Cocoa’s isolation in New York where she finds herself torn between the familiarity and comfort of the “old ways” symbolized by the custom and practices of Willow Springs and the need for educational and financial

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mobility evidenced in her move to New York. The impact of the lack of community is seen in this cynical world where a ‘good catch’ is “anything over eighteen, toilet-trained and not interested in meeting your brother” (Naylor 1988, 64).The communal voice, along with that of Cocoa and George become “a union of opposites: the modern and the traditional, urban and rural, North and South, orphan and member of an extended family” (Hunter 1993, 215). In a wider context, the diaspora of the Black life in the New World also faces the impact of the loss of community, as the Blacks are faced with the task of melding the various – sometimes contrary – aspects of their heritage into one whole. An oral society is also defined by its sense of community in the mode of its beliefs. The practices of the community establish the importance of traditions which bind and promote stability – such as the wedding dinner held six months after they start keeping house [...] We wait half a year to make sure it’s worth going through the trouble [...] No point in barbecuing a whole side of meat [...] if she’s gonna be back home with her mama before the food gets digested good’ (Naylor 1988, 133).

Another important practice is according voice to both the dead and the living: The island represents a world view in which boundaries between animate and inanimate, secular and sacred – even living and dead – are blurred. For African and especially Bakongo groups, the afterlife was a reality; death was a journey to the spirit world, which nonetheless did not constitute a break with life on earth (Tucker 1997, 150).

Within the African world view, communication between the dead and the living provides comfort and sustenance for those alive. Particularly for Cocoa, it is this contact with the spirits that “instils [...] a sense of her own selfhood” (Ranveer 1994, 144). The belief that the dead continue to be a part of the lives of the living is pivotal to the existence of the romance of George and Cocoa. George narrates his point of view of his marriage to Cocoa from the grave. Thus he continues to be a part of the Willow Springs community and Cocoa’s life after his death. By this means he “gets a chance – an eternity to understand what he has missed in the temporal realm” (Harris 1996, 98). This eternity has implications for the reader as well: “[t]he link between narrative voice and audience, therefore, is one that cannot be broken by the physicality of the text itself” (Harris 1996, 58). “Each culture has its own notions of time” (Vansina 1981, 173). Thus the acceptance of the dead as part of the living, and the conceptualisation of

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time as fluid and non-linear as opposed to chronological makes the telling of the tale possible.

Language and Identity Perspectival shift in the popular romance form is indicated not only by a change in speaker but also by a change in language code: The narrator and the black people on Willow Springs speak a language indicative of their region and their levels of formal education [...] to give us a reflection of a people whose lack of Standard English can never be a measure of their intelligence and cunning or their power (Harris 1996, 67).

Within Mama Day, the use of Creole is intimately bound to the issue of identity. The importance of being able to define one’s relationship to others through language is seen in the following statement: “To call language an instrument in fact devalues it: it is virtually the medium in which man, the ‘speaking animal’ exists, defining for his relations to his fellow human beings, his culture, even his own identity (Leech and Short 1981, 6). The kind of language people use determines the way they see their reality – it defines their assumptions, their values, their expectations (Ryan 1991, 113). The “inherited weight of history is experienced as the weight of words, the programmed network of signs designed to pin us to the habitual terms of a given way of life” (Ryan 1991, 116). Naylor’s use of the cadences of the Afro-American Creole is of interest to post colonial societies where pressure is often exerted to move away from the Creole to the Standard: Creole situations are by definition dialogic with their history and their role in the modern world […]. It also provides an opportunity to illuminate the sites of contention in which Creole language speakers and their descendants negotiate and seek power (Morgan 1994, 1).

Within the novel, Standard English and Creole are used interchangeably to indicate the different perspectives of the community on the issue of developers from the mainland putting up condominiums on the land. George (himself an outsider) summarizes the conflict between the developers and the community in standard: “It would bring much-needed income to the island, new people [...] But what kind of people? [...] They [islanders] know that even well-meaning progress and paradise don’t go hand in hand’’ (Naylor 1988, 185). The communal voice is even more succinct in Creole: “It weren’t about no them now and us later – was them now and us never” (Naylor 1988, 6).

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Conflict as Metaphor for Identity The reconfiguring of concepts of romance, beauty, code choice and community become important indices of the power/force of ideological shift. Challenges to dominant systems are often defined by conflict. In Mama Day, the notion of conflict is drawn out in a number of ways: in the contrast in register between the communal and individual voices and in the romance itself where conflict arises between traditional and contemporary values. It is also evident in George and Cocoa’s relationship in the different world view that they each represent. George’s experience and his subsequent failure points to the conflict between different ideologies or ways of apprehending reality. George believes only in the world of empirical evidence: “There were times when I tried too hard, pushing myself with the knowledge that I was all I had. And now you were all I had, and with you needing me, I had to hold on to what was real’’ (Naylor 1988, 291). This belief is also evident in his analysis of the game of poker he plays with the men of Willow Springs, especially Dr Buzzard who habitually cheats: I had learned to play at Columbia in a mathematics course dealing with game theory. I came out of that course with an A and a solid grounding in analysing problems of conflict by abstracting common strategic features from an infinite number of conflict situations [...] The dozens of matrix charts I had laboured over in graduate school proved that all things being equal, there is a play of matrix within the axis of maximising a minimum result [...] I had played and bet in absolute proportion to the odds (Naylor 1988, 210-211).

George thus bases his right to be right on the strength of his excellence in logic, which in turn is bolstered by his certification from Columbia University. George‘s dilemma in the card game, epitomizes the conflict between two different systems. Western philosophy promotes a belief in self, undergirded in the romance genre, by the primacy of the self. This contrasts with a non-traditional philosophy (here defined as African) which promotes the community. Within this African-based system is also a belief in non-traditional forms of healing. When Cocoa becomes ill on her and George’s first visit to Willow Springs, George believes that she can only be healed by a “real doctor”. Her aunts and grandmother though, believe her illness to be obeah-based. They believe that George’s help is needed to cure her but he must walk the half-mile to the chicken coop and bring back to her whatever he finds there. For the rational George, there is

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no logic in what they say. This task pits George against his deepest beliefs about himself, his marriage and his ideals. He cannot believe that anything he finds there can cure a “real” sickness. He believes that a more worthy task is to work on the bridge that has been destroyed by the storm so that he can return to the mainland. There is some irony evident here, when the situation is viewed from the standpoint that in popular romance the male protagonist is often required to perform a task that proves his love for the heroine, but the placing of this task in the realm of the supernatural means that George’s western approach to solving the problem predisposes him to failure. In his own words: “There were times when I tried too hard, pushing myself with the knowledge that I was all I had. And now you were all I had, and with you needing me I had to hold on to what was real’’ (Naylor 1988, 291). George desperately needs to prove his love for Cocoa. The importance of the Black male being able to prove this is outlined in the following: He wants his woman to believe in his love precisely because so many others won’t. You have to remember that being a Black man is to experience love burdened by both fault-finding sociologists in best-selling books and the clichés of old wives’ tales. An infidelity, a romantic misstep, a lover’s quarrel are often judged not on an individual basis but under a microscope of negative expectation (Campbell and George 1995, 272).

It is thus, only when George has tried every other means of getting Cocoa to the mainland and failed, that he decides to try Mama Day’s way that entails giving her his hands. Mama Day (Cocoa’s aunt) tries to explain to George the importance of his cooperation. He must believe that his love for Cocoa is a powerful force that can heal but he must also join hands with Mama Day and the others who have gone before and cooperate so that they can all survive. In the context of the oral tradition as it has survived in the New World, the term “hand” has an even wider significance lost on the western George. Instead of building a bridge between himself and Cocoa, he focuses on building the bridge to the mainland that has been blown down by the storm (Fowler 1996, 113). Fowler argues that Not only are hands the symbol of our connection to both the earth and the divine, but they are the symbol of our need for connection to each other [...] To refuse to join hands in a recognition of our human interdependence is to invite our own destruction [...] [thus] the [...] Afrocentric, maternal world of Willow Springs [...] cannot be joined to the white, patriarchal world of the mainland because that world, represented by George, refuses to acknowledge this interdependence (1996, 310).

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It is a frustrated George that eventually goes to the coop but the violence of the encounter is encoded in the “rips”, “shrieks” and “pierced veins” that punctuate the meeting. In the midst of this conflict it occurs to George: “could it be that she wanted nothing but my hands?” (Naylor 1988, 300). George’s practical side cannot let him accept this option. He goes his own way which requires his death at the ultimate sacrifice. George does not return to Mama Day. The exertion in fighting the hen causes his weak heart to give way. He manages to work his way back to the cabin where Cocoa lies ill and dies with his “bleeding hand slid (ding) gently down her arm” (Naylor 1988, 302). George’s insistence on doing it his way costs him his life, but at the same time his death makes another kind of communication possible between himself and Cocoa, for through his death they are intertwined forever. The novel thus chronicles a conversation between two lovers – one dead and one alive. Cocoa’s words seem appropriate to explain their new relationship: It’s a lot better this way, because you change as I change. And each time I go back over what happened, there’s some new development some forgotten corner that puts you in a slightly different light [...] But when I see you again, our versions will be different still (Naylor 1988, 310).

The romance of George and Cocoa, as chronicled in Mama Day, promotes a new concept of Black love – Black love as a grand passion “based on resilience and a healing power” (Campbell and George 1995, 266). It thus engages in critical debate with the conventions of the popular romance tradition as customarily practiced by a wider, white, non-oral world, highlighting areas of conflict. It questions the means by which the oral – as represented by Willow Springs and the non-oral, as represented by the mainland and most forcibly by George – can meet and finally concludes that they cannot. George dies because he cannot accept nonempirical ways of apprehending reality.

Conclusion Despite the required element of fantasy, the romance involves a negotiation of real social issues. Within the African diaspora, writers have embodied through their work the struggle of their respective societies to articulate an identity not defined by their relationship to a colonial power. This struggle has also been extended to the area of popular culture which includes the romance form. The island-like setting of Willow Springs and the use made of the oral tradition make Mama Day a fitting case study of the manner in which European and African traditions can be creolised in a

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New World context. Naylor’s text highlights a concern with the manner in which cultural stereotypes impinge on contemporary Black life and serve as hindrances to developing true intimacy. Popular romance becomes a vehicle for articulating the need for a new social order in which a new positive image of Black sexuality is formed. Campbell believes that the ultimate good of the romance framework lies in its ability to “reinvent reality.” It thus becomes “a radical literary mode, for it dares to posit a world of infinite possibility, a world in which cultural heroes and heroines come to grips with those negative forces, or villains, that interfere with the attainment of an ideal world” (Campbell 1986, ix). The rifts and conflicts inherent in this process are mirrored in the relationship of George and Cocoa. The romance form offers new possibilities for the role of the readers as well, making them an active part of deciding the significance of the tale: By wedding ourselves to Willow Springers, we separate ourselves from all that Reema’s boy represents – exploitation, loss of cultural memory, misguided education [...]. Naylor turns her ideal audience therefore, into cultural workers. We have the potential to join Cocoa, abandon our inclinations to absolute rationality, and become the next generation of sensitive and responsive hearers and tellers of stories that will keep future porch-sitters glued to their seats (Harris 1996, 104).

This vision of an integrated Black community, lead by strong men and women, unashamed, finding strength in their own formidable roots has not yet been realized but Mama Day signals a way through which these challenges can be negotiated.

References Adisa, Opal Palmer. 1988. “ I must write what I know so I’ll know I’ve known it all along”. In The woman, the Writer and Caribbean society: Essays on literature and culture, edited by Helen Pyne-Timothy, 102117. Los Angeles: University of California. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffith and Helen Tiffin. 1995. The Empire Writes Back. London and New York: Routledge. Balutansky, Kathleen and Marie Agnés Sourieau. 1998. Caribbbean creolization: Reflections on the cultural dynamics of language, literature and identity. 1-11. Gainesville: Florida: University Press of Florida. Bartholomew, Latischa. 1997. “Middle-class black girl.” Trinidad Express, July 13, 3.

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Brooks, Gwendolyn. 1953. “If you’re light and have long hair”. Excerpt from Maud Martha. New York: Harper and Brothers. In black-eyed Susans/Midnight Bird: Stories by and about black women, ed. Mary Helen Washington, 111-119. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Campbell, Bebe Moore and Nelson George. 1995. Do you love me? Essence. May 1995, 214+. Campbell, Jane. 1986. Mythic black fiction: The transformation of history. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Caputi, Jane and Susan Nance. 1992. “One size does not fit all: Being beautiful, thin and female in America.” In Popular Culture: An Introductory Text, edited by Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause, 292-312. Ohio: Bowling Green State University. Christol, Héléne. 1994. “Reconstructing American History: Land and Genealogy in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.” In The Black Columbiad, edited by Werner Sollors and Maria Deidrich, 247-156. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fleischman, Suzanne. 1990. Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction. Austin: University of Texas. Fowler, Virginia. 1996. In Search of Sanctuary. Woodbridge, CT: Twayne Publishers. Gandesbery, Jean. 1992. “Shaping Myths: The Manawaka novels of Margaret Laurence.” Commonwealth Novel in English 5(1): 65-72. Gilman, Sander L. 1985. “Black bodies, white bodies: Toward an iconography of female sexuality in late 19th century art, medicine and literature.” Critical Inquiry 12: 204-241. Grimas, Joseph. 1975. The Thread of Discourse. The Hague: Morton and Co. Harris, Trudier. 1996. The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor and Randall Kenan. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. Heinze, Denise. 1996. The Dilemma of Double-Consciousness in Toni Morrison’s Novels. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. Heyn, Dalma. 1997. Marriage Shock: The Transformation of Women into Wives. New York: Vellard. Hunter, William. 1993. “The Quilting of Culture: The depiction of African-American community in the novels of Gloria Naylor.” PhD diss., Purdue University. Kinnon, Joy, Bennet. 2000. “Is color still an issue in Black America?” Ebony, April, 52-56.

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Leech, Godfrey, N. and Michael H. Short. 1981. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London; New York: Longman. Morgan, Marcyliena. 1994. “Introduction”. Language and the Social Construction of Identity in Creole situations, 1-4. Los Angeles, CA:UCLA. Center for Afro-American Studies. Naylor, Gloria.1988. Mama day. New York: Vintage Books. —. 1995. “Finding our voice.” Essence, May 26 (1): 193. Ong, Walter. 1986. “Text as interpretation: Mark and after.” In Oral Tradition in Literature: Interpretation in Context, edited by John Miles Foley, 147-169. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Pratt, Mary. 1992. Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. London and New York: Routledge. Rabine, Leslie. 1985. Reading the Romantic Heroine: Text, History and Ideology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ranveer, Kashinath. 1995. Black Feminist Consciousness. Jaipur, India: Printwell. Rigney Hill. Barbara. 1991. The Voices of Toni Morrison. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. Roller, Judi. 1986. The Politics of the Feminist Novel. New York: Greenwood Press. Ryan, Kiernan. 1991. “Romeo and Juliet: The language of tragedy.” In The Taming of the Text: Explorations in Language and Culture, edited by Willie Van Peer, 106-122. London and New York: Routledge. Smitow, Ann, Barr. 1986. “Mass market romance: Pornography for women is different.” In Feminist Literary Theory, edited by Mary Eagleton, 134-139. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell and Co. Tucker, Lindsay. 1997. “Recovering the conjure woman: Texts and contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama day.” In The critical response to Gloria Naylor, eds. Sharon Felton and Michelle C Loris, 143-157. Wesport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. 1981. Writers in Politics: A re-engagement with issues of literature and society. Oxford; Nairobi: James Currey, Heinemann. Wilentz, Gay. 1992. Binding cultures: Black Women Writers in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Vansina, Jan. 1981. “Oral tradition and its methodology.” In General history of Africa: Methodology and African pre-history, edited by J. Ki-Zerbo, 142-165. Oxford: Heinemann and Unesco.

CHAPTER FOUR THE IMPORTANCE OF INCLUSION: POLISH PILOTS IN WAR-TIME BRITAIN JOANNA WITKOWSKA

On the eve of the outbreak of WWII the Polish state was just 20 years old but the sense of national identity was as strong as ever. The nation managed to survive historical turbulence, withstanding over 145 years of partial and then complete loss of independence. Hard won freedom was to be defended at any cost. Since Hitler’s activities posed a threat to the sovereignty of other European countries as well, when in 1939 the Poles started fighting Germany not many of them expected the September campaign (1st September-6th October) to be a lone struggle. Anglo-Polish and Franco-Polish military alliances1 made Poles believe that repelling Hitler’s attack would be a joint effort. The hopes for a successful Eastern front with the Western countries turned out to be unrealistic though (PraĪmowska 1995, 1, 34). Europe was not of major concern for the British who left its defence to the French while the latter did not want to risk defeat with its modest military force either (PraĪmowska 1995, 28, 29, 53). What is more, both took it for granted that nothing could be done to change the Polish fate which was used to justify their lack of action (PraĪmowska 1995, 36). The talks between both countries’ officials in May 1939 precluded active support anyway (PraĪmowska 1995, 33). Thus, the British and the French declarations of war (3rd September) in fact deepened Polish alienation as unfulfilled promises of help set against the fight with a disastrously stronger enemy intensified disappointment. When on 17th September the non-aggression Pact between German and Soviet foreign ministers (23 August 1939) resulted in the USSR’s attack on Poland, followed by only Western verbal condemnation of it, the feeling of political and military abandonment coupled with the grief of 1 25 August 1939 – Polish-British Common Defence Pact and 19 May 1939 Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention.

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loss of national independence. What the Poles clearly miscalculated was their belief in British-French-Polish alliance–the West seriously considered only coalition with the Soviets (Karski 1998, 259). For Britain the invasion only confirmed that Poland was doomed whereas future planning demanded moderation as the USSR could play a major role in the war with Germany (PraĪmowska 1995, 44-45).

Escapes from Poland The feeling of exclusion would continue on the way to the last vestiges of freedom – France and Britain – where Polish servicemen decided to flee. Evacuation routes included escapes via countries south of Poland (e.g. Romania, Hungary, and Greece) and then the Black Sea or the Mediterranean and then north via Lithuania and Latvia, the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia. Romania, due to a long tradition of cooperation and friendship became the most popular destination.2 Unexpectedly, despite earlier agreements, Polish authorities (President Ignacy MoĞcicki and the government) and the commander in chief (Edward Rydz-ĝmigáy) were interned after they had crossed the Romanian border. Due to German and Soviet pressure, members of Polish armed forces were put to prison camps too. Other neutral countries, e.g. Hungary, Sweden and Spain responded similarly, not mentioning the Baltic states – Lithuania and Latvia – heavily pressurized by the USSR. Although many countries (Romania, Hungary but also Italy) sympathized with the Poles allowing often quite easily for escapes, conditions in prisons were very poor (Zamoyski 2010, 36-40). Moreover, due to tightened security, in the first quarter of 1940 fleeing internment camps became much more difficult. Strong will to fight encouraged sacrifice but “journeys to freedom” were tiring and perilous. They could last as long as 18 months. Neither freezing temperatures nor scorching heat made an obstacle for soldiers. They would still cross the Carpathian Mountains, facing minus 40 degrees on the way to Hungary or the Karakum desert on the way to Persia. Such journeys resulted in the loss of body parts and/or ultimately deaths (Zamoyski 2010, 43). Those 2

In the interwar period Polish-Romanian alliance was confirmed by a series of treaties. At the root of this cooperation were common political and economic aims: “an attempt to defend Central Europe against the expansion of Russia and Germany” and ”in a broader sense, particularly in the 1930s, (…) the defence of European civilisation against the spread of two totalitarian systems, Hitler’s National Socialism and Bolshevik Communism”, Mieczysáaw Ryba, “Romania in Polish foreign policy 1918-1939”, 2010 at: http://realitas.pl/SwiatoOglad/MR20100925en.html (accessed 19 Feb 2011).

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caught in the Soviet controlled Baltic states could be sent to Siberia where internment and hard labour had similar effects.

(French) Misconceptions about Poles France, a traditional ally and the British Isles, “the land of last hope” in many respects sustained the feeling of separation. Poles would be blamed for the world conflict and this bred hostility towards them. What is more, the first country to be defeated could not be a good fighter, so many thought. German propaganda also contributed to this untrue picture, e.g. it was wrongly maintained that Poland was so much unprepared to war and backward that it had sent cavalry riders against German tanks.3 Western allies were also not aware of or ignored the fact that the Poles inflicted comparatively heavy losses on Germany proving their worth and courage (Wieczorkiewicz 2005, 104-105). Undeservedly, Polish skills and achievements were thus belittled and the military ridiculed. The loss must have affected the army’s morale, so it was thought, thus its fighting spirit was called into question. In such circumstances even positive signs were treated with suspicion. The bravery of the Poles was then translated into bravado, nervous anticipation to go to a battle into a lack of discipline and their suggestions to improve operation tactics into arrogance.4 Due to different ranking system and combat needs some Polish soldiers in foreign armies were degraded. When we add to it the strain of fighting on foreign soil, homesickness and concern about those left behind in the occupied country one can imagine the degree of isolation experienced by many Poles.

Wacáaw Król – The Witness of the Events A fighter pilot during WWII, Wacáaw Król (1915-1991) was the witness of these events. He fought in Poland and then in France (where he came by sea from the Near East after escape from internment in Romania) 3

Poles ridiculed the idea; in one of the four drama-documentary series Bloody Foreigners about the Battle of Britain two of the 303 Squadron airmen tell the following joke: A policeman was standing by the car. He wanted to know why it was left in the street without its lights on. “Would you leave the car like this outside the cinema in Poland?” [he asked] “No”, we said, “in Poland we ride to the cinema on horses!” (Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain. Written and directed by Carl Hindmarch, Darlow Smithson Productions for Channel 4, first broadcast 29 June 2010). 4 This is what one can learn reading the diaries of Polish pilots.

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and Britain (reached it via Africa and Gibraltar), flying also over the skies of occupied European countries, Germany, Africa and the waters of the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. He took part in the crucial WWII operations, among others in the Battle of Britain (1940) and aided the Allied landing in Normandy (1944). Well experienced an airman he trained pilots-to-be and was the commander of 302 (Poznan) and 316 (Warsaw) squadrons as well as of the 3rd Polish Fighting Wing (squadrons 303, 316 and British 129) (ZmyĞlony and Król 1991, 7-8). He recalls the wartime combat as well as on-the-ground experiences in his memoirs. In one of them he wrote: “These years exactly, cheerful and gloomy, happy, sometimes full of dilemmas and grim humour do I report on […]” (Król 1991, 8)5. The question to be answered here will be: how come the abandoned, alienated and alien nation which he represented was finally appreciated and made feel almost at home in a foreign country – Britain. The diaries on which the analysis will be based on are: W dywizjonie poznaĔskim [“In the Poznan Squadron”], Walczyáem pod niebem Londynu [“I fought over London’s skies”] Walczyáem pod niebem Europy i Afryki [“I fought over Europe’s and Africa’s skies”] and Mój Spitfire WX-L [“My Spitfire WX-L”], and the main concern will be the relations between Polish fliers and British civilian population.

Poland – Terra Incognita (?) One might argue that one of the reasons for the warm reception of Polish soldiers in Britain could be the lack of knowledge about Poland. Since the latter was “terra incognita” there were also no clichés. We may infer from Król’s diaries that it was curiosity about and surprise at “the other” that prevailed in contacts of the Poles with British civilians. Taking the former for the French due to their navy blue uniforms6 and learning about their mistake, surprised British passers-by kept repeating “Polish soldiers, Poland” (Król 1982, 24). Airmen’s language and the country of origin were unfamiliar and even exotic (Król 1982, 27). Król’s observations are confirmed by other sources. Olson and Cloud in A Question of Honour mention an Englishman travelling by train who was afraid he was accompanied by chatting Germans. When the men comforted him they were actually Poles and spoke their native language 5

“Te wáaĞnie swoje i kolegów moich lata górne i chmurne, radosne, czasem peáne rozterki i wisielczego humoru opisuje […].” 6 As their units were formed in France, at the beginning Polish pilots (coming to Britain from France) wore French navy blue uniforms.

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his reaction was: “Ah! So you have your own language!” (2003, 182). The Islanders’ lack of knowledge of languages was very annoying to Polish airmen who could often communicate in French and German (Król 1970, 145).

Polish-British Relations before WWII This does not mean though that both nations had nothing in common prior to WWII. The contacts went as far as over 1000 years back. The King of England, Canute the Great’s (1016-1035) mother (ĝwiĊtosáawa whose grave is in Winchester) was Polish and so was the mother (Maria Klementyna Sobieska) of prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788), popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. In the 16th century Jan àaski (called in England John A’Lasco)7 was in charge of foreign Protestant groups in London on behalf of Edward VI (BroĪek 1992, 11). The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed a wave of political refugees8 who at the same time attempted to propagate Polish cause on the British Isles.9 Since the image of a country struggling for freedom integrated well into the ideals of freedom, justice and sense of duty and popularized on the wave of Romanticism, the French Revolution and Victorian ethos, the former found its way into British press and literature with prominent poets like Coleridge, Campbell, and Keats lamenting the death of Freedom and extolling the heroism of the Poles.10 Strong feelings of national identity which the Poles cherished despite all odds were in tune with the desire of the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh who were also craving for political independence and resulted in Celtic sympathies towards Poland.11 The 7

In the 18th century he is made a patriot fighting for Poland’s freedom in a melodrama by a London-settled Irishman Arthur Shee, Polish- AngloSaxon Studies 8-9: 94. 8 National tragedies of 1772, 1793 and 1795 when Poland was partitioned among its neighbours Russia, Prussia and Austria resulted in its disappearance from the world map. National uprisings followed, e.g. the KoĞciuszko, November and January Uprisings in 1794, 1831, and 1863 respectively. 9 See: Wojciech Jasiakiewicz, Polska DziaáalnoĞü Propagandowa w Wielkiej Brytanii w Dobie Powstania Styczniowego w ĝwietle Korespondencji, PamiĊtników, Publicystyki i Prasy, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikoáaja Kopernika, 2001; Wojciech Jasiakiewicz, “The pro-Polish campaign in Great Britain in the period of 1830-1831”, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies 2, 79-102. 10 Marta GibiĔska discusses this in: “The patriot’s virtue and the poet’s song: Polish themes in English poetry of the nineteenth century’’, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies 3-4, 21-42. 11 See: Katarzyna Gmerek, Polacy i materia celtycka w XIX wieku, PoznaĔ,

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technological and cultural development of Britain was praised by Polish statesmen, writers and cultural activists, like Prince Adam J. Czartoryski (1770-1861) and Julian U. Niemcewicz (1761-1815) who at the same time often popularized Poland in Britain.12 The British learnt about Poland also from their compatriots. The first printed sources of their travel experiences appeared at the beginning of the 17th century.13 In the 17th century alone Poland was home to 40,000 or even 90,000 Scots fleeing their country for religious and economic reasons (Elliot). The 19th century Polish-British economic contacts made a qualitative difference for the Poles. Congress Poland14 could receive goods which helped to enhance its economy. British steam engines from the first half of the 19th century would be still working a hundred years later. It was also more distant Britain rather than close but historically hostile Germany that would be more willing to cooperate especially in the field of industry by providing its experts and training Polish workers.15 Still, till WWII, Polish-British relations, be it in the political, historical, economic, religious or cultural spheres, were not significant enough to leave their stamp on the history of both nations. For example, even if the British public opinion sympathized with the Poles during the latter’s national insurrections it was all about words rather than action. Britain had no interests in Poland. Since the countries had little in common, “great emotions” were absent between them (Geremek 2006, 2). Lukewarm contacts did not facilitate the hunger for knowledge about each other either and prevented identification with common aims, interests or friends and enemies. As a result, the British mistook Poland for Russia and even in the inter-war period, due to commercial contacts, would be more familiar with China than Poland (StaĔska-Bugaj 1991, 117-118, 122). Józef Piásudski (1867-1935), the first chief of state of independent Poland failed to BONAMI, 2010. 12 See: Wojciech LipoĔski, Polska a Brytania. Próby politycznego i cywilizacyjnego dĨwigniĊcia kraju w oparciu o Wielką BrytaniĊ. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 1978; “The influence of Britain on Prince Adam George Czartoryski’s education and political activity’’ Polish-AngloSaxon Studies 1, 33-67 and 2: 31-78; Wojciech Jasiakiewicz, “The pro-Polish campaign in Great Britain in the period of 1830-1831”, PolishAngloSaxon Studies 2, 79-102. 13 Adam Weichert, An annotated bibliography of printed British pre-20th century travel accounts of Poland, Polish- AngloSaxon Studies 2: 10. 14 Polish state (1815-1918) ruled by Russia, created by virtue of the Congress of Vienna. 15 Wojciech LipoĔski, “Traders and steam engines: Polish-British economic relations in the early 19th century”, Polish- AngloSaxon Studies 12-13: 9, 10, 29.

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establish closer Polish-British ties based on the cooperation on the Baltic Sea (Geremek 2006, 4). British Prime Minister Lloyd George (1916-1922) made the cooperation even more difficult. Polonophobe, he had been critical towards Poland since WWI and at the beginning of WWII his intensified attacks sparked a strong reaction from the Polish ambassador in London Edward RaczyĔski.16

The War Scare – The Smasher of Negative Images One might argue, that even if Lloyd George’s smear campaign did negatively influence the British public and provided it with harmful stereotypes about its ally, not mentioning anger at Poles at least among some Britons for dragging them to WWII, these would fade away for the time being because of much greater fear of the Nazis and for the aim of being protected. War scare in this context would be the smasher of bad images and maybe the British would have welcomed anyone, setting prejudices (racism) aside, as long as they helped secure the nation’s survival. For example, “Canadian Indians were often regarded with curiosity and fascination by the British public.” The latter got on well with Canada’s Native soldiers, the fruit of these good relations being also mixed marriages. What is more, the British were grateful for the financial and in kind support they received from the Canadian Natives in America. Orphans expressed their thanks on the BBC radio and sent letters to the donor Vuntut Gwitchin Band which developed into pen-pal friendship. Even the Royal Family was engaged. In 1943 Ontario's Nicikousemenecaning Band representatives were honoured with British Empire Medals by George VI (“Native Soldiers Foreign Battles” 2011). The fear that must have influenced British warm reception of the foreigners was not groundless. Hitler’s army did not leave doubts about its strength. It achieved spectacular successes in 1940 in Western Europe with Denmark’s surrender on the very same day it was attacked (9 April) and Holland defeated in less than a week (15 May). The unexpectedly rapid fall of France on 22 June opened the way for the attack on Britain, the latter isolated and weakened with the loss of 3,500 troops in French campaign and a considerable amount of war equipment as a result of Dunkirk retreat (Gilbert 2004, 103, Cruickshank 2011). The British could not count on the direct help of the USA, unwilling to enter the combat. 16

See: Mariola Kayser, “The Polemic between Count Edward RaczyĔski and David Lloyd George on the Anglo-Polish Relations at the Outbreak of World War II”, Polish- AngloSaxon Studies 6-7: 115-164.

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What is more, they did not even have a minimum number of aircraft to avert the danger in what was to become an aerial encounter (Gilbert 2004, 110). Göring threatened the Isles would not resist the attack (Kimball 1997, 63). “The British felt alone and isolated” (Kimball 1997, 59), and “their will to resist would crumble” (Cruickshank 2011). Gruesome thoughts occupied the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who in the conversation with the Canadian counterpart in June 1940 did not even rule out his government’s, though not his own, possibility of peace settlement with Germany if unable to win (Gilbert 2004, 103). The Germans were about to launch the so called “Adler” operation, i.e. an aerial attack on Britain, to be followed on the 15th September by the operation “Sea Lion” – the ultimate invasion of the country. The British were in the know of what to brace themselves for. As James Edward Dillon recalls on the first day of the war: Everybody knew what to expect from bombing, films from Spain and Nanking had shown entire walls collapsing, fire sweeping through the cities no matter how much water the firemen poured on them, refugees fleeing in panic with prams, carts and bicycles loaded with bundles and dead bodies lying everywhere in unnatural postures. A solitary aircraft, probably a Handley Page Hampden, the least threatening of bombers, had flown down river as Mr Chamberlain (Prime Minister at beginning of war) finished his broadcast. It panicked the entire North-West (Dillon 2003).

Civilians were anxious to avert the attack. Those not eligible for conscription volunteered in half a million to form the so called Home Guard, “a huge figure which reveals the seriousness with which ordinary people took the threat of invasion in the summer of 1940” (Cruickshank 2011). External threat which more than other factors strengthens the feelings of national identity17 opened the door for those who would help to defend identity values and symbols dear to the nation. Thus, preparing for the worst, the Britons welcomed also foreigners. Since December 1939 Polish airmen headed for the Isles. At the beginning of the Battle of Britain18 German Luftwaffe seriously outnumbered RAF forces (Koskodan 2009, 17 “The sense of national identity is never stronger than when countries are at war with each other, at imminent risk of war, or remembering war”, in: Gareth Evans, “War, Peace and National Identity”, at: http://glf.ywd.ca/index.cfm?pagepath=Members/Speech_Bin/Speech__Gareth_Eva ns_War,_Peace_and_National_Identity&id=35803 (accessed 10.10.2011). 18 Although different sources give different dates of the beginning of the Battle (10 July or 8 August 1940) the official date is said to be the 10th July.

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91). The Polish-British military agreement of 5th August 1940 allowed for the presence of Polish forces in the UK. After their arrival in Britain, the group of pilots with Wacáaw Król was directed first to Glasgow, Scotland,19 where they experienced “goodwill,” “friendliness” and “cordiality” [przychylnoĞü, przyjaznoĞü, serdecznoĞü]. The airmen were helped to adjust to the life conditions in a new country – they could easily exchange French currency for the British pound and use the public transport for free with their uniforms serving as a pass. The Scots were also far from displaying stereotypical meanness as Glasgow restaurants often did not accept money from the pilots for their service and the customers eagerly invited Poles to free meals (Król 1970, 145; 1982, 27). If we assume that fear of the enemy was among the reasons for this openness to “the Other” then Polish aviators’ presence on the Isles was desirable particularly during the Battle of Britain. Since the second half of 1940 the British would experience German bombing raids. On 10th July shipping convoys and South Wales dockyards were targeted. The next month, with the so called “The Day of the Eagle” on 13th of August, they saw even more, though mainly anti-aircraft, aerial attacks (Gilbert 2004, 114-115). On 30th August incendiary bombs were used against the capital city (Gilbert 2004, 122). In September “the German Air Force dropped 5,300 tons of high explosives on London in just 24 nights” (“London bomb damage maps revealed” 2005). Other cities would be targeted as well, among them Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff and Liverpool against which 230 bombers and 700 fighters were directed on September 15 (Gilbert 2004, 125). First night raids only took place on 5th October (Gilbert 2004, 130). 21st October was marked by 200th aerial attack of Liverpool port (Gilbert 2004, 132). The raids cost people’s lives. August bombing raids over Britain killed 1,075 civilians (Gilbert 2004, 122). The most intense one saw the killing of 400 Londoners on 15th October (Gilbert 2004, 132). Under the shower of 337 tons of bombs on 7th September 448 Londoners perished (Gilbert 2004, 123). Król confirmed the gravity of the situation: For the inhabitants of the British Isles a dangerous moment came as the Germans employed the same tactics as in Poland: they dropped bombs on cities and residential districts, defenceless civilian population. British ports were also a frequent target for the Luftwaffe sorties. British press did not

19

The fliers were sent there by mistake as Glasgow was actually the gathering point for the land forces. The ship with Król and other pilots entered the port in Liverpool on 13 July 1940.

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One of the Nazis’ aims was to break the British morale. The diarist writes about Londoners’ stress and hardship: During the day the Germans sent small groups of fighters with bombs on London to make the civilians, harassed by constant alarms, live in constant nervous strain. When the night came, bombers from regions continued the work of destruction. Ear-piercing sirens wrecked the nerves of exhausted population. Londoners moved from comfortable dwelling places to shelters, cellars and underground […]. Some of them lived permanently in the underground […]. The screaming of children was muffled by the noise of electric trains. The air there was heavy, stuffy and dusty (Król 1970, 180-181).21

After the Battle of Britain attacks and destruction were much less frequent. Thus, the lives of the British came almost back to normal. Nevertheless, there were events which painfully reminded of the war. On 15th November 1940 over 10 hour raid of German Luftwaffe destroyed Coventry including its 14th century Cathedral (“1940: Germans bomb Coventry to destruction”). In the September 1940-spring 1941 blitz period 43,000 civilians were killed and over three times more were injured (Kimball 1997, 64). Since June and then September 1944 V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets killed and injured thousands of Londoners.22 The memoirist 20

“Dla mieszkaĔców Wysp Brytyjskich nadeszáa groĨna chwila, poniewaĪ Niemcy zastosowali tą samą taktykĊ co w Polsce: zrzucali bomby na miasta i osiedla, na bezbronną ludnoĞü cywilną. Porty brytyjskie byáy równieĪ czĊstym celem wypraw Luftwaffe. Prasa brytyjska nie ukrywaáa tych smutnych wiadomoĞci. Podawaáa opisy zbombardowanych miast, liczbĊ zabitych i rannych […]”. 21 “Niemcy wysyáali w dzieĔ maáe grupki samolotów myĞliwskich z bombami na Londyn, by ludnoĞü cywilna nĊkana ciągáymi alarmami, Īyáa w staáym napiĊciu nerwowym. Gdy zapadaáa noc, nadlatywaáy z róĪnych kierunków bombowce i kontynuowaáy dzieáo zniszczenia. PrzeraĨliwie wyjące syreny alarmowe targaáy nerwy zmĊczonej ludnoĞci. LondyĔczycy przenosili siĊ z komfortowych mieszkaĔ do schronów, do piwnic i metra […]. Niektórzy z nich zamieszkiwali w metrze na staáe […]. Krzyk dzieci táumiá haáas pĊdzących po szynach pociągów elektrycznych. Powietrze byáo tam ciĊĪkie, duszne i peáne kurzu.” 22 V1 – “worlds first cruise missile. An unmanned gyro guided plane that delivered a tonne of high explosive each time one hurtled into the ground”, “V2 - the first ballistic missile […]. It weighed 13 tons and had arrived via the stratosphere at 3,000 miles an hour” (http://www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/V1_into.html, http://www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/V2_intro.html, respectively (accessed 31.05.2011).

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recalls the enormous intensity of the attacks: “The sirens sounded now more often than in the tragic months of terrorist air-raids of 1940 […]” and the surprise of the people: “The inhabitants of London were very disappointed because just when, as it seemed, the Germans were losing the war completely […] the disaster which, for the time being, could not be averted occurred” (1975, 292; 1991, 254).23 A Londoner Ken Long described the situation as “hell”. People were exhausted physically and psychically: I particularly remember how terribly tired everyone looked, the constant lack of sleep the patriotic pressure to keep working very hard, the nighttime fire watching duties and the constant stress of rationing, the blackout and the worry of what was happening to your Husband, Father, Son, Sweetheart, Brother and even the girls in the services who were at risk, and they of course were all away and worrying about us back home (Long 2003).

They developed phobias: I would look up and see German bombers caught in searchlights, weaving across the sky. I connected that sight with death and many years later that repressed fear manifested itself as a phobia of flying. Although I could fly at low level, flying at height in an airliner was unthinkable! (Wymondham Learning Centre 2005).

Airborne Successes of the Poles As the war continued, the feeling of unity between the Poles and the Britons strengthened the relationship. Poland was the fourth, after the USSR, the USA and Britain, aviation force. 145 fighter pilots from 302 and 303 Polish squadrons as well as Poles attached to British ones who took part in the Battle of Britain constituted the largest number of all foreign participants, with the second largest, Czech, having 86 fliers. The peak period of the war saw Polish squadrons making 10% of British Fighter Command strength (Brodecki, Wawer, and Kondracki 2005, 37, 73, 75). During the Battle of Britain at times 25% of planes in defence of London would belong to the Poles (Zamoyski 2010, 91). The latter flew 23 “Syreny alarmowe rozbrzmiewaáy teraz czĊĞciej niĪ w tragicznych miesiącach terrorystycznych nalotów 1940 roku”; “MieszkaĔcy Londynu byli mocno zawiedzeni, bo oto w okresie, kiedy wydawaáo siĊ, Īe Niemcy z kretesem przegrywają wojnĊ […] nastąpiáa nagáa katastrofa, której – jak na razie – nie bardzo moĪna byáo zapobiec.”

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over France and Germany attacking strategic enemy’s targets, with bomber escorts and reconnaissance and U-boat patrols, they were also used as instructors for the US airmen (Koskodan 2009, 97, 99). Both the Poles and the British would share the same, happy and gloomy, experiences and it is generally agreed that “nothing brings people closer than a common enemy”. One of the Polish veterans, Romulad LipiĔski24, wrote in his memoir: “Nothing unites people like common cause and common danger. Being exposed to a common danger develops some bond that is very strong” (Lipinski). Although he referred to the relationships between those in combat the feeling must have extended to those the soldiers defended with such sacrifice. Polish pilots started becoming the part of what Britain lived with. National identities, the important fuel and first and foremost reason to fight, mingled with a collective identity of war allies who fought the same cause – to defeat the Axis powers. Right after arrival, Król reported on whole cities of “well-disposed” Scots who considered Polish airmen “[…] allies in the fight with a common Nazi enemy”25 (1982, 27). What is more, the ally would be a worthy one: “[…] the English hold us in high esteem as war allies” (Król 1982, 113).26 The advent of the actual warfare strengthened the relationship and changed the image of once “exotic” Poles. Time was also on the airmen’s side. As the defence of Britain progressed, Poles had more and more successes. The latter were so spectacular that the British made an effort to check if the scores were not exaggerated, only to find out that if anything, rather the opposite was possible (Koskodan 2009, 94-95). Despite the fact that they were not operational from the very beginning of the Battle, they were credited with 12% German aircraft shot down during its course (Koskodan 2009, 96). What is more, they achieved this with a considerably smaller kill ratio than the British: “statistics show that in RAF as a whole, 4.9 kills cost one own death, while the Polish squadrons notched up 10.5 enemy planes destroyed for every own pilot killed – a staggering discrepancy” (Zamoyski 2010, 92). In the most effective and well known 303 Squadron of 34 fliers nine achieved the status of aces (Olson, Cloud 2004, 158). 302 “PoznaĔski” Squadron shot down certainly 27, most probably 11 and damaged 2 German aircraft (Król 1982, 149).27 24 LipiĔski served in the 12 Podolski Lancers Regiment, the regiment of the Polish II Corps under general Wáadysáaw Anders. 25 “przychylnie nastawieni”, “[…] sojusznicy w walce ze wspólnym hitlerowskim wrogiem.” 26 “Anglicy cenią sobie nas jako wojennych sprzymierzeĔców.” 27 In the period of 10 July 1940-6 August 1941 the squadron shot down certainly 34 German planes, probably 14 and destroyed 4 (Król 1982, 265).

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Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding admitted that "Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the battle would have been the same" (“A History of the Battle of Britain: Battle of the Nations”). Remarkable achievements were continued after the Battle, when raids over France and the Low Countries and operations like Mosquito, Rhubarb or Circus took place. For example in 1941 30% of the Luftwaffe losses were due to Poles (Olson and Cloud 2004, 190). In 1943 they shot down 113 enemy planes, with 302 Squadron among the best scorers, and dropped 1602 tons of bombs and mines (Król 1975, 239-240). Out of 1846 V-1 bombs shot down by allied fighters, 190 of them were downed by Poles, among others 306 and 315 Squadrons (Król 1991, 265). Other fighter pilots’ achievements in 1944 included: “100 certain shootings of German airplanes”, “destroying hundreds of motor vehicles, sinking dozens of barges, destroying artillery positions and military targets, bombing bridges, railway stations and junctions” (Król 1991, 271). In the Battle of Falaise (Normandy, France, 12-21 August 1944) their activities substantially helped First Armoured Division under the command of General Stanisáaw Maczek (Król 1991, 271). There were several reasons behind these successes. The Poles were older and more experienced (having been fighting in Poland and France) than British pilots. Without planes with modern technology the British were used to, they had to learn to concentrate well as well as to rely on themselves and especially their vision which had to be impeccable if they wanted to be admitted to the aviation school. In contrast to the British, their technique of fighting was aggressive making them more effective. Some of the techniques were even copied by the British. Mutual protection when airborne was a priority for them which reduced the number of losses. Last but not least, it was the excellent work of their ground crew who worked day and night to make sure the planes were safe to fly (Olson and Cloud 2004, 144-148).

Popularity of the Poles It was the media which eagerly spread the news of these successes to Britons. Journalists were frequent guests at the airports (Gretzynger and Matusiak 2007, 110). An English policeman in Król’s diary remarks: “There is a lot about you, Poles, in newspapers and on the radio. You are a brave nation, you fight valiantly over London”28 (1982, 105). English 28

“DuĪo o was, Polakach, piszą w gazetach i mówią w radiu. Dzielny z was naród,

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women whom the pilot met in a café repeated they “knew a lot about Polish pilot fighters from radio and press” (Król 1982, 169). Bad news about front developments was accompanied by more optimistic information about the heroism and determination29 of aviators and Polish names were frequently given (Król 1970, 153). Bravery became the Polish trade mark. Król’s name and a photograph would appear in connection with him being awarded a military decoration – Distinguished Flying Cross, by the Air Vice-Marshal H. W. L. Saunders (Król 1991, 243). In 1943 Polish Flying Team (PFT, the so called “Skalski’s Circus”) was established to fight in North Africa. The best 12 out of 68 pilots who volunteered became the Team members commanded by Stanisáaw Skalski (Waszczuk). “After a month of fighting PFT was the best fighting squadron fighting over Africa” (Waszczuk). Król was one of the PFT’s pilots. Daily Telegraph reported on the successes of the formation praising its fliers, including Król, and at the same time took the opportunity to remind the readers of Polish contribution to the Battle of Britain (1975, 211). The subject of media interest was also Król’s 302 Squadron’s performance (Król 1970, 211). All these reports were carefully read by the pilot’s Scottish acquaintances who were very proud of Król and could not wait to hear about these victories directly from the hero and see the awards personally. Press cuttings about Król were also kept by the Scotswoman Nancy, albeit for more personal reasons as she was enchanted with the Pole which came as no surprise since Poles were very popular with British women. The newspapers headlines were impressive. Zamoyski (2010, 109) writes that they deemed fliers “Polish daredevils, “Polish Cavalry of the Air” or “Polish Demons”. During this unique period of emergency they briefly entered, normally closed to the outsiders, the world of the higher strata of the allied society. The media noise helped open the hearts of British upper classes which became even more eager to help the Poles they heard so much of (Król 1982, 160). Social groups thus made room for the demands of the war reality. However, the combat was not the only area of interest. The press noted the concert of airmen from Leconfield (England) airbase in the nearby Hull town in the account titled “Polish talents in RAF” [Polskie talenty w RAF] (Król 1982, 111). Thus, popularity of the fliers translated into the popularity and popularization of Polish culture. The public listened to traditional soldier’s songs preceded bijecie siĊ dzielnie nad Londynem.” 29 The word “determination” [determinacja] in reference to Polish pilots was in fact the one heard most often from British officers, “this seems to have been their saving virtue, distinguishing them from their RAF colleagues” (Zamoyski 1995, 162).

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by the Polish national hymn. High attendance and even the need for more such events united the pilots and civilians, deepened the level of acceptance and showed openness of the locals for “the other”. Polish national and cultural identities were thus planted on the British soil. The film industry was interested in Poles as well. In 1941 Polish characters appeared in Dangerous Moonlight or Diary of a Polish Airman and in the next years more would follow (Zamoyski 2010, 109). What must have added to the publicity were the visits of prominent figures in squadrons’ airbases. Among them were the Royal Family members, politicians and top aviation officials. On 1st November 1940 the pilots of 300, 301 and 302 were visited by the Polish Prime Minister Wáadysáaw Sikorski and RAF officials, including Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for Air in Winston Churchill’s government. Some of the visits were unexpected like the one with the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, when later on the same day he came to spend teatime with the pilots. 302 Squadron members had the chance to talk to him and learn that he was “nice and unpretentious” [miáy i bezpretensjonalny] (Król 1982, 151-152). On 11th November 1940 302 squadron was honoured, also unexpectedly, with the presence of Prince George, Duke of Kent, accompanied by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Rodney Park, the commander of the Northolt RAF station Stanley Vincent and another top official whose name Król could not recall. The meeting was heartening as the Prince reassured Poles that the idea of independent Poland was dear to the British government (Król 1982, 166). The diarist was also lucky to pass his English language test. Prince George would approach each pilot of 302 Squadron and greet them and exchange a few words. As Król did not understand him he said, just in case: “Yes, Sir. I am very well. I like to be a fighter pilot” which occurred to be right as the guest asked how he was and if he liked flying fighters (Król 1982, 166). Poles became stars. The New York Times underlined a remarkable degree of fondness towards them: “[…] the Poles not only are appreciated, they are pretty close to being adored” (Olson, Cloud 2004, 168). The prominent American war reporter Quentin Reynolds called them “Glamour Boys of England” (Olson and Cloud 2004, 168). Poems were written about their exceptionable achievements. One of them was by Stephen Lucius Gwynn (1865-1950), the Irish poet and politician and The Times and The Observer correspondent (Gretzynger 2007, 179-180). The diarist admits that not only were the airmen called “heroes” [bohaterowie] but were also treated as such (Król 1982, 27). They frequently attracted the Islanders’ attention. The British literally stopped when they saw Polish uniforms in the street. It was not because, as in the beginning, “[…] little

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was known […] about them and most often only that they had shamefully lost the war with the Germans”30 (Król 1982, 165) but because they were now in the centre of attention. Everybody wanted to know them better yet curiosity was coupled with the excitement of reaching those who captivated popular imagination. The search for what constituted Polish identity was thus triggered. “English society suddenly discovered Poland, it started being interested in it. British families opened the doors of their private small castles and manor-houses, invited Polish pilots to spend leaves and weekends with them. There were no parties or social meetings where Polish soldiers would not be invited” (Król 1970, 211).31 Even long after the Battle of Britain, in 1944, the British family Król was accommodated with “received [him] with great cordiality, regarding this to be an honour to host a Polish flier awarded a distinguished British Flying Cross” (1991, 260).32 The airmen were hardly on their own in public places. As soon as they sat themselves at restaurant or cafe tables they were joined by the people who wanted to learn about Poles: “We did not manage to eat soup when an elegantly dressed man approached us and asked if he could sit down close to us because he would like to get to know us, Poles. […] Unexpectedly [also] two women appeared near us, well over thirty and they also sat at our table” or “Hardly did we try cakes when two women, about thirty something years old appeared at our table. ‘Can we sit next to you?’ asked the brunette shaking hands with us […] ‘We would like to talk to you because we heard a lot about Polish pilots’ the other one, fair haired started. [….] Soon afterwards some man, who also wanted to get to know us and talk joined us” (Król 1982, 106, 169).33 30 “[Polacy], o których dotąd maáo wiedziano, a najczĊĞciej tylko to, Īe sromotnie przegrali wojnĊ z Niemcami.” 31 “SpoáeczeĔstwo angielskie odkryáo nagle PolskĊ, zaczĊáo siĊ nią interesowaü. Rodziny brytyjskie otwieraáy dla Polaków podwoje prywatnych zameczków i dworków, zapraszaáy do spĊdzenia u nich urlopów i weekendów. Nie byáo w okolicy zabaw czy towarzyskich spotkaĔ, by nie zapraszano na nie polskich Īoánierzy.” 32 “[WáaĞciciele] przyjĊli mnie z duĪą serdecznoĞcią, poczytując sobie za zaszczyt goszczenie u siebie polskiego lotnika odznaczonego chlubnym lotniczym krzyĪem brytyjskim.” 33 “Nie zdąĪyliĞmy zjeĞü zupy, gdy podszedá do nas elegancko ubrany starszy pan i zapytaá, czy moĪe siĊ do nas przysiąĞü, bo chciaáby nas, Polaków, poznaü. […] Ni stąd ni zowąd znalazáy siĊ przy nas dwie Panie, dobrze juĪ po trzydziestce, i przysiadáy siĊ takĪe do naszego stolika”; „Nie zdąĪyliĞmy jeszcze dobrze posmakowaü ciastek, a juĪ zjawiáy siĊ przy naszym stoliku dwie panie, wyglądające na oko na okoáo trzydzieĞci kilka lat. ‘ Czy moĪemy siĊ przysiąĞü do panów?’ zapytaáa brunetka. […] ‘ChciaáybyĞmy z panami porozmawiaü, bo duĪo

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“Poland” badges opened the hearts of barmen who would not conceal their admiration to Poles giving short speeches: “Welcome, Polish pilots. I’ve heard a lot about you. I will be greatly honoured if you agree to drink with me”, and informing all bar clients about the presence of aviators. In the usual, domino effect like fashion, others wanted “to be honoured” by having a drink with the fliers as well and, as a result, Król and his colleagues would drink with: male civilians, two infantry officers, “an older man in a top-hat, sitting alone and waiting for his acquaintance” and, recommended by the barman, “nice women” – the Women’s League activists. All drinks were naturally on the barman and bar guests. Król’s friend, Wáodek, would remark: “Very nice people live here [in Croydon]. And this Women’s League is a wonderful institution, it does not avoid strong alcohol” (Król 1970, 240-242). 34 Toasting to (Polish) pilots was in vogue: “’To pilots.’ ‘To Polish pilots!’ – somebody corrected. ‘Viva!’ [‘Zdrowie lotników.’ ‘Zdrowie polskich lotników!’ – poprawiá ktoĞ z sali. ‘Niech Īyją!’] (Król 1970, 266). Places attended by Poles attracted more clients: “In ‘Orchard’ restaurant, which became famous for Polish airmen coming there, there appeared, out of curiosity, Englishmen with their wives and daughters, young girls from WAAF [also] kept coming” (Król 1982, 136).35 Consequently, the pilots contributed to the pub, bar and restaurant owners’ economic wellbeing: “The manager of the club […] was happy to see us there because our presence […] attracted nice [club] members with their colleagues which in turn had an influence on the profitability of the club” (Król 1991, 260).36 Thanks to this widespread, for different reasons, interest in Poles was not an issue for the latter, especially during dark winter days (Król 1970, 193). Being in the centre of attention could be tiring though. “’Excuse me’ he [the barman] said. ‘These women would like to know you and talk to you. They are from the Women’s League, they are nice and sociable […]’. We tried to explain we did not have time, but we had no choice, the ladies encouraged us by

juĪ sáyszaáyĞmy o polskich pilotach’ zaczĊáa ta druga, z jasnymi wáosami”. 34 “Bardzo mili ludzie tu mieszkają. A ta Liga Kobiet to wspaniaáa instytucja, wcale nie stroni od mocniejszych trunków.” 35 WAAF - The Women's Auxiliary Air Force. “W restauracji ‘Orchard’, o której juĪ rozeszáa siĊ fama, Īe tam przychodzą polscy lotnicy, zjawiali siĊ z ciekawoĞci Anglicy z Īonami i córkami, przychodziáy máode dziewczĊta z WAFF”. 36 “Kierowniczka klubu […], chĊtnie widziaáa nas na sali, bo naszą obecnoĞcią […] przyciągaliĞmy miáe czáonkinie z ich koleĪankami, a to z kolei miaáo wpáyw na rentownoĞü klubu.”

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beckoning and smiling at us” (Król 1982, 228).37 Król explains that avoiding such contacts was due to embarrassment or inconvenience but also the nature of their work: “It happened that there were no volunteers for some party and this was because of upcoming combat flights on the next day. In our combat job there was no difference between a weekday and Sunday or a holiday, which civilians often could not understand” (Król 1970, 212).38 Moreover, the hardship of combat must have made fliers often look for peace rather than engagement with civilians. Olson and Cloud add “It wasn’t manly – it simply was not pilot-like – to attract too much attention to oneself” (2003, 181). As a result, squadron commanders had to choose representatives who were supposed to go out and the pilots were forced to do it. The memoirist emphasizes this was most common with Englishwomen: “Then it was not even the right thing to resist” (1970, 212).39 Embarrassment was also related to free drinks: “When we decided it was high time to go, I asked the waitress for a bill. ’Sir, everything is already paid for’, she said […]. When we protested claiming we get a salary after all and we want to pay ourselves, everybody shut us down” (Król 1982, 106).40 The gratitude of civilians translated into other kinds of favours or manifestations of assistance. Those forced to emergency landings as well as their aircraft were taken good care of. They were given food, alcohol (very often it was precious whisky41) to warm them up, and accommodation. The appearance of meritorious guests was quite an event so the hosts were not willing to let them go until they drank to the friendship between Britain defenders and the locals (Król 1970, 261-263). Buying a car, indispensable to move round, became a pleasant experience. 37

“‘Bardzo panów przepraszam’ powiedziaá [barman]. ‘Te panie chciaáyby panów poznaü i porozmawiaü. One naleĪą do Ligi Kobiet, są miáe i towarzyskie […]’. TrochĊ táumaczyliĞmy siĊ brakiem czasu, ale nie byáo rady, bo panie zachĊcaáy nas skinieniami rąk i miáymi uĞmiechami.” 38 “Zdarzaáo siĊ, Īe na jakąĞ zabawĊ towarzyską nie byáo chĊtnych, a to z powodu zapowiadających siĊ lotów bojowych w dniu nastĊpnym. W naszej pracy bojowej nie byáo bowiem róĪnicy miĊdzy dniem powszednim a niedzielą czy ĞwiĊtem, czego cywile nie mogli czĊsto zrozumieü.” 39 „Nie wypadaáo siĊ wtedy nawet zbytnio opieraü.” 40 “Kiedy uznaliĞmy, Īe juĪ czas na nas i trzeba ruszaü w dalszą drogĊ, poprosiáem kelnerkĊ o rachunek. ‘Sir, juĪ wszystko zapáacone’ powiedziaáa […]. Gdy zaprotestowaliĞmy twierdząc, Īe przecieĪ my dostajemy pensjĊ i chcemy sami zapáaciü, wszyscy nas zakrzyczeli”. 41 Whisky was rationed during the war. In bars it was sold by a glass whereas individual purchase of a bottle of whiskey was not only difficult but also expensive (Król 1975, 236).

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For civilians, car maintenance versus petrol rationing did not allow for its comfortable usage and that is why they were willing to sell their vehicles. For the airmen, on the other hand, petrol was not an issue as they could use aviation petrol. What is more, Polish nationality was a passport to bargains: “Already the next day in the afternoon I became the owner of another, more modern car. It was in a very good condition, the owner – out of liking for Poles – reduced the price even by 5 pounds” (Król 1982, 199).42 With the beginning of the war the government introduced food rationing as due to the activities of the German submarines food import (55 million tons a year before the war) became more difficult.43 In June 1941 eggs started to be rationed: there was one egg per adult a week (Barrow). Although pilots were eligible for 2 eggs per week, they still missed egg meals. “Poland” badges though, (again) opened the hearts of farmers. Not only did they treat visiting Poles to scrambled eggs but provided them with more on their departure informing the authorities about “sudden indisposition of the hens” on their farms, due to “unknown reasons” (Król 1975, 234-237). A less conventional way of support would be giving mascots to fliers, which was related to belief in Gremlins, popular among the British and eagerly taken over by the Poles (Zamoyski 1995, 140). The diarist got a small black smiling doll in a checked skirt from his Scottish acquaintance who wanted it to bring luck to the pilot. Even if he treated the issue with a tongue in his cheek44 he did hang the doll in his plane carefully choosing the right place for it and after a successful operation confirmed his colleague’s suggestion about the possible positive role of the mascot. Zamoyski writes about “mascotfever”. Although he refers to live animals (dogs, cats, birds or even ducks, grass-snakes and monkeys) which would also be taken by aviators into combat – popularity of superstitions and counting on good luck could be among possible reasons (Zamoyski 1995, 140). “Uncertainties of life” and 42

“JuĪ nazajutrz w poáudnie staáem siĊ wáaĞcicielem innego, bardziej nowoczesnego samochodu. Byá w bardzo dobrym stanie, wáaĞciciel – z sympatii do Polaków – opuĞciá z ceny caáe 5 funtów”. 43 Food rationing finished in 1954. 44 This can be exemplified by the attitude to the plane engine failure during an operation when finally, miraculously, it started working again. Król’s comment was the following: “[…] wasn’t it gremlins’ work in this case – the evil ones spited us, the good ones rescued us. The truth lied probably in dirty petrol from canisters”. “[…] czy w tym przypadku nie zadziaáaáy gremliny – te záe zrobiáy nam na záoĞü, te dobre przyszáy nam z pomocą. Prawda tkwiáa chyba w brudnej benzynie z kanistrów (1991, 278). The issue of good and bad gremlins was frequently a topic of conversations among pilots (e.g. Król 1991, 234-235).

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intangibility of death were taken into account as well. In contrast to the infantry, pilots would not often witness the death of their colleagues which “added to the strangeness of fate” (Zamoyski 1995, 140-141).

Pilots’ Appeal These airborne successes would not have been translated into success with the public had it not been for the Polish aviators’ appealing ways on the ground. After all, they were “cheerful” [pogodni], “sporty” [wysportowani], “gallant” [szarmanccy] and “presentable” [godnie siĊ prezentowali] in their uniforms, radiating with youth and vitality (Król 1982, 136, 169). Uncertainty about the future with the real prospect of death made them seize each moment even more intensely: “We did not know what the future held. […] if the next day we would have the chance to spend time together in a jolly team. We were good at fighting and having fun ourselves […]” (Król 1982, 136).45 This marriage of professionalism in the air and the ability to let go when off duty must have also been attractive, the more so that even when having fun pilots kept “dignity” [godnoĞü] in public places: “The relationships between the squadron staff, officers and soldiers with the civilian population of Chichester town were very cordial. It was possible thanks to correct and dignified behaviour of the Poles […]” (Król 1970, 211)46. Although “from time to time [one] had to drown their worries and grief in great amusement and strong wine”47 this was within the bounds of decency and this is, as Król mentions, where the Poles emulated their British counterparts (1970, 184,185). Thus, the places of entertainment they spent their time in had the reputation of nice and joyful (Król 1970, 185). This is not to say Polish pilots’ conduct was always unimpeachable. “War has its rights and youth wants and must sow its wild oats, until it’s still alive” (Król 1975, 101).48 The airmen “liked to show off” (Bloody foreigners) and even more so if

45

“Nie wiedzieliĞmy, co nam zgotuje los. […] czy nastĊpnego dnia nadarzy siĊ jeszcze okazja spĊdzenia czasu w rozeĞmianym gronie. ByliĞmy dobrzy ‘do wypitki i do bitki’ […].” 46 “Stosunki personelu dywizjonu, oficerów i Īoánierzy z cywilną ludnoĞcią miasteczka Chichester byáy bardzo serdeczne. Staáo siĊ to dziĊki poprawnemu i peánemu godnoĞci zachowaniu siĊ Polaków […].” 47 “[garstka lotników] musiaáa od czasu do czasu utopiü swe troski i zmartwienia w szaáowej zabawie i mocnym winie.” 48 “Wojna ma swoje prawa, a máodoĞü chce i musi siĊ wyszumieü, póki jeszcze jest Īywa.”

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they wanted to impress British women.49 On the other, hand one cannot rule out that sometimes it was the departure from temperance attributed to Britons which could attract the interest of the fair sex. And females, so the diarist indicates, clung to Polish soldiers: “POLAND flashes on their sleeves did its duty, especially when it comes to nice female youth” (Król 1991, 19).50 The latter compared Poles with British men when it came to handling ladies: “Poles are real gentlemen […]. Which of our, English boys dances so nicely and then kisses a hand and sees to a place? ‘Great guys’, agreed young girls, ‘well-mannered and not importunate. And how they kiss!’” (Król 1970, 184).51 Good manners were also the result of education in a renowned Polish school for pilots in DĊblin where, apart from flying, they “received instruction in the art of being a gentleman […]. They were taught that an officer, gentleman, and pilot always brings flowers when calling on a lady and always kisses the lady’s hand – just so – on arrival and departure” (Olson and Cloud 2004, 13). The pilots could also appeal to higher classes as airmen had high reputation. In WWI they were compared to knights of the Middle Ages, they were thus “the knights of the air”. At the beginning of its inception in 1918 Britain being a pilot was a privilege as only the upper classes were believed to be well suited for the job and only the richest could afford learning to fly. Although this changed in the 1930s with the recruitment for the so called Volunteer Reserve which gave working class men the chance to take free of charge flying courses, in 1940 working class soldiers did not occupy highest positions (“Great Aviation Myths,” Sugarman 2011). Polish aviation was not class bound and offered positions to people from all walks of life (Olson and Cloud 2004, 12). For example, 303 Squadron commander Zdzisáaw KrasnodĊbski was the son of a nobleman while his successor Witold Urbanowicz came from a peasant family (so did Wacáaw Król). Nevertheless, if the ethos of British 49 Some pilots flew their planes so low they scared people and farm animals and distracted pupils at schools. A school headmaster “[t]hreatened, that if the raids were not stopped he would lay off two young female teachers who must have been the object of interest of young fliers (“groziá, Īe jeĪeli naloty nie ustaną, zwolni z pracy dwie máode nauczycielki, które niechybnie są obiektem zainteresowaĔ máodych lotników’’). 50 “Naszywki POLAND na rĊkawach robiáy swoje, zwáaszcza u miáej ĪeĔskiej máodzieĪy.” 51 “Polacy to prawdziwi gentlemani […]. Który to z naszych, angielskich cháopców tak áadnie zataĔczy, a potem pocaáuje w rĊkĊ i odprowadzi na miejsce? ‘Morowe cháopaki’ potakiwaáy máode dziewczĊta ‘grzeczni i nie natarczywi. A jak caáują!’”

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pilots’ upper-class background persisted this might have influenced the perception of Poles by the British as well.

Sympathy towards Lonesome Fighters Putting soldiers’ merits aside, sympathy as well as concern of the British about the Poles’ emotional state should be taken into consideration when trying to explain the phenomenon of inclusion. Poles were far away from their mother country and their family lives disintegrated – they were separated from their relatives, unsure about the latter’s lot and unable to help them. They celebrated their private anniversaries and occasions on their own which would be even more depressing as these reminded them of what and whom they had left behind: “The English had their own families, they visited them, wrote letters, telephoned them, celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, received gifts, sent parcels to them. How we sometimes envied them for the moments they spent in the warmth of hearth and home” (Król 1975, 92).52 The British must have known about this bitterness – one may believe that their kindness was not only a matter of courtesy but of co-feeling. Król confirms this when talking about his Scottish friends who always waited for his visits and offered him accommodation in their place to make him feel at home: “They valued a lot our acquaintance, they tried to substitute for a family in my war loneliness” (1991, 207).53

The Reasons for Inclusion – A Conclusion There is no one answer to the question why the members of geographically, historically, politically and culturally distant nations, which by implication brought to the relationship different and contrasting identities, got on so well during 1940-1945. On the one hand, the highest state of emergency – the war – lifts the barriers of national distinctions as more pressing and natural mobilization against the enemy takes over. In case of Poland, the process could be much easier as both countries were not bound by common links and thus strong prejudices would not be an additional obstacle. What is more, the combat that followed would put 52

“Anglicy mieli swoje rodziny, jeĨdzili do nich, pisali listy, telefonowali, obchodzili urodziny, rocznice, dostawali upominki, sami wysyáali paczki. JakĪe im nieraz zazdroĞciliĞmy tych chwil spĊdzonych w cieple domowego ogniska.” 53 “Bardzo cenili sobie znajomoĞü ze mną, próbowali zastĊpowaü mi rodzinĊ w mojej wojennej samotnoĞci.”

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both nations in the same boat and blur the difference between “us” and “them” due to common experience. Parallels took over contrasts when common aims were at stake. Differences of national characters were put aside. The Polish motto “For your freedom and ours” seemed to have worked with the British as well. On the other hand, even after the Battle of Britain, when the greatest threat of invasion passed, Poles would still enjoy the hosts’ liking. However, they would no longer be the same in the eyes of British civilians. Having proved their value, they now deserved the credit which opened the hearts of more Britons for whom the fliers had seemed far-away foreigners before. Admiration and gratitude followed. The attractiveness of the young men and their good manners supported the already won good image. As the Islanders’ interest in the Poles grew, they would become more sensitive to their lot which many of them tried to make more bearable by building the atmosphere of home away from home for Polish soldiers. The Poles seemed to have been the right people in the right place and time. They belonged, in the words of Winston Churchill, to “the few” who gave the British inhabitants what they then needed – more security and hope in the dark period of history when every single aviator mattered. On the wave of this appreciation cultural differences aroused interest, attracting the British to “the other” rather than causing resentment. Upper classes welcomed Polish pilots and accepted them in their ranks. Cultural differences could be interesting and attractive for many women who were often adored in a way previously unknown to them, the fascination which resulted in many marriages. Poles seemed to have found the happy medium – they had enough in common with the Britons to be accepted and were different enough to keep the British interested in learning more about the Poles. What is more, if spending time together – celebrating holidays, taking part in events like hockey matches or simply staying in a pub or a restaurant – was attractive enough for the Poles, it could be equally appealing to the British civilians. Overall, this is quite a pleasant picture of the relationships between Polish soldiers and British civilians. One might wonder if such flawless coexistence was possible. Maybe Król, the author of the accounts, writing his diaries long after the war, retained only positive images letting the negative ones go as with time we often become more understanding and idealise the past? Zamoyski54 argues that the picture would not necessarily have to be that rosy. Military uniforms are not a welcomed sight in the long run in any country since they symbolize unwanted “invasion and a threat”. On a more practical note, crowds of soldiers could be a nuisance 54

Information that follows is taken from Zamoyski 1995, 169-171.

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in smaller and usually quiet areas. Another problem was stereotyping. Willingness to take shortcuts rather than make an effort to know the Other better resulted in both nations being reduced to “drunk and reckless” in case of the Poles and “stuffy and unfeeling” in reference to the British. Even though the Poles enjoyed considerable popularity, after “the honeymoon period” (mid 1940 till mid 1941) the prose of life would have to come and change the stars into less fascinating mortals. Thus newspapers would shift their focus and more often reported on Poles being drunkards and law offenders. Changes in the world political scene added to this negative picture. In 1941 the USA and the Soviet Union entered the war. American soldiers with their Hollywood air seemed to outshine Polish ones. Pro-Soviet propaganda turned many Britons against the Poles who were now an obstacle on the way to good relationship with the powerful ally that gave hope for defeating Germany. On the other hand, Zamoyski did admit that “[f]or the most part, the Polish airmen were blissfully unaware of any unkind feelings on the part of the British population” and the latter, especially those less politically oriented and living in more remote areas gave them every reason to feel that way by maintaining their friendly attitude. This ultimately gives additional credence to Król’s recollections and shows, politics apart, that enchantment with the Poles not necessarily had to be a passing fad. Taking into consideration politics though, one has to conclude on a pessimistic note, that Polish soldiers were the subject of noticeable exclusion. It was often emphasized that the Poles did not fight for Britain or France – they struggled for independent and territorially integrated Poland. The United Kingdom, the fading power at the end of the war, could not and was not determined enough to help Polish aviators realize their dream of coming back to the free country. Many soldiers had nowhere to return as the Eastern territories of Poland were incorporated within the USSR’s borders and the country became subordinated to the Soviet Union. The national identities of many Poles were then in tatters. Warm welcome and acceptance by the British civilians was not translated into real politics of the country’s leaders. As a result, many pilots stayed in the British Isles after the war, and again they had to struggle for being included.

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References Barrow, Mandy. 2011. “Britain Since the 1930s.” Accessed June 9. http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/war/rationing2.html BBC News. 2011. “1940: Germans bomb Coventry to destruction.” On This Day 1950-2000. Accessed May 31. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_35 22000/3522785.stm. —. 2005. “London bomb damage maps revealed.” Accessed Oct 10, 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4655437.stm. BBC. 2011. “Native Soldiers - Foreign Battlefields. The Sacrifices and Achievements.” On This Day 1950-2000. Accessed Oct 30. http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/history/other/native/second_sacrifices. Bloody Foreigners: The Untold Battle of Britain, first broadcast 29 June 2010 by Darlow Smithson Productions for Channel 4. Directed and written by Carl Hindmarch. British Embassy Warsaw. 2011. “Previous Ambassadors.” Accessed May 21.http://ukinpoland.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/our-embassy-inwarsaw/our-ambassador/previous-ambassadors. Brodecki, Bogusáaw, Zbigniew Wawer, and Tadeusz Kondracki. 2005. Polacy na frontach II wojny Ğwiatowej/ The Poles on the Battlefronts of the Second World War. Warszawa: Bellona. BroĪek, Andrzej. 1992. “A Short View of the History of Polish Emigration to Great Britain and America.” In Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, edited by Wojciech LipoĔski, vols. 3-4, 21-42. PoznaĔ: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza. Cannon, John. 2002. “Stuart, Charles Edward.” The Oxford Companion to British History. Encylcopedia.com (May 21, 2011). Cruickshank, Dan. 2011. “The German Threat to Britain in World War Two.” BBC History. Accessed June 6. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/invasion_ww2_01.shtml. Dillon, Jim. 2003. “War for a Junior, 1939 – 1941.” BBC WW2 People’s War. Accessed June 6, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/69/a1947369.shtml Elliott. Andrew. 2011. “Scots Diaspora.” Sikorski Polish Club. Accessed May 23. http://www.sikorskipolishclub.org.uk/newsletter/ScotsDiaspora_English. pdf. Evans, Gareth. 2011. “War, Peace and National Identity.” Global Leadership Foundation. Accessed Oct 10.

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StaĔska-Bugaj, Ewa. 1991. „Propagating Polish music in Great Britain in the years 1919-1939.” In Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, edited by Wojciech LipoĔski and Krzysztof Sawala, vol. 2, 117-118, 122. PoznaĔ: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza. Sugarman, Martin. 2011. “Jewish Pilots and Aircrews in the Battle of Britain.” Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed June 12, 2011. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/sugar4.html. Waszczuk, Jacek. 2008. “Cyrk Skalskiego.” Samoloty. Wszystko o lataniu. Accessed April 20, 2011. http://www.samoloty.pl/index.php/historialotnictwa-hobby-245/historia-lotnictwa-polskiego-hobby259/dywizjony-psp-1940-1946-hobby-1744/cyrk-skalskiego-hobby1772. Weichert, Adam. 1991. “An annotated bibliography of printed British pre20th century travel accounts of Poland.” In Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, edited by Wojciech LipoĔski and Krzysztof Sawala, vol. 2, 103-115. PoznaĔ: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza. Wieczorkiewicz, Paweá. 2010. Historia Polityczna Polski 1935-1945. 2nd edition. Warszawa: KsiąĪka i Wiedza. Wymondham Learning Centre. 2005. “Childhood Experiences of The War.” BBC WW2 People’s War. Accessed June 6, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/89/a3803889.shtml. Zamoyski, Adam. 2010. The forgotten Few. The Polish Air Force In World War II. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Aviation. ZmyĞlony, Wojciech. 2011. “Wacáaw Król.” Polskie Siáy Powietrzne w II Wojnie ĝwiatowej. Accessed May 2, 2011. http://www.polishairforce.pl/krolw.html.

CHAPTER FIVE THE HAUNTED CHINA: THE GHOST IMAGE IN AMY TAN’S “THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER” HUI-LIEN YEH

According to Chinese tradition and religious beliefs, ghosts and human beings belong to different realms. Due to this belief, “the ghost” has been treated as a taboo in many traditions. Yet, this forbidden issue has been exciting curiosity for thousands of years. Among Chinese literary works, LIAOZHAI ZHIYIࠓ⪵㰻ㄅ␗ࠔ is the first series which tells stories of the ghost. Nevertheless, in these Chinese works of fiction, “the ghost” tends to be demonized. Ghosts usually bring awful consequences if human beings do not keep them at a distance. On the contrary, the issue of “the ghost” turned out to be not a taboo but an exotic element revealed in many popular Chinese American novels and it brought fame and money to the writers. Maxine Hong Kingston, one of the most important Chinese American writers, highlighted the importance of “the ghost”: in her The Women Warrior the subtitle Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts reveals the main theme of the book. Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses involves the issue of incarnation. It has been the convention that “the ghost” becomes an important medium to communicate the Chineseness with Americanness for Chinese American writers. The Hundred Secret Sense negotiates dominant ideologies and the ideologies promoted by family members in language, culture and reality. In these novels, the ghost functions not as a threat but as an assistant or catalyst of searching identity. The protagonists in these novels usually confront the conflict of family, ethnicity, culture, history and nationality and try to negotiate their position in the conflict. Revealing the forbidden secrets which are told by their Chinese ancestors, these writers establish a connection between the past and present through “the ghost.” Furthermore, they explore the

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authority provided by ghosts to articulate Chinese American ethnicity and resist the power imposed by the western culture. Although “the ghost” has been a recurrent theme in Chinese American fiction, few studies focus on its significance and implications. Obviously, the exploration of the recurrent theme lies not in the existence of the ghost but in the meaning of its existence. In this chapter I will argue that the presence of the ghost exemplifies the “wild zone,” as Elaine Showalter implicated, which is preserved only for “othered women” to reclaim their identity. Sigmund Freud’s “uncanny” further deciphers the code of repressed memory which has been replaced by the image of the ghost. As a marginalized being, the ghost also corresponds to Michel Foucault’s perception of madness. All these show that the ghost may function as an intermediary in the process of retrieving ethnic identity. An example can be found in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter in which she authorizes her protagonist the healing power of Chinese ethnicity. Sigmund Freud adopted the German word unheimlich to elaborate the meaning of the uncanny and indicated that “the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar” (Freud 1976, 220). The German word unheimlich means “unhomely” or “ghostly” which bears an important meaning to our argument. It relates to “what is frightening - to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear in general” (Freud 1976, 219). The uncanny is something one does not know one’s way about. However, Freud also posted a question: how is it possible that the familiar can become unfamiliar and frightening? Freud raised the psycho-analytic theory to denote that if the emotional impulse is repressed into anxiety, then “among the frightening there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs” (1976, 241). This class of frightening things would form the uncanny. Therefore, the uncanny is nothing new or alien to us. In the light of “the uncanny”, the ghost image in Chinese American novel refers to the Chinese American ethnicity. Chinese Americans confront the “inbetweenness”, feeling their “home” is not “home”; for them, it is “unhomely.” Nevertheless, their ethnicity apparently exists inside them, although it is being repressed. The uncanny, incarnating as the ghost, recurs. They have to recognize their ethnicity in order to find their “home.” Freud also disclosed how a person could lessen the uncanny: “[t]he better orientated in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it” (1976, 221). This aids to clarify the dilemma of Chinese

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Americans. The more Chinese Americans adapt the new life, the less will they feel something uncanny. Freud also noted that everything uncanny should be remained secret and hidden; yet, it will finally come to light. Thus, though the Chinese ethnicity has been hidden or repressed, it will come to light through the appearance of the ghost. Reading Freud, we find that “[t]his unheimlich place, however, is the entrance to the former Heim [home] of all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning” (1976, 245). We are inspired that the uncanny, the Chinese ethnicity, will lead Chinese Americans home. The ghost image bears the important mission of lightening the “heimlich place”. Though human beings view the ghost’s intentions to be harmful, they also see it being endowed with special helping powers. The powers are converted to a healing power for the othered Chinese Americans while these Chinese Americans experience the Diaspora in the unhomely land. As Sigmund Freud further exposed, religions dispute the importance of after life and death; even the men of science admitted the impossibility of getting into contact with inhuman beings. While the definite answer has not been given, the fear of the dead is strongly implemented within us. We believe that the dead will be the enemy of the living. That is why people choose to repress death; but repression is already there (Freud 1976, 242243). Repressing the past does not erase the underlying event; on the contrary, it will be transformed into other ways and will try to wait for a good time to emerge. In many Chinese American novels the ghost waits there for an appropriate time to haunt the protagonist and force him/her to encounter the repressed memory or past. In addition, Freud pinpointed that the uncanny effect of epilepsy and of madness has the same origin (1976, 243). The layman tried to quarantine the patients into a remote corner to make sure that he/she will not be infected. Freud also indicated that the Middle Ages often ascribed all such maladies to the influence of demons (1976, 243). Also, in the concept of psychoanalysis, seeing a ghost is usually diagnosed as illusion or paranoia. Notwithstanding the madness being influenced by demons or ghosts, they possess the power to transgress the boundary between reason and madness as the ghost who can transgress the human land and the ghost land does. In Michael Foucault’s Madness and Civilization the author says that madness unbinding the yoke of civilization can transgress the borderland and move between two boundaries. When delineating the history of madness, Foucault classifies death and madness as the same category because these two issues belong to the forbidden knowledge in the light of Renaissance Age.

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And where once man’s madness had been not to see that death’s term was approaching, so that it was necessary to recall him to wisdom with the spectacle of death, now wisdom consisted of denouncing madness everywhere, teaching men that they were no more than dead men already, and that if the end was near, it was to the degree that madness, become universal, would be one and the same with death itself. (Foucault 1965, 16-17) Death and madness are forbidden, yet, at the same time they are a divine inspiration because they can lead you to know the truth. As Freud notes, madness is the punishment of a disorderly and useless science. If madness is the truth of knowledge, it is because knowledge is absurd, and instead of addressing itself to the great book of experience, loses its way in the dust of books and in idle debate; learning becomes madness through the very excess of false learning (1976, 25). Therefore, madness and ghost should be celebrated instead of being confined or exorcised. Since the ghost is closely linked with madness, it also provides a space to blur the boundary of madness and sanity, present and past, myth and reality. Searching identity becomes possible because the ghost has the privilege of moving between different worlds. Applying Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “uncanny”, we discover that the ghost displays a familiar, yet, strange land. The “in-betweenness” exactly coincides with the dilemma of a Chinese American who finds Chineseness as a familiar, yet strange for them. With the narration of the ghost coming from their Chinese past, Chinese American writers force their protagonists to reclaim the repressed history, being repressed either by the outer force or inner force. In this Chinese American fiction, the ghost is usually rejected and denied at the beginning. However, with the occurrence of important events, the ghost turns out to be the significant source of retrieving memories. Moreover, in her “A Criticism of Our Own” Elaine Showalter distinguishes the differences between white women and ethnic women. The feminism has contested the sexual discrimination; however, the idea of “othered women” apparently challenged feminist view of perceiving the ethnic woman. More specifically, in her “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”, Showalter adopted Edwin Ardener’s paradigm of the dominate vs. muted group to create a paradigm which would explain the relationship between the man and the woman. As the following chart displays (fig. 1), Ardener indicated that female culture forms the muted culture, while the male culture forms the dominant culture. By the term “muted,” Ardener meant the problems of language and of power. “The dominant group controls the forms or structures in which consciousness

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can be articulated. Thus, muted groups must mediate their beliefs through the allowable forms of dominant structures” (Showalter 1985, 262). While the dominant culture encompasses the muted culture, the muted culture still remains a “wild zone.”

Man

Fig.1

Woman

Ardener’s male and female culture.

Elaine Showalter applied this paradigm in the discussion of the man and the woman. She elaborated that “[m]uch of muted circle Y falls within the boundaries of dominant circle X; there is also a crescent of Y which is outside the dominant boundary and therefore ‘wild’” (1985, 262). According to the explanation, the wild zone is forbidden to the man. This is a “female space” and should be “the address of a genuinely womencentered criticism, theory, and art” (1985, 262-263). Hsin-ya Huang, in her “Three Women’s Texts and the Healing Power of the Other Woman” (2003), further borrowed Showalter’s paradigm and applied it to the relationship between white women and othered women. Unveiling the wild zone of othered women, Huang noted that the wild zone of othered women had not been explored and yet, it has been marginalized. The wild zone, thus, is preserved only for othered women. In the light of the criticism of ethnic women, we need to highlight the otherness of othered women in order to fight against the dominant group (2003, 268-269). If we adopt Huang’s perspective and apply it to the ethnicity of Chinese Americans, it is obvious that American culture, as the dominant culture, covers most part of Chinese American culture, the muted group. However, the muted culture is not totally covered. The part which is not covered has not been explored. This “wild zone” should be addressed by the genuine Chinese American criticism which reveals the ethnicity of Chinese Americans. In many Chinese American fictions, the ghost, metaphorically, reveals the Chinese American otherness as ghosts are often treated as othered, marginalized beings compared to human beings. In Amy Tan’s fiction, especially in her three recent works, gothic elements function as natural phenomena. The Bonesetter’s Daughter is one of them. The Bonesetter’s Daughter displays the otherness of Chinese

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Americans and exemplifies the healing power through the ghost. Though most criticism pay more attention to the theme of mother-daughter relationship, it is the ghost who is definitely an essential medium of retrieving Ruth’s Chineseness. In fact, The Bonsetter’s Daughter is not Amy Tan’s first creation of ghost story. As mentioned above, she also exhibited her fascination with the ghost image in her previous novels. Patterning on her The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan also situates her protagonist of The Bonesetter’s Daughter in the terror of being hunted. As Precious Auntie’s ghost had followed LuLing from China to America, LuLing’s daughter, Ruth, was also confronted with the same fear. When Ruth was a child, she was being reminded about the existence of Precious Auntie’s ghost though LuLing never gave Ruth any explanation. This terror tore apart the relationship between LuLing and Ruth. Ruth had never tried to understand LuLing’s fear of the ghost of Precious Auntie until LuLing’s hand script was found while LuLing was suffering from dementia. Though LuLing’s story only occupied one-third of the novel, her past remained the essence of the story and impacted Ruth’s present life. Ruth confronted a state of turmoil in her present life while facing the emotional and career crisis. Only after she had read her mother’s hand script, she finally got healing power from connecting her mother’s past with her own present life. Freud pointed out an important concept in reading a story, “[i]n telling the story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton” (1976, 227). This view enlightens our discussion of how LuLing and Ruth retrieved their family history. Precious Auntie’s ghost is the uncertainty that leads the readers to follow the path to find the secret of the family. Also, according to Avery F. Gordon, what is invisible or neglected is thought by most to be dead and gone. The writers who weave ghost into their writing recover the evidence of things not seen, that “paradoxical archive of stammering memory and witnessing lost souls” (Gordon 2008, 194-195). Since the ghost represents the lost and invisible, returning of the ghost symbolizes reclaiming the lost and invisible. Amy Tan sketched the reclaiming of the past through the ghost in The Bonesetter’s Daughter. She recovered the evidence of things not seen and showed that ordinary people ascertain these evidentiary things even more often than professional seers. She possessed a vision that could not only regard the seemingly not there, but could also see that the not there is a seething presence. In The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan illuminated Precious Auntie’s otherness and it did not matter whether she was alive or dead. Precious

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Auntie was born in a bonesetter’s family. As the daughter of a famous bonesetter, Precious Auntie was also endowed with the talent of curing people’s bones with the “dragon bone”. The precious “dragon bone” is so rare that most people could not locate the exact position and dig it out. The possession of the rarity highlighted Precious Auntie’s otherness and distinguished her from other girls. Furthermore, Precious Auntie was educated as a knowledgeable girl who could write elegant Chinese characters and treat patients like her father did. Precious Auntie was not domesticated. Father passed the secret of the family to the only daughter, not to a son. It shows that Precious Auntie’s position in this family was more like a son: “[t]he secret of the exact location was also a family heirloom, passed from generation to generation, father to son, and in Precious Auntie’s time, father to daughter to me” (Tan 2001, 184). Moreover, Precious Auntie was not afraid of expressing her own opinions. All these make her otherness apparent. Despite her endowment, Precious Auntie’s otherness grew more obvious after she turned silent forever and gave birth to a baby girl. After her husband died, Precious Auntie swallowed the oily ink. Though she was rescued, her face was twisted. This ugly form was ghost-like. Since then, Precious Auntie was silenced. Her thoughts had to be translated by her own daughter, LuLing. The interpretation of Precious Auntie’s language also disclosed her otherness. Unable to communicate with others, Precious Auntie had to talk through LuLing’s interpretation. Precious Auntie’s “wild zone”, though alive, was still hidden. She was perceived as a “No Name Woman” whose existence only brought shame to Liu family: “No one spoke of Precious Auntie, either once living or now dead” (Tan 2001, 245). As Kingston’s Aunt, Precious Auntie lived as a taboo and a shame to the family because she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, the biggest taboo act in Chinese tradition. However, this “forbidden secret” finally turned into a ghost and threatened the family. Precious Auntie’s predicaments further marginalized her into an othered space. Being considered an unlucky person whose father and husband died because of her marriage, Precious Auntie represented an unlucky symbol in Chinese tradition. After she committed suicide, LuLing’s surrogate mother ordered her chef to dump Precious Auntie’s body into “The End of the World”. This signifies their disdain of Precious Auntie because “The End of the World” was a place where people deserted the unwanted and unlucky bodies: “For what lay beyond and below was too unlucky to say out loud: unwanted babies, suicide maidens, and beggar ghost” (Tan 2001, 180). “The End of the World”, as its name

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denoted was a deserted and abandoned land which human beings should not visit. Bodies, ghosts, demons, animal spirits, Japanese soldiers, whatever scared us. […] Sometimes you couldn’t bury someone for other reasons. So to put a body down there, well, this was bad, but not the same way you think, not as though we didn’t care about who died (Tan 2001, 384).

As a result, “The End of the World”, “the ghost land” was the unknown boundary that humans had never crossed. The shadowed crescent in Ardener’s diagram, the wild zone, incarnates this “no man’s land”. However, while the cliff was creeping closer to the back of Liu’s compound, “The End of the World” threatened the Liu family. It signifies that the uncanny came to threaten the Liu family. While Liu’s compound crashed down to “The End of the World”, the hidden memory finally returned as Precious Auntie’s ghost crept back. Precious Auntie’s ghost presents also the “wild zone”. As “ghost” differentiates a human being from his/her “otherness”, “ghost” turns out to be Chinese American’s preserved space of contesting the mainstream power. The healing power of “othered woman”, thus, is formed. Therefore, ghost represents not a superstition but, metaphorically, Chinese American’s ethnicity. “Othered women” also remain a “wild zone” which cannot encompass white women. “Othered women” differentiate themselves from their “otherness”, the unexplored wilderness. Precious Auntie’s ghost symbolized the uncanny, something which LuLing and Ruth are familiar with but which is repressed. Tan chronicles LuLing’s story with a part divided into several chapters entitled with different Chinese characters. The title of each chapter summarizes LuLing’s predicaments. One of the chapters is entitled “Ghost” - this signifies the atmosphere of haunting. This part describes the events after Precious Auntie committed suicide. Since then, Precious Auntie had become a forbidden / unspoken secret, no matter whether alive or dead. The ghost can be interpreted as the incarnation of the forbidden secret as Chinese daughters are always taught not to give birth to a child before they get married. Thus Precious Auntie’s ghost, the uncanny of the family, will finally occur to the Liu family. It was so familiar, yet, repressed intentionally. The Liu was thrilled when being haunted by the ghost. Everyone knew there was nothing worse than a vengeful ghost. They caused rooms to stink like corpses. They turned bean curd rancid in a moment’s breath. They let wild creatures climb over the walls and gates. With a ghost in the house, you could never get a good night’s sleep. (Tan 2001, 198)

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When the unfortunate events occurred to the Lius, they put the blamed on Precious Auntie’s ghost. Last night, he said, Precious Auntie came to Father. Her hair was unbound, dripping tears and black blood, and father instantly knew she was a ghost and not an ordinary dream. ‘Liu Jin Sen,’ Precious Auntie had called. ‘Did you value camphor wood more than my life? Then let the wood burn as I do now’ (Tan 2001, 246).

The Liu family suffered a series of unlucky events, so they asked for help from a Taoist priest to exorcise Precious Auntie’s ghost. In fact, the act of exorcising a ghost is, according to Freud, expelling the unfamiliar or fear of the inner heart. It will bring temporary comfort to the victims. After the exorcising, it seemed that the family got salvation. Though Liu family tried to expel Precious Auntie’s ghost, this woman actually carried on an important function in the family. Precious Auntie learned from her father the art of healing people’s bones with dragon bones dug out from caves which were difficult to be located. Precious Auntie disclosed the secret of the bone to LuLing and demanded that the bones were engraved with words in an extinct language. She instructed LuLing that the writing must be “something that should have been remembered. Otherwise, why did the gods say it, why did a person write it down?” (Tan 2001, 183). Her demand reveals her wisdom of appreciating the past. In fact, in this novel Tan emphasized the importance of the past and inheritance. As LuLing’s hand script unfolded, “These are the things I must not forget” (Tan 2001, 173). Precious Auntie also kept reminding LuLing the significance of the past by passing down the dragon bones to her daughter. “ ‘when you know how to remember, I’ll give this to you to keep’” (Tan 2001, 183). Memory highlights the importance of inheritance. A person’s present, especially a Chinese American, is not shaped by himself/herself, but by the inheritance he/she takes over from the ancestors. Ruth faced a crisis in the values of marriage, family and her life. She was caught between her mother’s memories and her own life in America. Yet, Precious Auntie’s ghost did not disappear when LuLing moved to America. Although LuLing tried to leave behind what happened in China and turn a new leaf in America, she never got peace thinking of the curses. She turned to the sand plate for help while encountering life turmoil. Deeply believing that Precious Auntie possessed her daughter, LuLing consulted Ruth for any question but it turned out that she was cheated by Ruth. LuLing blamed the curse for every unfortunate event. As Avery F. Gordon puts it: “Perceiving the lost subjects of history – the missing and

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lost ones and the blind fields they inhabit – makes all the difference to any project trying to find the address of the present” (Gordon 2008, 195). Also, as Freud explained, the imagination of the ghost is the fear of the dead. LuLing’s fear of and regret for Precious Auntie forced her to react as a superstitious woman in order to survive in her present life. Precious Auntie’s power, as a Chinese woman, could not be underestimated. According to Ken-Fnag Lee, “The intervention of the third space makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process and can avoid the trap of binary thinking and enable other positions to emerge” (2004, 106). Thus ghost land, the end of the world, functions as the third place which provides a space to open up new possibilities. Also, it opens up the possibilities of healing. Though Precious Auntie was treated as a source of forbidden / secret knowledge, she possessed, at the same time, the power of healing. Precious Auntie was born as the daughter of a bonesetter. Her father was known as owing the power of healing people’s bones. Inheriting her father’s power, Precious Auntie also possessed undisputed power. Moreover, her dragon bones enabled her to cure people. When Precious Auntie turned into a ghost the Liu family found her power destructive but she also had the healing power. This healing power was transformed into LuLing’s courage to confront obstacles and later into Ruth’s power to encounter her crisis. In fact, the healing power inherited from Precious Auntie emphasizes the significance of a person’s ethnicity. The connection to Chineseness enables Chinese Americans to defend themselves against the appropriating, dominant, and hegemonic culture. This connection is established through the mother’s past. In her hand script, LuLing explicated the definition of “Mother”: […] ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother’s breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin (Tan 2001, 299).

Mother originates everything. LuLing’s denotation emphasized the inheritance of the maternal past. Thus, recognizing mother’s past appears to be essential to retrieve ethnicity. Ruth tried to explore her lost grandmother in order to reveal her power. When recognizing Precious Auntie’s real name, Ruth could reclaim her own Chineseness. Ruth beheld that These are the women who shaped her life, who are in her bones; they caused her to question whether the order and disorder of her life were due

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to fate or luck, self determination or the actions of others. They taught her to worry. But she has also learned that these warnings were passed down, not simply to scare her, but to force her to avoid their footsteps, to hope for something better. They wanted her to get rid of the curses. (Tan 2001, 402) Therefore, retrieving Precious Auntie’s identity is essential in the novel. After some efforts, Ruth eventually uncovered Precious Auntie’s real name which yields plenty of meanings. Having understood the meaning and significance of her maternal past, Ruth perceived that the ghost of Precious Auntie existed not as a curse any more but as a medium of retrieving her maternal lineage. Without being named accidentally, Precious Auntie’s Chinese pronunciation carried amounts of meanings which exposed her spirit and maternal love to her daughter. Bao can mean ‘precious’, or it can mean ‘protect.’ Both are third tone, Baaaaooo. And the mu part, that stands for ‘mother’, but when it’s written in bao mu, the mu has an extra piece in front, so that the meaning is more of a female servant. Bao mu is like saying ‘baby-sitter,’ ‘nurse-maid.’ And bomu, that’s ‘auntie’ (Tan 2001, 382).

Precious Auntie survived to protect her daughter from being harmed. Being a mother, she disguised herself as a female servant in order to nurse her daughter and to prevent her from being teased about having ugly mother. The sacrifice was precious and the spirit should be passed down. Enlightened by her name, Ruth realized her possession. In Chinese tradition, the heir of a family should preserve his/her family name and the ancestors’ names. A person’s name means existence. In the chapter entitled “No Name’s Aunt” of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, the family denied the aunt’s existence by erasing her name from family pedigree. The lineage of the family means the inheritance. The inheritance indicates not only blood and bones but ethnicity and the healing power as well. The existence of Ruth’s grandmother implied that the influence remains. The grandsons and granddaughters can easily retrieve her power. The fact that Ruth’s grandmother once existed impacted Ruth and enabled her to trace her own roots – her ethnicity. Ruth began to cry. Her grandmother had a name. Gu Liu Xin. She had existed. She still existed. Precious Auntie belonged to a family. LuLing belonged to that same family, and Ruth belonged to them both. The family name had been there all along, like a bone stuck in the crevices of a gorge. LuLing had divined it while looking at an oracle in the museum. And the given name had flashed before her as well for the briefest of moments, a

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Ruth was aware that these women who had shaped her life were still in her bones. Although they did not exist anymore, they did influence her life. Adopting her protagonist as a bare example, Amy Tan shows that the connection to the ancestors helped bring about self-reconciliation in Ruth’s crisis. As Amy Tan described, “the given name had flashed before her as well for the briefest of moments, a shooting star that entered the earth’s atmosphere, etching itself indelibly in Ruth’s mine” (Tan 2001, 399-400). The shooting star, though disappeared, still remained in its orbit. Precious Auntie was not accidentally named “Gu Liu Xin”. In fact, each character of grandmother’s Chinese name symbolized certain meaning and enlightened Ruth with its underlying interpretations. Yet Ruth’s and GaoLing’s interpretations could be further elucidated. “Gu Liu Xin” unravelled its implication with several homophones. The hidden meaning of the homophones exposed the significance of digging out Ruth’s grandmother’s name. “Gu”, according to GaoLing, meant “gorge”; but with different words, it also meant “bone”. GaoLing further expressed the meaning of “bone” in Chinese. It denoted a person’s “character.” The denotation of “character” conveyed how Ruth’s grandmother acted bravely to fight against the gang of the landlord for marrying her love and how she survived courageously to raise her daughter with tolerance of other people’s teasing. Both displayed her character in bone to resist her unfortunate fate. Ruth adopted the homophones of her grandmother’s name to create a sentence carrying multiple meanings and elaborating her grandmother’s story. “The blind bone doctor from the gorge repaired the thigh of the old grain merchant” (Tan 2001, 398-399). The sentence explained how Precious auntie’s father treated her fiancé and how they got engaged. With these homophones, Precious Auntie’s family name denoted her destiny. “Liu Xing”, as GaoLing explicated, implied “shooting star.” GaoLing revealed that according to Chinese superstition a shooting star was a bad sign. For most family members, Ruth’s grandmother specified the bad luck because of the subsequent events which happened to her. Though in Chinese tradition a shooting star is considered an unlucky symbol, in modern view a shooting star is rare and precious which signifies the uniqueness of Ruth’s grandmother. She exemplified distinguished thought and behaviour which made her so different from her contemporary girlfriends. “Liu Xin”, however, also meant “remains truth.” Precious Auntie’s true heart to her fiancé and daughter will remain in her legend. Moreover, it will be passed down to LuLing and Ruth.

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Furthermore, Precious Auntie displayed her prophet-like view and instructed her daughter about the importance of their ancestor’s wisdom. “The bones you have are not from dragons,” she said, “They are from our own clan, the ancestor who was crushed in the Monkey’s Jaw. And because we stole them, he’s cursed us” (Tan 2001, 202). Long before the archaeologist discovered that the bones had belonged to human beings, Precious Auntie foresaw their significance. She, as one of the few people being able to find the bones, warned LuLing to preserve the bones since the characters on the bones might refer to some important meanings passed down from ancestors. This gave an important lesson of treasuring ancestor’s wisdom of the clan. If one enlarges the meaning of the dragon bone, it refers to preservation of Chinese ethnicity for Chinese Americans. Since dragon in Chinese tradition represents the emperor, only the emperor can embroider the dragon on the clothes or use utensils carved with dragon. The bones exhibited their rarity. Therefore, the dragon bones further elevated Precious Auntie’s rareness which was shown in her legend-like life story. While depicting a legend-like protagonist and exemplifying her symbolic meaning in retaining a person’s ethnicity, Amy Tan also hints that writing is a way of keeping ethnicity. It seemed to be a ritual that Ruth could not talk for several weeks each year. Though being disturbed by this annual “routine”, Ruth eventually discovered a way to get along with her physical situation and even felt comfortable about it. After she had read all her female ancestor’s stories, she realized that “she does not need to talk. She can write. Before, she never had a reason to write for herself, only for others. Now she has that reason” (Tan 2001, 401). Being a writer, Ruth only listened, recorded others’ life stories and then modified them; yet, she never tried to write her ancestor’s stories. Pin-chia Feng indicated that Ruth played the role of a “cultural translator”. She carried the destiny of telling others’ stories (Tan 2001, 134). Enlightened by Precious Auntie and LuLing’s stories, now she will translate her female ancestor’s stories into her familiar language. As a cultural translator, she was obliged and privileged to communicate her Chinese ethnicity with her American ideology and American readers. Her family stories will not perish in the mainstream American book market; instead, possessing the power of telling stories, she will manifest this “wild zone” by recognizing her Chinese ethnicity. Ruth, aided by the healing power of her grandmother, finally acquired and practiced the power of writing. Fusing Precious Auntie, LuLing and herself, the trilogy exemplified the resolution of the crisis of three women belonging to the same family. .

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Ruth remembered the essence of her roots as she wrote. It is for her grandmother, for herself, for the little girl who became her mother. As the Chinese characters on the bones and LuLing’s hand script, the power of writing will remain when time flies. Both Ruth and LuLing reconciled with their conflicts while writing their past. LuLing still remembered her past, yet she revised it for the better. Ruth could face the relationship with her boyfriend in a positive way and recognize the significance of her mother’s past. She listened and tried to understand her mother. Readers should not neglect the fact that Amy Tan highlights every chapter told by LuLing with Chinese characters. These Chinese characters reflect the theme of each chapter. By doing so, LuLing’s stories could be connected with her Chinese ethnicity. On the contrary, the chapters about Ruth’s American life were noted with numbers. Obviously, this strategy distinguishes LuLing’s chronicles and Ruth’s life conflicts. Meanwhile, the strategy further denotes the segregation between Chinese and American identity. As Ruth exclaimed, “But I don’t have anything left inside me to figure out where I fit in or what I want” (Tan 2001, 389). Ruth confronted the dilemma of being in-between. The in-betweeness made her feel she belonged to nowhere. She could not identify with her mother and would not be willing to understand her mother’s past. In other words, she resisted her Chinese ethnicity. Nevertheless, Ruth’s Chinese identity inherited from her mother and her American identity finally integrate via the reconciliation of mother and daughter. Ruth began to understand that the fact that the ghost of her mother kept talking was not a curse on her. The ghost, the curse, and the warnings are hopes and wisdoms which her female ancestors intend to retain as a space for her to overcome her conflicts. In addition, when Ruth wrote a story, she fused all

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stories of her grandmother, her mother and her own into one. It symbolized her American identity fused with Chinese identity. Realizing the importance of the past, Ruth chose not to hide her Chinese ethnicity but to “take what’s broken, to feel the pain and know that it will heal” (Tan 2001, 403). Ruth chose to remember her ancestors instead of getting rid of her ethnicity. In The Bonesetter’s Daughter Amy Tan elucidated the true meaning of the ghost through GaoLing’s remarks. “Now I think Bao Mu left a lot of sadness behind. Her death was like that ravine. Whatever we didn’t want, whatever scared us, that’s where we put the blame” (Tan 2001, 385). Also, the whole essence of the ghost is, according to Avery Gordon, that “haunting and the appearance of specters or ghosts is one way […] we are notified that what’s been concealed is very much alive and present, interfering precisely with those always incomplete forms of containment and repression ceaselessly directed toward us” (2008, xvi). As discussed above, the question of the existence of the ghost should not be put too much emphasis in the story. Instead, the underlying meaning has been ranked the first. It reminded the protagonists the present of what had been concealed. Pin-chia Feng named the ghost the “Chinese umbilical cord” which connected Chinese ethnicity and Americanness in Chinese Americans. It is true that what Amy Tan said in this spectacular piece of fiction is that if we listen carefully to the voices of Chinese Americans, we will hear not only “their” stories, the old story of the past, but the modern story of contemporary Chinese Americans as well.

References Feng, Pin-chia. 2007. “Ghostly China: Amy Tan's Narrative of Transnational Uncanny in the Hundred Secret Senses, the Bonesetter's Daughter and Saving Fish from Drowning.” A Journal of English & American Literature 11: 113-42. Foucault, Michel. 1965. Madness and Civilization. New York: Vintage Books. Freud, Sigmund. 1976. “The Uncanny.” In The Standard Edition of Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey, vol. XVII, 217-52. London: Hogarth. Gordon, Avery F. 2008. Ghostly Matters. London: University of Minnesota Press. Huang, Hsin-ya. 2003. “Three Women’s Text and the Healing Power of the Other Woman.” In Journeys of Women’s Spirits, 266-92. Taipei: Fem Book.

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Kingston, Maxine Hong. 1989. The Women Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Vintage. Lee, Ken-Fang. 2004. “Cultural Translation and the Exorcist: A Reading of Kingston’s and Tan’s Ghost Stories.” MELUS 29.2: 105-27. Showalter, Elaine. 1985. “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness.” In The New Feminist Criticism, 243-70. New York: Pantheon Books. —. 1993. “A Criticism of Our Own: Autonomy and Assimilation in AfroAmerican and Feminist Literary Theory.” In Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, edited by Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Prince Herndl, 213-233. New Jersey: Rutgers UP. Tan, Amy. 1995. The Hundred Secret Senses. New York: Ivy Books. —. 2001. The Bonesetter's Daughter. New York: Ballantine Books.

PART TWO: GENDER IDENTITY

CHAPTER SIX “WHO DEVOURS WHOM?”: OPPRESSION AND EATING DISORDERS IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S “THE EDIBLE WOMAN” BARBARA KIJEK

The first novel by Margaret Atwood, published at the close of the nineteen-sixties, The Edible Woman, constitutes a biting yet hilariously ironic critique of early North American consumer society. Atwood recognises consumption as an unavoidable element of social reality and uses it to poignantly illustrate gender and cultural power politics existing in the mid-twentieth century in urban Canada. Therefore, consumption of all conceivable kinds becomes the leitmotif of the book and the images of food virtually permeate it throughout. It comes as no surprise that even the experience of the protagonist, Marian MacAlpin, is rendered precisely in terms of food consumption. She functions in a close relation to food, being a consumer herself and working in a market research company whose obvious aim is to boost consumption. Most importantly, as the plot unfolds, and as she develops her bizarre obsession, Marian comes to identify with food and discovers her gendered role of a consumable object in a male-dominated and male-oriented world.

Woman the Consumer At the outset of the novel the protagonist is described as an aspiring young middle-class woman, not very different from other women of her times, who leads an ordinary life and considers various possibilities and alternatives typically available for her like (Cooke 1969, 32). She appears to be of sound mind, stable, serious and rather secure and orderly. According to her boyfriend Peter Wollander, she is “a sensible girl,” which is a rare and highly laudable feature in a female since “most women are

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pretty scatterbrained” (Atwood 1980, 89). Peter reassures Marian, calling her “marvellously normal” while her friend Clara reinforces this picture, describing Marian as “almost abnormally normal” (Atwood 1980, 206– 207). This outstanding normalcy of hers is reflected in Marian’s sound and undisturbed appetite: she successfully lives up to the standards characteristic of a consumer society, whose relations, quite obviously, are based on selling as well as buying various consumable objects. It is by no mistake that Sarah Sceats calls the protagonist “an unquestioning omnivore” (Sceats 2004, 95); as the critic explains, [...] in the first dozen pages she [Marian MacAlpin] consumes or samples milk, cereal, bread, peanuts, vanilla, caramel and orange flavoured canned rice puddings, coffee and toasted Danish – all before lunch (Sceats 2004, 95).

Additionally, Marian is a regular shopper, well accustomed to the aggressive though alluring consumer reality. Her sharp, almost predatory, appetite is fully revealed during her shopping sprees. When in a mall, Marian is determined and greedy, even despite being perfectly aware of the diverse manipulation techniques employed there with a view to fuelling her already wolfish appetite: She resented the music because she knew why it was there: it was supposed to lull you into a euphoric trance, lower your sales resistance to the point at which all things are desirable. Every time she walked into the supermarket and heard the lilting sounds coming from the concealed loudspeakers she remembered an article she had read about cows who gave more milk when sweet music was played to them. But just because she knew what they were up to didn’t mean she was immune (Atwood 1980, 172).

To safeguard against consumer manipulation used by mysterious, money-oriented “them,” and thus retain at least some of her dignity, especially when faced with some “deceptively-priced or subliminallypackaged” commodities, Marian resorts to her “counter-charms,” which involve preparing shopping lists and choosing the brands of products blindfold. Nonetheless, sooner or later, she is bound to fail, since, as she explains, “[...] in some ways they would always be successful: they couldn’t miss. You had to buy something sometime” (Atwood 1980, 172). And indeed, Marian quite easily, and almost voluntarily, falls prey to merciless marketing methods:

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These days, if she wasn’t careful, she found herself pushing the cart like a somnambulist, eyes fixed, swaying slightly, her hands twitching with the impulse to reach out and grab anything with a bright label (Atwood 1980, 172).

Her blissful surrender is complete when she realizes that It was dangerous to stay in the supermarket too long. One of these days it would get her. She would be trapped past closing time, and they would find her in the morning propped against one of the shelves in an unbreakable coma, surrounded by all the pushcarts in the place heaped to overflowing with merchandise…. (Atwood 1980, 175)

The protagonist clearly understands the mechanisms that govern modern society and she recognises that In consumer culture, the mind can no longer be trusted because it is permeated and manipulated by mass psychological advertising intended to overcome the individuality of the self (Tolan 2007, 29).

Marian succumbs to the omni-present, all-powerful consumerist culture and her fall is particularly spectacular chiefly because she herself works in a consumer research and marketing company and, as a result, she possesses considerable experience and knowledge concerning the manipulations she is subject to.

Woman the Nurturer Marian’s job with Seymour Surveys connects her to food in an indirect yet equally significant manner. It consists in revising marketing questionnaires, thus exploring prospective and actual customers’ needs and expectations, all with a view to increasing their consumption. In this way the protagonist seems to be fulfilling the allegedly feminine function of nurturing others and catering for their needs in a selfless and devoted manner. Even the strictly hierarchical structure of the company resembles some foodstuff, as it is [...] layered like an ice-cream sandwich, with three floors: the upper crust, the lower crust, and our department, the gooey layer in the middle. On the floor above are the executives and the psychologists – referred to as the men upstairs, since they are all men – who arrange things with clients [...]. Below us are the machines [...]. Our department is the link between the two: we are supposed to take care of the human element, the interviewers themselves (Atwood 1980, 19, emphasis mine).

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Here again women are first and foremost associated with nutrition: constituting “the gooey layer in the middle” and taking care of “the human element” seem to naturally result from their gender role of caretakers and nurturers. In other words, it is supposed to be inherently feminine to be driven by the desire to please others while sacrificing oneself. As Marian somehow drily notices, her job is designed to appeal “to the embryonic noble nurse that is supposed to be curled, efficient and self-sacrificing, in the heart of every true woman” (Atwood 1980, 109). The question might arise, though, who is in a position to define what actually makes a “true woman.” Other females working for Seymour Surveys are described by Marian as [...] motherly looking women who sit deciphering the interviewers’ handwriting and making crosses and checkmarks on the completed questionnaires with coloured crayons, looking with their scissors and glue and stacks of paper like a superannuated kindergarten class (Atwood 1980, 20, emphasis mine).

As can be easily noticed, women are perceived as second-class workers, infantile and docile, in need of constant supervision and control. Besides being dull and unchallenging, their work offers them bleak prospects of advancement. Marian herself is aware of the existence of the glass ceiling: What, then, could I expect to turn into at Seymour Surveys? I couldn’t become one of the men upstairs; I couldn’t become a machine person or one of the questionnaire-marking ladies, as that would be a step down. I might conceivably turn into Mrs. Bogue [Marian’s superior] or her assistant, but as far as I could see that would take a long time, and I wasn’t sure I would like it anyway (Atwood 1980, 20).

What Marian can do instead of following her unlikely professional career path is to marry and quit the job, which constituted a lingering, legally motivated social expectation in the 1960s. It may be worth mentioning that the so-called “marriage bar” was just one out of a number of discriminatory policies employed in the workplace: After WWII women were expected and, in the case of federal government employees, required to relinquish their jobs to returning servicemen. The day nurseries were closed, many women returned to the home, often to have children, and by 1946 the rate of women's participation in the labour force had dropped to Depression levels. [...] [In the 1960s] the earnings of working women continued to be significantly lower than those of men: in

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1961 earnings of women employed full-time, year-round, were 59% of the earnings of men in the same categories; when part-time workers were added, women's wages dropped to 54% of men's. [...] [M]en were more likely to work in unionized occupations, to be employed in highly paid professions, and they held 89.7% of all proprietorial and managerial positions. Women remained locked into "female" occupations, predominantly clerical (The Canadian Encyclopedia).

Working professionally constitutes, therefore, only a transitory period for a young female, before she gets married and embarks on her career proper, i.e. starts a family life. Marian’s colleagues, whom she secretly refers to as the “office virgins,” seem to have internalised this model of femininity which defines for them their primary objective in terms of “get[ting] married and settl[ing] down” (Atwood 1980, 22). Interestingly, the nickname Marian chooses for them is far from groundless: They aren’t really very much alike, except that they are all artificial blondes [...] and, as they have confessed at various times [...] all virgins – Millie from a solid girlguide practicality (“I think in the long run it’s better to wait until you’re married, don’t you? Less bother.”), Lucy from social quailing (“What would people say?”), which seems to be rooted in a conviction that all bedrooms are wired for sound, with society gathered at the other end tuning its earphones; and Emmy, who is the office hypochondriac, from the belief that it would make her sick, which it probably would. (Atwood 1980, 22)

It is especially Lucy whose decision (pertaining, as it is, to the most private issue imaginable) is to an intriguing extent motivated by the expectations and dictates of the society, and not by her own reason or conscience. In the case of the main character, it is parents who assume a similar role – Marian suspects that they had probably been worried she would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss. [...] But now [once engaged to marry] she was turning out all right after all (Atwood 1980, 174).

Interesting how the position of a “female executive” directly follows the “dope addict” to paint a grim picture of the inevitable crippling effects of her university education. Their worry is rooted in the (not altogether groundless) assumption that an academic degree could significantly reduce her chances of getting married.

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Thus the three “office virgins” desperately try to realise their social potential and “snag” some husband. Initially, they employ ideas and techniques traditionally ascribed to females the seducers. Lucy, who seems particularly intent on catching a husband, devises a shrewd plan which consists in visiting expensive restaurants where potential victims of higher repute could be found. She herself acts as bait: Lucy had mauve eye-shadow to match her dress, and lipstick with a pale mauve tinge. She was, as always, elegant. She had been lunching out expensively more and more in the last two months (though Marian wondered how she could afford it), trailing herself like a many-plumed fish-lure with glass beads and three spinners and seventeen hooks through the likely-looking places, good restaurants and cocktail bars [...], where the right kind of men might be expected to be lurking, ravenous as pike, though more maritally inclined (Atwood 1980, 111–112).

With time, as their impatience and despair grow, the office virgins assume less innocent and more war-like tactics. Their attempts at cornering and catching a husband start to resemble a difficult and deadly military campaign. During her engagement party, Marian notices that her old acquaintance Leonard [...] had been spotted [by the office virgins] at once as single and available. They had him backed against the wall in the neuter area now, two of them on the sides cutting off flank escape, and the third, in front (Atwood 1980, 235).

Even when Lucy “had abandoned the siege of Leonard,” Millie and Emmy were still tenaciously holding him at bay. Millie had moved round to the front, blocking as much space with her wide skirt as possible and Emmy was sidestepping back and forth like a basketball guard; but one of the flanks was unprotected (Atwood 1980, 238).

It may be interesting to point out the contradiction inherent in such a social construction of femininity: on the one hand, women are expected to marry young to seek their natural fulfilment in marriage and housewifery; on the other, their desperate attempts at complying with this expectation are frowned upon and ridiculed. Peter, Marian’s boyfriend, is particularly frightened at the thought of getting married or, in other words, falling victim to women’s marital scheming. On several occasions he mentions his friends who have recently “succumbed” or “gone under without much warning”:

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It had been like an epidemic. [...] Peter and Trigger [his last unmarried mate] had clutched each other like drowning men, each trying to make the other the reassuring reflection of himself that he needed. Now Trigger had sunk and the mirror would be empty (Atwood 1980, 27).

After Trigger’s wedding, Marian patiently and almost sympathetically listens as Peter describes in most pejorative terms Trigger’s new status: “God”, he said, “poor Trigger. He looked terrible. How could he let himself be taken in like that?” He continued in a disjointed monologue in which Trigger was made to sound like the last of the Mohicans, noble and free, the last of the dinosaurs, destroyed by fate and lesser species, and the last of the dodos, too dumb to get away. Then he attacked the bride, accusing her of being predatory and malicious and of sucking poor Trigger into the domestic void (making me picture her as a vacuum-cleaner), and finally ground to a halt with several funereal predictions about his own solitary future. By solitary he meant without other single men (Atwood 1980, 64).

Nevertheless, despite all concerted and at times pathetic attempts of her friends, it is Marian who first gets engaged, causing genuine surprise and more than slight envy. She decides to reveal the secret of her engagement to the office virgins to show them that “there’s still hope in the world yet” (Atwood 1980, 112), but confronted with “the suddenly pathetic too-eager faces poised to snatch at her answer,” she regrets she has “dangled the effect in front of them that way without being able to offer them a reproducible cause” (Atwood 1980, 113). More importantly, when Lucy straightforwardly asks her how she managed to “snag” Peter, Marian suddenly realises it is her who has been caught.

Woman the Consumable This sudden flash of insight introduces the third and most important plane on which Marian’s relation to food is enacted. The protagonist discovers that in the consumer society, where social relations equal those between the consumer and the consumed, women have traditionally been pushed into the position of a consumable commodity. Consequently, Marian herself IS food or “a consumable object of exchange traded on the marriage market“ (Bromberg 1988, 18). Power imbalance in the patriarchal society is rendered in terms of “symbolic cannibalism” (Bouson 1993, 15), where men seek to assimilate and contain, devour and erase female individuality. Women are diminished and subjugated, given the pre-designated, socially-imposed role of a mute and passive object of

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desire. As Pamela S. Bromberg notes, the protagonist experiences “entrapment in the mirror of masculine approval and marriage,” where “to be mirrored in Peter's eyes is to become Peter's image of her and society's image of a wife.” Thus, she becomes “an accessory to [Peter’s] corporate image”, which he can proudly display to his friends and not “a person in her own right” (Bromberg 1988, 14). Margaret Atwood uses an ironic exaggeration and satire, persistently comparing women with food to draw attention to various seemingly harmless customs and traditions which in fact constitute sanctioned methods of objectifying and disempowering females. Nathalie Cooke lists multiple instances where this identification female-commodity takes the most explicit form and also remarks that never is such a comparison applied to men (Cooke 2004, 46). She quotes literary critic Eira Patnaik who writes that “from time immemorial the female has been identified with edible commodities”, which, she claims, supports the lingering theory that [...] women have no core. They are matter, bereft of soul and essence, while man is mind, endowed with the highest worth of existence (Cooke 2004, 47-48).

The issue of the “core” is taken up by the philosopher husband of Marian’s friend Clara, who is acutely aware of the gradual dissolution of his wife’s inner self. Her hard-won unique identity is gradually conquered, poisoned and killed by the mundane household routine. Joe thus describes Clara’s situation: “[...] it’s a lot harder for her than for most other women; [...] it’s harder for any woman who’s been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets married, her core gets invaded....” “Her what?” Marian asked. “Her core. The centre of her personality, the thing she’s built up; her image of herself, if you like.” “Oh. Yes,” said Marian. “Her feminine role and her core are really in opposition, her feminine role demands passivity from her....” (Atwood 1980, 235).

He goes on to explain: So she allows her core to get taken over by the husband. And when the kids come, she wakes up one morning and discovers she doesn’t have anything left inside, she’s hollow, she doesn’t know who she is any more; her core has been destroyed (Atwood 1980, 236).

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The problem is explored in detail in Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (published in 1963), which discusses the sources of the American women’s widespread unhappiness with the “proper” role of housewives, expected to seek fulfilment solely in being wives and mothers. Thus women are belittled and marginalised, reduced to consumable flesh, which is additionally nicely “packaged” for the delectation of the consumer. This packaging process involves among other things dressing up, styling hair and doing elaborate make-up. This dramatic transformation, the “female masquerade,” is described by Marian alternately as a complicated surgery and an act of production. At the hairdresser’s Marian [...] closed her eyes, leaning back against the operating-table, while her scalp was soaped and scraped and rinsed. She thought it would be a good idea if they would give anaesthetics to the patients, just put them to sleep while all the necessary details were taken care of; she didn’t enjoy feeling like a slab of flesh, an object (Atwood 1980, 209, emphasis mine).

Then, completely motionless, with a “surgical cloth around her neck”, strapped into the chair (metaphorically speaking) Marian participates in the “operation” that is performed on her and even automatically helps “the doctor” by “handing him the clamps”. She is [...] fascinated [...] by the rack of gleaming instruments and bottled medicines on the counter in front of her. She couldn’t see what he was doing behind her back. Her whole body felt curiously paralysed. When at last all the clamps and rollers and clips and pins were in place, and her head resembled a mutant hedgehog [...], she was led away and installed under a dryer and switched on (Atwood 1980, 209, emphasis mine).

Throughout this procedure Marian admits to be feeling “inert; totally inert”. Finally, After one of the nurses had pronounced her dry she was returned to the doctor’s chair to have the stitches taken out; she found it rather incongruous that they weren’t wheeling her back on a table. She passed along the gently–frying line of those who were not yet done (Atwood 1980, 210, emphasis mine).

As proved by the italicised excerpts, hospital imagery abounds and is reinforced by the repetitive use of the passive voice, which together convey the image of indeed “a slab of flesh” being handled by cool and indifferent professionals, whose task is to produce a desired artificial commodity.

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What is produced is chiefly an object, both of male desire and consumption – after her visit to the hairdresser’s, Marian remarks: “They treated your head like a cake: something to be carefully iced and ornamented” (Atwood 1980, 208). As Patricia Waugh notes, “the ‘dressing’ of the female body [...] is viewed as a ritualistic preparation to a cannibalistic feast” (1989, 185). Interestingly, the woman often consents to be thus claimed and contained not to pose any threat to the surprisingly fragile male ego. At the same time, man the predator seems to derive a considerable part of his machismo and self-esteem from subjugating the pliant female. This behavioural pattern becomes especially pronounced when shrewd Ainsley, Marian’s flatmate, outwardly instructs the latter never to question man’s expertise and, by extension, his general superiority. She describes a dull party of “bloody one-track” dentistry students she went to the previous day and, when asked whether she could not have changed the subject, she is genuinely astonished: “Of course not”, she said. “I pretended to be terribly interested. And naturally I didn’t let on what my job was: those professional men get so huffy if you know anything about their subject” (Atwood 1980, 12).

Such passivity and servility come to define the women who want to be accepted by the other sex and so they also constitute important elements of a socially constructed woman.

Woman the Construct A socially desirable woman is but a cultural construction, an artificial model, externally conditioned and foisted on females in an attempt to contain the imagined threatening Other. This marginalisation is motivated by the fear which takes root in the perception of female body and her sexuality as something essentially dangerous and in need of control. Patricia Waugh refers to this issue, calling it the “hysterization of women’s bodies” and quotes Foucault, who discussed extensively the fallacy of perceiving female sexuality as “a natural energy or a set of drives which have been repressed” rather than simply recognising that it is “a historically constructed imaginary unity”. As Foucault goes on to explain, “women’s sexuality [is] produced” and “femininity is thus historically positioned and defined in terms of the body” (Waugh 1989, 173). Atwood rightly recognises this mechanism, as she never fails to notice that

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The acceptable, ‘feminine’ forms of oral behaviour are highly regulated. Medicine, psychology, fashion, welfare guidelines (rules for hygiene, for example), religious practices – all regulate, control and construct the female body in various ways. Women’s bodies are almost literally burdened down with social meanings, proscriptions and contradictions [...] (Waugh 1989, 175-6).

As a result of gender positioning, the woman experiences a disturbing sense of disintegration and estrangement from her own body. Reduced to flesh and commodified, she becomes mute and powerless, and therefore she ceases to pose any threat to the sanctified patriarchal order. What the traditional society further requires of her is that she be dependent and abject, in other words, feminine. Femininity here consists in being often over-emotional and irrational, but most importantly – conforming and submissive. Consequently, when Marian acts in an unexpected way, her fiancé somehow automatically accuses her of rejecting her femininity. Marian’s answer is straightforward and hilarious: “Oh, SCREW my femininity!” She rightly recognises that “Femininity has nothing to do with it” (Atwood 1980, 80). On the other hand, the social construct of a man first and foremost stresses reason and stability. Peter, who is solid, serious and “scientific”, is repeatedly described as “a rescuer from chaos” and “a provider of stability” (Atwood 1980, 88), who makes wise decisions effortlessly and, for example in a restaurant, he “could make up their minds right away” (Atwood 1980, 147, emphasis mine). He is “ordinariness raised to perfection” (Atwood 1980, 61) and his “distinction is his normalcy.” Even when he is suffering from a hangover, his appearance is still rendered as impeccable: He was carelessly dressed, but it’s impossible for Peter to dress with genuine carelessness. This was an arranged carelessness; he was meticulously unshaven, and his socks matched the colour of the paintstains on his sports-shirt (Atwood 1980, 88).

Acting on pre-established masculine scripts, Peter develops an interest in weaponry, hunting and photography, which are all tools of mental colonisation. The man here is undoubtedly the predator and the consumer – in these particular circumstances, a real carnivore. The notion of masculinity as encompassing the qualities of strength, valour and love of unrestrained freedom is extensively employed in advertising, which effectively visualises and perpetuates lingering sexual stereotypes, just like the following ad of the manly Moose beer:

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The stereotype of male’s (the hunter’s) pursuit and female’s (the game’s) surrender is reversed in the case of Marian’s flatmate Ainsley and their acquaintance Leonard Slank. The former is determined to have a child, although, quite surprisingly, she does not wish to marry. The latter, who once used to be described as “a self-consciously-lecherous skirtchaser” (Atwood 1980, 87), this time actually falls prey to his would-be victim and her scheming and thus unexpectedly becomes the one that has been used. As a result of this comic reversal of the sanctified roles of the predator and its prey, the traditional discourse of hunt becomes less ominous and more ridiculous. Ainsley is an aggressive and cold-blooded huntress. From the moment she decides that “Every woman should have at least one baby. […] It fulfills your deepest femininity. […] The thing is wholeness [and] a sense of purpose” (Atwood 1980, 40–41), she consistently strives to complete her mission. She bears “a chilling resemblance to a general plotting a major campaign” (Atwood 1980, 85). Her choice of Len for the father is motivated solely by his genetic merits since Ainsley, having investigated his ancestors for education and allergies, has decided that he is “a good specimen” (Atwood 1980, 85). Then she “figures out her strategy” (Atwood 1980, 85). Knowing Len’s preference for young and naïve girls, she purposefully (and with a great deal of naturalness and talent, one must admit) acts “dumb and scared” (Atwood 1980, 84). As she explains to Marian, she “has it all worked out […] It’s all got to seem accidental. A moment of passion. My resistance overcome, swept off my feet and so forth” (Atwood 1980, 86). Consequently, Len [...] would not readily believe that Ainsley, who seemed as young and inexperienced as a button mushroom, was in reality a scheming superfemale carrying out a foul plot against him, using him in effect as an inexpensive substitute for artificial insemination with a devastating lack of concern for his individuality. [...]

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Len must be abandoned to his fate, which he would no doubt embrace with glee. Marian was further confused by the fact that she didn’t exactly know whether an early Christian was being thrown to the lions, or an early lion to the Christians (Atwood 1980, 122–123).

Meanwhile Len is himself a cynical and unscrupulous womanizer, who derives especial pleasure in corrupting young innocent “greenish” girls. As Marian suspects, In his own warped way he was a kind of inverted moralist. […] The supposedly pure, the unobtainable was attractive to the idealist in him; but as soon as it had been obtained, the cynic viewed it as spoiled and threw it away. “She turned out to be just the same as all the rest of them,” he would remark sourly (Atwood 1980, 87).

It therefore comes as hardly any surprise that Len was “constantly accused by women of being a misogynist and by men of being a misanthropist and perhaps he was both” (Atwood 1980, 87). Ainsley’s plan is so flawless, and her determination so unwavering, that Len can do nothing but succumb. Entangled unwittingly in her baby plans, Len for the first time experiences the emotions typical of the victim; he is frustrated and feels tainted and ultimately objectified. When accusing Ainsley of devising such a wicked and sick plan, he reveals his conviction that it is partly college education that spoils and impairs women. He says to Marian: “So she’s been to college, too. I should have known. That’s what we get then,” he said nastily, “for educating women. They get all kinds of ridiculous ideas” (Atwood 1980, 157).

Then, infuriated and powerless, he turns directly on his oppressor: “All along you’ve only been using me. What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually collegeeducated the whole time! Oh, they’re all the same. You weren’t interested in me at all. The only thing you wanted from me was my body!” “What did you want,” Ainsley asked sweetly, “from me?” (Atwood 1980, 159)

Len’s mental state deteriorates rapidly and soon he is reduced to a trembling and whimpering thing, a repulsive writhing “white grub suddenly unearthed from its burrow and exposed to the light of day” (Atwood 1980, 160). When Ainsley explains to him that he “can keep

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[his] peace of mind, [she’s] not threatening [him] with a paternity suit” (Atwood 1980, 159), he is far from relieved: “Peace of mind. Hah. Oh no, you’ve involved me. You involved me psychologically. I’ll have to think of myself as a father now, it’s indecent, and all because you” – he gasped: the idea was a novel one for him – “you seduced me!” He waved his beer-bottle at her. “Now I’m going to be all mentally tangled up in Birth. Fecundity. Gestation. Don’t you realize what that will do to me? It’s obscene, that horrible oozy…” (Atwood 1980, 159).

Ainsley tries to explain to Len the perfect naturalness and beauty of parenthood, but he is distraught by the so-called Facts of Life. When accused by her of displaying “the classic symptoms of uterus envy”, Len erupts and shows his utter despair: “Stop! […] Don’t remind me. I really can’t stand it, you’ll make me sick. Don’t come near me!” […] She made me do it,” he muttered. “My own mother. We were having eggs for breakfast and I opened mine and there was, I swear there was a little chicken inside it, it wasn’t born yet, I didn’t want to touch it but she didn’t see […] Horrible. Horrible” (Atwood 1980, 160).

Len’s childish and embarrassing outburst at the realities of pregnancy completely ruins his image of a self-possessed and self-assured man; the scene ends with him being soothed and rocked by the cooing broody Ainsley. Irreparably damaged, he literally retreats into his childhood mentality, living with friends and fighting over toys with their small kids.

Involuntary Starvation It is only gradually that Marian comes to identify the underlying gendered expectations. The realisation gives rise to an eating disorder: Marian, or more precisely her body, refuses to eat. The more acutely aware she becomes of the objectification she is subject to, the more pronounced her food-revulsion gets. Its first manifestation occurs soon after the proposal, when she recognises and ponders the new position she will soon be forced into: the one of Peter’s passive and deferential wife. Distancing herself and contemplating him coolly as he pontificates, she becomes acutely aware of his precision in cutting the steak, concluding that this is a highly violent action, albeit disguised and decontaminated (Sceats 2004, 96).

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In accordance with what society requires of her, Marian gradually relinquishes all her powers to Peter, practically encouraging him to prevail over her in all matters of everyday routine. Very early in the novel Marian observes that as Peter’s bride-to-be she has to “adjust to his moods”, but she immediately explains that “that’s true of any man, and his were too obvious to cause much difficulty” (Atwood 1980, 61). She mentions casually that “Life isn’t run by principles but by adjustments” (Atwood 1980, 102), which provides a convenient excuse for her allowing to be more and more dominated by her patronizing fiancé. She develops “a soft flannelly voice” with which she expresses her subjugation, saying, for instance, “I’d rather have you decide that. I’d rather leave the big decisions up to you” (Atwood 1980, 90). Finally, she turns into a passive object which “was floating, letting the current hold her up, trusting to it to take her where she was going” (Atwood 1980, 115). Her victimization seems complete when she returns from the beauty parlour, “packaged” and transformed for their engagement party, and Peter attempts to snap a photo of her. Marian’s involuntary reaction is panic and a flight from the predator who threatens to devour her completely: Her body had frozen, gone rigid. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t even move the muscles of her face as she stood and stared into the round glass lens pointing towards her, she wanted to tell him not to touch the shutterrelease but she couldn’t move... (Atwood 1980, 232). The dark intent marksman with his aiming eye had been there all the time, hidden by the other layers, waiting for her at the dead centre: a homicidal maniac with a lethal weapon in his hands (Atwood 1980, 246).

Marian’s body rebels at such ruthlessness and aggression. She feels threatened by Peter’s machismo and savagery, transparent and fragmented – she fears she might dissolve and disappear, be claimed and entirely consumed by Peter’s appetite. She feels “like melting jelly” (Atwood 1980, 43), “dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle” (Atwood 1980, 218). Marian is thus afraid of being deprived of her core or identity, of literally “losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer” (Atwood 1980, 219). What she fears in fact is what she calls a “thick sargasso-sea of femininity” (Atwood 1980, 167), which is “liquid”, suffocating and “amorphous” and which threatens engulfing. As a result, she distances herself from her body, which develops its own subversive voice and threatens self-starvation. Marian discovers that “the stand it [her body] had taken was an ethical one” (Atwood 1980,

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178), as it simply decided to reject all food that could have possibly been once alive. To her own horror she also learns that […] this thing, this refusal of her mouth to eat, was malignant; that it would spread; that slowly the circle now dividing the non-devourable from the devourable would become smaller and smaller, that the objects available to her would be excluded one by one (Atwood 1980, 153).

Since it is hardly her own decision, Marian can only hope that “her body might change its mind” (Atwood 1980, 178): “God, […] I hope it’s not permanent; I’ll starve to death!” (Atwood 1980, 152). Her strange condition cannot be helped anyhow: She was becoming more and more irritated by her body’s decision to reject certain foods. She had tried to reason with it, had accused it of having frivolous whims, had coaxed it and tempted it, but it was adamant; and if she used force it rebelled (Atwood 1980, 177–178).

Once her identification with food is complete, she loses even the ability to tell her own story in the first-person singular, relinquishing this power to some omniscient third-person narrator. In brief, Marian can no longer eat since she identifies with food and thus becomes aware that [...] in fact men silently consume women, soak up their energies, take away their names, and deny them a public voice or definition which is not dependent on their own (Waugh 1989, 184).

Thus, Marian’s anorexia is not appearance-motivated; it is an expression of dissatisfaction with the existing patterns of human relationships and an instrument of resistance against cannibalising attempts of men. To enact her female rage and revenge and to ultimately break her identification with the consumable, Marian performs an action which on the one hand is archetypically feminine, while on the other – stunningly subversive. Namely, she bakes a cake for Peter and gives it the shape of an alluring woman. Patricia Waugh interprets this action as an “act of offering an imitation (the cake) of an imitation (her ‘feminine’ body)” and “a postmodernist refusal of the ‘speculative’ terms of representation available to her within a patriarchal society” (Waugh 1989, 183). Apostrophising the cake as though it were herself in her party clothes, [Marian] condemns it: “You look delicious [...] Very appetizing. And that’s what will happen to you; that’s what you get for being food” (Atwood 1980, 270).

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Later on, she offers the cake to Peter and addresses him directly, revealing also to him the ominous overtones inherent in consumption: “You’ve been trying to destroy me, haven’t you,” she said. “You’ve been trying to assimilate me. But I’ve made you a substitute, something you’ll like much better. This is what you really wanted all along, isn’t it?” (Atwood 1980, 271).

Rejecting her former compliant and self-diminishing self, Marian finally gains agency and wholeness. The ensuing emotional cleansing helps her regain control over her story and reintegrate her mind and her body. She becomes single and self-assertive, a subject and a consumer herself. Last but not least, she gains an insight, especially into what Brooks J. Bouson calls “the dangers inherent in women's acquiescence to masculine expectations”(Bouson 1993, 26).

Conclusion The Edible Woman makes uncompromising criticism of both the sexual politics and simplistic feminist views of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Atwood refuses to tackle the problem in question only in terms of male oppression and female powerlessness. She clearly shows that “women collude in their oppression (in being edible), through passivity and the assumption of innocence” (Sceats 2004, 98). In particular, by acting on pre-established feminine scripts, women themselves perpetuate the harmful stereotypes concerning them. They […] may be denied their own subjectivity, may indeed have internalised a perception of themselves as objects, but acceptance and passivity are a kind of bad faith (Sceats 2004, 103).

This critical comment on gender relations and the mutual responsibility for them becomes a recurring theme in much of Atwood’s later writing. In an interview quoted by Ann Howells, the author summarises her stance as follows: If you define yourself as innocent then nothing is ever your fault – it is always somebody else doing it to you, and until you stop defining yourself as a victim that will always be true. It will always be somebody else’s fault, and you will always be the object of that rather than somebody who has any choice or takes responsibility for their life (qtd in Howells 2008, 18).

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Therefore, to fight oppression and victimisation one has to first recognise and reject the victimiser within oneself. Otherwise, no change is possible and one risks remaining a hopeless foodstuff forever.

References Atwood, Margaret. 1997. The Edible Woman. 1980. London: Virago. Bouson, J. Brooks. 1993. Brutal Choreographies; Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. Bromberg, Pamela S. 1988. “The Two Faces of the Mirror in The Edible Woman and Lady Oracle.” In Margaret Atwood; Vision and Forms, edited by Kathryn Van Spanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, 12–23. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Cooke, Nathalie. 2004. “The Edible Woman (1969).” In Margaret Atwood; A Critical Companion, edited by Kathleen Gregory Klein, 31–51. Westpoint, Connecticut, and London: GP Greenwood Press. Friedan, Betty. 1974. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton. Howells, Coral Ann, ed. 2006. The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sceats, Sarah. 2004. Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tolan, Fiona. 2007. Margaret Atwood; Feminism and Fiction. Amsterdam and New York, New York. Waugh, Patricia. 1989. “Contemporary Women Writers: Challenging Postmodernist Aesthetics.” In Feminine Fictions; Revisiting the Postmodern, 168–217. London and New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER SEVEN “THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE”: (NEO-)VICTORIAN FEMALE INSANITY IN THE LIGHT OF FEMINIST DISABILITY STUDIES BARBARA BRAID

The Crimson Petal and The White by Michel Faber (2002) makes use of some well known and potent themes of the Victorian classics and its realism and narrative authority–to the extent that Georges Letissier called it ‘a Neo-Victorian classic’ (2009, 113)–and one of those canonically Victorian references made in the novel is a governess motif. In a twisted allusion to Charlotte Brontɺ’s Jane Eyre (1847), Sugar, a 19-year-old prostitute, is installed by one of her clients, a perfumer William Rackham, in his own house as a governess to his daughter Sophie. Sugar hopes that thanks to Rackham’s sexual fascination she will manage to free herself from the despised profession of a sex worker. However, on her way to becoming a future Mrs Rackham there is the current Mrs Rackham– Agnes, an eccentric, or as her husband claims, a mad wife, locked away in her bedroom. Still, this is as far as the similarities between Faber’s and Brontɺ’s novels go. There is no “reader, I married him” conclusion for Sugar. It is partly because her lover discards her once he discovers her pregnancy, even though this child is never born (McGuigan 2003, 131). There is a much more important difference, however, between Sugar /Jane and Agnes /Bertha. Our contemporary Jane does not only acknowledge the existence of the madwoman from the very beginning, but also feels compassion towards her and even solidarity, which finds its culmination in helping Agnes to escape the Rackham household before she is locked away in a lunatic asylum. Jane Eyre’s lack of compassion for Bertha has often been noted by the feminist, and especially postcolonial critics, as in the famous essay by

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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1985). Since Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) Brontɺ’s Bertha Rochester, and indeed any literary madwoman, has started to be interpreted as a symbol of feminine rebellion against the patriarchal vision of femininity and resulting limitations imposed on women in society. They interpret the figure of Bertha Rochester as Jane’s hidden, irrational, ireful self; her violence and murderous tendencies represent Jane’s anxieties about marriage and her own female identity. It seems that a madwoman stands in Brontɺ’s novel for the subversive desires lurking in the female protagonist. However, more recent feminist studies, among them feminist disability studies, have claimed that the figure of a madwoman in culture needs not to represent a rebellious and vengeful New Woman, but might actually be a more convincing embodiment of the submission and imprisonment, only perpetuated by madness which has no language and no future. The chapter will examine both hypotheses, on the backdrop of the prescribed midVictorian female identity, to see if the feminist disability studies applied to an interpretation of Michel Faber’s novel rightly perceive Sugar and Agnes as “madwomen who cannot speak” (Caminero-Santangelo 1998).

Where Angels Fear to Tread: Being a Middle-class Woman in the Mid-Victorian Era In the aforementioned book Gilbert and Gubar (1979) discuss the works of (now seen as canonical) nineteenth-century writers, from Jane Austen to Emily Dickinson, to show the duplicity characterising the works of these authors, resulting from the anxiety of female authorship in the nineteenth-century culture. On the one hand, the pressure of the male literary canon and the desire to be acknowledged pushed those writers towards the imitation of the male voice, thus deeming the female author hypocritical; on the other, the female authors attempted to revise the literary tradition which, almost exclusively male, tended to categorise the feminine into two binary oppositions: those of the angel in the house and the monster, and give the female a voice which will express the female author’s sense of identity – “her subjectivity, her autonomy, her creativity” (Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 48). The female author had to apply both approaches at the same time: she told her own female story and female identity, but she did it through a patriarchal set of plots, hence the term “a schizophrenia of authorship” coined by Gilbert and Gubar to describe this phenomenon (1979, 69). To overcome this conflict, the female author wrote her female identity into a patriarchal canon by means of a palimpsest, that is “works whose surface designs conceal or obscure deeper,

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less accessible (and less socially acceptable) levels of meaning” (Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 73). The motif of madness represents, therefore, not only the identity issues lurking in the female characters of nineteenth-century novels, but also in the writers themselves. It seems that the issue of female insanity in the Victorian era–as a social, medical as well as cultural phenomenon–is closely connected to the gender norms which women were expected to adopt as their feminine identity. The term often used in the scholarship to describe the ideal which Victorian women aspired to comes from the poem by Coventry Patmore “The Angel in the House” (1854). In this work the female protagonist, Honoria is presented as naturally selfless and devoted to family life; she “radiated morality because her ‘substance’ was love, not self-interest or ambition” (Poovey 1988, 8) and “completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others” (Greg 1862, 436) was her purpose in life. The natural habitat of the angel in the house is the domestic sphere; her natural instinct is maternal. The motherhood is a central Victorian concept, mostly in the bourgeoisie ideology. The class identity is an important factor in the discussion of the Victorian feminine ideal: a middle-class mother was differentiated equally from an aristocratic lady and a working-class woman, who were both, ironically, perceived as uncontrolled and degenerate, one due to her idleness and exaltation, the other due to her inferior social role and crude animalistic instincts (Shuttleworth 1992, 34-41). The middle-class mother and wife had some important ideological tasks to perform. Firstly, this feminine ideal helped maintain the genderrelated division of labour by insistence on woman’s weaker physical and mental constitution. The application of the first law of thermodynamics to the discussion of physiology in the mid-Victorian scientific discourse led to an assumption that human beings, as “conscious automata” (a term used by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1874), have a limited energy resource throughout their lives. “The luck of the hereditary draw determined whether one was a ‘millionnaire of nerve-force’ or a pauper, and there was little one could do about it” (Russett 1989, 126). Thus the control over one’s energy and conservation of one’s life force was of utmost importance for a healthy Victorian. The lack of balance in the energy expenditure would lead to weakness and illness. Women would face even a greater necessity of energy conservation, as it was their duty to ensure appropriate development and sustenance of the reproductive system. Physiologists and physicians, like Henry Maudsley or Edward Clarke, would thus discourage middle-class women from extensive education and intellectual labour, seeing this kind of work as incredibly dangerous for

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female fertility and woman’s bodily and mental constitution (Russett 1989, 110-122). As a result, a middle-class woman was burdened with a crucial evolutionary responsibility: on her loyalty to the traditional division of labour depended the healthy development of her race and class. A mother who gave birth to puny and sickly children, or a spinster who refused to marry in order to devote her time and energy to intellectual or charitable work endangered the existence of the middle-class and its superior role in society, as the threat from working class and colonies, breeding healthy and strong children, felt to be omnipresent by the midVictorian middle class (Shuttleworth 1992, 32). Another duty of a bourgeoisie wife and mother was the spiritual superiority and moral guidance she was supposed to offer to her husband and children. It was “the mother’s sacred mission to rear children [with] a spiritual grace which, filling the domestic sphere, uplifts her weary husband on his return from the corrupting world of Mammon” (Shuttleworth 1992, 31). This apparent moral supremacy of a woman was believed to stem from her maternal instincts. This assumption about femininity again helped establish and maintain the middle-class division of labour and the division of space into private (female) and public (male) speheres. Woman was too refined and noble, it was claimed, to take part in the dubious practices of the capitalist economy. “Women were not selfinterested and aggressive like men, but self-sacrificing and tender” (Poovey 1988, 7). Her role was both being an affectionate mother to her children and a comfort of her husband. The strict division into the private and the public roles also stressed another function of a middle-class angel in the house. If the home was the realm of morality and spirituality, it justified the morally dubious enterprises the middle-class husband was involved in outside home. The man dealt with the necessarily brutal aspects of life; the wife he came back to at the end of the day sanctioned and purified his deeds with her love, her tenderness, her affectionate solicitude for his comfort and enjoyment, her devotedness, her unwearying care, her maternal fondness, her conjugal attractions […]; [she] exercise[d] a most ennobling impression upon his nature, and [did] more towards making him a good husband, a good father, and a useful citizen, than all the dogmas of political economy (Gaskell 1833, 165).

Thus the woman’s spiritual rule in the home managed to balance two mutually exclusive aspects of the role the middle-class played in midVictorian society: on the one hand, moral leadership, on the other, economic supremacy over the working class.

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As the Victorians saw a direct correspondence between female identity and the maternal instinct, there is little surprise in the fact that female sexuality was perceived as a phenomenon solely governed by the laws of reproduction. By 1845 it was assumed that female eggs were released during an intercourse and thus that a woman’s orgasm was as crucial to conception as male one (Laqueur 1986, 1). However, in 1845 a Polish physician Dr Adam Raciborski discovered that female eggs are released spontaneously (Showalter and Showalter 1970, 84); this, in turn, led to a rejection of centuries old preconception that female orgasm is a necessary component of conception. On the basis of this discovery the mid-Victorian medical discourse also presumed that most women were characterised by “sexual anaesthesia” and their sexuality was inherently connected to their maternal instinct only (Poovey 1988, 7). It was famously claimed by William Acton, in his work The Function and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857) that a middle-class wife was characterised by a significantly smaller sexual appetite than that of her husband’s: the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind. What men are habitually, women are only exceptionally. […] There are many females who never feel any sexual excitement whatever. Others, again, immediately after each period, do become, to a limited degree, capable of experiencing it; but this capacity is often temporary, and will cease entirely till the next menstrual period. The best mothers, wives, and managers of households, know little or nothing of sexual indulgences. Love of home, children, and domestic duties, are the only passions they feel. As a general rule, a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him; and, but for the desire for maternity would far rather be relieved from his attentions (1857, 144-145).

It transpires, then, that the Victorian housewife’s sexuality, as much as in other aspects of her life, was principally focused on satisfying her husband’s needs and fulfilling her maternal duties. This, of course, concerned solely a middle-class woman, as Acton himself mentioned the courtesan as a contrasting image to “any modest English woman” (Acton 1857, 108) who did not possess an excessive sexual appetite as a prostitute might have had or might have pretended to have (Acton 1857, 144). A similar opinion was expressed by W. R. Greg when he said that [i]n men, in general, the sexual desire is inherent and spontaneous, and belongs to the condition of puberty. In the other sex, the desire is dormant, if not non-existent, till excited; always till excited by undue familiarities; almost always till excited by actual intercourse” (Greg 1850, 10).

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What should be noted here is the stress on the apparent natural purity and virginity of bourgeoisie women. Patronising and false as these medical descriptions may sound, this presumption was also often used by women for their own advantage, as Nancy F. Cott presented in her article on the idea of the “passionlessness” (1978). She uses this term to show the Victorian ideology of women as naturally sexually unaggressive and thus morally superior to men (Cott 1978, 220). This enabled them to have more control over their sexuality and reproduction, as well as provide a moral upper hand over their husbands, something that Cott terms after Daniel Scott Smith a “domestic feminism” (234). The idea of female sexual anaesthesia has been, however, refuted by Havelock Ellis in 1903 (Cott 1978, 219), which can be perceived as a symbolic marking point for the end of the Victorian sexuality discourse. Last but not least, a crucial constituent of the prescribed female gender identity in middle-class mid-Victorian women was the slim and ephemeral body. It seems to be deeply connected to the aforementioned elements of female identity discourse. Women’s self-control, spirituality, selflessness and passionlessness called for a de-emphasis on their physicality (Silver 2004, 9). Female incorporeality (and, by correspondence, purity and restraint) was represented by woman’s small appetite; “[t]he slim body, in general, emblematizes the sexually pure and ethereal woman in Victorian discourse” (Silver 2004, 10). Another such emblem was a corset, a lifelong companion of most middle-class Victorian women, which was designed to control all the shapes of the female body which diverged from the wispy ideal and in doing so, represented the “arrest [of] the potentially unruly and recalcitrant female mind” (Summers 2001, 5). The gender norms in the Victorian culture were exceptionally conductive to the pathologisation of the female identity. As Shuttleworth and Poovey rightly noticed, the angel in the house incorporates an inherent threat of disruption (Poovey 1988, 11). On the one hand, the obedience to the feminine ideal was virtually impossible to perform; a small stray from the prescribed behaviour could result in a destruction of the carefully constructed perfection, which quite obviously could lead to anxiety and feelings of inadequacy and guilt (Shuttleworth 1992, 38). On the other hand, although female sexual constitution–the maternal instinct and ephemeral sexuality–might have given women a spiritual and moral superiority over men, at the same time it would have been often seen as a potential source of insanity (Shuttleworth 1992, 32-33). Needless to say, for some mid-Victorian housewives their prescribed feminine identity was a figurative straitjacket (Digby 1989).

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The Angel and her Nerves: The Mid-Victorian Discourse on Female Insanity Motherhood, that essence of the Victorian feminine identity, also hid a threat of excess and insanity. Woman’s “uterine economy” could in certain situations go awry: either because a mother overindulged in maternal emotions, or because she went against her offspring, which in both cases could potentially lead to physical and mental pathology. Showalter presents the mid-Victorian discussion on the dangers of excessive breast feeding, which symbolically represents the necessity to regulate the maternal emotion. Unregulated passions, be it maternal or sexual ones, were in Victorian minds too close to insanity to be freely allowed and accepted (Showalter 1987, 38-44). The extreme case of a maternal deviance was puerperal insanity, a term coined in the early nineteenth century to stand for a variety of disturbances connected with pregnancy and childbirth (Marland 2004, 3), from depression to violence and even infanticide (Showalter 1987, 57). The symptoms of this mania were: aversion to one’s child, anger, foul language, indecent behaviour, masturbation, and finally, aggression towards oneself or the baby (Showalter 1987, 58). The Victorian medical authorities linked puerperal mania to the “ovarian perversion of appetite” (Shuttleworth 1992, 32); in other words, it was believed to have stemmed from the stress and depletion of the nervous energy that woman’s reproductive system suffered during pregnancy and childbirth (Showalter 1987, 37). As Marland noted, some symptoms of puerperal mania bring to mind postpartum depression, a quite common phenomenon nowadays (2004, 4); however, puerperal insanity of the Victorian era is a more wideranging pathology than a “baby blues.” Elaine Showalter explains this discrepancy by attracting our attention to an unconscious rebellion that might have been taking place in a mother’s mind (1987, 58). Some social problems, as far as the poorer mothers are concerned, could also have had its impact on the violent acts of suicide or infanticide that puerperal maniacs committed – poverty, illegitimacy, or abuse might have had more to do with the cases of child murder than a diagnose of puerperal mania (Showalter 1987, 59). Moreover, in contrast to postpartum depression, puerperal mania was often seen as an incurable mental illness which debilitated for life. Other important events in woman’s sexual life could also be potentially dangerous for her mental health. It seems that the female body itself held a threat of deviancy. Apart from pregnancy, menstruation, and particularly menarche and menopause were seen by the mid-Victorian physicians as

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most hazardous for women’s mental stability. According to the midVictorian physicians, due to menstruation, women were prone to periodical hysteria (Digby 1989, 197); T.S. Clouston claimed that: [t]he regular normal performance of the reproductive functions is of the highest importance to the mental soundness of the female. Disturbed menstruation is a constant danger to the mental stability of some women; nay, the occurrence of normal menstruation is attended with some risk in many unstable brains. The actual outbreak of mental disease, or its worst paroxysms, is coincident with the menstrual period in a very large number of women indeed (1896, 521).

If menstruation was so hazardous for the mental stability of women, even more so was its beginning and its end. John Thorburn claimed that during a menopause, ”every form of neurasthenia, neuralgia, hysteria, convulsive disease, melancholia, or other mental affliction [was] rife” (1885, 192), and David Davis warned against the dangers of puberty and climacterium as the times when nymphomania was most often experienced by middle-class women (1841, 339). Again, Showalter manages to explain these mental phenomena by referring to the social context in which both teenage girls as well as ageing women found themselves – the change in their social status as those who had just become sexual objects or had just stopped being ones (1987, 57-59). Not only was the motherhood marked by the principles of selfrestriction and control, but also in itself the ideal of motherhood was a limitation on women’s lifestyles. The woman’s identity was dependent on successful maternity: “[w]oman craves to be a mother, knowing that she is an imperfect undeveloped being, until she has borne a child” (Allan 1869, 35); what is more, the quality of biological performance as a mother became a principle on the basis of which a moral assessment of a woman was made (Shuttleworth 1992, 35). In other words, transgressing the prescribed norm of maternity was in itself perceived as deviant. An excessively passionate woman was perceived as abnormal, and sometimes diagnosed with nymphomania; what was meant by the “excess” was, however, unclear, and could encompass anything from erotic dreams and fantasises or frequent marital coitus, to adultery, lesbianism and masturbation (Groneman 1994, 339-340). Nymphomania “embodied Victorian fears of the dangers of even the smallest transgressions, particularly among middle-class women whose conventional roles as daughters, wives and mothers were perceived as a bastion against the uncertainties of a changing society” (Groneman 1994, 342). Masturbation itself, both in men and women, was looked on with contempt and fear as a deviance; it was believed to lead to nervous pathologies, again on the basis

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of the application of the first law of thermodynamics to human physiology: expenditure of nervous energy during masturbation would inevitably and incorrigibly devastate the patient’s nervous system and lead to insanity. On the other hand, the clitoris had been perceived since the eighteenth century as a deviant organ, potentially allowing self- and homoeroticism, thus endangering the patriarchal control over the middle-class midVictorian woman. There was a potential for a gender rebellion in a clitoris as a phallic power symbol (Moscucci 1996, 69-70). There is little wonder, then, that one of the recommended cures for nymphomania were, notoriously, clitoridectomy or oophorectomy. The surgical removal of ovaries was recommended as a way to remove the cause of the malady, which was believed to stem from female reproductive system, especially menstruation. Oophorectomy would obviously do little to quench female desire (Groneman 1994, 349), whereas clitoridectomy, since 1850s suggested as a cure for masturbation, was by some physicians believed to be exceptionally effective. While the practice took hold in the United States, where it was still used in the beginning of the twentieth century, it became a controversial issue in Britain. Isaac Baker Brown, a gynaecologist who recommended cliterodectomy as a cure for numerous female mental maladies, was expelled from the Obstetrical Society of London for his controversial theory and practice of clitoridectomy and became discredited as a physician (Moscucci 1996, 61). However, the most powerful arguments against Brown’s practices were not those which referred to clitoridectomy as a form of sexual mutilation, but rather those based on the fact that Brown often failed to inform his patients and their husbands about the nature and consequences of these surgeries (Moscucci 1996, 68). Nevertheless, the female transgression against the angel in the house ideal could go in two opposite directions: not only in a form of excessive realisation of sexual desire by fallen women, lesbians and nymphomaniacs, but also in a form of a rejection of all sexual relationships. An unmarried middle-class woman was a threatening and immoral presence in the Victorian society: she was unnatural, as she had rejected the holy destiny of a woman, that is being a wife and a mother. On top of the fact that she was more prone to the “secret vice” as she was unable to satisfy her sexual desire in a marital coitus (King 2005, 22) and thus might have become a nymphomaniac, she was also potentially in danger of becoming affected with “climacteric insanity” (Digby 1989, 204). It could take a form of “old maid’s insanity” (now known as erotomania), a term coined by T. S. Clouston and linked to the abnormal activity of an unmarried woman’s ovaries (Shorter 2005, 99). Charles Mercier described this deviance,

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giving examples of “an old maid [who] thinks she has been seduced, she has been unchaste, she is engaged to this man or that, to whom perhaps she has never spoken” (1902, 157). Clouston linked the spinsters’ virtuous life in their youth to their mental disturbances later in life, saying that these patients were [u]nrepossessing old maids, often of a religious life, severely virtuous in thought, word and deed, and on whom nature, just before or after the climacteric, takes revenge for too absolute a repression of all the manifestation of sex, by arousing a grotesque and baseless passion for some casual acquaintance of the other sex whom the victim believes to be deeply in love with her (1896, 526-7).

Again, it transpires that it is moderation and submission to patriarchal control that is the basis of normalcy as far as female gender identity in Victorian era is concerned: anything beyond that golden means, either passion or repression, was perceived as deviance. Another useful discourse enabling control over female was the idea of moral insanity, described by James Cowles Pritchard in his 1837 work Treatise on Insanity. He identifies moral insanity as madness consisting in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the intellect or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucination (Pritchard 1837, 16).

The symptoms included “eccentricity of conduct, singular and absurd habits” as well as “a wayward and intractable temper, with a decay of social affections, an aversion to the nearest relatives and friends formerly beloved – in short, with a change in the moral character of the individual” (Pritchard 1837, 28). Thus, a mere contestation of the social norm, and a rejection of natural female affections, as marriage and motherhood were perceived, could in themselves represent symptoms of insanity. Obviously, a transgressive behaviour towards the prescribed gender norms constituted a danger of being perceived as insane; however, performing those roles and fulfilling the expectations could also lead to actual disturbances which might have had an impact on women’s mental health. Gilbert and Gubar point at socialisation of women, which would attract them from self-realisation towards submissiveness, objectification and the life of confinement in the sphere of the domestic as the factors that led them to anorexia and agoraphobia (1979, 54). Sexual ignorance could lead to traumatic experiences; Elaine Showalter claims that 25% of young

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girls were unprepared by their mothers for menarche (1987, 56-57), which might have resulted in hysterical fits, depression, anxiety or again, anorexia. Thus, a submission to the prescribed gender identity would in itself hold a threat to female sanity. The idea of self-restraint is of a crucial importance in the Victorian insanity discourse: lack of self-control leads to a perception of a woman as potentially threatening. On the other hand, the control and repression might lead to actual psychopathology. Historically speaking, some critics, for example Phyllis Chesler and Elaine Showalter, have found out that non-normative women would be incarcerated for apparent madness which might have led to psychological problems later in their lives, due to the treatment they had to suffer in lunatic asylums; it can be presumed that gender regulations characteristic for the 19th century Britain were responsible for frequent cases of insanity which was nothing but eccentric or “unfeminine” behaviour. On the other hand, an equally significant number of cases concerned women who suffered authentic psychopathology (that is, one which would be recognised as such today), but whose insanity stemmed from the exorbitant demands and stifled lifestyles of the Victorian society. Thus patriarchy might have labelled them insane rightly, but also patriarchy was often the important factor which lay at the bottom of these mental disturbances. Therefore, the historical data present two ways of looking at female Victorian insanity: it could have been a label given to those women who infringed the rules of what was perceived as feminine behaviour, but it could have also been a genuine mental disturbance, which had its aetiology in the Victorian norms of femininity. However, looked at as a literary motif, female insanity evokes another question – can a madwoman be perceived as a rebel against patriarchy, or rather as its victim?

The Embodied Madwoman: Feminist Disability Studies on Female Madness Although Gilbert and Gubar warned against romanticisation in the interpretation of female madness, it seemed virtually impossible to escape this trap. Some feminist critics started to question the reading of female insanity as a female revolt and anger; Marta Carminero-Satangelo in her book The Madwoman Can’t Speak, or Why Insanity is Not Subversive questions the aforementioned interpretation of female madness and presents a madwoman as silent and powerless, a figure which strengthens the stereotypes of femininity instead of subverting them (1998, 2-3). Shoshana Feldman also claims that “[f]ar from being a form of contestation, ‘mental illness’ is a request for help, a manifestation both of

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cultural impotence and of political castration” (1975, 2). A similar point of view, one that rejects the traditional interpretation of female insanity as a feminist symbol, and rather sees the mental illness as an impairment which in a (patriarchal) society becomes a disability, is the feminist disability studies. As Rosemarie Garland-Thomson aptly put it, disability studies “reimagines disability” (2005, 1557). It goes beyond the biological and the medical discourse of disability, and focuses on the social and cultural context as the condition which influences both the experience of physical and mental impairment but also the way the sufferers from various impairments are perceived by the ablebodied. The purpose of studying disability sociologically is to show how an impairment becomes a disability, but also to break with certain stereotypes about disabled people and to explain how the society rejects bodies which do not conform to the physical normativity. The agenda of disability studies is to denaturalise disability; to show that, to paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote, “bodies are not born, but made” (Donaldson 2002, 112). What is meant by this quote is the creation of the particular perception of the body by the society; an ill body is perceived as disabled because it does not conform to what is seen as “normal” in culture. The focus on the body and the theory of the embodiment and how it shapes identity of the disabled is actually an important aspect of disability studies. In other words, disability studies is politically oriented, focusing on the rights of the disabled people and letting the dismissed voices of the disabled tell their experience of the body and the society they live in. One of the significant changes that feminism has undergone since the 1990s is the recognition of the fact that “woman” is not a homogenous category and that the gender discourse intersects with race, class or sexuality, to mention the most obvious aspects. This multiple female identity also encompasses disability, which in itself is a varied phenomenon, “including a wide range of congenital or acquired physical differences, mental illness or retardation, chronic or acute illnesses, fatal or progressive diseases, and temporary or permanent injuries” (Thomson 1994, 586). As the critical realm of disability studies stems from sociological and medical discourse, the gender issues in this context might make feminist disability studies a subfield of disabled studies, discussing the experience of disabled women. On the other hand, if the critical focus is moved towards the issue of identity and representation of bodily “otherness” and aberrance, feminist disability studies will become a discussion of disability as a political difference which traditionally had to face inferiority, and as thus may be perceived as a critical subgenre of

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feminism (Thomson 1994, 567). Therefore, such issues characteristic for feminism as the role of the body representation in the identity formation, beauty standards, the relation between body, gender and sexuality are also stressed in feminist disability studies. Both feminist studies and disabilities studies are a part of the body of critical theories with a political agenda which emphasises social justice and aims at equality. It stems from the critique of, on the one hand, the omission of the feminist studies within disability studies and thus “reinventing the wheel” (Thomson 2002, 1), on the other, exclusion of the disabled women from the feminist discourse of the second wave. Both theories are informed by Michel Foucault’s idea of disciplinary normalisation and they both question “institutionalized techniques of normalization that sustain patriarchy, white supremacy, class power, ‘compulsory ablebodiedness,’ and compulsory heterosexuality” (Hall 2002, vii). Gender studies and disability studies have many issues in common – most importantly, body and normalization: in the light of feminist and gender studies, the female body is seen in patriarchal culture as the Other, that is, non-normative; “[t]he female body, like the disabled body, never quite measures up and must be continually refashioned to fit social norms of beauty, fitness, and appropriate behaviour” (Casper and Talley 2007, 1697). Female disabled body is then doubly “deviant” and “monstrous.” Another affinity between feminist studies and disability studies is the research on the issue of mental illness and its stereotypes and stigmatisation; nevertheless, disability studies rejects the typical feminist perspective on madness as an avatar of female rebellion against patriarchy. It claims that romanticisation of madness is dangerous and unfair for mentally ill women: thinking that if it is self-imposed, that mentally ill women are simply “unhappy and self-destructive in typically (and approved) female ways” (Chesler 1989, xxxvi), one can expect them to simply shake it off and stop being mentally ill (Nicki 2001, 83-86). According to feminist disability studies, a traditional feminist discourse of female insanity is far from liberating, and instead serves as the perpetuation of the patriarchal stereotype of mentally ill women. Donaldson claims that mental illness in women has to stop being seen as a feminist metaphor, and has to be embodied, that is, seen as a “real” illness, a physical impairment: “theories that pay attention exclusively to the social causes and construction of mad identity while overlooking the material conditions of the body, and the body as a material condition, have a limited political scope” (Donaldson 2002, 102). On the other hand, Nicki notices that the insistence on treating mental illness as a simply genetic, biochemical and biophysical phenomenon simplifies the issue and overlooks the importance

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of the social and cultural context the mentally ill exist in (Nicki 2001, 89). What is more, she claims that the absence of a social and cultural analysis may result in labelling any non-normative, nonconformist personality as “mad” (Nicki 2001, 91). It would be probably fit to find a golden means and to say that a study of madness in the perspective of feminist disability studies demands a simultaneous treatment of both the embodied aspect of insanity as well as its socio-cultural context. The idea of embodiment is extremely important in all aspects of disability studies. It focuses on the body as one of the central components of one’s identity. As a female body becomes a component of gender identity, so does a disabled female body, to a more profound extent; as it has been bluntly put by Thomson: “[i]f the male gaze makes the normative female a sexual spectacle, then the stare sculpts the disabled subject into a grotesque spectacle” (1997, 26). It is also to some extent common to the feminist tendency to affirm the body in an attempt to transcend a body/mind dualism which has become a representation of other dualisms, such as female/male, nature/nurture, or instinct/logic. In this dualism, mind (male, nurture, logic) obviously holds hegemony. On the other hand, the disabled bodies, affected by disease and pain, seem to betray or confuse the sufferers; unable to control them, they may feel frustrated by their unruly bodies. However, this tendency towards an equal affirmation of the body and mind may stumble across another problem in the disability studies. In the case of mental illness it is the mind that is unruly, frustrating and misleading. The tendency then is not to transcend the physical pain through the mind, but the mind has to be coped with by selfpreservation mechanisms (Nicki 2001, 92). It might also lead to stigmatisation in the society where the control over one’s mind is perceived as a moral and spiritual virtue. The aim of the feminist disability studies is, among other things, to break with the stereotypes of the mentally ill people as self-indulgent, selfish and weak (Nicki 2001, 95). Another stereotype about mental illness is the presumption that the mentally ill are irrational, excessively emotional, and that their cognitive powers are diminished. Not only does such a notion allow to stigmatise the eccentric, extremely emotional or hyperactive people as insane, but also allows societies to reject any attempt at understanding the mentally ill. However, the developments in psychiatry since 1960s show us that, to some extent, mental illness may appear as a logical consequence of certain situations and conditions of life; as Nicki put it, it is “toxic social environments in which mental illness thrives” (2001, 81). On the one hand, mental illness is often debilitating mostly due to “difficulties in social adaptation” (Szasz 1975, 54), but also, on the other hand, it might

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stem from a trauma in the past, as a part of a self-preservation mechanism. A mental disorder related to trauma is then nothing but a “rational response to […] an intense psychological stress.” (Nicki 2001, 82). The study of female madness obviously did not start with the emergence of feminist disability studies in the 1990s. The crucial bond between female gender regulations and mental illness among women has been recognised by such feminist scholars as Phyllis Chesler, Elaine Showalter and Jane Ussher, to mention just few most important ones. They have been studying the problem of female mental illness to solve a pivotal dilemma: are madwomen those who suffer from mental illness, or those who are labelled mad by their culture? The answer provided by the feminist disability studies is that even though the mentally ill women might have been victimised and oppressed by the patriarchal structures that surrounded them, their insanity was an embodied reality.

“Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, Now the White”: Madwomen in Faber’s Novel Sugar, the young prostitute-cum-governess of The Crimson Petal and the White might be perceived as a representation of the romanticised approach to the motif of madness as she is a rebellious fallen woman and as such represents female deviance by which the mid-Victorians were so intimidated. Even though she eventually becomes a mother figure for Sophie, her attempts at aborting her own baby with William Rackham might qualify her as a puerperal maniac, while her prostitution would link her to nymphomania. Also, if moral insanity theory is applied, Sugar’s novel represents her hateful relationship with men and thus she might be perceived as moral monomaniac. Sugar’s disruption of the feminine ideal as a symptom of insanity is aptly represented at the end of the novel by William, who, after Sugar disappears with his daughter, reads her novel and concludes: Oh God, oh God: how is it possible that his daughter has fallen into the clutches of such a viper? Ought he to have guessed sooner than today? Would another man have come to his senses faster? It’s so obvious now, so terrifyingly self-evident, that Sugar was a madwoman: her unnatural intellect, her sexual depravity, her masculine appetite for business her reptilian skin… […] How is it possible, though, that God saw it fit to install two madwomen in the bosom of his household, when other men are altogether spared? (Faber 2002, 816-817, emphasis in the original)

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From the point of view of feminist disability studies, however, Sugar would not qualify as a madwoman figure. It is only the Victorian ideology that perceives such features in a woman as intellect, sexual passion or selfpossession as deviant. Agnes Rackham, on the other hand, a middle-class lady, a wife and a mother, suffering from a variety of physical and mental symptoms, might better represent a woman victimised by her own obsession to identify with the angel in the house. Her body is both the source and the battlefield of her insanity. There are several reasons for her mental disturbances–some of them are downright physical, as will be mentioned later–but most of them boil down to Agnes’s treatment of her body and sexuality and the embodiment of the prescribed female gender, which becomes a source of acute psychological distress and, ultimately, mental illness. It seems that a sexual trauma–defined by Freud in 1896 as “one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience” which lies “at the bottom of every case of hysteria” (Gay 1989, 103)–might be one of the factors that caused Agnes Rackham’s insanity. In Agnes’s eyes, her wedding night represented an unwanted and premature sexual awakening, when her ignorance about marital duties clashed with her husband’s desire; this experience marks her relationship with William throughout the novel. Agnes’s behaviour seems at best eccentric in the eyes of her husband and her doctor, but the narrator gives us an inside view of some of the reasons for her unusual conduct. She is terrified of menstruation and rejects her own daughter, pretending Sophie does not exist (a whim indulged by her husband and the servants, who make sure the girl is perfectly hidden from Mrs Rackham). This behaviour, however, stems from Agnes’s total ignorance of her own body: “[s]he knows nothing of her body's interior, nothing; and there is nothing she wants to know” (Faber 2002, 219). She takes monthly bleedings for some terrible affliction she battles with by starving herself. When she gets pregnant, she believes it is a demonic possession: Riddle: I eat less than ever I did before I came to this wretched house, yet I grow fat. Explanation: I am fed by force in my sleep. […] Demon sits on my breast, spooning gruel into my mouth. I turn my head, his spoon follows. His vat of gruel is as big as an ice pail. Open wide, he says, or we shall be here all night (Faber 2002, 617).

In her diary, she describes the birth of her daughter in terms of an exorcism: My Holy Sister leans over me; She is many different colours in the light of the stained glass, Her face is buttercup yellow, Her breast is red, Her hands

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are blue. She places them gently on my belly, and inside me the demon squerms. I feel it pushing and lungeing in rage and terror, but my Sister has a way of causing my belly to open up without injury, permitting the demon to spring out. I glimpse the vile creature only for an instant: it is naked and black, it is made of blood and slime glued together; but immediately upon being brought out into the light, it turns to vapour in my Holy Sister's hands. Falling back in exhaustion, I see my belly shrinking. “There now”, my Holy Sister says to me with a smile. “It is over” (Faber 2002, 617-618).

The lack of knowledge of her own body is a source of trauma when her body betrays her and behaves in inexplicable ways. It was not a rare situation in a prudish Victorian era to leave teenage girls in total ignorance of menarche by the embarrassed mothers; obviously, as a result, girls thought they were bleeding internally or even dying (Showalter 1987, 5657). In Agnes’s case, the fear of the female biological cycle reflected itself in a religious mania, as it will be discussed below. Agnes’s trauma connected with body and sexuality was also strengthened by the treatment she receives from the men she comes in contact with. In her own eyes, she is pure and virginal, like the ideal angel in the house she was supposed to represent: In her own eyes she is neither sane nor insane; she is simply Agnes... Agnes Pigott, if you don't mind. Look into her heart, and you will see a pretty picture, like a prayer-card depicting the girlhood of the Virgin. It's Agnes, but not as we know her: it's an Agnes who's ageless, changeless, spotless, no step-daughter of any Unwin, no wife of any Rackham. Her hair is silkier, her dresses frillier, her bosom subsided to nothing, her very first Season still to come (Faber 2002, 159).

Agnes takes the Victorian ideal of passionlessness literally: “[w]hat Agnes craves is not a man, nor even a female lover” (Faber 2002, 219). However, she is not allowed a luxury of staying asexual; the marriage with William Rackham is tainted by the wedding night, when sexually ignorant Agnes is actually raped by her husband. He repeats the act the night before she is supposed to be taken to the lunatic asylum, abusing her when she is drugged and unaware of what is happening. This leads to a lack of trust and open hatred between them. What is more, Dr Curlew, her physician, a man of his times, is another source of stress, as his examination involves probing her uterus for the signs of movement, which in his belief would explain Mrs Rackham’s hysteria. Agnes finds these examinations distressing and oppressing: Is she mad to imagine that Doctor Curlew is bullying her? That he's taking liberties no physician should? How wonderful it would be to tell Doctor

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Thus both men perpetuate Agnes’s trauma stemming from her ignorance of her female body and sexuality. Agnes’s mania, however, is of a religious kind. She feels herself a Catholic, like her mother – even though once her mother had married Lord Unwin they both converted to Anglicanism. Agnes feels it was a betrayal, and desires a stronger connection with her dead mother’s old faith. If Agnes ever rebels against her husband, she does it when she undertakes secret trips to a Catholic church and goes to a mass and a confession. She takes Sugar, who had been observing the Rackhams’ house, for her guardian angel. Interestingly, it can be seen as a metaphorical connection with a spiritual femininity, a spirit of a (M)other that made her reject her husband’s and her step-father’s Protestantism. Agnes’s dreams and visions are also connected with her Catholic faith: when distressed, she escapes in a dream-world of the Convent of Health, where tender and motherly nuns tend to her needs and help her recover. That is also where her “Second Body” is kept – a new body, fresh and clean, more spiritual than the First one. Again it seems that what Agnes rejects is the grown body of a wife and a mother; she desires an asexual, angelic one: “What is she doing in this frail and treacherous body?” (Faber 2002, 236). Agnes’s religious obsessions might be fed by her Catholicism, but ultimately an expression of her hatred of her own body and a desire to experience feminine eternal (Chesler 2009, 209) – a woman disembodied, safe from men, who in the Convent of Health are just there to carry Agnes on stretchers to see the good nuns. This need for bodily evanescence is also realised by her anorexia, which she also uses to control her menstruation. The above reasons, however, might boil down to being an expression of her motherlessness, which is the source of her traumatic attitude to her body and explains her need to look for the eternal feminine; a mother is the angelic pure ideal which Agnes tries to copy. As Chesler put it, “[w]hether a girl once had and then lost her mother or whether she never had her mother in a perfect enough way, what the girl wants is nothing less than union with the Feminine Eternal; she cannot accept its loss or its ongoing absence in her life” (2009, 209). The nuns from the Convent of Health and the guardian angel are the expression of the yearning for being in touch with her own feminine spirit. Moreover, it has to be stressed that in Agnes Rackham’s case the madness is not simply caused by the society’s misunderstanding and oppression of women. Her mental illness is, what Donna Haraway would call, “real” (1997, 142). The aspect which binds Agnes’s mental issues to

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her body, and to some extent embodies her insanity, is the tumour in her brain. This could explain some of the symptoms, for example fainting and collapsing: Abruptly, Agnes's arm begins to shake, with mechanical vehemence, and the spout of the teapot rattles loudly against the rim of William's cup. In an instant the cup has jumped out of its saucer, and the white of the tablecloth erupts with brown liquid. William leaps from his seat, but Agnes's hand has already shivered out of the teapot's grip, and she totters away from the table, eyes wild. The shoulders around which he tries to cast a comforting arm seem to convulse and deflate and, with a retching cry, she falls to the floor. Or sinks to the carpet, if you will. Whatever way she gets there, she lands without a thump, and her glassy blue eyes are open (Faber 2002,136).

The narrator informs us about Agnes’s condition in a hyperomniscient way, to use Letissier’s term, (2009, 123) saying that [i]n Agnes’s head, inside her skull, an inch or two behind her left eye, nestles a tumour the size of a quail's egg. She has no inkling it's there. […] No one will ever find it. Roentgen photography is twenty years in the future […]. Only you and I know of this tumour's existence. It is our little secret (Faber 2002, 218-219).

This fragment perfectly summarises the interpretation of Agnes’s character in the light of feminist disability studies: on the one hand, the mental illness is real, embodied, deeply rooted in her body; on the other, it is misunderstood and debilitating due to the society’s limitations in understanding her condition; essentially, Agnes is labelled mad and stigmatised because of the lack of medical knowledge that would explain her condition.

Madness – Body or Culture? Conclusion The issue of Agnes’s possible rebellion against the prevailing ideology of a female identity prevails. Is her insanity, in the words of Elaine Showalter, “simply a label society attaches to female assertion, selfinterest and outrage” (1987, 72)? The feminist disability studies rightly point at authentic mental disturbances which might be Agnes’s case: posttraumatic stress disorder caused by the wedding night rape, hallucinations resulting from the tumour behind her left eye or her anorexia. There are also those aspects of society which make her symptoms more acute or cause additional distress and anxiety, such as her ignorance about sexuality or the lack of empathy she experiences from those near her. These factors

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explain away Agnes’s symptoms easily enough, but they fail to examine the role that the motif of female madness plays in a literary text. In the body/culture relationship, feminist disability studies point at the way culture treats the sick body to explain the way a non-normative body becomes disabled and marginalised. But it is also true that culture pathologises the body and shapes its reactions; in other words, culture not only perceives the Other body as mad, but also creates a mad body through unattainable and mutually exclusive standards it imposes. There is an optimistic ending of this story, however, and a feminist one as well. Sugar – Agnes’s Jane – helps her escape the prison of a lunatic asylum – Bertha’s destiny. A fallen woman shows empathy and solidarity with the lady. Sugar not only makes sure Agnes escapes William, but she also removes her from the reader’s gaze. Against William’s presumption that Agnes drowns in the Thames, the reader is not convinced. There are enough clues in the narration to suggest that the body found in the river does not belong to Agnes, but we are not informed what actually has happened to her; the narrator wilfully withholds this information. We can only hope that having escaped a toxic environment that debilitated her, Agnes manages to overcome some of her traumas and maybe lives happily ever after beyond the world of this novel.

References Acton, William. 1857. The Functions and Disorders in the Reproductive Organs in Childhood, Youth, Adult Age, and Advanced Life: Considered in Their Physiological, Social and Moral Relations. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blackstone. Allan, J. M. 1869. “On the Differences in the Minds of Men and Women.” Journal of the Anthopological Society of London 7. Quoted in Shuttleworth, 1992, 35. Augstein, Hannah Franciska. 1996. “J C Prichard's Concept of Moral Insanity. A Medical Theory of the Corruption of Human Nature.” Medical History 40: 311-343. Caminero-Santangelo, Maria.1998. The Madwoman Can’t Speak, Or Why Insanity in Not Subversive. New York: Cornell University Press. Casper, Monika J., and Heather Laine Talley. 2007. “Feminist Disability Studies.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia Of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer, 1696 – 1700. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Chesler, Phyllis. 1989. Women and Madness. San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt Brace & Co.

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Chesler, Phyllis. 2009. Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. Clouston, T. S. 1896. Clinial Lectures on Mental Diseases. 4th ed. London. Quoted in Digby, 1989, 198, 204. Cott, Nancy F. 1978. “Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850.” Signs 4 (2): 219-236. Davis, David. 1841. Elements of Obstetric Medicine. 2nd ed. London. Quoted in Digby, 1989, 199. Digby, Anne. 1989. “Women’s Biological Straitjacket.” In Sexuality and Subordination. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Nineteenth Century, edited by S. Mendus and J. Rendall, 192 – 220. London: Routledge. Donaldson, Elizabeth J. 2002. “The Corpus of the Madwoman. Toward a Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and Mental Illness.” Feminist Formations 14 (3): 99-119. Faber, Michel. 2002. The Crimson Petal and the White. Edinburgh: Canongate. Felman, Shoshana. 1975. “Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy.” Diacritics 4: 2-10. Gaskell, Peter. 1833. 1972. The Manufacturing Population of England, Its Moral, Social, and Physical Conditions, and the Changes Which Have Arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery; with an Examination of Infant Labour. New York: Arno Press. Quoted in Poovey, 1988, 8. Gay, Peter. 1989. The Freud Reader. New York and London: W .W. Norton Company. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 1979. 1984. The Madwoman in the Attic. Second Edition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Greg, W. R. 1850. “Prostitution.” Westminster Review 53: 238-68. Quoted in Poovey, 1988, 5. —. 1862. Why Are Women Redundant? National Review 14: 434-460. Quoted in Poovey, 1988, 1. Groneman, Carol. 1994. “Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality.” Signs 19 (2): 337–367. Hall, Kim Q. 2002. “Feminism, Disability and Embodiment.” NWSA 14(3): vi – xiii. Haraway, Donna. 1999. “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse.” In Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, edited by Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, 203–14. New York: Routledge. Quoted in Donaldson, 2002, 110. King, Jeanette. 2005. The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Laqueur, Thomas. 1986. “Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology.” Representations 14: 1–41. Letissier, Georges. 2009. Rewriting/Reprising: Plural Intertextualities. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Marland, Hilary. 2004. Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McGuigan, Aileen. 2003. “Book Review: The Crimson Petal and the White.” Scottish Studies Review 4 (2): 131 – 133. Mercier, Charles. 1902. A Textbook of Insanity. London: Macmillan. Quoted in Digby, 1989, 204. Moscucci, Ornella. 1996. “Clitoridectomy, Circumcision, and the Politics of Sexual Pleasure in Mid-Victorian Britain.” In Sexualities in Victorian Britain, edited by A. H. Miller and J. E. Adams, 60-78. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Muller, Nadine. 2009. “Hystorigraphic Metafiction: The Victorian Madwomen and Women’s Mental Health in 21st-century British Fiction.” Gender Forum. An Internet Journal for Gender Studies 25. http://www.genderforum.org/index.php?id=219 Nicki, Andrea. 2001. “The Abused Mind: Feminist Theory, Psychiatric Disability, and Trauma.” Hypatia 16 (4): 80 – 104. Poovey, Mary. 1988. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Prichard, J. C. 1837. A treatise on insanity and other disorders affecting the mind. Philadelphia: L. A. Carey and A. Hart. Russett, Cynthia Eagle. 1989. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press. Shorter, Edward. 2005. A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Showalter, Elaine. 1987. The Female Malady. Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980. London: Virago Press. Showalter, Elaine. and English Showalter. 1970. “Victorian Women and Menstruation.” Victorian Studies 14 (1): 83–89. Shuttleworth, Sally. 1992. “Demonic mothers. Ideologies of bourgeois motherhood in the mid-Victorian era.” In Rewriting the Victorians. Theory, History and the Politics of Gender, edited by Linda M. Shires, 31-51. New York and London: Routledge. Silver, Anna Krugovoy. 2004. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1984. “Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12 (1): 243-261. Summers, Leigh. 2001. Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg. Szasz, Thomas. 1975. The Myth of Mental Illness. St. Albans: Paladin. Quoted in Nicki, 2001, 81. Thomson, Rosemary Garland. 2005. “Feminist Disability Studies.” Signs 30 (2): 1557 – 1587. —. 1994. “Redrawing the Boundaries of Feminist Disability Studies.” Feminist Studies 20 (3): 582-595. —. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. —. 2002. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory.” NWSA Journal 14 (3): 1-32. Thornburn, John. 1885. A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women. London. Quoted in Digby, 1989, 199. Ussher, Jane M. 1992. Women's Madness: misogyny or mental illness? Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT GENDER IDENTITY IN WALT WHITMAN’S “LEAVES OF GRASS”: A MATTER OF UNITY OR DIVERSITY? DIANA ISMAIL

“What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are you?” (LG: 47). Walt Whitman posed these questions in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, and continued to do so throughout all the editions. The matter of identity is a key issue in the successive editions and a broad term in Whitman studies, encompassing sexual identity and gender identity, to enumerate a couple. This chapter focuses on one of the aspects of identity–gender identity and, in particular, the female identity due to its complexity and multifaceted interpretations in Whitman studies. The definition of gender not only involves the biological sexual division into male or female. Rather than being something innate, it is more of a social construct, an acquired behaviour and a product of culture and its institutions (Murfin 2003, 182). In other words, gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. As the question of how Whitman sees gender is especially fascinating when one discusses identity in Leaves of Grass, I would analyze whether gender in Whitman’s work can be defined by any criterion (such as socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, attributes, and appropriateness) or whether it constitutes a category of its own. Is gender identity a matter of unity–can it be defined in a unified way according to a certain set of qualities? Or is it a matter of diversity–a fluid, indefinable state with more than one definition of what it means to be a woman or a man? To answer these questions I will argue with Michael Moon’s (1991) observations concerning the “construction” of men and women and the implications that arise from it – that gender is a matter of unity. In the analysis I will mainly refer to the work of Jimmy Killingsworth (1989) on

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female sexuality and power. I will also quote, among others, Harold Aspiz (1980), Betsy Erkkila (1989), Marta Skwara (2010) and Vivian Pollack (2000). As I will be disputing with Moon’s view on gender, first of all, I will present his interpretation of male and female presence in Leaves of Grass, after which I will refer to the research of the Whitman scholars enumerated above, in order to show a different point of view and / or to explain gender-related phenomena present in Whitman’s poetry.

Michael Moon and Gender It should be stated here that Moon’s Disseminating Whitman is not strictly concerned with the issue of gender–the revisionary effects of the successive editions of Leaves of Grass, and the presence of the author in them (through his dissemination) is what Moon examines in his research. Nevertheless I am referring to his theory because of its unified, unambiguous, clear-cut differentiations concerning male and female roles in the text. Namely, Moon postulates that a strict division of gender roles and their characteristics is present in the first edition: mother solid cohesion matter

man fluid dispersal spirit (Moon 1991, 77)

When presenting passages to show the division, Moon also uses a poem from the second edition of Leaves of Grass, claiming that the poem was “probably drafted during or soon after the time of the appearance of the first edition” (Moon 1991, 77). He points out, on the basis of passages from the 1855 and 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass, that female attributes are characterized by solidity and maternity, cohesion and the world of matter, whereas male attributes are characterized by fluidity, dispersal and the world of spirit, all of which enable the man to disseminate his presence, simultaneously placing the woman in an inferior position. According to Moon, fluidity being in the male domain is especially visible in the 1855 text in fragments that contain landscape descriptions. When passages arise that contain fluid landscapes merging with one another, Moon claims that they show male homoeroticism. Moreover, he claims that fluidity is valued over solidity and the attainment of fluidity enables one’s search for identity but the transgression of solid into fluid

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can only be achieved by a man. Consequently, as a result of this male– fluid and female/mother–solid division and the advantage of the fluid over the solid, Moon puts forward the conclusion that the man implicitly stands higher than the woman; women are excluded from Whitman’s fluid dynamics and rendering intermingling fluids as male depicts male homoerotic love (Moon 1991, 74-84). To support his claims, Moon quotes the following passages: (1) Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes – Missouri, Columbia, Ohio, Niagara, Hudson spending themselves lovingly in him, (Preface LG 1855) (2) Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and clean the womb cohering, The head well-grown, proportioned, plumb, and the bowels and joints proportioned and plumb. (LG 1855) (3) I am the poet of the body, And I am the poet of the soul. […] I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. (LG 1855) (4) UNFOLDED only out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded […] Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman I love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man […] A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity – but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman, First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself. (“Poem of Women” LG 1856)

In (1) we have a reflection of the fluid embodiment of the male author who incarnates geography and is conceptualized as a mobile body of water disporting himself with American rivers and lakes, which are also male. Whereas in (2) (3) and (4) the identities of men and women are contrasted, and the woman is depicted as the mother.

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For Moon, the nature of the exchanges that take place in fragment (1), where male bodies flow into each other, is quasi-sexual, fluid, oral and seminal (he deduces this from the meaning of the word embouchure – that is, an outlet of body of water and musical mouthpiece). Therefore he claims that in situations where fluid male landscapes merge with one another, male homoerotic valences are being depicted. This is one of the many pieces of evidence that Moon puts forward to show that male identity is fluid. Fragment (3) shows the stable or maternal identity of women against fluid male identity with the additional attributes of cohering being in the female domain and jetting being in the male domain. In this passage, male presence is metonymically represented through the activity of the male genitals jetting and female presence is depicted through the activity of the female genitals cohering. Fragments (2) and (3), on the other hand, depict the inequality of women, the solidity of their identities and the fluidity of the male identities, which can evolve spiritually. In (2) Moon notices that the last line is not parallel to the previous ones in the poem, in the sense that it seems to privilege “the mother of men” (after having asserted that the body stands in equality with the soul, and the women with the men) and he claims that this promotion of the “the mother of men”, in fact devalues women who are not mothers, or are mothers of other women–“for it is the male gender of the mother’s offspring, and not sheer maternity in itself (which is capable of producing offspring of either gender), which here attracts the poet’s high valuation” (1991, 79). Therefore, he claims that women are placed in an inferior position. Moreover, the fact that the man “having been shaped in the woman” is then free to “be shaped in himself” (3), seems to reflect that only he can evolve spiritually and achieve a new identity, while the woman, unlike the man, is not ultimately a fluid self to be shaped, but has an unchangeable solid identity. Therefore, Moon further states that despite Whitman’s claim that men and women are equal (as Whitman says he is the poet of both genders and that it is equally great to be male as well as female), the woman is restricted to the role of a matrix for masculine self-shaping and is trapped in the realm of matter which she cannot transgress. Bearing in mind the definition of gender and Moon’s claims, the following assertions can be postulated of Moon’s interpretation of gender identity:

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GENDER ATTRIBUTES

MAN fluidity

WOMAN solidity

CONSTRUCTED ROLES BEHAVIOURS ACTIVITIES APPROPRIATENESS

homosexual lover

mother

homosexual lovemaking, evolvement of self the possession and expression of sexual desires, free and unrestrained development of one’s identity

giving birth to children not expressing or possessing sexual desires, inability to transgress solid boundaries and develop one’s identity

The question to be posed now is to what extent Moon’s gender division is applicable to the first edition and how gender is portrayed in other editions.

The Woman’s Role as a Mother Killingsworth’s view on how Whitman sees gender is quite different to that of Moon’s. When he analyses female sexuality in the Poem of Women, he claims that the woman’s role as a mother is not a restricting one but is the source of her power which encompasses more than just the biological activity of bearing children. On the basis of the lines “Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all justice is unfolded, / Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy,” Killingsworth additionally claims that women are bound closer to morality than men as they possess justice and sympathy in their primal and purest form. Therefore he ascribes to them the roles of “the moral as well as the physical guardians of the culture“ (1989, 63), the values which the women then pass on to their children. Like Moon, he makes reference to the female genitalia, though he does so in the word “unfolded", noticing that the key word unfolded signifies both “evolution”, as the Latin evolvere means to unfold, as well the “instrument” of evolution – the folds of the vagina (a synecdoche for female sexuality in general). However his analysis carries unexpected implications to the role of the woman/mother. Killingsworth draws attention to the enfolding actions of the vagina in the following notebook excerpt, in which Whitman describes “a superb calm character”: “His analog the earth complete in itself enfolding in itself all processes of growth effusing life and power […].” (quoted in

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Killingsworth 1989, 64). If we were also to acknowledge the early notebook excerpt quoted above as containing the enfolding element as the activity of the female genitalia, the enfolding-cohering correlation becomes apparent, as does the effusing element, which seems to resemble the jetting activity (dispersal) of the male genitalia. According to Killingsworth both the activity of enfolding (cohering) and the activity of effusing (jetting), i.e. pouring forth, radiating, are noted as being performed by the female agent. Consequently “dispersal” is, in fact, revealed to be not only a male attribute. Moreover, Killingsworth interprets enfolding and effusion as acts of ideal creative power and artistic creation which unfold from the ideal, prototypical, poem mother – the mother is thus also the ultimate artist, and it is with her femininity that male creative power is infused: “Unfolded out of the inimitable poem of the woman can come the poems of man – only thence have my poems come” (“Poem of Women” LG 1856). It seems that Whitman suggests his poems emerge out of maternal rather than paternal traditions of language and he represents himself as bound to the logic of the “feminine” (Pollack 2000, 182). As the ideal mother gives birth to the great poet, motherhood becomes an analogue to the poet’s creativity (Aspiz 1980, 236). Betsy Erkilla, like Killingsworth, also urges us to read motherhood as a trope for creativity rather than as merely a biological function (Pollack 2000, 184), claiming that while Whitman insisted on the superiority of the mother, he did not in fact trap the female in a maternal role, but sought to revive her as a creative and intellectual force (Erkkila 1989, 258-259). Harold Aspiz in Walt Whitman and the Body Beautiful (1980), on the other hand, additionally attaches a spiritual aspect to motherhood, claiming it was a virtue to Whitman and that it “denoted love, stability and prophetic spirituality in contrast to the male principles of restless dynamism and self-reliance” (Aspiz 1980, 235). Moreover he emphasizes the importance of women’s sexuality which, to the poet, “symbolized the evolutionary yearning to complete the human race and to supply it with physically sound and spiritually sensitive children” (Aspiz 1980, 236). Therefore, it seems that the woman’s role is not restricted only to maternity and childbearing, and coherence is not the only quality manifested by the female in Whitman. Coherence is blended with dispersal in the act of female creation, the realm of spirit is blurred with the realm of matter and the woman acts as a guardian of culture and an ideal creative force. Consequently Moon’s division seems invalid.

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The Woman’s Sexuality and her Evolvement The image of the woman can be further expanded to include the evolvement of the self and her sexual desire, which seem to go hand in hand in Whitman’s work. This is visible via Killingsworth’s analysis of “Poem of Procreation” (Killingsworth 1989, 65-73), in which Killingsworth elaborates on the woman figure with “brawny embraces” from “Poem of Women”. In the former poem, the strong and healthy male persona proclaims his equality with women who have fully developed sexual instincts – only they are “warm-blooded and sufficient” for him as they are not impassive and they do not deny him. These women are exemplars of perfect health and their personae may be read as an empowering feminist statement: (5) They are tanned in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength, They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves, They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves. (“Poem of Procreation” LG 1856)

Such athletic imagery and proclamation of equality, as Killingsworth notices, recalls the views of two of the most radical feminists of the period, which Whitman seemed to draw from: Mary Wollstonecraft (17591797), who included physical exercise in her equalization program, and Frances Wright (1795-1852) who believed that physical activity should be taught to young women from early youth as it imparts vigour to the body and independence to the mind (Killingsworth 1989, 66). Although liberal critics have never, in fact, fully agreed the poem to be a complete feminist statement due to lines that suggest the incompleteness of women without the presence of men like the male persona (“all were lacking […] if the moisture of the right man were lacking”) (Killingsworth 1989, 69), it does seem to attempt to empower women. This poem appears to be a good example of what Aspiz describes as the positive feminism (despite its obvious shortcomings, visible to the contemporary reader) that Whitman steadily strived towards attaining. Through depicting the beauty of healthy women with sexual appetites “Whitman sought to establish women’s dignity and independence without which, he felt, a democratic society could not endure” (Aspiz 1980, 211). He attempted to liberate women sexually as he considered the aspect of women attaining sexual awareness,

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crucial to their attainment of political power (“all were lacking if sex were lacking”). For Whitman, one was not achievable without the other, as he depended political power upon sexual awareness: “All the governments, judges, gods, followed persons of the earth, / These are contained in sex, as parts of itself and justifications of itself” (“Poem of Procreation” LG 1856). It seems, therefore, that the second, 1856 edition expands the woman’s sexual role, giving her the possibility of development through the attainment of sexual awareness and political power. Moon’s interpretation of female sexuality in the first edition might also be more complex than he states as a closer analysis of a passage of “The Sleepers” and the twenty-eight bathers’ scene shows. In “The Sleepers”, the speaker relates his mother’s story of meeting a “red” woman in her youth. This woman, a squaw, is said to visit the speaker’s mother’s family and the young girl is in such awe of the woman, especially in the line “The more she looked upon her she loved her”, that Moon interprets the scene as depicting (lesbian) desire (Moon 1991, 83-7). In the twenty-eight bathers’ scene, on the other hand, Moon states that the female persona exhibits desire, though he simultaneously ascribes it to a hidden male persona. In the passage, twenty-eight young men are bathing by the shore and are being observed by a female figure, who is secretly watching them from the confines of her home – from her window (it is worth noting here, that she is not a mother figure). As she longingly observes the young men splashing in the water, she seems to be overcome by her desire to join the bathers, and thus she does so. Consequently, the following erotic scene takes place, with the twenty-ninth bather (the woman) participating, though she remains unseen by the remaining bathers: (6) Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair, Little streams passed all over their bodies. An unseen hand also passed over their bodies, It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun. [. . .] they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

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They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray. (LG 1855)

While Moon admits that a woman’s desire for the men is depicted, he excludes the female figure from the role of the lover by claiming that exclusively male orgasm is represented at the end of the passage and the speaker of the poem is in fact a homosexual male, who takes the woman’s position for his own as she passes from the window to the bathers, midway in the passage. Therefore, it is the male persona who indulges in (homoerotic) lovemaking, not the female one (Moon 1991, 38-47) and once again the figure of the male seems more prominent to Moon, though the “phrases to puff and decline with pendant and bending arch” do not have to refer to a male orgasm at all, as Marta Skwara argues in Polski Whitman (2010), and there is no reason to insist that the scene cannot be read as a heterosexual love scene. Bearing in mind this interpretation, the quality of women possessing sexual desires is emphasized once again1.

The Mother as a Lover It is worth noting that the female persona in the twenty-eight bathers’ scene seems to be an exception from the rule that, normally, it is the mother figure that is engaged in sexual activity in Leaves of Grass. Similarly, in “Song of Myself” a non-maternal female figure, the trained soprano, when convulsing the speaker “like the climax of my love-grip” is given a love-grip of her own in a trial version of the poem, as Aspiz notices (1980, 223). Otherwise, mainly, the mother receives the fullest erotic attention in Whitman’s poems sometimes in an incestuous way, for instance like in the “Clef Poem” of the second edition: (7) I am not uneasy but I am to be beloved by young and old men, and to love them the same, 1 Whether the desires are equally intense to that of the males, despite Whitman’s proclamation of it being so, has been debated. In response to the poem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), a female sexual liberationist and Whitman’s contemporary, writes about Whitman’s failure to acknowledge the reciprocity of the woman’s appetite and Killingsworth interprets lines such as “The man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex” against “the woman I like knows and avows hers”, to depict a slight hesitancy on Whitman’s part to admit that women have as fully developed sexual instincts as males – the phrase hers is considered to be an ellipsis for her sex (Killingsworth 1989, 69).

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Chapter Eight I suppose the pink nipples of the breasts of women with whom I shall sleep will taste the same to my lips, But this is the nipple of a breast of my mother, always near and always divine to me, her true child and son. ( LG 1856)

Similarly, in the poem “Walt Whitman” that appears in all the editions, Whitman seems to be depicted as a child who is cushioned soft and rocked to sleep in billowy drowse by his mother, the Sea, who is also his lover. As a mother and woman, the sea is specified as being capricious and dainty, as having female physiognomy (stretched ground-swells-breasts) and as possessing the capacity of giving birth (the brine of life). Whereas as a female lover, the Sea dashes with amorous wet and breathes broad and convulsive breaths: (8) You Sea! I resign myself to you also – I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me; We must have a turn together – I undress – hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet – I can repay you. Sea of stretched ground-swells! Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves! Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty Sea! I am integral with you – I too am of one phase, and of all phases. (LG 1855/1860)

If we consider the fact that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was a common belief that in order to conceive healthy children, or to conceive at all, a woman must enjoy sexual relations and achieve orgasm (Killingsworth 1989, 91), it is not surprising that Whitman eroticizes the mother in his poems–conceiving is an omnipresent motif in his work. Moreover, the sexual relation between the mother and her son in Leaves of Grass is explained by Killingsworth through the writings of Orson Fowler. In these pre-Freudian nineteenth century articles, it is explained that the sex drive appears in early childhood and its function is to attach boys to their mothers and daughters to their fathers (Killingsworth 1989, 89-90). Hence the theme that a mother’s love is perquisite to all other kinds of love (including sexual love) and the erotic image of the mother figure.

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The Solidity and the Fluidity of the Genders Continuing the topic of Moon’s gender division in other editions, my research has shown that not only are the coherence-dispersal and spirit-matter binaries a blur. The mother-solid male-fluid division is not a strict one either. In landscape descriptions, indeed sometimes the female is solid and the male fluid: in “Chants Democratic and Native American” “the great pastoral area” is said to be athletic and feminine whereas in the poem “Proto-Leaf” “the Poet, with flowing mouth” is awaited for by “the daughter of the lands”. However, at times the female is also associated with the fluid and the male with the solid. Enlisted below are passages that contain reference to the gender of landscapes: (9) Here lands female and male, Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world – Here the flame of materials […] (“Proto-Leaf” LG 1860/1872/1881-82) (10) Land of many oceans! Land of sierras and peaks! Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land! Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate lovers! The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed! The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! (“Proto-Leaf” LG 1860) (11) I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile (…) (“Salut au Monde”LG 1856/1860/1872/1881-82) (12) Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between it and the spinal river, Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine, Of all sloping down there where the fresh free-giver, the mother, the Mississippi flows—and Westward still; (“Proto-Leaf” LG 1860/1872)

Landĺ female

Female= solid

Landĺ male

Male= solid

Land of sierras and peaks ĺ male

Male= solid

Land of many oceans ĺ female/ Male

Male= solid/

The Nile ĺ mother

Female= fluid

The Mississippi ĺ mother

Female= fluid

Pastoral area (land) ĺ female

Female= fluid

Female= solid

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(13) Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways—but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you. You friable shore, with trails of debris! You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot; What is yours is mine, my father. (LG 1860/1872/1881-82) (14) With angry moans the fierce old mother yet, as ever, incessantly moaning, The undertone—the savage old mother, incessantly crying, (“Poem of Joys” LG 1860/1872/1881-82)

The Seaĺ mother

Female= fluid

Landĺ father

Male= solid

The Seaĺ mother

Female= fluid

In “Proto-Leaf”, for instance, we find that land is not only female–it is simultaneously male. The passage that contains reference to the athletic and feminine pastoral lands also contains the Mississippi, which is explicitly female2–it is the mother and the fresh free-giver. If we were to recall, for instance, fragment (8) in which the mother also appears as the persona’s lover, we would find that the mother figure is presented as the Sea – a fluid entity. Similarly, the mother is depicted as the Sea in the poem Leaves of Grass and the “Poem of Joys”, where we find reference to the Sea as a fierce old mother and as the savage old mother. And, furthermore, alongside the fierce old mother in Leaves of Grass there appears the father who seems to be referred to as the shore and island – a solid. The landscapes that are described as lovers clutched together, on the other hand, seem to be rather ambiguous gender-wise. That is to say, while the land of sierras and peaks–a solid–clearly refers to masculinity due to the phallic qualities of the landscapes, the land of oceans seem to incorporate both the female and the male. We may take the land in “the land of oceans” to be a male entity and the ocean as a female one or the other way around. Consequently, it seems that the land of sierras and peaks is the male lover while the land of oceans may be either a female or male lover. However as one of the lands is later specified as the elder and 2

The Western Sea and spinal river are genderless here.

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younger brothers’ land and the other as the feminine land of the experienced and inexperienced sisters, it seems plausible to postulate that the lovers are of different genders. This in turn shows that the role of the man is not only of a homosexual lover, it may also be of a heterosexual lover and all the examples above show that there is no rule as to which gender is assigned strictly fluid or solid qualities. What is more, the division seems to be reversed in the sense that what is fluid is more often assigned female qualities than male, which simultaneously helps show that women are not excluded from what Moon calls Whitman’s fluid dynamics in the editions following the 1855 Leaves of Grass.

Gender Fluidity through Suffix Marking What perhaps was not so obviously deducible on the basis of the quoted passages of Leaves of Grass in the analysis, but what should be emphasized here to illustrate the fluidity of gender even more so, is Whitman’s use of gender suffixes. Sherry Ceniza draws attention to the fact that, on the one hand, Whitman worked with gender suffixes creating feminine -ess endings for masculine nouns that normally end with -or and -er. However at the same time he created -ist endings that incorporated both feminine and masculine gender (Ceniza 2009, 181). For instance, in Volume 3 of Daybooks and Notebooks, Whitman noted down two other forms of the word orator: the masculine and feminine “oratist” as well as the feminine “oratress” (Ceniza 2009, 182). A similar situation occurs in the definition of the “Kosmos” which often appears in the editions of Leaves of Grass: Whitman says that the “Kosmos” is “masculine or feminine, a person who[se] scope of mind or whose range in a particular science, includes all, the whole known universe” (Ceniza 2009, 181). Such examples clearly show the simultaneous fluidity of gender identity and gender distinctions that are emphasized by gendered suffix marking. In addition, Whitman introduced feminine gendered forms of common nouns in Leaves of Grass such as “quakeress,” “translatress,” “oratresses,” “dispensatress,” “all-acceptress,” “protectress,” for a reason. That is to say, probably due to his need to make sure that his female readers did not feel subsumed by common nouns ending in -or or -er (Ceniza 2009, 182). Even Moon, when discussing the twenty-eight bathers’ scene, suggests that via the indeterminate identity of the “unseen hand” in the passage: Whitman effectively destabilizes the genders of both the source and object(s) of the erotic gaze, projecting a space in which both men and

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Therefore, Whitman did not place the woman in an inferior position and he, undoubtedly, made an attempt to present the woman in a different light than was the norm in his day. His contemporaries did not depict white women as passionate in their literature, as Aspiz notices (1980, 211), and examples such as the twenty-eight bathers’ scene show that: Whitman seems intent on displacing the stereotypic Victorian angel of home economics […] with a “new” female ideal: the woman who omnipotently transcends the gender roles prescribed by conventional society. (Killingsworth 1989, 63)

Whitman’s image of woman clearly countered the nineteenth century popular ideal of sexless womanliness (Killingsworth 1989, 66).

Conclusion It seems that in terms of gender identity, Whitman was reaching beyond the boundaries of male / female. As it is visible in the presented analysis, Whitman paid much attention to depicting the roles of men and women. However, he did not present these roles in a consistent or unified way that would allow classification. Gender, consequently, seems to be a flexible concept in the successive editions of Leaves of Grass. As Whitman was intent on breaking norms in his poetry, any attempt to classify his work in binary either-or categories seems futile. Gender identity in Leaves of Grass, in fact, is a matter of diversity.

References Aspiz, Harold. 1980. Walt Whitman and the Body Beautiful. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Ceniza, Sherry. 2009. “Gender”. In A Companion to Walt Whitman, edited by Donald D. Kummings, 180- 196. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Erkkila, Betsy. 1989. Whitman the Political Poet. New York: Oxford University Press. Killingsworth, Jimmie M. 1989. Whitman’s Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Moon, Michael. 1991. Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in Leaves of Grass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Murfin S. and Supryia M. Ray. 2003. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pollack, Vivian. 2000. The Erotic Whitman. Berkeley: University of California Press. Skwara, Marta. 2010. Polski Whitman. O funkcjonowaniu poety obcego w kulturze narodowej. Kraków: Universitas. Whitman, Walt. 1855. “Leaves of Grass.” The Walt Whitman Archive http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1855/whole.html —. 1856. “Leaves of Grass.” The Walt Whitman Archive http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1856/whole.html —. 1860. “Leaves of Grass.” The Walt Whitman Archive http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1860/whole.html

CONTRIBUTORS

Simon Bacon is an Independent Scholar based in Poznan, Poland. He is currently leading research projects on “Monsters and the Monstrous” and “Immersive Worlds and Transmedia Narratives” for the independent research network Inter-Disiciplinary.Net. He is also the chief-editor of the academic journal Monsters and the Monstrous and is co-editing a book on Undead Memory: Vampires and Human Memory in Popular Culture. Barbara Braid is Assistant Lecturer at the English Department in Szczecin University, Poland. She is a PhD candidate at Opole University, Poland, working on a dissertation on the motifs of female madness in the Victorian and neo-Victorian novel and she has published a number of articles and book chapters on neo-Victorian, lesbian and gothic literature. Since 2010 she has been Project Leader for “Femininities and Masculinities” project within the independent research network Inter-Disiciplinary.Net, where she is also a member of the advisory body, the Area of Activity Board. Karen Sanderson Cole is Assistant Lecturer with the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her MPhil dissertation was based on the construction of images of black women in the popular romance genre. She is also the holder of an MhEd in Tertiary Level Teaching and Learning and is presently a PhD candidate working on autobiography as narrativeexploring the life-story of the Prime Minister in the English Speaking Caribbean. Diana Ismail is a teacher of English as a Second Language and a doctoral student, working under the supervision of Prof Marta Skwara at the University of Szczecin. She received her BA and MA in English Philology from the University of Szczecin, Poland, where she focused on cognitive linguistics and its application to the analysis of Shakespeare’s works. Her current research combines elements of cognitive linguistics and comparative literature in the study of Walt Whitman's poetry.

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Barbara Kijek is Assistant Lecturer at the English Department, Szczecin University. She holds an MA in English from Szczecin University. The title of her MA thesis was “Dystopia and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” which reflects her main academic interests, namely modern Canadian literature, the issues of national, cultural and gender identity, and the mechanisms of alienation and oppression. Currently, she is conducting research on the cultural identity of the members of the Scottish diaspora in the Canadian Maritimes on the basis of contemporary Canadian fiction. Ferne Louanne Regis is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, where she also lectures in the School of Education and the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Her primary work focuses on the biracial minority group of Douglas in Trinidad and their expressions of ethnic identity via language but her interests extend to other areas and groups where language and ethnicity are at play. Julitta Rydlewska is Senior Lecturer and the former founding head of the Department of English at the University of Szczecin. She holds a PhD in English literature from Adam Mickiewicz University in PoznaĔ. In addition to teaching English literature to Polish students she has edited several collective works and published several translations in the fields of psychology and history; her major books in translation include Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance, and Ludy T. Benjamin’s A Brief History of Modern Psychology. Joanna Witkowska is affiliated with the University of Szczecin (Poland). Her research focuses on Polish-British cultural relationships. She has published on anti-Western propaganda and Polish-British relations during WWII. Her recent publications include The Image of the United Kingdom in Poland During the Stalinist Period, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu SzczeciĔskiego 2009; “Creating false enemies: John Bull and Uncle Sam as food for anti-Western propaganda in Poland” in: The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, ed. by Alan P. Dobson, Routledge, Vol. 6, Issue 2, 2008; “The Loneliness Of Poles–On Polish-British Relationships at the End of the Second World War as Presented in Wáadysáaw Anders’ War Memoirs Bez Ostatniego Rozdziaáu [Without The Last Chapter]” in: ĝwiat Sáowian w jĊzyku i kulturze, vol. 9, ed. Ewa Komorowska and Joanna Misiukajtis, Szczecin, 2008.

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Hui-Lien Yeh is Assistant Professor at the Applied Foreign Language Department of Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science in Taiwan. She gained her PhD in English Literature from National Kaohsiung Normal University. Both of her master and PhD dissertation focus on Asian American studies. Most of her research also aims to reveal the voice of Asian Americans. In addition to teaching English and American literature, she is currently researching the issue of biopolitics and Asian American writing.