One of the reasons why the novels So Long a Letter (by Mariama Ba), Kindred (by Octavia Butler) and Trumpet by (Jackie Kay) are being commonly regarded to account for a high literary value by critics, is that they contain a number of clues, as to what are the qualitative features of the process of social actualization of non-white female identity. This paper aims to substantiate the validity of the above suggested at length, and to promote the idea that each of the mentioned novels is affiliated with its own distinctive type of such identity, namely: ‘biological’ or ‘traditional’ (So Long a Letter), ‘post-colonial’ or ‘hybrid’ (Kindred) and ‘feminist’ (Trumpet).
First of all, let us focus our attention on Ba’s novel. As of today, it is a widespread practice among many critics to regard this novel as one that advances the cause of women’s emancipation. This point of view is not altogether deprived of a certain rationale. After all, in So Long a Letter, we can find a number of indications that the novel’s narrator Ramatoulaye Fall was a progressive-minded woman who supported ideals of gender egalitarianism – at least in the societal sense of this concept. In this respect, the following remark is particularly illustrative: “My heart rejoices every time a woman emerges from the shadows.
I know the field of gains is unstable, the retention of conquests difficult: social constraints are ever-present, and male egoism persists” (Ba 88). This, however, cannot be seen as the proof that Ramatoulaye was naturally attracted to the ideas of feminism. Quite on the contrary – throughout the novel, the main character never ceases to come up with the statements that expose her comfortable and so-called ‘traditional’ (and deeply patriarchal) values.
For example, Ramatoulaye does not make a secret of her genuine commitment to the religion of Islam, the affiliates of which consider thoroughly ‘natural’ to think of women as a commodity: “I hope to carry out my duties fully. My heart concurs with the demands of religion. Reared since childhood on their strict precepts, I expect not to fail” (Ba 8). The main character also positions herself as a person who believes that the notion of ‘womanhood’ is synonymous with the notion of ‘childbirth’ – hence, Ramatoulaye marginally points out to the sheer appropriateness of woman’s sexual submissiveness, and to the social benefits of her willingness to sacrifice for the sake of something greater than her own well-being. The latter is reflected by the strongly defined nationalist stance: “Women are the nation’s primary, fundamental root, from which all else grows and blossoms.
Women must be encouraged to take a keener interest in the destiny of the country (Ba 62). This, of course, suggests that despite Ramatoulaye’s intellectual insight, she was naturally tempted to think of the sense of self-identity as something rather inseparable from what happened to be her gender. The clearly defined rural settings in the novel provide an explanation as to why this was the case. After all, it wasn’t a secret that the challenges of a rural life incite people to have as many children as possible (Ramatoulaye was a mother of twelve), simply because even youth represent a high value as agricultural helpers. Consequently, this results in a woman’s worth being perceived as reflective of her ability to exist as a ‘birth-giving machine.’
Evidently enough, the notion stated above does not apply to the character of Dana (narrator) from Butler’s novel Kindred. The reason for this is that the character had spent her formative years California in the 1970th, something that taught Dana to show very little tolerance to the manifestations of male-chauvinism/white racism while making trips to the early 18th century’s Maryland. That means that Dana could not possibly be comfortable with the idea that her gender was the most influential factor, within the context of how she used to go about addressing challenges in her life. Rather she felt as if it was her existential identity of a ‘hybrid’ (African-American woman with a fair amount of ‘white blood’ in her veins), which defined her sense of self more than anything else.
This sensation had to do with the fact that, despite opposing slavery and resenting white racism, she nevertheless could not help experiencing a certain ‘oneness’ with the slave-owning oppressors, such as Rufus Weylin. The validity of this suggestion can be illustrated with regard to Dana’s statement that: “There had to be some kind of reason for the link he (Rufus) and I seemed to have. Not that I thought a blood relationship could explain the way I had twice been drawn to him… What we had was something new, something that didn’t even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not come from our being related” (Butler 29).
We can hypothesize that Dana’s sensation, in this respect, was suggestive of her endowment with the mentality of a ‘racial hybrid.’ This endowment is extrapolated with her tendency to be affected by a number of mutually exclusive anxieties in regard to the country’s past and present. On the one hand, Dana never ceased to experience the sensation of strong emotional distress in relation to the legacy of slavery in America. On the other hand, however, she was possessed by the elusive suspicion of having somehow contributed to its legacy. This explains Dana’s hesitation: “If I was to live if others were to live, he (Rufus) must live. I didn’t dare test the (time) paradox” (Butler 29).
Apparently, as opposed to what was the case with the character of Ramatoulaye (from Ba’s novel), Dana could not associate herself neither with the ‘oppressed’ nor the ‘oppressors’, just as she could not help behaving in the manner inconsistent with the patriarchal conventions of what a woman’s behavior is ought to be all about.
The character of Joss Moody (a famous jazz trumpeter, who was post-mortem revealed to be a woman all along) is much unlike the two characters mentioned above. In essence, she can be viewed as someone who symbolizes the process of Black women’s continual emancipation being brought to its logical conclusion. The reason for this is, as it is inferred in Trumpet, that despite being a woman Joss persisted with considering her formal gender-affiliation purely incidental – this individual was nothing short of a man in a woman’s body. The fact that this indeed used to be the case can be confirmed by anyone familiar with the novel in question.
After all, throughout the novel, Joss was being reflected by others as a rationally thinking man, who clearly enjoyed imposing dominance upon his friends and relatives – a distinctive psychological trait of ‘alpha-males.’ Moreover, many of the Joss’s close relatives (such as his adopted son Colman) proved themselves unable to contemplate the idea that as far as sex was concerned, his role could be viewed as just ‘ramming’: “My father never got a leg over. Had a hard-on. My father was never tossed off… Did he wear a dildo? Shit. If he did, he would have rammed it in, I promise you” (Kay 169).
Thus, it is not much of an exaggeration on our part to suggest that the character of Joss in Kay’s novel sublimates the feminist assumption that, the further away a particular woman is distanced from the traditional conventions of femininity, the happier she is. This helps explain the discursive significance of the motif of a trumpet in Kay’s novel. It provides a symbolic reference to a phallus, the implied motif there is to accentuate the full objectiveness of Joss’s efforts to be a man – thus, exposing her as the actual epitome of feminism, which, in turn, can be defined as the socially projected sublimation of women’s ‘envy of penis’.
The earlier developed line of argumentation, in regard to the subject matter in question, fully correlates with the paper’s initial thesis. Apparently, it is indeed thoroughly justified to refer to all three novels, as such, that help readers gain a number of in-depth insights into what prompts modern women to adopt different identity-related stances in life. Therefore, it will be thoroughly appropriate to recommend these books for reading by those who strive to gain a better understanding of the factors that play a role in making the identity of a modern woman, as we know it.
Works Cited
Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. London: Heinemann, 1980. Print.
Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon, 1979. Print.
Kay, Jackie. Trumpet. London: Picador, 1999. Print.