Abstract:
Moving away from the “grand narratives” (Lyotard, xxiii) of history, Feminism as a literary movement has encouraged women, as a reader and a writer, to constantly question, reclaim and reconstruct the patriarchal portrayal of the “weaker sex” in literature. Caribbean writer Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is one such work which tries to rediscover and rewrite the forgotten history of a woman. Tituba is famous in literature as a character from Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, where she is portrayed as a slave woman from Barbados who practices black magic and is jailed for witchcraft. Winning the 1986 French Grand Prix award for women's literature, Conde’s novel gives space and voice to the West Indian slave Tituba to tell her true story. This coming of age novel tries to show how truth has been manipulated. The proposed paper is an attempt to understand how Conde reworks the story of a Caribbean slave to explore the different levels of oppression. The study also tries to investigate how the questions of identity, sexuality, and gender are explored by the author to speak against the discourses of imperialism and patriarchy.
Key Words: Feminism, Subaltern, History, Truth, postcolonialism, Discourse
Diana Wallace in her book The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000 speaks of “the second-wave of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s” as the departure point that initiated the recovery of “herstory” (177). This writing of “herstory”, as Rachel Blau Duplessis writes, has caused a “poetics of rupture and critique” (Duplessis, 32). This is the stage when women
break the sentence [to] reject ... the structuring of the female voice by the male voice, female tone and manner by male expectations, female writing by male emphasis, female writing by existing conventions of gender - in short, any way in which dominant structures shape mute ones (Duplessis, 1985, 32).
Writing from the female point of view, these are the stories of the consciousness of women, her real story. They are “creative intervention[s]” (Bhabha, 3) that deconstructs the canonical texts to reclaim the muffled voice of its women characters. Adrienne Rich in her essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” speaks of the need for this turn in literary tradition,
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. . . . We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us. (Rich, 35)
Women writers thus engage in an act of “break[ing] the sentence” and “break[ing] the sequence” (Woolf, 74-75) of traditional literary discourse to carve her space, to voice her story.
The second half of the Twentieth Century witnessed the publication of some important texts such as The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Rachel Blau du Plessis’s Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (1985), The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives (1989) by Molly Hite, Changing the Story: Feminist Fiction and the Tradition (1991) by Gayle Greene that speak need of the alternative female voice.
Similar to Feminism, postcolonial literature emerged with giving room to the voice of those who were otherwise unheard. Representation has been an ideological tool that was used by those in power to manipulate and misrepresent the voiceless. Foucault thus speaks about ‘a regime of truth’ in which “‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it.”(Foucault, 23) An analysis of history proves that it is abundant with silences, pauses, stillness and contortions that this ‘regime of truth’ created. The seminal postcolonial text The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989), written by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin speaks of the need of “alternative reading practices” (Ashcroft et al, 189).
The subversion of a canon is not simply a matter of replacing one set of texts with another. . . . A canon is not a body of texts per se, but rather a set of reading practices. . . . These reading practices, in their turn, are resident in institutional structures, such as education curricula and publishing networks. So the subversion of a canon involves the bringing-to-consciousness and articulation of these practices and institutions, and will result not only in the replacement of some texts by others, . . . but equally crucially in the reconstruction of the so-called canonical texts through alternative reading practices. (Ashcroft et al, 189).
Postcolonial feminism thus emerges as a branch that looks into the narratives of the female Other.
Less explored, Caribbean women’s literature arises out of a voicelessness of its female authors and protagonists. Carol Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido in their work Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature defines “voicelessness” as “the historical absence of the woman writer’s text; the absence of a specifically female position on such topics as slavery, colonialism, women’s rights and more direct social and cultural issues.” Emerging from silence, the women’s literature of the Caribbean explores the recesses of the Antillanite, a term coined by Edouard Glissant to represent the complexity of Caribbean culture, identity and heritage.
Originally written in French as Moi, Tituba, Sorcière…Noire de Salem (1986), the novel was translated into English in 1992 by Richard Philcox as I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Winning the 1986 French Grand Prix award for women's literature, the novel retells the story of the historical figure and fictional character Tituba, the first woman to be accused and imprisoned for practicing witchcraft in the notorious 1692 Salem Witch trials. The article “Tituba’s Story” written by Bernard Rosenthal, published in The New England Quaterly gives a historical account of the woman as an Indian, married to John Indian and a slave of Reverend Parris. Her age not known. She confessed doing witchcraft and was imprisoned. After her release nothing is known about what happened to her.
Denying to label the novel as a historical fiction, Conde, builds from this meagre history and her wide imagination the life and voice of the “Black Witch of Salem.” Written as a first person narrative, the work begins with the image of violence and suppression. The novel starts so: “Abena, my mother, was raped by an English sailor on the deck of Christ the King one day in the year 16** while the ship was sailing for Barbados. I was born from this act of aggression. From this act of hatred and contempt.”(1) Growing up in Barbados, Tituba loses her mother at the age of seven. Her mother is hanged for resisting a wealthy planter from raping her. She is then brought up by an old woman named Mama Yaya who teaches her magic. Against the warning for her mother’s spirit she marries John Indian. As the wife of John Indian she gives up her religion for Christianity, endures the tortures that John’s mistress inflicts on her. Magic comes to her as a resort to get rid of the mistress. Later Tituba and her husband is sold to Reverend Parris. Accused of black magic, the magical favours that she did to the Puritan women of Salem, Tituba is imprisoned. It is in prison that she meets Hester Prynne who asks her to tell her story. Since Tituba confessed to her crimes, she is not hanged and later she is bought by the Jew Benjamin Cohen d'Azevedo. There she becomes his mistress and takes care of his family. The flame of anti-semiticism later engulfs the house killing Benjamin’s children. Benjamin sets Tituba free, sending her back to Barbados. On reaching her native place Tituba uses her knowledge of magic to work as a healer. She later joins a rebel group who fights against the plantation owners and is finally caught and hanged. But the enduring spirit of Tituba is shown as helping the revolts.
Conde once said that she wanted to offer Tituba her revenge. The novel is a revenge taken by Tituba against all her oppressors who silenced her by reclaiming her story, finding space to assert her true self. Conde makes this possible by the means narration/language and sexuality.
The first person realist mode of narration that Conde adopts gives Tituba an active voice. It is the voice of the Other asserting the truth of their existence. The epigraph of the novel “Tituba and I lived for a year on the closest of terms. During our endless conversations she told me things she had confided to nobody else”(v), removes the authorial position and leaves the authority of narration to Tituba. Even the title of the novel “I Tituba” asserts the fictional autobiography of the work. The title shows how she has been portrayed by the Self ‘black’ and ‘witch’, the modes by which she was pushed into the margin of the society. The first person narrative gives credibility to the events of her life. The reader identifying themselves with the narrator thus feels intimately the pain, torture and terror that the protagonist had to undergo.
Tituba who is aware of her position in the society in terms of race, gender, culture and ethnicity is able to narrate her story by exposing all the aspects of her oppression. She narrates her birth, result of a brutal rape, as an “act of aggression…hatred and contempt.”(1) At a young age her mother is killed for resisting rape. The sight of her hanged mother is something that haunts Tituba. The effect of which is described as “I felt something harden inside me like lava; a feeling that was never to leave me, a mixture of terror and mourning.”(12 She knows that her skin colour and gender make her powerless and voiceless. Married to the slave John Indian, she becomes a household servant of Susanna Endicott. As a slave Tituba understands that the society perceive her as:
I was nonbeing. Invisible. More invisible than the unseen, who at least have powers that everyone fears. Tituba only existed insofar as these women let her exist. It was atrocious. Tituba became ugly, coarse, and inferior because they willed her so. (24)
Even in this note of helplessness there is an assertion of identity when her rebel spirit rises “Nobody had ever spoken to me, humiliated me, in such a manner! … My blood was boiling inside me.”(19) Maybe because Tituba considers ‘the unseen’ as omnipotent, the entire story is narrated by the spirit of Tituba, after being executed, from the realm of the dead. Mama Yaya’s words to young Tituba that she’ll suffer a lot in her life, but survive, is like a prophecy that concludes the story of her life.
As a slave of Reverend Parris at Salem, the puritans accuses Tituba of black magic and calls her a witch. Tituba surprises the reader and transgresses the Self in her understanding and defining of the term ‘witch’, which in a puritanical society was seen as an emissary of Satan. She describes her experience as:
I noticed that when he said the word [witch], it was marked with disapproval. Why should that be? Why? Isn’t the ability to communicate with the invisible world, to keep constant links with the dead, to care for others and heal, a superior gift of nature that inspires respect, admiration, and gratitude? Consequently, shouldn’t a witch (if that’s what the person who has this gift is to be called) be cherished and revered rather than feared?” (17)
Tituba’s understanding of every event and experience comes from her deep rooted sense of culture and identity and she never gives that up throughout the novel. She resists every hegemonic definition of the Other. Later imprisoned for witchcraft Tituba shares her prison with Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. By bringing these two women together, Conde brings together two women unjustly punished for being independent and resisting the patriarchal forces. In the novel Prynne commits suicide but keeps on to influence Tituba as a spirit.
Tituba is finally gets a chance to speak at the court proceedings. Hester Prynne teaches her how to frame a story that will help her to survive. She asks Tituba to give the audience “what they wanted” (99). Tituba becomes the voice and as a master craftsman she spins stories with dramatic effect to confuse the court and give them “what they want.” (99) She is finally convicted and imprisoned. Out of prison, Tituba later becomes part of a rebel group that fight against slavery and is executed.
Her narrative voice asserts her presence even after her death. She says:
“For now that I have gone over to the invisible world I continue to heal and cure, but primarily I have dedicated myself to another task ... hardening men’s hearts to fight. I am nourishing them with dreams of liberty. Of victory. I have been behind every revolt. Every insurrection. Every act of disobedience” (174).
In the epilogue of the novel Tituba defines her self, her identity. It is a striking rejection of the hegemony of the Self.
“I do not belong to the civilization of the Bible and Bigotry. My people will keep my memory in their hearts and have no need for the written word. It’s in their heads. In their hearts and in their heads….Yes, I’m happy now. I can understand the past, read the present, and look into the future. Now I know why there is so much suffering and why the eyes of our people are brimming with water and salt. But I know, too, that there will be an end to all this” (176).
She places her self in the heart of her community and culture. She finally portrays herself as in control of history and truth, the real truth and true history.
Sexuality is another aspect that empowers Tituba. In the beginning of the novel through the story of her mother, the reality of sexual helplessness of women especially a coloured woman is depicted. Unlike the experiences of her mother, Tituba makes use of her sexuality as a mode of freedom. Tituba speaks freely of her body and her experiences. In Tituba’s desire for John Indian the western notions of male gaze and voyeurism are reversed. Here it is Tituba who is the voyeur and the subject is the body of John. He is objectified and relished in her fantasy. Here John’s masculinity gives visual pleasure to her.
The novel also gives space to Tituba to explore and discover her body and sexuality. Tituba’s narration of the exploration of her body is encoded in an erotic and poetic language. This self-discovery empowers her and the knowledge of her inner pleasures makes her strong and gain control. As a slave of Reverend Parris, Tituba defines her womanhood in contrast to the fragile and invalid wife of the priest. When Elizabeth speaks of being a woman as a “curse” (43), Tituba opposes by saying “What is more beautiful than a woman’s body! Especially when it is glorified by a man’s desire” (43). Tituba finds pride and happiness in her body. For her woman-ness is an essential part of her identity.
Under the custody of the Jewish merchant Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, Tituba transcends the idea of physical domination of the Self on the Other by desiring her master and finding pleasure with him. Though her situation is that of a slave unable to resist the advances of the owner, she transcends it by enjoying him and their sexual relationship. She thus possesses control over the desires of her body. Later returning to Barbados when Christopher demotes her as an “object to make love”, Tituba leaves and joins another group. Here as the leader of the slave rebellion she fights for emancipation and finally dies for the cause. Tituba reclaims the position of a coloured woman as victims of violence and fear by taking control of her sexuality.
Maryse Conde fills up the void and silence of history by giving voice to the story of Tituba, a victim of the Salem Witch trials. Through the effective employment of narration and language Tituba finds a space and through portraying her vibrant sexuality her independence is asserted.
Works Cited:
- Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth; Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.
- Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
- Carol Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido, Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature (Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990), 2.
- Condé, Maryse. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Trans. Richard Philcox. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992.
- Duplessis, Rachel Blau. Writing beyond the ending: Narrative strategies of twentieth-century Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1985. Print.
- Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. , 1988. Print.
- Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester University Press, 1984.
- Rosenthal, B. 1998. “Tituba’s story”. The New England Quarterly 71, 190-203.
- Rushdie, Salman. Shame: A Novel. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997. Print.
- Wallace, Diana. The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
- Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Penguin, 1993 [1929].