Introduction
Women have innate power. The power to win men’s hearts by sheer physical being. The power to remain gentle, loving, and empathetic in the midst of wanton violence, apathy, and pointless power struggles. The power to survive adversity, masculine control, domination, subjectification and objectification, when all else seems to want her essence to be eradicated. Above it all, she will remain a woman, and claim what is rightfully hers.
Three memorable characters in the postcolonial literatures we have discussed and of course enjoyed reading about that are selected here stand for the embodiment of feminine essence, aspirations, and individuality that characterize what a strong woman should be, and it is this inner strength, that which does not fold or surrender amid adversity, is the trues spirit of any strength ever possessed and wielded. It is the fortitude that persists despite physical weakness, want, or even solitude.
The Nameless Artist in Surfacing
Margaret Atwood had penned a remarkable person in the unnamed narrator in her novel “Surfacing”, whose thoughts reflect a highly active mind coming to terms with loss, direction, loneliness, and hope amid frustration. She was financially independent and had been divorced from her erstwhile husband. Her ruminations revealed that certain eccentricities in men are unforgivable, like tending to plants in small pots in the basement, smashing them in fits of anger, and claiming something like sole ownership of a would-be child. Quirks like that tip the balance that should exist within a partnership. Risking solitariness rather tolerating an unreflective and unreciprocal personality would pay off in the long run, or so she thought. When one could have had everything, when sanity and normality could be attained and maintained with the slighterst effort, idiosyncrasies are irreparable cracks. She was the type that would have it complete or none at all. She herself grasped a palpable absence of completeness within, and she did not delude herself into a make believe infallibility that men usually project.
Her doubts as to the suitability of a long term match with Joe, her refusal to be flattered by his proposals of marriage and love, her scrutiny and criticism of it as an unauthentic sentiment on Joe’s part, another ploy to embroil her into something that is only a contract between selfishness and its servant, is but a natural yearning in her to bond herself to something truthful, sincere, and hence, long lasting. This is typified by her flashbacks on her father, mother, and brother, because, she held on to them as truly belonging to her and her past, hence, a truth one could refer to in putting bearings in going to a certain direction, taking a certain path. Living in the backwoods of Canada only underscores the need for ties that go beyond selfish desire and artificial insanity, the vastness of the wilderness made people cling to one another more strongly. It did make people looney, however it was only because the relationships that they had established already had taken different, natural, directions, like her mother’s death, her brother’s independence and her own, her father’s eventually solitude.
She would rather hole up in that remote cabin rather than face again the unnatural egoism that her men had in themselves, her ex-husband, David, and Joe.
In her search for the truth in herself, rather than ever experiencing the truth of herself in a partner, she would forego her former existence in the city. This type of self-determination and resignation, that which made her abandon her superficial companions who are engaged in a delusional master and servant relationship, only underscored that strength that a single woman could muster when faced by intelligences that would view her empathy, kindness, and emotional vulnerability as a pretext to treat her as a pliable object. It was this individuality that made her withdraw from the outside world and just made her immerse in her past, and the environment of her past. Objectification, shallowness, insincerity, and insensitivity she would not let in her life, her consciousness, her world.
Her need for physical completion only made her ties with Joe a convenience, although she was looking for more in him, which he seemed to fail to show due to the predictability of his actions, words, and emotions, the inability to communicate, or absence of, the soul that wished a union, a mutual longing for true meaning.
Her longing for what was real made her reject the indecent proposal of David, who symbolized the insincere and shallow person who thought nothing beyond gratification. She came from a family which thought of the family first, gratification almost nil. The bond that came from simple recognition and functional association and interaction, a solidarity brought about by facing the unknown, could have been sensed and shared, if people had not filled their heads with wants and things that were truly not really theirs. If they had only viewed them as passing objects and placed more value more on having meaning through being with someone, and cherishing that one, one would not have to resort to self-imposed insanity and withdrawal from a world that thought itself sane but was rather satiated with insane desires. Objectifying people would have qualified as an insane thought, but that which commonly occurred.
Although her dad might have gone insane due to his solitude, he was more real to her than any other man that came to her life, hence, her search for him had given her more meaning than any associations she had had in the past. The author had given her a hopeful ending with Joe shattering any expectations of egoistic predictability by coming back for her when her hiding would have marked her as lost, and of course, insane. He must have found meaning with her after all.
For some, to color life into parts of either black or white, like our nameless artist held as a principle in regards to relationships, attests to a strength bordering on fearlessness and a victorious steadfastness with the unknown. In a way, she had conquered her own wilderness. And, like a recompense by mother nature she so embraced, a man would come back and make her return from that wilderness and embrace true happiness.
Mariah
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Lucy” has a heroine/title character whose outspoken mind showed more the inner conflicts and contrasts she instinctively felt after being transplanted-dislocated from one climate to another, from one culture to another.One could credit her the titillating sexual escapades she recounted in which the playing field was levelled between women and men. However, it was her mistress, Mariah, that seemed to bearing a heavier burden than Lucy, with her complaints and petulance towards the society she was existing in. One could almost have an impression that she would rather count her sociocultural emotional baggages than her blessings. Despite being assailed and hurt by someone who was supposed to be really close to her, whose very memory becomes a javelin that pierces the heart, Mariah still somewhat remained composed even though she was being betrayed in her very household by her lawyer-husband, Lewis and her friend, Dinah. She had what we could call emotional professionalism.
She would not make a scene that would scandalize her four children. She, by forebearing the scurrility and apathy of her husband, had actually protected her children from the unpleasantness and psychological disturbance that they would be traumatized with had she chosen to behave to the point of which, “hell hath no fury than a woman scorned”. By taking into account her children’s welfare first, hence the hiring of Lucy as the maid/babysitter, she was being a real mother, a nature endowed role that would not need a man to be complete in itself, but a natural feeling that is really the sustainer of society and of the survival of the human race. Mothers give to their children not only sustenance to grow and function as creatures, but also transmit culture and behavioral formation necessary for them to fit in and function as social beings. By seeming denial of pain, by playing the “martyr”, and letting Lewis have his way, she ensured that her children have a greater chance of being raised as more psychological balanced individuals than those who are exposed to bitter fights and domestic disturbance and arguments.
If Lucy detected in Mariah a certain affected composure, a pretense to indifference, a reflection of a larger hypocrisy that Western civilization seemed to represent with those codes of conduct, decency, and nobility, might be due to the fact that her self-control is stronger than her husband’s susceptibility to another woman’s wiles. It might also be due that it was actually a form of emotional control in reaction to the domination and inequalities that still persist in the West. That doubles as a manner of damage control, of preventing the worsening of an otherwise volatile situation. This could be a product of evolutionary and cultural reforms that were put into place at the heels of the bloody wars and wanton violence that marked the rise of European nation states from the feudalism and barbarism that plagued their societies early in their history.
However, she had no reason to believe her mistress as a cheated wife would signify her as weak. As a mother in that marriage, she was making her children grow more beautifully, a mother who valued more her children than her hurt pride.
Ada McGrath
Jane Campion’s Ada McGrath of “The Piano” is a memorable character whose seemingly self-imposed muteness makes her stand out from the other fictional heroines, however, it was really her determination to claim George Baines as her chosen lover and husband in defiance of the prevailing restrictions on women at that time, made her a woman ahead of her time, as all women before her who had sought self-actualization through sexual freedom. That freedom was so removed socially and culturally from women’s prerogatives back then so much so that women had to go through difficult ordeals just to fulfill their desires, hence, their own individuality and personal freedom. We have Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, Hannah Foster’s Eliza, and even Shakespeare’s Juliet are a few of the fictional women who symbolized those who struggled and fought against an encroaching patriarchal world in the pursuit of their sexual and emotional liberty.
Ada had also defied the nominal “husband” in Alisdair Stewart, withdrawing her support and commitment from the arranged marriage contracted for her by her father Wyston McGrath, as well as her consent to give Alisdair control over her body and her life.
The newly colonized Maori New Zealand had the protestant Western taboos and norms regarding the sexuality of women, which frowned upon and eventually stifled women’s sexual liberty. The situation wherein she was brought under the commitment with Alisdair would not be a valid excuse for her to hurt Alisdair’s feelings, however, given the competition between her erstwhile husband’s stolidity and lack of charm and Baines’ very strong emotional and sexual feelings towards Ada, not to mention his rugged appeal and disarming sensitivity, brought a conflict to Ada, who had to risk challenging the norms in making her choice, and that exercise of freedom of choice had validated her later actions with Baines.
If first impressions had sway over a woman’s tendency to physically desire men, Alisdair’s lack of an enthusiastic reception of his new wife, his blunt dismissal of her request to bring the piano inland, and his similarity of comportment and bearing with Delwar Haussler, that well-dressed piano instructor who used then abandoned Ada and her child Flora, would have rendered Ada frigid at the thought of sharing her intimate secrets with him. Those coincidental quirks of decision and similarity would have had fatalistic consequences and would have emboldened the sentimentality, the primacy of personal feelings over social obligation of any woman. On the other hand, Baines seeming lack of breeding only underscored his down-to-earth, authentic and transparent display of attitude, and would have been more preferable when contrasted to the hypocrisy of genteel superficialities coupled with ulterior and/or authoritarian motives. His partiality to Ada’s wishes, especially in giving her access to the erstwhile most important object and mouthpiece of her life, the piano, and even his subtle and even duplicitous bargain of piano keys for clothing item, made him an even more clever operator than the brutish and clumsy Alisdair, and would have made him score big in Ada’s heart.
His artifice of exchanging his land for the piano had been more sophisticated and effective than Alisdair’s childish boarding up of the cabin’s windows in obtaining the forbidden pleasures from the impressed Ada.
So when Alisdair resorted to violence and repression in reaction to Ada’s “betrayal” that was in fact her free choice of doing what her body wished to do, societal justice would have been on his side but not personal or sentimentalist justice in relation to his supposed goal to maintain Ada’s loyalty or even win her heart and desire. His laying the claim on Ada’s body by social contract alone without her consent was met with defeat.
Ada McGrath’s determination to hold on to her heart’s desire, her survival despite axe mutilation from a civilized person like Alisdair, and her pacific stance somehow accentuated by her muteness fictionalized a woman’s latent power to be herself in spite of what those outside of her would made to be. Even when the physical invasiveness of forced sex violated a woman’s right to personal privacy, her mind would be far away, mentally distancing herself from her grunting, panting, animalistic attacker. And when her mind would be on the object/subject of her love, it would be a world inhabited by only she and her man.
Thus, Ada as a mother, and Ada, as a woman in love, would be that pacifist champion of a woman’s right to her body, and to exercise the freedom of choice of whom she would consent to give her body.
The Resonating Character in those Women
Those three remarkable characters had one thing in common. They had the strong will that underlay their perseverance in continuing their lives and staying independent economically, emotionally, and physically in a society whose comfortable views place them as the weaker in the gender dialectic. Their will, that internal, essential, and mental primal mover, that which animates, the soul of their being, the subject, is the essence of all strengths that could be possessed. All those talents, assets, resources, prowesses, athleticism, power, and wealth would be worthless and motionless if the will to be, to continue, to persist is self-destructed in one’s being. By letting the will be exercised, to be enacted, to be independently actualized, is the realization of one’s freedom, of one’s authentic existence.
CONCLUSION
The study of symbolism in literature, especially that of characters and patterns in fiction, allow us to make multiple realizations that span over multiple disciplines and philosophies. That could work as a form of bibliotherapy, in which we could emulate characters that are otherwise unsullied by all too real human fallibility and inconsistency. The constant nature of these characters, once created on the page, could be a student’s model, and reference to an ideal. Future instructors will have as an invaluable learning tool the description and analysis of characters that they could assign to students so as to afford them a way at looking at themselves by looking at these timeless characters.
Filed under: Essay, relationships, Psychology, Behavior, thoughts, Writing, Literary Criticism Tagged: | symbolism, Anglo-American Literature, Feminism, Surfacing, The Piano, Lucy, character analysis, inner strength, novels, women empowerment, Margaret Atwood, Jamaica Kincaid, postcolonial, Jane Campion
