Daily Archives: January 5, 2014

Bertha Mason

This entry was posted in Jane Eyre and tagged Creole female on January 5, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Bertha Mason

Source Text: Brontë, Charlotte. “Jane Eyre.” Introduction and Notes. Ed. Stevie Davies. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.

Entry Author: Crystal Carpenter

Bertha Antoinetta Mason is the mysterious and problematic character placed in Rochester’s and Jane’s life to provide shock value and growth to the progression of the storyline. Bertha’s purpose was to be set apart from Jane in intellect, appearance, delicateness, and sanity, because Brontë uses her as ‘a throw away’ character to cause a distraction as a way to hit a certain romantic climax between Jane and Rochester. Bertha is chained and bound to the assumptions of her culture, in that she is physically locked away and verbally abused because of her mixed race. Words like beast, strange wild animal, dark, grizzled hair, wild mane, hyena, maniac, purple face, and bloated features are used to define BerthaBronte’s representation of Bertha…develops two lines of argument: that Bertha is “imagined as white – or as passing as white – In the novel’s retrospective narrative,” and that she “become[s] black” in “the form in which she becomes visible in the novel.” That form, she argues, is marked by racial stereotypes of the “non-white” (Thomas 1).Bertha is forced to play a role in the degradation of her lineage without her side of the story ever being told. The reader accepts how Bertha is described by Rochester – “Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard! …Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points” (Brontë 337) – as truth because being a white wealthy aristocrat gentleman is perceived as credible; and the reader wants Jane and Rochester’s romance to flourish.

Bertha is left without a voice and in place of it is a growl. Her character depicts the masculine nocturnal beast that wanders Thornfield Hall at night and hides during the day. Bertha has a brother, Richard Mason, who is never depicted in any way as beast like. He is treated like an English gentleman, which is interesting because he comes from the same family line as Bertha. Brontë is making a reference to how woman are locked away in the domestic sphere, forced to comply with men as the head in the public sphere.

It is, of course, taken from Jane Eyre, where the madwoman, Bertha Mason, is quite literally confined in an attic, but it becomes emblematic of the female subversive desire to challenge all-pervasive patriarchal standards – a desire which can be expressed only through images of irrationality, passion, and imprisonment (Foster 95).

Women writers had no choice but to have multiple undertones within their work. Bertha’s character is compromised for the advancement of feminist’s rights. However, for the sake of the feminist movement Bertha’s race and self-worth is being sacrificed. During the 19^th century the progression of white woman was the objective, not woman of color. Bertha is a symbol for many cultures exploited and repressed by the British Empire. Brontë writing Bertha as the “mad woman” represents the fear that the English had if miscegenation was to occur between the British and “other” cultures. Racial lines would be blurred and mixed race children would be the product of imperial reign, which would ruin the racial dominance of the British over their colonies. Brontë locking Bertha away is a way to control and stop further assimilation with the English culture.

Creole: Generally, the term signifies a European native of the West Indies but it can also refer to persons of mixed race or black people (Davies 567).

Work cited:

Foster, Shirley. “Monsters and Madwomen – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer

and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar.”

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 14.1 (1980): 94-96. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Thomas, Sue. “The Tropical Extravagance of Bertha Mason.” Victorian Literature and Culture

27.1 (1999): 1-17. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Georges

This entry was posted in The Mulatto and tagged black male white on January 5, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Georges

Source Text: Séjour, Victor. “The Mulatto.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed. Henry L. Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. Second ed. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.

Entry Author: Crystal Carpenter

“Master,” he said…But you know, do you not, that a Negro’s as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him, the laws curse him.” This begins the second paragraph of The Mulatto, a story told by an older freed slave. Slaves were forced to believe the life whites provided was the best for them. The slaves who rebelled were punished so there was no risk of an uprising. This story is about Georges (a mixed race, tragic mulatto) searching for his identity in the name of the father he does not know.The story begins with the rape of Laïsa by her master, Alfred, which leads to the birth of Georges. Not knowing who his father is causes some identity confliction. Georges would beg his mother for the name of his father hoping this would help him gain some of his identity. Georges held on to the closest father figure he knew, his master, Alfred. These symptoms of identity confliction are a natural trope of the tragic mulatto’s characterization.

The tragic mulatto/a is normally characterized as a mixed-race figure who finds him- or herself depressed, suicidal, fratricidal, and/or patricidal due either to a lack of identity or to an innate, biological corruption. According to the stereotype, these individuals do not know whether they fit into white society or into black society and are often made to choose between their dual identities, passing either into whiteness (the most familiar trope) or into blackness (Daut 2).

The tragic mulatto, based on gender, is depicted differently. Both have similar aspects but men usually have an oedipal complex. The plot for a male tragic mulatto usually goes through a pattern of identity confliction, loss, power reversal, revenge and rebellion (and sometimes death). Georges use his revenge on Alfred as a way to reverse Alfred’s power over him, and rebelling against his father in an emblematic way. Any slave born out of “the violation of identity caused by miscegenation” (Daut 12) becomes more intense in their revenge and need to kill – as a way to sever the ties between the absent father. Once Georges has reversed the power roles and now holds Alfred’s fate in his grasp, he will seek justice for his mother, wife, and himself by making Alfred the victim. After Georges has discovered that Alfred is his father he commits his final act as the tragic mulatto, taking his own life. Georges as the tragic mulatto stirs mixed emotions within the reader, because his fictional story as a mixed race slave becomes real to the reader. The motivation of his actions was not to kill for the sake of it, but to right the wrong Alfred would not. If Georges had known Alfred was his father he would not have killed him so readily. This is what makes Georges so tragic he became entwined in a false identity of passionate revenge, and never had the chance to mend his own identity.

Work Cited

Daut, Marlene L. “”Sons of White Fathers”: Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in

Victor Séjour’s “The Mulatto”.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.1 (2010): 1-37. JSTOR.

Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Squeak/Mary Agnes

This entry was posted in The Color Purple and tagged black female South white on January 5, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Squeak/Mary Agnes

Source Text: Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. The United States of America: Harcourt, 1982. Print.

Entry Author: Claire Tierney

Squeak is a minor character in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, but she is essential, as she is the only character expressly identified as mixed race, having both white and black ancestry. Squeak’s story is one of growth and transformation. Squeak becomes Mary Agnes, and in the process becomes strong, independent, and appreciated.She is called Squeak because she is quiet, and assumed to be ineffectual. She is often called “little Squeak”, as she has been conditioned by society to respond affectionately and feebly to everyone, especially the men, around her. She constantly calls her lover Harpo “baby” and cries when she is ignored (84). She believes her light skin is the primary reason Harpo is with her, suggesting her race is a large aspect of her identity. She asks Harpo, “Do you really love me, or just my color?” (97).Initially Squeak begins a life with Harpo after Sophia leaves him, creating a natural point of comparison between the two females. At the beginning of the novel, Squeak acts as a foil to the thick-skinned and confident Sophia, who does not accept disrespect from anyone, male or female. After Sophia is imprisoned for defending herself against the mayor’s assault, the characters are distraught, and are considering solutions when Squeak asks, “What can we do?” (90). Squeak figures out she is the blood-relative of the white warden, and Celie and the other women “dress Squeak like a white woman” (93).She is passing for a white woman when she goes to the prison to plead for Sophia’s release, only to return having been raped by the warden. This event changes Squeak, causing her to realize her power and self-worth. Her first words to Harpo after he recognizes she has been attacked are “Shut Up, Harpo. I’m telling it” (95).After she is raped, she fights against Harpo just as Sophia did, and ultimately leaves him just as Sophia did. She becomes a singer like Shug, providing herself with a job that relies on her feminine singing voice, which is “high, sort of mewing” according to Celie(98). While she initially sings Shug’s songs at the juke joint, she eventually writes her own. Additionally, she helps Sophia take care of the Mayor’s children. In doing this, she becomes a part of a community of strong women of color.

Squeak’s character is shaped largely by her relativity to the other women in the novel. Readers are introduced to her as Harpo’s new girl, where she is slightly villainized as she is seen as Sophia’s replacement. This is evidenced when Squeak’s teeth are knocked out by Sophia during a confrontation. By the end of the novel, Mary Agnes’s character is as dependable and competent as any of the other female characters, and this forces the characters and readers to respect her. This transformation and this sense of separation from the other characters is evident in her song,

They calls me yellow,

like yellow be my name

They calls me yellow

like yellow be my name

But if yellow is a name

Why ain’t black the same

Well, if I say hey black girl

Lord, she try to ruin my game

(99).

Squeak stands strong with the other women in the novel, while also claiming her own independence and identity as a woman of mixed race, as an outsider looking in. This separateness becomes a point of independence for Mary Agnes. At the novel’s beginning Squeak is an outsider in her world. She stood pale in comparison to strong characters like Shug and Sophia. By the end of the novel, she proves that she is not to be compared to other women, that she stands alone.