Yearly Archives: 2014

Roxanne

This entry was posted in Pudd'nhead Wilson and tagged african-american bi-racial female white on February 12, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: Roxanna

Source Text: Twain, Mark, and Sidney E. Berger. Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins: An Authoritative Text, Textual Notes, Criticism. New York: Norton, 1980. Print.

Entry Author: Claire Tierney

Roxy is 1/16th black and 15/16ths white in Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, where she is a slave to Percy Driscoll. She is resilient, resourceful, and pragmatic. She is very much a victim of her society and her station in life. She is described as looking white, “to all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody; but the one.sixteenth of her which was black out-voted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro” (9).

She is described as beautiful, “Her complexion was very fair” and her hair was brown, “but it was not apparent because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the hair was concealed under it” (9). When she is “among her own caste” she had “an easy, independent carriage […] and a high and ‘sassy’ way” (9). But when she was around white people she was “meek and humble” (9). Society defines her as black only because of her tattered clothing and lower-class vernacular. These social constructions, along with her intellect and strength, highlight the fallaciousness of Dawson’s Landing’s definitions of race.

Her sense of morality is constantly in question. Early on the novel when she sees Judge Driscoll has left some money out, she does not take it, thanking the fact that she “was saved in the nick of time by a revival”, saying “‘Dad blame dat revival, I wist it had a ben put off till tomorrow” (12). Later on in the novel her only concern becomes protecting herself and her son. She is willing to do anything for him. She complicates the binary of good and evil, and becomes increasingly darker throughout the novel. This is a direct result of desperation, as she is forced to make decisions more erratically.

She switches Tom and Chambers in their infancy in an effort to save her son the pain of serving the same life sentence of slavery that she has endured. Nevertheless, she enjoys seeing her son, a black man, in a position of power. She actively seeks to change the status quo in her society, and uses her and her son’s multiraciality to do so.

Later when the death of Judge Driscoll frees Roxy, she works hard until her body is arthritic, and she comes back to see her son. She becomes enraged when she sees that her son has become a criminal, squandering the opportunity she gave him by falling prey to society’s spoiling of him. She takes control of his life, demanding that he turn over a part of his allowance to her. She masterminds criminal plans with her son, and he betrays her, selling her “down the river” to an abusive slave master. She escapes by attacking her overseer and returns to Tom, telling him that she will reveal his true identity as a black man if he does not buy her freedom. After Tom fails at doing this, and gets caught in the Murder of Judge Driscoll, Roxy lives the duration of her life with “the spirit in her eye quenched” and “the voice of her laughter ceased in the land” (120). She fulfills the prophecy of the tragic mulatto, forever an outcast to society, forever miserable.

Roxy comports herself with confidence as a beautiful light-skinned woman around black people, and as a lowly ignorant black woman among white people. Her presentation, her vernacular, and even her morality are largely defined by the perceptions of those around her, more than how she defines herself. Despite her pragmatism and attempts at disrupting the status quo, she falls victim to society’s cruel logic.

The Sheep Man

This entry was posted in The Sheep Man and tagged beast black male man sheep on February 12, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: The Sheep Man

Source Text: Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989. Print.

Entry Author: Mike Steigman

A WILD SHEEP CHASE

The Sheep Man is believed to be part sheep and part human, he appears out of the blue as an apparition to the main character searching for his friend in the mountains north of the Junitaki township. Interestingly, his mixed identity is quite literally all he has to his name. The “sheep” in “Sheep Man” comes before “man” insinuating he is more animal-like than human. Upon his entrance, Murakami states, “The Sheep Man wore a full sheepskin pulled over his head. The arms and legs were fake and patched on, but his stocky body fit the costume perfectly. The hood was also fake, but the two horned that curled from his crown were absolutely real (251).

He loses his temper with the main character after being questioned too much, but quickly regains his composure. The sheep man then apologizes to the main character because “sometimes it’s like the sheep in him and the human in him are at odds so he gets like that” (254).

He speaks human language, yet all of his sentences in the narrative are void of any spaces or capitalization, so it’s difficult to distinguish one word from another. One can say his words sound like animal noises in this sense. His basic qualities are reminiscent of a Neanderthal. He is attentive to polite behavior, yet flees at the first sign of violence, even metaphorical like when the protagonist raises his voice. The main character goes further to say, “The sheep man was just like an animal. Approach him and he’d retreat, move away and he’d come closer. As long as I wasn’t going anywhere, there was no hurry” (254). By being part-animal, the Sheep Man is unable to form any emotional ties with the protagonist, therefore further isolating both the main character as well as himself.

Murakami deliberately chooses to blend this man with a sheep in order to extract some of his humanity and highlight his weaknesses. The Sheep Man reveals the reason he hides out in the wilderness is because he didn’t want to go off to war, because members of the Junitaki Township went off to fight in the Russo-Japanese war. He claims he didn’t know who he would be fighting, he just knows he didn’t want to go. And “that’s why he’s a sheep.”

However, there’s a distinct binary evident in partially being a sheep. Sheep are herded by one person, with all their choices made for them by the shepherd. Once divided from the flock, a sheep is left with little direction. Animals are also typically perceived as strong, unstable, wild creatures. Centaurs and lycanthropes, part human and part animal, are mystical creatures, wise and fierce beyond human capabilities. Murakami plays with this notion while simultaneously categorizing, in his name, a mixed-race/species character, arguing that a double identity can weaken one’s abilities just as it can fortify them.

Lastly, The Sheep Man tells the protagonist, who had originally traveled to the Junitaki Township with his girlfriend had forced her to return to the Dolphin Hotel. He assures the protagonist that she didn’t want to be there and she doesn’t belong. The Sheep Man disappears as quickly as he entered in the novel, without explanation.

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE

The Sheep Man reappears in this novel, along with the main character. His mask has become grungy, his horns dilapidated, and he looks significantly older. This time, the Sheep Man appears where he had supposedly sent the main character’s girlfriend in A Wild Sheep Chase, the Dolphin Hotel. The main character presses a button in the elevator, and suddenly it opens its doors on a floor, pitch-black. The elevator refuses to move, so the main character exits to the floor and finds The Sheep Man sitting behind a desk. The Sheep Man speaks in the second person, constantly asking the narrator to tell “us” what’s going on outside as “we” want to know.

The Sheep Man’s costume appears more dingy than “last time”, his stature shorter and his breathing heavier. He advises the main character that he has to dance and keep on dancing, that is the only way to not lose direction.

Toward the end of the novel, the main character visits The Sheep Man together with Yumiyoshi, his girlfriend, but The Sheep Man has vanished. Reminiscent of A Wild Sheep Chase, The Sheep Man appears unable to exist alongside a partner of the protagonist. All that remains are clippings and yellowing pages about sheep that The Sheep Man had been guarding. They are now abandoned with no one to care for them. Having lived away from war and civilization, The Sheep Man grows older and older until he disappears into irrelevance, with any hope of peace from future wars disappearing along with him.

Sophie Fevvers

This entry was posted in Nights at the Circus and tagged animal beast bi-racial human on February 12, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: Sophie Fevvers

Source Text: Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Entry Author: Alexandra Katechis

Sophie Fevvers is the protagonist of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984). Her status as a mixed race character stems from the very physical reality of being half bird and half human. In this work, I attempt to mirror Fevvers’ progress as an extremely complex character, beginning with the preposterous self-idealizations and transitioning slowly to the empowering self-reclamation. Voice is manipulated to emphasize the difference between self-identification and outer authorization of identity, a main (feminist) theme of the novel.

Fevvers
A found Abecedarian

Anatomy of our avian wonder, aerialiste extroidinare:
Azrael, Azrail, Ashriel, Azriel, Azaril, Gabriel,

Broken blossom of the present tense. Fevvers,
Brothel-bred burlesque of Brobdingnagian symmetry, a

Chorus of a woman, cheering on the coming century, the
Circus of our Cockney ringmaster, celestial fishwife,

Dark angel of many names, and all the rest of this dolorous litany. We, the
Denizens of down below, all with hearts that beat and souls that suffer, sir,

Excavated from England, once held above the spinning world,
Effervescent and eager, now dropped back into place. Think twice about turning

From a freak into a woman, the female part where Terror rules. Our
Feathered friend advises the fool with festering teeth. Fevvers

Groks with a joyous awe, almost a gratitude, that luxury should exist like
Gin palaces in heaven where she might reside behind the bar

Hemmed in the heavy envelope of simplest delusion. Walser and
His hobby of the humbug hunt, hung up with her on the high trapeze.

Is she fiction or is she fact? The idea of it condemns them both.
I feared the proof of my own singularity, and no longer alone, they

Join in with the stable-boys, roustabouts and grooms, elephants and equestrians,
Jugglers and tumblers, all drawn to the amazing spectacle, all succumbed to it.

Knowing no other tricks, the circus could absorb madness and slaughter, and
Knit together the hypnotic tension between the flesh and the spirit.

Lovely London, the shining city, the new Jerusalem,
Lit with candles of midnight, burns up the nuclear core of our luciferity:

Magic, the museum of women monsters, made pure in
Midsummer, yes, the year’s green hinge.

Once and for all, find the oracular proof in the organ of this gilded cage, and
One by one we might be made free from this

Panopticon, step from our platforms of prolegomena and slowly, slowly begin to
pull, dragging with us our freight of dreams. With a pressure

Queer as combustion and composure of equal and celebratory
Quality, she proclaims, all the women will have wings, the same as I. The

Rhapsodic rush of the interrogatory, What is your name? Have you a soul? Can you love?
Requiem for her dazzling reflection, restorer of her soul. We rise from a

Sleep more lifelike than living which consumes the world, the
shaman’s elixir coaxed out of the samovar with sulfuric

tongues. We are abandoned between tundra and taiga in our mind’s
Transbaikalia, steeped in the bliss of a new century. Fevvers, the

Universal word of wonder, of grief, cracks the black, black vortex of the
Uroboric snake with its tail in its mouth. Once the

Verified and venerated virgin whore, channel of volcanic sighs; now a miracle of frail
Violets, frost nipped and pale, the colour of tired eyelids yet big

With wilderness and wildness, in full bloom…Violets on New Years Eve.
Wherever we go we’ll need no more fathers, her heart crushing with commotion and

Expectation of pleasure. Once the old world has turned on its axis,
exacerbated with the customary endings of the old comedies,

You shall give yourself to me but I shall not possess you.
Year One, the envoi of this extensive ritual;

Zed to this linear story which seemed to happen in the third person

Annelies Mellema

This entry was posted in This Earth of Mankind and tagged bi-racial daughter dutch female indonesian javanese light-skinned on February 12, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: Annelis Mellma

Source Text: Toer, Pramoedya Ananta This Earth of Mankind

Entry Author: Mike Steigman

Annelies Mellema is the illegitimate daughter of Dutch settler, Herman Mellema, and Javanese (Indonesian) Concubine, Nyai Ontosoroh. She is the sister of Robert Suurhoff. Both he and Annelies are part Javanese, part Dutch or “Mixed-blood”, as referred to in the novel. Both Mr. Mellema and Nyai rushed to board a ship when she was in labor so Robert could be born a Dutch citizen, but to no avail.

Annelies’ introduction begins thus, “In front of us stood a girl, white-skinned, refined, European face, hair and eyes of a Native” (25). Her description is told through Minke, the protagonist’s perspective. Minke is Javanese, yet fluent in Dutch and Western studies thanks to his schooling. Annelies on the other hand stays home, assisting her mother in working the fields and raising animals.

She acts incredibly childish throughout the narrative, with all decisions imposed upon her. mother, love interest, father, doctor and brother all and forcibly make decisions for her. Her will is frail and she falls ill at the slightest touch, namely without Minke’s presence, continually drugged by the family doctor until Minke returns to her.

Once she wakes up from being drugged, the doctor tells Minke to “‘Have pity on this child. She cannot face violence or harshness. She dreams of someone who will love her, who will give her pure love. She feels like she is living alone, by herself, without knowing the world’” (202).

Considered the “better child” between herself, and her mixed brother Robert Mellema, she maintains the farm with her mother, Nyai. Robert Mellema had also dropped out of school and “for him there would be nothing greater than to become a European and for all Natives to bow down to him (67). He desires to pass as Dutch, but is unable to do so due to lack of education and his darker skin color. Annelies leans toward her Javanese identity based off her close relationship with her mother. Nyai has told her stories about how Herman Mellema had slowly turned an incredibly evil man after Nyai had attempted to educate herself to be fluent in Dutch and Western studies. Ever since, Nyai has decided to keep Annelies out of schools. Coupled with Robert Mellema sexually assaulting her, Annelies wants nothing to do with her “Dutch” side of the family.

Before he and Nyai had met, Herman Mellema was married and had a son. His biological son visits and accuses him of having “committed a blood sin, a crime against blood” (99).
The text concludes with her forced departure from Java, being the illegitimate wife of the main character and the illegitimate daughter of Nyai in the eyes of Dutch law. The courts then decide to send her off to Europe. Once she exits the safe haven of her home, she leaves Nyai and the main character, the two natives or Dutch-educated “pure-bloods” alone in the house, newly confiscated by the government.

The first installment in the Buru Quartet, This Earth of Mankind was originally an oral story shared between Indonesian prisoners. When Pramoedya Ananta Toer transcribed the text to paper, he sought to ‘correct the accepted version of the history of the ride of Indonesian nationalism’ through Annelies, who embodies the frailty of the nation, the instability of relationships as a counterpart to Minke and Nyai, both pure-blood Natives well-versed in Dutch teachings yet rendered powerless.

Annelies’ weakness is a microcosm of the relationship between colonizer and colonized. As an involuntary ambassador of the tragic princess, the walking manifestation of the union between ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’, she is wiped out by the end of the novel. As she exits, any hope of reconciliation between the Natives and the Dutch is systematically erased.

Tom Driscoll (Valet de Chambre)

This entry was posted in Pudd'nhead Wilson and tagged african-american bi-racial black male Mark Twain on February 12, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: Tom Driscoll (Valet de Chambre)

Source Text: Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

Entry Author: Adam Kelley

The character known throughout the text of Puddn’head Wilson as Tom Driscoll, a white southern aristocrat, was actually born Valet de Chambre, a mixed race child born a slave, but was switched at birth by his slave mother Roxana, “Roxy”. Chambers, hereafter referred to as Tom, ‘passes’ as the son of Judge Driscoll, descended from the “First Families” of aristocratic “Old Virginia” lineage. Tom’s real identity is later revealed using forensic evidence that proves his birth, but his appearance and success as an imposter challenge 19^th century notions of racial identity. Tom, is born a ‘black’ slave by the ‘one drop’ rule, lives half his life as free white man of a locally respected family, and is ultimately revealed and sold back into slavery. The irony of his fate draws out the arbitrary nature of socially and legally constructed racial identity.

The imposter Tom’s race is known through his mixed race mother Roxy. The narrator describes her as “white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black out voted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro” (Twain 9). Twain’s matter-of-fact tone parodies the absurd nature of 19th century legal definitions of race. He presses this point farther when he describes of Roxy’s son that “he was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro” (9). Both Roxy’s and her child’s racial status is defined legally in terms of the “one drop rule” that defines them as slaves by descent.

Physically, Roxy’s son ‘Chambers’ and the child Tom Driscoll appear identical. Twain describes of Chambers that “he had blue eyes and flaxen curls, like his white comrade” (9). The only discernable marker between the two infants is their clothing: the Driscoll child dressed in the finest garb and ornament, and Chambers stuffed into a “course” shirt that “barely reached his knees” (9). This further links the racial identity of the children to social cues imbedded in status symbols, and not in anything inherent in the children themselves.

Later in life the imposter Tom is informed by his mother that he was switched at birth and this has a devastating effect on his sense of self. After the revelation he wakes in the morning to exclaim the infamous lines “‘A nigger!—I am a nigger!—oh, I wish I was dead!’” (48). Profoundly disturbed by the news of his origin, Tom’s personality is shattered and he immediately begins to internalize the racial stereotypes he once cast on others. He feels “the curse of Ham upon him” (49) and “the ‘nigger’ in him was ashamed to sit at the white folks table” (49). He becomes deeply aware of his vulnerability under the law, and lives his life in constant fear of being found out.

All of Tom’s social relationships become inverted: his mother, once his slave, now lords her secret knowledge of his identity over him, and his perception of his relationship to his Uncle and his community alters drastically from entitlement to suspicion. His drastic shift in mood draws out the effects of racial prejudice on the marginalized of society. Tom is unwittingly forced into the position of ‘passing’ as white, and grows up oblivious of his origin. But, once he learns his true origin, he immediately begins to question his own identity and alters his personality and behavior. Nevertheless, Tom is consistently a despicable character: callous, cruel, and manipulative, but his punishment of being “sold down the river” feels unjust even for such an unlikable person. Tom, although being guilty of multiple counts of theft and even a murder, is ultimately punished merely for being a fraction ‘negro’.

Armand Aubigny

This entry was posted in The Awakening and tagged bi-racial black male part black white on February 7, 2014 by Betsy Huang

Character: Armand Aubigny

Source Text: Chopin, Kate. The Awakening: With a Selection of Short Stories. 1899. Reprint. New York City: Bantam Dell, 1981. 177-182. Print.

Entry Author: Emma Baker

In Kate Chopin’s short story, “Desiree’s Baby,” Armand Aubigny is the father of the titular child and the husband of Desiree. Belonging to a well-known, respectable Creole family, he owns a plantation called L’Abri that he inherited from his father. He spent his childhood in Paris until his mother’s death, and returned home to the United States with his father. Presumably, he lived with his mother when she was still alive. His role in the short story focuses on falling in love with Desiree, the adopted daughter of the Valmondés, another well-known creole family. Although Desiree comes from an ‘obscure origin,’ as the Valmondés found her around the ‘toddling age’ near the gateway to their home, Armand initially finds that no obstacle to marriage instead asserting, “What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?” However, while his father treated the slaves under his ownership with kindness, “Young Aubigny’s rule was a strict one, too, and under it his negroes had forgotten how to be gay.” (Chopin, 177)

As such, Chopin positions Armand Aubigny as the character with the most power in his societal context. He is male, wealthy, and at the start of the story, both the reader and the surrounding characters believe he is white. One can see evidence of his exercise of this power in the treatment of his slaves as well as evidence of prejudice and racism. He seems reasonable in his acceptance of a nameless wife whose origins are unknown at the start of the novel, but after the birth of their child one perceives changes in his behavior. Others notice the child’s skin tone before he does but he begins to absent “himself from home; and when there, avoided [Desiree’s] presence and that of her child, without excuse.” (Chopin, 179) After Desiree herself realizes the similarity to one of the quadroon boys of La Blanche, a mulatto slave, she pleads with Armand to tell her what it means. He only responds, “it means…that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.” (Chopin, 180) Armand is not suspected to be the reason for the child’s quadroon appearance, as Desiree’s origin is unknown. As she attempts to defend herself by naming her features, he cruelly responds, “As white as La Blanche,” (Chopin, 180) demonstrating that the physical appearance of whiteness holds no power when one carries ‘black blood.’ Following this, he draws further away from his wife, begins to treat his slaves with a greater cruelty than before and does not prevent his wife from walking unprotected into the bayou with her child never to return. His position in a place of power demonstrates how influential his actions and decisions are on the lives of others around him, as well as highlight the discrepancy between an unknown origin or namelessness and the possibility of having black ancestry.

Chopin does not reveal his parentage until the last lines of the story. As he burns all of Desiree’s belongings he finds a letter sent from his mother to his father saying, “I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.” (Chopin, 182) The reader then retroactively remembers various mentions throughout the story of “Armand’s dark, handsome face,” (Chopin, 179) and when Desiree pleads, “look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand.” (Chopin, 180) As such, Chopin constructs Armand as a mixed race character who passes for white and maintains, if not enforces, the status quo in order to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Louisiana culture. In the revelation of his mixed race as the final and pivotal plot-point, Chopin upsets the status quo by suggesting a complete lack of adherence throughout the piece, as well as emphasizing the dire consequences that resulted from adherence to those conventions.

Saleem Sinai

This entry was posted in Midnight's Children and tagged Indian male white on January 28, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Saleem Sinai

Source Text: Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Random House, 2006. .

Entry Author: Shalyn Hopley

Saleem Sinai is the illegitimate son of William Methwold, a white British officer, and Vanita, a poor Indian street performer’s wife. However, Saleem is born at the same moment as Shiva, the son of Amhed and Amina Sinai, a wealthy Kashmiri family moved to Bombay. Shiva and Saleem are switched at birth by Mary Pereira, and Saleem is raised as the Sinai’s son without them knowing. Saleem is the protagonist and narrator of Midnight’s Children yet his birth and the revelation of his mixed race heritage do not occur until about a fifth of the way through the book. The beginning portion of his story is spent describing his family history. Yet with Saleem’s birth, the audience discovers that this history is not that of his biological family but that of his unwitting adoptive family. Rather than tell the story of his poor Indian mother, his colonizing British father, and their extra-marital affair, he has chosen to tell the story of his Kashmiri family. Saleem interestingly acknowledges his mixed-race heritage and gives it a significant place in the story, including its revelation during one of the turning points of the novel—his birth, which coincides with the partition of Indian and Indian independence (132); still while acknowledging his mixed race parentage, he is privileging a monoracial identity and even discounting the significance of his parentage saying “…there’s something more important than that. It’s this: when we eventually discovered the crime of Mary Pereira, we all found that it made no difference! I was still their son: they remained my parents.” (131).Saleem’s mixed birth however cannot be so easily discounted in the significance to the story. Saleem’s status as a mixed race character and child who not truly his parent’s child is symbolic of the status of India at the time of his birth. He is the result of colonization, and evidence of an Indian divided by foreign powers who are on their way out. He speaks of himself and the other midnight’s children, “children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents—the children of midnight where also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history.” Saleem, and his mixed heritage, becomes central to Rushdie’s allegorical tale of Indian independence.Saleem and his fellow Midnight’s children usher in a new period in India’s history, and in the novel, are granted with special abilities which destine them to stand out in both society and history. Much of Saleem’s personal history is interwoven with Indian history, his action being key to some of the wars in India. Eventually, his existence and that of his cohorts becomes central to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. She declares the state of Emergency to imprison and sterilize the midnight’s children, draining them not only of their reproductive abilities but their magical abilities and their hope (505). Her actions are tinged with a dark history of sterilizing the racial other, the undesirable elements of society so they and their progeny can no longer contribute to society. The power of the midnight’s children is intrinsically tied to their ability to reproduce, and so without powers and their ability to have children, they cannot affect the story of India. No longer connected to history, Saleem begins to fall apart, supposedly literally disintegrating at the young age of thirty-one.

Niki

This entry was posted in A Pale View of the Hills and tagged female Japanese on January 28, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Niki

Source Text: RIshiguro, Kazuo. A Pale View of Hills. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Print.

Entry Author: Victoria Patlajan

“For paradoxically it was he who wanted to give her (Niki) a Japanese name, and I—perhaps out of some selfish desire not to be reminded of the past—insisted on an English one. He finally agreed to Niki, thinking it has some vague echo of the East about it.” (9)

“Keiko, unlike Niki, was pure Japanese…” (10)

Niki is the second daughter of the Japanese main character and narrator Etsuko, fathered by her English husband. Niki’s mixed race, out-going personality, and her western influences serve as a foil to Keiko, Etsuko’s first daughter, who is fully Japanese and is seen as reclusive and aloof. Keiko commits suicide before the start of the novel, and the story revolves around the interactions between Etsuko and Niki after Keiko’s death, reflections on Keiko’s life, as well as Etsuko’s storytelling of Sachiko and Mariko—a mother-daughter pair in Japan who lives serve as a parallel between Etsuko and Keiko.

At the start of the novel, readers are given implicit references of Niki’s mixed-race heritage through descriptions of family dynamics, yet her brusque personality aligns more with western traditions rather than her Japanese lineage. While many mixed-race characters struggle between the two worlds of their races, Niki seems to drop her Asian background for a more “white-oriented” life, though Etsuko attempts to demonstrate Japanese life through Sachiko and Mariko’s story. Niki’s character seems to have much more urban, western qualities that Etsuko criticizes, such as Niki’s fast-paced walking, where Etsuko says ‘Niki, one supposes, has yet to learn the pleasures of walking for its own sake” (47) . Niki is also argued to be more selfish and “You mean you didn’t come to her funeral because she didn’t come to your father’s? Don’t be so childish, Niki” (52), though Niki retorts with explaining that Keiko was never truly part of their family due to her lack of involvement. While her child-like reactions aren’t necessarily “western”, Niki does not seem to have a grasp of her Japanese culture. While Etsuko attempts to show life in Japan through her storytelling to Niki, it is not clear if this truly changes Niki’s perspective of her lineage.

Interestingly, while the physical appearances of Niki and Keiko are not explicitly described in the story, they are shown as looking strikingly similar to one another, despite their different fathers and races. In an uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Waters, a family acquaintance, actually mistakes Niki for her late sister Keiko, saying “’Why hello, Keiko’—she touched Niki’s sleeve—‘I did not realize it was you’” (50). While Niki politely corrects Mrs. Water’s mistake—though without telling her of the suicide of her sister—this one and only physical description is powerful in that readers can understand that, physically, Niki must still look clearly Japanese, and may be subject to any societal constructs and judgments that Asians must deal with, even if they aren’t explicitly noted in the novel.

Antoinette Cosway

This entry was posted in Wide Sargasso Sea and tagged Creole female white on January 28, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Antoinette Cosway

Source Text: Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1998. Print. Norton Critical Edition.

Entry Author: Lauren Cyr

Antoinette Cosway’s mixed race serves the purpose of alienating her from her peers, and contributes to her eventual confinement in the end of the novel. Antoinette’s father, a white man from England named Alexander, was a former slave owner who ran a plantation in Jamaica. He fathered many other illegitimate children with his slaves. Antoinette’s mother is a creole woman from Martinique, living on the Jamaican plantation with Alexander.

Antoinette and her mother are unable to fit in with the other white people in Jamaica. This is due to the fact that they are from Martinique originally, a French colony, rather than the Jamaican English colony. Antoinette is, however, also unable to relate to the non-white villagers as well. The villagers refer to Antoinette as “white cockroach,” in reference to her creole/white race. Antoinette is also the daughter of a former plantation owner; her class sets her apart from the other slaves.

Antoinette’s European heritage puts her into contact with her eventual husband, Mr. Rochester, a white man from England. He comes to Jamaica in order to marry Antoinette. He continually tries to subdue the Creole side of her, which he associates with madness. For example, he decides to rename Antoinette (her mother’s Creole name) “Bertha,” a more English sounding one.

In addition to changing her name, Rochester also seeks to change Antoinette’s language, further fragmenting her identity. Antoinette’s language contains remnants of her Creole heritage, a heritage that Rochester believes to be inferior. When Antoinette speaks to him, Rochester is reminded of her “inferior” background. To him, not only is Antoinette Creole, she is also the wrong type of Creole. When Antoinette speaks, she does so by “chattering in patois,” the patios a blend of the language of the colonizing with the colonized. Antoinette’s heritage stems from Martinique, a country colonized by the French. Thus her language is a combination of French and a native tongue, twice removed from Rochester’s English.

Rochester devises a plan to move Antoinette to England, in order to further suppress her Creole heritage. In a move that symbolizes the influence of white English men over the Caribbean people, Rochester takes ultimate control of Antoinette by locking her in attic for the rest of her life. He sees Antoinette as a source of madness, and hopes that by locking her away in England, he will be able to put her aside and forget about her. Antoinette is rejected by the blacks on the island for being too white, and by her husband for being too Creole. Her fragmented identity and struggle for finding a sense of place leads to her eventual madness at the end of the novel.

Harry Potter

This entry was posted in Harry Potter and tagged Indian male white on January 12, 2014 by Cheryl Turner Elwell

Character: Harry Potter

Source Text: Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter Series. New York: Scholastic, 1998-2007. Print.

Entry Author: Jessica Davis

Harry James Potter holds half-blood status in Rowling’s imagined wizarding world because his mother is Muggle-born and his father is pure-blood. There are three main blood statuses; pure-blood, half-blood, and Muggle-born, which are all methods of determining a witch or wizard’s magical lineage. Pure-blood status is kept by only marrying other pure-bloods, Muggle-borns are the magical product of two Muggle parents, and half-bloods are any mixture of Muggle-born and pure-blood parents. This can be a pure-blood or half-blood witch or wizard procreating with a half-blood, Muggle-born, or Muggle. Blood status (like race) has nothing to do with magical ability, but is a long-lasting prejudice by the self-appointed superiority of pure-bloods. Many pure-blood witches and wizards intermarry within the series to keep their status “pure” and many lie about their status, claiming complete purity of their family tree. Harry possesses impressive magical abilities, proving that his half-blood status has no correlations with magical ability.The significance of Harry’s half-blood status is his middleman position between the Muggle and wizarding worlds. The first ten years of Harry’s life were spent growing up with his magic-hating aunt and uncle in the muggle world, which allows him Muggle world knowledge when he goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but also an innate comfort and belonging in the wizarding world. Harry’s half-blood status also keeps him balanced between his two best friends, Ron Weasley, who is of pure-blood status, and Hermione Granger, who is a Muggle-born witch, and top student in the school. During Rowling’s second novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, we uncover some of the story’s underlining racism through Draco Malfoy’s inappropriate slur towards Hermione.

“Mudblood is a really foul name for someone who was Muggle-born – you know, non-magical parents. There are some wizards – like Malfoy’s family – who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood… I mean, the rest of us know it doesn’t make any difference at all” (Rowling, Chamber of Secrets, 89).

Mudblood is a sort of racial term describing a witch or wizard born to two muggle parents, describing their blood as filthy.

One of the most profound advocates for equal rights of blood status, is Albus Dumbledore. He is a constant reminder in the series to treat people equally, and never judge them based on where they come from or what they may be.

“You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!” (Rowling, Goblet of Fire, 708).

This sort of stance is what Rowling is trying to teach her readers that differences mean nothing to those with open minds and a willingness to accept others. The pureness of a witch or wizard’s blood is thought to keep magical ability within magical families, but magic can be passed down even through muggle families.

Ironically, Harry’s half-blood status is one of the greatest plot movers, since Lord Voldemort uses this fact to choose Harry as his eventual downfall, due to a prophecy. The choice is between Harry the half-blood, and Neville Longbottom, a pure-blood schoolmate of Harry’s. It is believed that Lord Voldemort chooses Harry because his half-blood status is closest to Lord Voldemort’s half-blood status. This choice drives the whole novel from beginning to end, with the underlying message of tolerance towards others and social discrimination.