female

Annelies Mellema

This entry was posted in This Earth of Mankind and tagged bi-racial daughter dutch female indonesian javanese light-skinned on by

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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.

Niki

This entry was posted in A Pale View of the Hills and tagged female Japanese on by

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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 by

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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.

Lila Mae Watson

This entry was posted in The Intuitionist and tagged black female light-skinned on by

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Character: Lila Mae Watson

Source Text:  Whitehead, Colson. The Intuitionist.  New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

It is unclear at the outset as to whether Lila Mae Watson is half-black, or as to whether her skin tone enables her to obtain a greater form of acceptance from her white colleagues, or to “pass.” Colson Whitehead chooses to focus marginally on Lila Mae’s relations with her father, who was black and who taught her “white folks can turn on you any minute,” but little mention is made of her mother (Whitehead 23). Although it is made clear that they occupied the same house, when Lila Mae recalls her elevator repairman father showing her and her mother his uniform, it is never made clear as to whether her mother might have been half-black. Aesthetically, Lila Mae exemplifies a “mixed-race” paradigm by her acceptance within a political minority, “the Intuitionists.” Within this political minority, she holds the unique and isolated status as the only black woman “Intuitionist.”

Watson finds herself within a racial identity equation of James Fulton and Pompey, both African American characters who choose to “pass” within white society, although Fulton’s identity is not made clear until well into the novel’s climax. As such, Lila Mae leads a lonely existence in the dark, with few African American role models other than Pompey, who is a conformist, and who appeases the white community, because success as an elevator inspector will ensure a better life for his family. Lila Mae is more determined and more of an individual, even if she has the capacity to be self-centered. She remains focused in the face of obstacles, and openly questions her culpability in the failed elevator inspection, rightfully insistent that there is something more to this situation and embarking on a “quest” to uncover the details in relation to the accident, and, in effect, finds herself discovering more about her own racial identity in the process. Effectively, Colson Whitehead inserts Lila Mae within the context of one of the oldest literary traditions, the “Quest” narrative, a narrative also ascribed to Danny in Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and Lila Mae’s literary ancestor, Janie Mae Crawford, in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

On this “quest,” Lila Mae is undeterred and un-intimidated when thugs invade her apartment, when she uncovers the deception of Natchez’s, and certainly when Chancre’s cohorts kidnap her. Still, Watson is compliant to a degree. She calmly accepts her Inspectors Academy room, a converted janitor’s closet. She is excruciatingly polite, even when under pressure, and she dresses conservatively and neatly, clearly invested in not doing anything to offend the sensibilities of a predominately white environment, and fully aware of the significance of her role as a black woman elevator inspector. Like Conrad’s Jewel in Lord Jim, Lila Mae is objectified by those around her; but while Jewel is objectified in a conventional sense, Lila Mae is utilized shamelessly by the Intuitionists for political gain, as proof of their diverse credentials, in contrast with the more conservative Empiricists. Lila Mae is an invaluable political tool as the only female, black elevator inspector, who just happens to be an Intuitionist. As such, whether or not she is willing to admit it or assume kinship with Pompey, she, in effect, is “passing” to a degree, as well.This is where her resemblance to James Fulton, the figurative father of Intuitionism, is most crucial. Both Lila Mae and James Fulton emerge as essential to the novel’s message, and are intrinsically linked to the novel’s theme of social advancement in the context of identity politics. Both hail from a period in which the only African Americans allowed in the department store were employees, although Fulton had more direct experience. James Fulton, a light-skinned black man, plagued by the necessity of “passing” racially, singles out Lila Mae Watson out in his private journals for a significant role within the Intuitionists. This leads one to wonder exactly to what degree he empathized with Lila Mae Watson. “He notices he has written Lila Mae is the one in the margins of his notebook,” Whitehead writes. “That’s right… She doesn’t know what she’s in for, he thinks, dismissing her from his mind” (Whitehead 253).


Bertha Mason

This entry was posted in Jane Eyre and tagged Creole female on by
janeeyreCharacter: 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 19th 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.

Squeak/Mary Agnes

This entry was posted in The Color Purple and tagged black female South white on by
The Color PurpleCharacter: 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.

Sophie Mol

This entry was posted in The God of Small Things and tagged Caucasian England female Indian Western white on by
The God of Small ThingsCharacter: Sophie Mol 

Source Text:  Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks,2008. Print.Entry Author:  Apollonia Roman

In the multi-layered novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Sophie Mol is the half Caucasian, half Indian nine year old visiting her two younger cousins in India. Even though there are several other tragedies in the book, including the molestation of her cousin Estha and the death of the “untouchable” Ammu, Sophie’s death is the locus from which the entire novel revolves, even though she is physically present in only a few chapters. While tragedies are covered up, Sophie’s rises to importance because is part white and has been raised in the west. Her Westernness makes her special in the novel. She is the only character who is referred to with any excitement by the others.

Sophie has been raised in England away from her biological Indian father, Chacko. Chacko uses his education at Oxford University in England to elevate himself in his Indian family, with whom he currently lives. He previously married  Sophie’s mother, Margaret Kochamma, to combine his most proud accomplishments: receiving an education and obtaining a white wife (Roy 114). Sophie and Margaret have come to visit Sophie’s Indian relatives in Ayemenem after the death of Sophie’s step-father, Joe, who she “loves most in d’world” (Roy 72). Joe is everything Chacko is not; he is “steady, solvent, thin…a wedge of light” and presumably white (Roy 118). Sophie idolizes him and regards him as her true father, while Chacko is just her less important “realdad” (Roy 72).  This gravitation towards a man so different in personality and race both elevates and distances Sophie from her Indian family and father.

Sophie’s only physical likeness to her “realdad” is a similar nose, “she had [her grandfather’s] nose waiting inside of hers” (Roy 68). This nose is sign of intelligence, “a moth-loving nose,” an “entomologist’s nose,” because it is something that gives educated Chacko pride (Roy 68). In contrast, Sophie’s white skin is described as much as her nose. This attribute is what differentiates her most from Chacko and his side of the family, binds her intimately with the white Margaret and biologically unrelated Joe. Her seven year old cousin Rahel describes her skin as precious, “she’s very delicate, if she gets dirty she’ll die” (Roy 100). After this statement, Rahel goes on to list Sophie’s other beautiful attributes: her hair, teeth, and legs. Yet, Sophie’s skin color takes precedence as her most impressive feature.

Every event in the novel, past, present, and future, refer, revolve, and lead up to the death of Sophie Mol. This is likely important because her “whiteness” makes her more valuable to her Indian family. “White” is mentioned nearly one hundred times throughout the novel, including references to white saris, lilies, insects, clouds, hair, etc. This imagery consistently reminds the reader that “white” is beautiful, fragile, and something to be treasured. Sophie Mol is treated as if she is such, even though she is obstinate, often speaking without reservations to her cousins. On page 73 Sophie declares that she doesn’t love her Indian family because she doesn’t know them. She is able to escape chastisement for infractions her cousins are not, such as being rude at the dinner table (Roy 153). The importance of Sophie’s fair skin eclipses her actions to her Indian family; she becomes more precious for her symbolically Western features makes her the crux of Roy’s critique on the problematic perception and reactions to class differences and reactions in the novel.