Sisters in the Struggle:
Feminine Dualities in Native American Literature
The literature and art of ethnic minorities has long been a subversive force in the sense that it challenges the often-unjustified norms and values of the ruling class. By writing, singing, painting, or performing works that stand in contrast, whether subtly or blatantly to the established norms, these works subvert, mock, and challenge the perceived reality of the majority, forcing them to confront the troubling possibility that their world-view may not be the only valid one, or worse yet, that it is as flawed as that of those they feel superior to.
Native American literature has challenged Anglo-European notions since it’s earliest publication, just as Native American customs, cultures, and commodities challenged Anglo-European explorers and colonizers during the colonization of North and
This is exactly what D’Arcy McNickle and Louise Erdrich’s female characters do, especially in regards to the “good sister” and the “bad sister” which both employ in their novels. These pairs challenge, both by their actions and attitudes, Anglo-European ideals of the feminine and the roles women are assumed to take, as well as Western notions of morality in general. By their refusal to sit comfortably in the box Western literature has built to hold female characters, even feminist ones, these sisters struggle to make know to their Western readers a world-view that is as challenging as it is refreshing, and a threatening as it is timely.
Two Sisters
A traditional Ojibwa story cycle relates the tale of Matchikeis, the “good sister” and Oshikiwe, the “bad sister”[1]. Matchikeis follows the customs and norms of her society, and is considered reliable, hard working, trustworthy, and moral. Oshikiwe is the opposite side of this coin, flighty, lazy, tricky, and loose. In an Anglo-European story, one would expect that the “good sister” would be praised, while the “bad sister” is vilified, just as the dutiful Cinderella is praised at the expense of her “wicked stepsisters”. However, in the Ojibwa stories, this is patently not the case. Both sisters are equally loved, and both are equally heroines in the tale. More than that, they share a husband, quite happily in fact, which in many ways is an affront to Anglo-European notions of family and of female sexuality.
The Ojibwa seem to recognize in these stories an idea, which, despite its obvious logic, has never been popular in Anglo-European thought. In Western culture, the idea that in order to have good, one must necessarily have bad, and that to remove one would make the other meaningless, has always been considered subversive. Western cultures have long propounded the notion that there are both “pure” good and bad, and that one or the other can exist alone. Most monotheistic religions are in fact based on this very principle, and Anglo-European culture is still, at its core, based on these religions.
This, to my mind, is why Erdrich chooses to parallel this ancient story in Love Medicine. By making the two matriarchs of the families portrayed such seeming opposites, and yet having them share the love of one man, Erdrich issues a challenge to the white world’s ideas about the nature of love, female sexuality, and morality.
Marie, the good sister, is everything a respectable wife should be, a good homemaker, loyal to her husband, pious, and very caring towards not only her own children but also those that she has taken in from extended family. She tries to keep her husband from drinking, tries to keep him “respectable”, and strives for a sort of pious peace both for herself and within her community. In this way she is a stark contrast to Lulu, who freely sleeps with whatever man she desires, regardless of marital vows or public censure, whose home seems at first a pocket of chaos, and who seems not to care at all what others in the community think of her.
Yet neither Marie, nor Lulu is as clear-cut as they first seem. While Marie is pious, even aspiring to be a nun, she enters the convent not because she hears the call, but because she dreams of being a saint. Marie’s conception of sainthood is flawed by her pride however. She sees her piety as a way of proving herself superior to whites in general, and to the authoritative nuns who run her school in particular:
“...No reservation girl ever prayed so hard. There was no use trying to ignore me any longer. I was going up there on the hill with the black robe women. They were not any lighter than me. I was going up there to pray as good as they could.... And they never thought they’d have a girl from this reservation as a saint they’d have to kneel to. But they’d have me...”
Her excessive pride is evident elsewhere as well. She brags about her husband’s leadership in the tribe, takes great pride in the accomplishments of her children, and looks down on Lulu and her relations as less respectable. Despite her “goodness”, she is tainted by a kind of feverish pride, which makes her at times makes her seem harsh and unforgiving such as when she uses gossip to punish her friends for nosiness.
Lulu, on the other hand, has many positive qualities that are masked by her bad girl image. She is extremely fond of her sons, no matter who their fathers might be, and runs her home with a firm but loving hand, she “...managed to make the younger boys obey perfectly...while the older ones adored her to the point that they did not tolerate anything less from anyone else.” Her sexuality, the cause of much of her “badness”, is nevertheless also a source of immense power for her, shown to perfect example when she threatens to “hit the tribe with a fistful of paternity suits that would make their heads spin” unless her demands are met by the tribal council, or when Beverly Lamartine is pulled helplessly into her arms, unable to resist her.
Both women share a love in common, that of Nector, Marie’s husband and Lulu’s long-time lover. Both bare him children, and both provide something very much needed in his imperfect life. At the end of the novel, the two do something almost unheard of in a Western story, becoming fast friends after his death, taking care of each other throughout their twilight years. As Lipsha Morrissey recounts:
“ Only Grandma Kashpaw [Marie] wasn’t one trifle current at the insight Lulu showed. She and Lulu are thick as thieves now...”
These paired “sisters” serve as more than just allusions to and ancient Ojibwa story, they subtly challenge the stereotypes of women that are all-too-prevalent in Western writing. Neither Marie nor Lulu really needs Nector; rather, they both want him. They act on their sexual desire, subtly in Marie’s case, and blatantly in Lulu’s, which is an anathema for traditional Western female characters, who are usually acted upon. They are also extremely strong women, the center of their respective families. One gets the impression that Marie would have no problems if Nector left, save that of her own thwarted desire, just as Lulu gets by quite well despite having no male “bread-winner” to support her. Neither woman needs a man, but both want one. The only characters exhibiting such behavior in most Western novels are either whores or libertines. Erdrich’s “sisters” are neither, making their very existence in print a subversion of Anglo-European values.
Catherine the Faithful vs. Elise the Libertine
D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded contains two female characters that in many ways foreshadow Erdrich’s Marie and Lulu. Catherine the Faithful, mother of the protagonist Archilde, and Archilde’s love interest, Elise La Rose. The Salish people, of whom McNickle writes so passionately, shared many cultural elements with their northern neighbors, Erdrich’s Ojibwa, and one can find parallels to the story of Good Sister and Bad Sister in The Surrounded. Catherine is a highly regarded member of the tribe, educated by the Catholic missionaries and daughter of a chief. She is in many ways the epitome of a good Indian woman, whereas Elise, also the daughter of a chief, Old Modeste, is neither pious, nor traditional. She drinks, dances with white men, and is very sexually assertive. Unlike Marie and Lulu, these two women do not share a lover in common, but they both love Archilde, one maternally and one romantically.
However, whereas in Love Medicine Lulu as the Bad Sister is by far the more subversive, in The Surrounded it is Catherine as the Good Sister who most strongly challenges Anglo-European ideas of progress, civilization, and morality.
Elise may be a bit of a libertine, but she is almost expected to be. In the rural West especially, Indian women are often thought of as “easy” and promiscuous, alcoholics and barflies. Elise to some extent fulfills these expectations, and therefore doesn’t challenge Anglo stereotypes to any great degree.
On the other hand, Catherine is educated by priests, married to a successful European farmer, held in high regard by her tribe and in as high regard as an Indian woman might be by the Anglo community. Despite this, or rather because of it, hers is the most subversive role played in the novel. Her rejection of English, her disdain for modern conveniences, and eventual renunciation of Catholic faith make of her life a direct challenge to the ruling ideals of Anglo-European culture.
Despite her marriage to the prickly and proud Max, Catherine chooses not to live in the fine house at the center of the family’s ranch, instead spending her days in the smoky comfort of an old log cabin. She refuses to speak any language but Salish, despite being educated in English and possibly in Spanish as well. Her husband Max is forced to use Salish to speak to his wife:
“When he talked to her he had to use her tongue, since if he tried to use English, which she knew perfectly, she would pretend not to understand”
It is this focus on her language, which slowly leads her away from the white world. The language of one’s thought and dream-life colors one’s social interaction and daily life, and by choosing to live in Salish, Catherine is defying the white world, if only subtly.
This defiance comes out in other ways as well. Catherine’s cabin is littered with “modern” contraptions, all gone to waste and ruin:
“The stove had been worn away by rust but not by use, because she went on cooking over a camp fire. With every new thing it was the same. The Sisters had taught her many arts, but they had not quite taught her to be interested in using them. Possibly there was a deeper reason for her neglect, but on the surface that was what she felt”
Her rejection of white materialism is a striking critique of the differences between the two cultures. While trained in the domestic arts of the white world, she has a nomad’s disdain for bulky possessions and complicated practices that lead to evermore work and an individual being “owned” by their possessions. To Catherine, “it seemed that you could not live in a house as you lived outdoors or in a tepee. The outdoors cleansed itself and so did a tepee. You moved it and the dirt fell out. Besides, you did not mind a little dirt.”
Catherine’s desire to go hunting is another subtle challenge to Anglo-European culture, one that Leslie Marmon Silko uses in as well, both in Ceremony and Storyteller. In Anglo-European culture, hunting is an exclusively male endeavor. White writers speak of “Man the Hunter”, and traditionally regulate women to the role of gatherers, handy-craft workers, and domestics. There are several falsehoods in this perception; most notably that hunting was the main source of food for “hunter-gatherers”. In fact, the gathering done mainly, but not exclusively, by women provided the majority of subsistence for such cultures, making women the center of such tribal economies and as such extremely powerful. Additionally, women in such cultures often hunted as well as the men, particularly when they did not have young children or after their children were grown. (Mander) One rarely hears mention a huntress in Western literature, with the possible exception of Greek myth, with Diana the virgin huntress as an archetypal figure.
Furthermore the crisis of the novel, Catherine’s killing of the game warden, came about largely due to a conflict between two radically different views of the nature and purpose of hunting. For Anglo-Europeans, hunting is often thought of as a recreation, a hobby of the rich and idle, particularly in the early days of North American settlement. (Mander). As such, only certain animals were to be hunted, usually males, which made good trophies. Louise killing a doe, because the meat would be more tender, and Catherine’s acceptance of this, are therefore affronts to the ruling class’s idea of proper hunting, but make perfect sense from the point of view of a subsistence culture. As Louis says to Archilde, “I suppose you shot a fifteen-year old buck like a God-damned white man. That’s tender meat, that, a yearling doe.” Unlike the Natives, the Game Warden sees this as a breach of the law. “You’ve got a doe here. You know there’s a law against killing female deer, don’t you?” This difference in world-view, and the warden’s rejection of the family’s claims to being exempt from game laws leads directly to the death of both Louis and the warden.
Ultimately, it is Catherine’s rejection of Catholicism and it’s faith in authority that makes the strongest statement in the novel. In attempting to ease her guilt over the killing, she first goes to the priest to seek absolution through confession, but leaves the church without achieving peace of mind. It is only after she goes to the elders and asks to be whipped that she achieves a measure of peace.
This is perhaps one of the most radical ideas proposed in the novel. The idea that absolution, and the authority to absolve rest in the individual, and not in an authority above the individual is a challenge not only to the rule of law and of organized religion, but to one of the basic tenants of Western culture itself.
Amongst the Salish, one must go and ask to be punished, and hence absolved, of a wrongdoing. No one has the authority to force punishment or repentance on another without they themselves being guilty of wrongdoing. The Salish were a society without police, without organized structures of coercion and permanent laws that applied without regard to situation. Yet even the Jesuits found them to be “instilled with a sense of Moral Law”. The tradition of the whip negates much of what is thought necessary and right in Western society. No authority, be it God or the penal system, can absolve a person of a wrong unless they choose to be absolved. As Modeste says, “When we were told to give this [whipping] up, they said they would give us new laws. Well, they gave us those new laws and now nobody is straight. Nobody will confess and nobody will go to the white judge...” Such logic renders a thousand years of Western political thought and jurisprudence null and void, making anathemas of these perceived saviors of society. In effect the Salish are saying that the judge who sentences and the jailor who imprisons are as guilty of crimes as the criminals they incarcerate or execute.
This ethos is to be found in only one school of European thought, which was itself largely inspired by the “discovery” of Native American societies, namely Anarchism. Not the anarchism of everyday parlance, the idea of no order or responsibility, but rather the idea that authority begins and ends at the individual, and that the use of coercion for any means is an affront to free will and therefore a kind of criminal act, a theft of choice. As Proudhon, one of the most influential anarchist writers put it:
“To be governed is to watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures that have neither the right, not wisdom, nor virtue [to do so.]”
In her rejection of the authority both of Church and Law, Catherine loses her faith, but finds a peace in her last days, having lived a life that, while smeared with tragedy, nonetheless served as a wonderful critique of the contradictions and injustices that underlie the culture that has come to dominate her homeland. As she says after under going her whipping:
“If any of you think I’ve done wrong, it will do no good to say so. To me it is clear and I won’t go back. Only consider. For years I saw how the world was going. You knew my sons and how I prayed to keep them from going to hell. It would have been better if they had been given the whip. Praying was not what was needed for them, and it does me no good. You have made this promise [to forgo the whip in favor of confession] but tonight you ought to forget about it. If you get in trouble over it, it will be nothing new. We have trouble no matter what we do, and we ought to just forget about it and live as it seems best.”[2]
Elise and Catherine, Marie and Lulu. Both pairs challenge Anglo-European thought in ways both subtle and sublime. Whereas it is Bad Sister Lulu in Love Medicine that makes the challenge most clearly, it is the Good Sister Catherine that most challenges the white world in The Surrounded. The reader is forced to recognize the idea that not only are the Good Sister and the Bad Sister equally loved, they are equally important. They are not polarized opposites, but the connected ends of the same circle, with the wealth and variety of human behavior and action stretching between them even as they stand back to back, sisters in the struggle to keep their traditions alive and adapt their people to a new and hopefully better world they will help bring about.
Works Cited:
Edwards, Stuart. Selected Writings of P-J. Proudhon.
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine.
Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations.
McKnickle, D’Arcy. The Surrounded.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Storyteller.
Ceremony.
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