Religion and
Literature in the Caribbean
When
speaking of the names she has been called (Òwhite cockroach,Ó Òwhite niggerÓ)
in her life as a Creole, Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea says to the unnamed Rochester character, ÒI often
wonder where I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I
ever born at allÓ (Rhys 61)1. Antoinette captures in this lamentation
all of the issues of identity inherent in a Caribbean nationality, and though
she is a white Creole,2 she
nonetheless has felt the sting of slavery, colonialism, and the distant gaze of
the Englishman. Religion functions
in the three literary works discussed here (Derek WalcottÕs Dream on Monkey
Mountain, Jean RhysÕs Wide
Sargasso Sea, and Michelle
CliffÕs No Telephone to Heaven)
in the search for Caribbean identity.
It is my contention that whereas Derek WalcottÕs play argues for the
viability of the hybrid, Michelle CliffÕs and Jean RhysÕs novel argue against
that viability.
WalcottÕs
Dream on Monkey Mountain
opens with the invocation of Baron
Samedi, the guardian between the present life and the afterlife, the
mediator for all souls between life and death. Baron Samedi is figured here, and generally in vodou practice, as a Òfrock-coated figure with white
gloves, his face halved by white make-upÓ (Walcott 212). The vodou figure of Baron Samedi is
figured throughout the text along with many other Afro-pagan practices, with
Christianity, and with Rastafarianism. Makak is himself a figure of
Rastafarianism, frequently convoluted with the ÒAbyssinian lion3,Ó a direct invocation of Haile Selassie
I, king of Ethiopia. Furthermore,
Makak believes himself to be, and is crowned in his dream, the King of Africa,
calling to mind the practices of the Rastafarians who believe in Haile
SelassieÕs divinity as the true king of the African peoples throughout the
world. The restoration of
MakakÕs original name, Felix Hobain is Obeah. Since he has been called Makak, which in French creole means
Òmonkey,Ó for so long, it is that naming which has defined who he is as a
person. Being called Òmonkey,Ó or
slave, or Negro, or any other derogatory term for that which you are not is
Obeah in that you may begin to function as the thing you are named. However, the reclaiming of his
original, real name allows Makak to fulfill his destiny as the hybridized man. When Makak is renamed through Obeah
ritual and crowned the Rasta-like King of Africa, as Sinan Akilli asserts, the
Òdichotomies of body and soul, material and spiritual gain, imprisonment and
freedom (both physically and spiritually), monkey and lion, black and white,
all first form and then are resolved in a matrix reflecting the perplexed state
of the hybrid, creolized West IndianÓ (9). WalcottÕs solution, therefore, to the problem of colonialism
is the mŽlange and appropriation of African pagan and Christian practices in a
complex hybrid, in essence the very nature of Rastafarianism, which seeks to
reread the Bible subversively through the lens of the African Diaspora. The dream on Monkey Mountain has an
Òemancipatory and reconciliatory effectÓ (Akilli 9).
However,
this Òemancipatory and reconciliatoryÓ effect seems to be subverted by the
actual reality of the postcolonial Caribbean. The figure of Baron Samedi, for example, was appropriated
and used by Papa Doc Duvalier to commit terrible atrocities against his own
people. Though WalcottÕs play could
perhaps be read literally as a Òdream,Ó a vision of what the future could be like, it also seems to exhort those of
Caribbean identity to begin the process of hybridization. Despite this call for hybridization,
evidenced in reality by Papa DocÕs relationship with the United States as well
as his appropriation of the Vodou guardian of the crossroads of life and death
in order to justify his atrocities, that the Haitians who fear the zombie and
the increased practices of the criminal loa are much more in tune with the reality of
the Caribbean dilemma.
Furthermore, the practice of Rastafarianism has been colonized, or
cannibalized by white North Americans and Europeans drawn to its message of
vegetarianism and resistance to the dominant culture, undermining its power as
a subversive force for change in Jamaica and throughout the African
Diaspora.
It
is the reality of the certain failure of the hybrid that Jean Rhys and Michelle
Cliff take up in their novels.
AntoinetteÕs renaming is much less successful than that of Makak. When the male figure renames her, she
exhorts him not to, saying ÒBertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by
another name. I know, thatÕs Obeah
tooÓ (Rhys 88). Shortly after he
begins calling her Bertha, she tells Christophine, who notices right away that
she is beginning to undergo the transformation that will make her into the
madwoman ÔBerthaÕ of Jane Eyre,
and Christophine associates her with the supernatural: ÒYour face like dead woman and your
eyes red like soucriant4Ó (Rhys 70). This Òface like dead womanÓ foreshadows BerthaÕs
eventual imprisonment and madness in England, where she is in effect a zombie,
made that way both by the Rochester characterÕs colonialism and by Christophine,
who gave her something to help her ÒsleepÓ (ÒShe isnÕt going to sleep natural,
thatÕs for sure, but I can make her sleepÓ) through the ordeal of her
imprisonment. As Trenton Hickman
asserts, ÒThroughout Wide Sargasso Sea, the man zombifies Antoinette Cosway by undermining her family
ties, her connections with the island, and finally by forcing her to live
imprisoned and exiled in England, where she is divorced from the land where her
identity was formed. ÔBertha
MasonÕ is by RhysÕ account a zombie, created from the woman who had been
Antoinette Cosway to suit the manÕs own financial, social, and sexual needsÓ
(191). Christophine is the only
character that tries to stand up to ÔRochester,Õ and even she does not do that
successfully. She makes him hear her
words, to acknowledge her magic, but she leaves because her magic Òis warped
and ultimately defeated by the rival power of colonial witchcraftÓ (Maurel
114). While Christophine is
speaking to ÒRochester,Ó he threatens her with colonial law, ÒI read the end of
FraserÕs letter aloud: ÔI have
written very discreetly to Hill, the white inspector of police in your
town. If she lives near you and
gets up any of her nonsense let him know at once. HeÕll send a couple of policemen up to your place and she wonÕt
get off lightly this timeÕÓ
(Rhys 96). Formerly, no one
would have touched her, for Òthey not damn fool like you to put your hand on
meÓ (96), but with ÒRochesterÕsÓ threat of colonial power, the spell of her
terrifying magic is broken and, as Sylvie Maurel asserts, ÒThe subalternÕs
voice is absorbed into the masterÕs discourse and loses its resonanceÓ
(114). Obeah, the religion of
Nanny, slave rebellions, and resistance to colonialism is ultimately ineffective
against the colonial law of the bŽkŽ.
The hybridized Obeah
rituals cannot help her, but neither can her own hybridity.
Antoinette
becomes the zombie because, as Christophine explains to ÒRochester,Ó ÒShe is
not bŽkŽ like you, but
she is bŽkŽ, and not
like us eitherÓ (Rhys 93). She
becomes a zombie because she has no self, and no means of articulating a
self. She has no country, no race,
no place, and no identity, and her will is easily controlled by ÒRochester,Ó
because she has no roots to combat his English view of her. Antoinette is marked by the colonial
encounter as a zombie, her madness is genetic and a product of her environment,
where she can never articulate an authentic self, and thus is neither African
nor English. Her eventual madness
and destruction of Thornfield Hall might be read then, as a response to the
colonial power that has stunted her.
It is her only way since Obeah, zombification, and hybridity have not
rescued her from colonialism, she must still speak her story. As Miki Flockemann asserts, ÒIf one
looks at madness here in terms of Ôsaying the unsayable,Õ then it is possible
to see the representation of madness as simultaneously social metaphor, which
offers an unsettling critique of a ÔmadÕ or absurd social structure, and also
in terms of the intervention of another mode of reality, value, knowledge, or
belief system, which results from the protagonistÕs situation at the
intersection of cultures, rather than being limited to her own social (and
cultural) alienationÓ (76). In the
very last paragraph of the novel, she remembers, ÒNow at last I know why I was
brought here and what I have to doÓ (112). She does become the ÒBertha MasonÓ of Jane Eyre, fulfilling the Obeah curse that renamed
her and shaped her destiny, but she also articulates a certain kind of agency
that only resists colonial power in death and in violence, and Òher death leap
over the battlements of Thornfield towards Tia can be seen as a dream
re-enactment of an attempt at completion, an assertion of Caribbean identity
that is in fact denied to her physicallyÉThe prospect of some form of recovery
can only happen at the level of the imagination, through a dream of
flight/escape/deathÓ (Flockemann 76).
The hybridities of Obeah/Christianity, whiteness/blackness,
English/Creole are insufficient, and it is only through imagination (or death?)
that Antoinette can return to her original self.
Similarly,
the death of Clare Savage at the end of No Telephone to Heaven speaks to the ineffectiveness of hybrid and
Obeah, when the Hollywood movie producers have appropriated the story of Nanny
in order to make a film, and the Obeah man and resistance group are killed by
the army. Clare Savage and
Harry/Harriet die fighting a fraudulent representation of Nanny and the
Maroons. Why, one might ask, would
a person give their life over a film?
The solution lies in ÒMagnanimous Warrior,Ó where a narrative voice is
lamenting the loss of women like Nanny, the ÒRiver Mother. Sky Mother. Old Hige. The
Moon. Old Suck,Ó all of the Obeah
representations of feminine power who have Òbeen burned up in an almshouse fire
in Kingston. She has starved to
death. She wanders the roads of
the country with swollen feetÉHer powers are known no longer. They are called by other namesÓ
(164). Thus, Clare and Harriet die
fighting to protect the culture of Obeah.
The cultural capital industry of filmmaking has appropriated an Obeah
story in a fraudulent way, and in order to remember how to love the
Òmagnanimous warrior,Ó Obeah must be restored to its former glory, in this
case, through the death of the resistance movement.
Clare
and Harriet are attempting to rescue Obeah from appropriation because they have
seen, through Rastafarianism, what happens when a Creole and hybridized faith
is captured (and cannibalized) by those who are willing to become hybrids
themselves. For example, she says
of a young man at the party in the beginning of the novel who is carrying on
about Rastafarianism and resisting the white man that his ÒdaddyÓ was a Òprofessor
of African studies at the UniversityÓ (14). Clare and Harriet do not want Nanny and Obeah to suffer the
same fate. They are, as Belinda
Edmondson asserts, Òblending the voice of the ÔofficialÕ history, which denies
that there is a history, with the oral transmission of historical resistance
encoded in the ÔmagicalÕ narrative of mythÓ (186). In other words, they are participating in the oral tradition
of resistance and Obeah instead of falling victim to neocolonial attitudes like
the young man who practices Rastafarianism. Like Antoinette, Clare and Harriet are attempting to recover
a lost history, or a history and identity that belongs to them, and they must
do it through violence and destruction, just as Antoinette must burn down
Thornfield Hall.
Derek
WalcottÕs Dream on Monkey Mountain asserts
the possibility of hybrid identity that combines Afro-Creole religious
traditions with those of European Christianity. On the other hand, Jean RhysÕs Wide Sargasso Sea and Michelle CliffÕs No Telephone to
Heaven seem to conclude
that the only way to resist colonial power is by violently overthrowing it and
searching through the imagination, and at times, through death, for an
authentic self. Which of these
writers is correct, I do not know.
Many more authors and artists5 of all
kinds have weighed in on how religious expression figures in the search for
identity in the Caribbean, and yet none of them propose the same solution. It is clear, however, that the making
of a Caribbean identity could not be accomplished without the search for a
religious identity through Afro-Creole and Neo-African religious
traditions.