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TREATMENT OF GENDER AND ETHNIC HISTORY IN TWO AMERICAN NOVELS.   Term Paper ID:29946 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines the pattenr of ideas in Toni Morrison's JAZZ & in Louise Erdrich's novel TRACKS & issues of gender and social and cultural history.... More...

10 Pages / 2250 Words 6 sources, 17 Citations, MLA Format $40.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Examines the pattern of idieas in Toni Morrison's JAZZ & in Louise Erdrich's novel TRACKS & issues of gender and social and cultural history. Describes plot, characters, and themes of each novel. African-American & Native American experiences & communities. Woman's point of view. Historical implications of each novel. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine the treatment of gender and history in Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks and Toni Morrison's novel Jazz. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the pattern of ideas emerging in each of the works, and then to discuss how the specific issues of gender and social and cultural history are articulated and analyzed, as well as the relevance these issues have for a more complete understanding of the relevance of gender and history representations have to positioning the novels as cultural commentary. In order to appreciate the way gender and history are treated by Morrison and Erdrich in their respective novels, it is useful to note that the fictional design of each novel appears to be ethnographic in character. Tracks, for example, is placed in the context of a dying Native American community at Match Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Eventually, Violet andAlice form a bond of true friendship, "linked by mutual compassion, to eachother and also to ancestral women . . That birthachieves an aura that lifts it out of history, for a bear invades the cabinwhile Fleur is in labor; it is frightened away, shot by Pauline, but theidea grows that the bear was itself an apparition. In Jazz, the main influence of history on the narrative comes aboutbecause of the burdens it imposes on experience. The narrative line itselfis simple, straightforward, and shocking: a married, mild-mannered 54-year-old man, Joe Trace, takes up with 18-year-old Dorcas for several months,then shoots her when he spies her with another man. Nanapush and Pauline give alternative accounts of 17-year-old Fleur's recovery from the epidemic and departure from the reservationand Nanapush's care to take a job at a store in town. . A second narrator, Pauline, who is Fleur's friendand who does cultivate magic and power, tells the same story from her pointof view. Works CitedBeidler, Peter G., and Gay Barton. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1999.Cannon, Elizabeth M. However, the evidence of the text is thathistory, specifically the history of oppression that marks the African-American life experience in a European-American-dominated society, exertsjust as much influence on behavior and attitudes. This incident sets up a dynamic of what turns out to be Fleur'spersonal power. Joe is not prosecuted for themurder "because nobody actually saw him do it, and the dead girl's auntdidn't want to throw money to helpless lawyers or laughing cops" (Morrison2). Like the others, they were country people, but how soon country people forget. The aftermath of Dorcas's death proves to be a rite of passage forthese women, for by the end of the novel Alice has become more honest withherself and her feelings, and Violet and Joe are being drawn back to eachother, transcending their past and more recent history. . They therefore act from both a sense ofentitlement and anger. At the funeral, Joe'swife Violet tries to mutilate the corpse. The dying is bothmetaphorical and literal, for the novel opens with an account of anepidemic of tuberculosis raging through the community that prefigures theepidemic of industrial destruction of the wilderness. . . Suddenly big and small trees aroundthe Pillager cabin start falling, having been chopped (by Fleur) at anglesthat that assure they will fall on top of and destroy the lumber equipment.It is in this way that Fleur's departure becomes a personal triumph of amere woman over the onrush of white domination and community betrayals. . As Joe and Violet travel on thetrain from North Carolina, through Virginia, and then Maryland andDelaware, the train cars, segregated by law below the Mason-Dixon linebecome integrated: "Now, skirting the City, there were no green curtains;the whole car could be full of colored people and everybody on a first-comefirst-serve basis" (41). The Pillagers are known by the community to have an aura ofmagic about them, which means that embodying it in Fleur makes perfectsense. "Generative Adversity: Shapeshifting Pauline/Leopolda in 'Tracks' and 'Love Medicine.'" The American Indian Quarterly 21 (Fall 1997): 729-41.Morrison, Toni. Although Violet and Joe are the main focus of Jazz, the fact thatViolet, who is manifestly bonkers, seeks out a relationship with Alice totry to make sense of Joe's affair. Fleur begins playingpoker with three other employees, who are white men, and she habituallywins exactly one dollar, always betting on a good pair, never bluffing. Boston: G.K. That reconciliationhas historical resonance as well, for it coincides with the HarlemRenaissance of the 192 s, the time when African American art achieved cross-cultural authority and assurance. She resides withthe midwife/medicine woman Bernadette Morrissey and accompanies her on herrounds in Matchimanito. Pauline cultivates an aura of magic, bewitching, as she thinks, youngbut slatternly Sophie Morrisey into having sex with Eli, then making sureFleur knows--after which Fleur rejects Eli. In any case, there is no question of doinganything like reporting the rape, which impregnates Fleur. Pauline,who follows Fleur back to Matchimanito when suspicion about who locked thefreezer hardens in Argus, is the daughter of mixed-blood parents who hasattended school off the reservation, thus marked by her personal history asequally alien to both white and Native American culture. occupy[ing] a space in the lineformed by generations of struggling black women" (91). Unlike the Kapshaws, Fleuris targeted for displacement when a lumber company takes over the land onwhich her cabin stands; she leaves the reservation and sends her daughterLulu to a government boarding school. . Joe Trace's murder of young Dorcas, who as Furman notes is notsympathetic but manipulative (86) and self-absorbed, can be interpreted ashis slightly insane wish to freeze time itself by assuring that Dorcas willalways be remembered in her youth, never subject to the ravages of age andtime. She had chosen Joe and refused to go back home once she'd seen him taking shape in early light. Butduring the attack the power of womankind asserts itself, since Margaretbites Lazarre, who later dies of blood poisoning. In Jazz, personal triumph comes in the form not of dislocation--thatis the history of migration that Joe and Violet bring with them to New York--but rather of coming to terms with their history, both past and present,by coming to terms with the loved one. The City, they anticipate, will love them, and"like a million more they could hardly wait to get there and love it back"(42). Violet's determination in New York reflects a history that, in heryouth, resembled something like hopeless. She had butted their way out of the Tenderloin district into a spacious uptown apartment promised to another family by sitting out the landlord, haunting his doorway (Morrison 31-2). In Tracks, history is made the equivalent of painful memory on thepersonal level. When they fall in love with a city, it is for forever, and it is like forever. There is a tornado the following day. Lily couldn't believe, first of all, that a woman could be smart enough to play cards, but even if she was, that she would then be stupid enough to cheat for a dollar a night . Alice had been raising her niece and was unaware of her niece's sexualadventurism. But the city's unfolding history appears to work on this determinedgirl over the course of the years, such that by the time Joe takes up withthe flighty and manipulative Dorcas Violet has more or less deteriorated inher mind, speaking to pet birds rather than to her husband. . until he finally thought he had Fleur figured as a bit-time player, caution her game. As Beidler andBarton point out n this regard, "the primary relationships between Nanapushand the Pillager family are . She liked, and had, to get her way. Raising stakes would throw her (Erdrich 3 ).When Fleur wins the game with a bluff, it is not clear she has used herfemale status to cozen the men into thinking they have figured her out, butthat is the effect that her winning has on them, an effect complicated bythe fact that she is not white. Fleur's pregnancy is not showing when she returns to Matchimanito,and she takes up residence at her family's cabin on the lake. Cannon says (245) that this makes Harleman "appropriate backdrop" for the story Jazz tells. Now Violet has not been steadfastlyfaithful to Joe. She had been a snappy, determined girl and a hardworking young woman, with the snatch-gossip tongue of a beautician. Pauline is racked with dreams of Fleur's rape butalso jealous of both Fleur's relationship with Eli and her obvious self-sufficiency; Fleur makes the grounds around the Pillager cabin lush withvegetables. Jazz. Indeed, she and her son betray Fleur when they aregiven money to pay taxes on Kapshaw and Pillager land but pay them only onKapshaw land. She alsotakes Eli Kapshaw as a lover, and when the baby Lulu is born, it is notclear who the father is, though Nanapush admits to paternity. Pauline eventuallyenters the convent--yet another alien environment--and becomes a nun, thus,like other nuns, making herself alien to the typical biological destiny ofwomankind. That is not onlybecause doing so would demand that Fleur challenge the lower social statusof women and Native Americans in white culture, but also because ofinterference with the cosmos. From the vantage point of leader of the tribe, he explains (to anadopted child, it turns out) that he survived the epidemic and nursed theonly surviving child of the Pillager family, Fleur, back to life. And in the beginning when they first arrive, and twenty years later when they and the City have grown up, they love that part of themselves so much they forget what loving other people was like--if they ever knew that is (Morrison 44- 45). This helps dislocate the history of Matchimanito andinterrupts the history of the Pillagers there. She is a counterpoint (as well as mirror, it turns out) ofViolet's experience. They get the middle wrong too" (Erdrich 45). Hall, 1993. The main line of action is the Native Americans' confinement to areservation, lack of acceptance by the white community as equal citizens,sporadic dependence on government largess for food and sustenance, and lossof their land to a lumber company. One must bring to a reading ofTracks the fact of the presumption of white male superiority. But that is a social role that masks arather different history. Thusthe historical inevitability of decline and dispersement of modern NativeAmerican life between 1912 and 1924. History works on Joe aswell, or more exactly works its way out of Joe's memory, so that he"recalls dates, of course, events, purchases, activity, even scenes. By the end of the novel, Fleur andPauline have both left the reservation--Pauline to enter a convent andFleur to abandon pristine woods being clear-cut by the lumber company. And one day shelets the birds out of their cage altogether (34ff). Tracks. It is at this juncturethat the unfolding history of Fleur becomes confused in Matchimanito, thesubject of gossip that "comes up different every time, and has no ending,no beginning. Much ofTracks focuses on the life of Fleur, who has about her a fearless, charmed,changeling quality and whose powerful persona is both attractive anddangerous and whose life is suffused with magic, as the Pillagers havealways been, even though as a youngster she does not particularly desire tofunction in that realm. But hehas a tough time trying to catch what it felt like" (37). In order to appreciate the way gender and history are treated byMorrison and Erdrich in their respective novels, it is useful to note thatthe fictional design of each novel appears to be ethnographic in character.Tracks, for example, is placed in the context of a dying Native Americancommunity at Matchimanito Lake near fictional Argus, North Dakota, between1912 and 1924, and tells the story of how some members of the communityfacilitate that decline and dispersal of the population. . The affair itself has a very brief history, but it has implicationsfor the whole lives of Joe and his wife Violet, as well as for Alice, whois the aunt of the murdered girl. Even the history of the journeyfrom the South to the North is instructive. The purpose of this research is to examine the treatment of gender andhistory in Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks and Toni Morrison's novel Jazz.The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the patternof ideas emerging in each of the works, and then to discuss how thespecific issues of gender and social and cultural history are articulatedand analyzed, as well as the relevance these issues have for a morecomplete understanding of the relevance of gender and historyrepresentations have to positioning the novels as cultural commentary. In a last display of magic, whenFleur is on the brink of leaving the reservation, surrounded by lumberjacksand heavy equipment, the wind kicks up. in name rather than blood" (23). Cannon says that this makes sense because "sexual desirebecomes the only desire operative when the fulfillment of other desires isdenied," as it has, by the Traces' history in the city. Hall, 1989.Furman, Jan. "Following the Traces of Female Desire in Toni Morrison's 'Jazz.'" African American Review 31 (Summer 1997): 235-47.Erdrich, Louise. Three days later, when the freezer is opened,two of the men have died, and the third is so severely frostbitten that hisextremities literally fall off. She attempts to self-abort the child, who is adopted by theLazarres, but is prevented from doing so by Bernadette. The character of Margaret Kapshaw seems closest to that of earthmother, for she behaves maternally toward Fleur, as well as toward Sophie,despite the latter's seduction of her son Eli. As Furman says (9 ), Alice "is forced to see notonly her niece's lie with Joe, but her own deceptions," one of which isthat her own dead husband had been unfaithful and that she had had"murderous dreams" about the other woman. In the aftermath of Violet'sshocking display of jealous rage at Dorcas's funeral, it becomes clear thatJoe's affair was a personal humiliation that complicated and put intospecific relief the pattern of social humiliations that had circumscribedViolet's life, even though in New York she found an aggressive copingstrategy. The whole matter is complicatedwhen Sophie betakes herself to Fleur's cabin and kneels outside in the snowfor two days, in a kind of penance, refusing to move even when her familyplaces a statue of the Blessed Virgin in hopes that she will recover fromthe trance. Boston: G.K. According to Furman (97), music is in the background of the murder,sending "competing messages" of happiness and hostility, and influencingpeople in Harlem, including but not limited to Joe, to do, as Alicerecalls, "distorted things" (79). She bluffs, taking all the money.Partly in retaliation, partly because they are drunk, the three men respondby raping her. Toni Morrison's Fiction. Furman says that Violet becomesMorrison's "window for viewing the lives of all black women who have beenwronged," many of whom go about carrying weapons. Pauline's personalhistory is consistent with the US government's "concerted" effort beginningin 1875 "to assimilate the woodland tribes through a formal and estrangingeducation based on Western civilization" (McCafferty 733). A Reader's Guide to the Novels of Louise Erdrich. Thethree men seek shelter in the store's freezer, and they are locked in (byPauline, as it turns out). She is also targeted,however, by Sophie's brother Clarence and his friend Boy Lazarre, whoattack her and Nanapush, beating him unconscious and shaving her head. For the women of Tracks, gender affects destiny in the community ofMatchimanito, but the destiny of the characters varies according to theirbehavior as members of the Native American social group. This does not meanMargaret is a saint. Alice is sane, respectable, dignified, restrained,compared to violent Violet, a woman who like so many women of Harlem worksas a domestic in a white household. Thisis done not to humiliate her in particular but rather to humiliate Eli. The loss ofmemory to the City's unfolding history makes Joe and Violet invisible tothemselves and to each other, although when they first came to the citythey were passionately in love. For example, Violet andJoe come to New York in 19 6, the initial maturation period for jazz as anAmerican historical artifact that also coincides with the persistent waveof migration of African Americans from the rural south to the ever-more-industrialized north that began in the wake of Reconstruction and Jim Crowand continued through much of the century: The wave of black people running from want and violence crested in the 187 s; the '8 s; the '9 s but was a steady stream in 19 6 when Joe and Violet joined it. The initial narratorof the story, the old medicine man Nanapush, has the perspective of theages. Onenight, after this pattern has consistently been established, Fleur plays ahand in which the pot builds and builds. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1996.McCafferty, Kate. Pauline witnesses what happens but is either too fearful or toomesmerized to interfere. Yet the menbecome "hooked" on and irritated by playing poker with her not leastbecause she always plays exactly the same way: The irritating thing was she beat with pairs and never bluffed, because she couldn't, and still she ended each night with exactly one dollar. Only physical collapse enables her to be moved from the spot.Pauline initiates a sexual relationship and conceives a child by NapoleonMorrissey. Butthe departure also represents an interruption and violation of NativeAmerican history that, Tracks suggests, is partly brought on by the degreeto which Native Americans have been co-opted by dominant culture. But the rape also occurs because in Fleur there is a confluence ofrebellion against both history and gender. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.