Stories of growth: Caribbean
Women Writers (3)
Olive Senior’s “Bright Thursday”
•
•
Do you have experience of living with your
grandma or aunty in a house or place very
different from your own?
Do you know claustrophobia and agoraphobia
are?
Outline
• Olive Senior: Introd.
• Youtube films:
–
“You Think I Mad, Miss” “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMuq8J9bErk
– Democratic Voice and “Missing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs1i_GcNGU0
– Tree Reading Series Featured Reader 27 Jul 10 - Olive Senior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaoX9I9LKmw
• “Bright Thursday”
– color scheme and education;
– the father’s (lack) of influence
• Quiz
Olive Senior: an Embodiment of
Conflicts
•
• The daughter of peasant
farmers, she grew up, after four,
with well-off relatives whose
lifestyle was the opposite of
what she had known as a child.
 tension between two different
households, between rural and
urban settings
 “two Jamaicas” (source:
http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Biography/bio_OLIVESENI
--> Children moving
between two “households.”
OR_Jcanauthor.htm )
“Bright Thursdays”--Genealogy
• Dolphie Watson
• Mina
Bertram
(white U.S.)
(brown)
Miss Christie
Myrtle Johnstone
(dark)
Laura
2 sons (2 fathers)
(Bertram’s Mistake; Bertram’s stray shot)
A child’s perspective—
a gradual process of alienation
“Bright Thursdays”--Questions
• Why is Laura’s story not like ours visits of our
grandparents?
• If we divide up the story into the beginning, middle
and end, where is the “middle” part in which the
action starts?
• Why does the story have a long introduction?
What does the intro. show about Laura? Why
does she feel alienated from her siblings? What
is she afraid of?
• What is the significance of the photographs,
mirror, the mountains vs. the wide open space
and the clouds, and Laura’s sense of space?
• What does the ending mean?
Color System in the Caribbean Society
• Ms. Christie: “Dying to raise their
color all of them” (199)
• The color triangle: white
brown
dark
“Bright Thursday”: intro.
• Intro. Pp. 194 - 207
• Myrtle as a single mother in conformity with social values
– Myrtle’s view of Laura’s father—proud of being
associated with him, not expecting him to do anything
(p. 197)
– Myrtle’s dream of status improvement (197-98; 200)
– Myrtle vs. Ms. Christie – Myrtle all polite and Ms.
Christie, condescending and implicitly critical (pp. 19899;)
• Laura in the two households
– at her mother’s: feeling well protected p. 200
– at Ms. Christie’s: feeling displaced and scared p. 195;
196
Laura’s sense of space: dinner table 195-96;
Home in the mountains vs. grandma’s203
Contrasts between the two
households
• Mountains vs. hills pp. 203 – 204
 sense of insecurity as reflected in
her views of the clouds (204)
Meanings of the clouds?
Space and its Symbolic Meanings
• Spatial imagery
psychological -- Laura’s sense of displacement
• Feeling alienated (because of the mother’s special
treatment) even at home.
• “permanently” transported from mother’s house to father’s
• out of place or no space (photos on the bureau195)
2. Social -- Laura’s sense of inferiority
– enclosed and protected(mother’s house in the mountains,
hemmed in 203);
– empty space (the dining table 196; father’s house 204-05)
– fear of the open space, which is still constraining ( like a
“blue bowl” 204-205)
– Fear of bright Thursday and the need to walk to school
206-207 (the bus)
– Need protection and safety from the earth (digging
potatoes 207)
1.
The Cloud and Agoraphobia
• geographic metaphor attached with social meanings:
The Cloud = Christ’s judgment?
1. A projection of social hierarchy from one social
field (the other people) to another
(religion/Christ);
2. Metonymic displacement of Christ to the Cloud
which he is associated with.
• Laura’s fear of open space or agoraphobia –
– physical factor: moving to an area she is not
familiar with
– psychological factor: sense of placelessness and
inferiority
– Social factor – see definitions of agoraphobia
agoraphobia
• Agoraphobia is a condition where the sufferer becomes anxious
in environments that are unfamiliar or where he or she perceives
that they have little control. Triggers for this anxiety may include
wide open spaces, crowds, or traveling (even short distances).
Agoraphobia is often, but not always, compounded by a fear of
social embarrassment, as the agoraphobic fears the onset of a
panic attack and appearing distraught in public. This is also
sometimes called 'Social Agoraphobia' which may be a type of
social anxiety disorder also sometimes called social phobia. …
• Agoraphobia occurs about twice as commonly among women
as it does in men.[4] The gender difference may be attributable to
social-cultural factors that encourage, or permit, the greater
expression of avoidant coping strategies by women. ….
• Branches of the social sciences, especially geography, have
increasingly become interested in what may be thought of as a
spatial phenomenon. One such approach links the development
of agoraphobia with modernity. (source; see also panic attack)
Middle part
1. The grandmother
-- calls Laura “my little adopted,” instead of
granddaughter
-- criticizes Myrtle’s attempt at whitening her
family, but she herself has been doing it.
2. The father
– present only as a photo 208; few fathers
around;
– dreaming about being rescued by her
father;
– will bring nothing but bright Thursdays
(208)
Quiz
1. Why is Laura agoraphobic? 15% [one
sentence]
2. Why is “Bright Thursday” scary? 45%
3. What happens at the end? 45%
Ending: final revelation and initiation
• Color hierarchy represented by the
opposition between the mother and Mina
p. 210
• A story of disillusionment—the breaking
up of her hope and dreams—“bloody
bastard” (211)
• Turned into an orphan + no more clouds =
isolation and independence?
• Running for education …