Stories of Growth: Caribbean
Women Writers (2)
Michelle Cliff’s Abeng
Outline
•Caribbean Women Writers: Major Themes
•Michelle Cliff: Introd.
•Abeng Chap 15-17
1. hunting scene and its reasons;
2. bathing scene and what it reveals –gender
and race
3. the issue of languages
•Quiz
Key Questions to WSS?
• Is Antoinette mad? If so and if not,
why?
• Book 1: What are her problems in
growing up as a creole girl?
What’s Troubling Antoinette in
WSS Book I?
1. Her creole mother’s aloofness 
loneliness;
2. The black people’s antagonism against
her and her mother.
3. lack of role model; lack of friends
4. White Patriarch – in the plantation history
a. A false support: Mr. Mason,
b. Problematic family history (promiscuity and
“madness” )
Caribbean Women Writers: Major Themes
• female Bildungsroman:
– stories of growth and development // the process
of socialization as well as alienation
– racial and class issues (black, white and mulatto)
– + gender stereotypes and inequality
• “Mother Country” vs mother land (relations
to the Caribbean landscape)
• education and mother-daughter
relationship -- usually alienation
the grandmother as the positive figure
Working Miracles: Women’s Lives
• absent father (mother)
– child-shifting (adoptions –“Bright Thursdays”
adopting to fill in an empty space for the
grandparents 210)
• Single mothers as breadwinners (1/2 of the
Caribbean households are headed by women)
• Outside children -- children born out of a
father’s stable residential union; legitimacy is
not an issue
Olive Senior, Working Miracles: Women’s Lives in the English-Speaking
Caribbean (Chapter 1)
Michelle Cliff--Introduction
• born in Jamaica (1946), educated in the US and UK
and now resides in the USA
• works:
– Abeng (1984) –our excerpt
– No Telephone to Heaven (1987)
• “White Creole” Identity:
– “My family was called red. A term which signified a
degree of whiteness. . . . In the hierarchy of shades
I was considered among the lightest. The
countrywomen who visited my grandmother
commented on my 'tall' hair - meaning long. Wavy,
not curly (Cliff, 1985: 59).
Michelle Cliff--Introduction
• Race: asked to pass as white
• Gender:
– Sent to an all-girl boarding school and fell in love with a
girl there.
– The diary in which she wrote about it was read by her
parents. They read it out loud to the other family
members. (source)
Abeng-Major Themes
1. Interaction of gender, sexual, class, racial
identities
2. Race:
– the issue of language
-- the importance of history and oral culture (story-telling)
– “colourism” or color prejudice in Jamaica
3. the issue of passing (129)
–
“Passing demands a desire to become invisible. A
ghost-life. An ignorance of connections…. Passing
demands quiet. And from that quiet--silence.” -“Passing” (Cliff Claiming an Identity, 21)
Passing: Examples
• The Human Stain (film 2003) Novel by
Philip Roth
• Abeng –
Kitty (black) -+ Boy (white) 
p. 129
The Meaning of Abeng & Maroon
• Abeng -- an African word
meaning conch shell.
• Two meanings:
1)The blowing of the conch
called the slaves to the
canefields in the West Indies.
2)The abeng has another use: it
was the instrument used by the
Maroon armies to pass their
messages and reach one
another.”
--Abeng – about
both colonial control and resistance to
colonialism
Characters in Abeng
• (landed, red) Albert &
Mattie Freeman;
• Kitty Freeman * p. 128
•(colonists; planters)
Samuel & Judith;
•Judge Savage
Boy Savage
•Clare Savage; Jennie Savage
• Ben (C’s cousin) & Joshua (half
cousin)
•Miss Ruthie (squatter, black)
•the cane-cutter
•Mass Cudjoe (the pig) *
•Old Joe (the bull)
Zoe
The Savages
• Judge -- burned his slaves alive on the eve of
emancipation
• “His mind was on a 'higher' plane--he was
concerned about the survival of his race. He was
fearful of the mixing that was sure to follow
freedom--in which the white seed would be
diluted and the race impoverished”(38).
• “…He was not to blame. These people were
slaves and would not know how to behave in
freedom. They would have been miserable.......
At that moment these people were his property,
and they were therefore his to burn” (39-40)
Irony: The Savages—not all
whites
• The Savages defined themselves
according to "color, class, and religion,
and over the years a carefully contrived
mythology was constructed, which they
used to protect their identities. When
they were poor, and not all of them
white, the mythology persisted" (Abeng
29).
Kitty Freeman
• "Kitty's mother was both Black and white, and
her father's origins were unknown—but both
had brown skin and a wave to their hair.
• .... Her people were called 'red' and they knew
that this was what they were. .. . The
Freemans did not question this structure…”
• [cause] “... a settling of blood as some lighter
skins crossed over one or other of the darker
ones--keeping guard, though, over a base of
darkness. And a trickle of white
people …made the island whiter than it
actually was" (54).
Irony: Ms. Mattie
• Against Clare’s being with Zoe
Cliff on Clare Savage
• Clare Savage "is an amalgam of myself and
others, who eventually becomes herself alone.
Bertha Rochester is her ancestor.
Her name, obviously, is significant and is
intended to represent her as a crossroads
character, with her feet (and head) in (at least)
two worlds.
• Clare: a light-skinned female who has been
removed from her homeland in a variety of ways
and whose life is a movement back, ragged,
interrupted, uncertain, to that homeland. She is
fragmented, damaged, incomplete.“ (e.g. her
missing her mother)
Ref. Cliff on Clare Savage
• Savage: “Her surname is self-explanatory. It
meant to evoke the wilderness that has
been bleached from her skin,
understanding that my use of the word
wilderness is ironic, mocking the master’s
meaning, turning instead to a sense of nonWestern values which are empowering and
essential to survival, her survival, and
wholeness. ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads
Character" 264-5)
Abeng: Our Excerpt
• Chap 15: hunting episode • Chap 16: gender and
– The natural world outside racial implication and
causes of Clare’s acts
the plantation
– Why shoot?
– Clare and hunting pp.
– Robert
114 (Clare’s memory
– Clare
115) –
– Boy vs. Kitty
– Zoe’s persuasion:
against hunting. pp. 116 • Chap 17:
consequences:
– Bathing pp. 119 (Clare’s
– Zoe’s thinking
reflection 121-24);
– Clare’s facing the
– Cane-cutter’s interruption
grandmother
Abeng: Starting Questions
• Why do you think Clare wants to go
hunting?
• Why is the cane-cutter’s sudden
presence so embarrassing?
• Does Clare shoot out of fear or shame?
The Hunting Episode in Context
1.
–
–
–
The history of natural lives//colonialism pp. 112
the origin of the pig--the native of the island
the Maroon ritual and gender differences
the mongoose
•
•
•
•
from India (112)
“the true survivor” (113)
symbolic meaning—about hunting and survival; how
the natural habitat has been changed by colonial
practices
Does Clare enjoy killing wild animals? What is
the symbolic meaning of this hunting for Clare?
pp. 114, 115,
Animals
hog
mongoose
Mongoose (image source)
bushmaster
Bushmaster (image source)
Clare’s motivation
• She does not enjoy hunting (e.g.
experience of eating goat and roasted
birds);
• Wanting to eat the pig’s testicles and
penis?
• Her mother Kitty, Kitty Hart, Anne Frank,
Doreen Paxton
• Joshua and Ben’s shooting birds and
hunting for a pig.
Clare and Zoe
• What are the differences between Zoe and
Clare? ( WSS -- Antoinette and Tia)?
• Zoe:
– calls Clare “town gal” class difference
– is afraid of being thought of as “Guinea warrior,
not gal pickney.” (117-118)  gender limitation
• Clare
– split; “limited” (119);
– recognize her “selfishness”; her lack of
understanding of property and ownership
(121)—Clare’s alienation from the native code;
unconscious of her own class privilege
Zoe & Clare (2):bathing scene
• What is the significance of the bathing scene (119120, 124) in the episode? Is the relation between
the two girls lesbian?
• Why is Clare so afraid of being seen by the canecutter?
• Why does Cliff follows it with a narration of
“battyman” in Ch. 16?
• How does the family describe the “battyman” Robert
(125-126)? What has happened to him? What is the
connection of Robert’s story with the relationship
between Clare and Zoe?
• What divides Clare and Zoe?
Zoe & Clare (2):bathing scene
• Self-definition & Communication p.
120; 124 (not be selfish again) –
respecting class boundaries, but
crossing gender-race ones.
• Robert and the American negro (12426)//
Clare and Zoe  transgression of racial
boundaries p. 127
Clare’s Split Racial Identities
• Boy’s teaching of “race and color and
lightening” (127)
• Kitty’s influences:
– Kitty’s cherish of darkness (127-128)—”keep
darkness locked inside” (129)—melancholic
– Kitty’s dream of setting up a local school (129130)--her distrust of British education and love of
black culture--“Daffodils” vs the Maroon Girl (129)
– Kitty’s preference for the darker daughter Jennie
(129) and Clare’s sense of alienation from the
mother (128)
Clare’s love for Zoe (131)
– Thinks Clare likes passing (129)
Languages--English and Patois
• What kind of language does Zoe use?
What is the significance of different
languages in the novel? (e.g. Clare to
Zoe, to the cane-cutter, and to Ms.
Mattie) (122, 134).
Note: Pig Cudjoe
• In Jamaica, the growing strength and
frequency of attacks by these Maroon
groups between the 1650s and 1680s
erupted into a full-blown war--known as
Cudjoe's War, after its Akan leader--by 1690.
In 1739, the British empire sued for peace
and signed a historic treaty--Cudjoe s
Treaty--giving the once-enslaved Africans
autonomy and recognition as free people.
Note 2: Resisting Women in
Jamaican history
• (p. 128)
• Nanny -- the legendary Maroon leader, famed both for her
strategic prowess and for her ability catch a bullet between
her buttocks and thereby return it whence it came (the novel
p. 14)
• Inez-- the descendant of Maroon and Miskito Indian parents;
– imprisoned and raped by Clare's great-grandfather the
judge and turned into his concubine, she capitalizes on
his absence to escape, and in doing so takes pains to aid
a group of rebellious slaves acquire a piece of land where
they can live undisturbed
– She aborts the fetus she carries with the help of Mma Alli,
the sorceress
Quiz
1. What is passing? Who wants Clare to
do it? 20%
2. What does “speaking buckra” mean?
How about “gal smaddy”? 20%
3. Explain the significance of one of the
following scenes/characters in 3
sentences? 60%
–
–
–
–
The hunting scene
The bathing scene
Clare’s memory of her uncle Robert
Clare’s relations with her mother Kitty
References
• Cliff, Michelle. "Clare Savage as a
Corssroads Character." Caribbean Women
Writers: Essays from the First International
Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley,
MA: Calaloux, 1990. 263-68.
• Michelle Cliff
http://www.answers.com/topic/michelle-cliff