Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory is a novel about a Haitian woman's struggle to break the chain of female injustices that occur in her family. Upon finding herself and having her ultimate awakening after the death of her mother, Sophie is determined to treat her daughter in a respectful manner. A major theme in this novel, and one of the injustices that the Caco family faces, is the implicit belief that a woman's body is not her own, but rather belongs to her eventual husband. It is important for Sophie to break this idea in order to ensure that her daughter has a better life. By identifying instances in which this injustice takes place, one can try to formulate a way to break the chain.

One of the main struggles Sophie faces in the novel is the thought that a woman's body is a man's domain, rather than her own. For example, there is a strong emphasis placed on pre-marital virginity. A woman keeps her honor if she saves herself for her husband. This is a clear example of a man controlling a woman's body before he even comes on the scene. In order to ensure that a woman's virginity is maintained, she is often tested throughout her adolescence. Sophie is traumatized by this and struggles with it throughout the novel, "My body was quivering when my mother walked into my room to test me" (88). There were other ways that men had control. One way, rape, was experienced by Sophie's mother and was her main difficulty throughout the novel. Finally, a man was also able to control a woman sexually by citing that his sexual desire was too strong. It is a wife's duty to please her husband regardless of whether she is in the mood or not. A good example of this is found on Sophie's return trip from Haiti. She left her husband to escape the pain caused through sex, and her husband identified this over the phone during her trip back home. However, once she is reunited with him, she cannot have a simple phone conversation with her mother without Joseph putting his hands on her (199). Knowing how injustices take place can give us answers on how to break them.

How do the women in this novel break the injustices that they face? There are three solutions presented to the reader: Atie's way, Martine's way, and Sophie's way. Atie chooses to live a careless life style of alcohol and sleepless nights. She finds solitude in her denial of the situation at hand. Martine chooses to end her life by mutilating her body. For her, destroying the only thing women have that men seem to cherish is the final solution. Sophie chooses to get therapy from a psychiatrist and joins a help group. In the end, she sees herself as free by affirming her independence and freedom as an individual.

The Joys of Motherhood

The author of The Joys of Motherhood, Buchi Emecheta, portrays colonialism from a far different perspective than what the reader is used to. Traditionally, one expects to read about a white superpower exerting its influence on "primitive" or "animal-like" natives. However, Emecheta writes about the white-native relationship from the perspective of Nnu Ego, a tribal African woman from Ibuza. Nnu Ego creates an animalistic view of the white man, rather than talking of them as superior beings.

There are several examples in The Joys of Motherhood that show Nnu Ego's negative feelings towards white outsiders and their Victorian values. For instance, she seems to feel that the ways of the white man are disgusting and foreign. She calls Lagos "a soft place" and also describes it as a "place where men's flesh hung loose on their bones, where men had bellies like pregnant women, where men covered their bodies all day long (46)." This shows that Ego felt disdain for the white man's foreign ways in tampering with the traditional values of the Ibo. Further evidence suggests that the whites in Lagos can be considered primitive and animalistic. Nnu Ego refers to white women as being "pale like pigs" and "how could our men stand them? (75)". This portrays white people as animals, therefore considered inferior to Nnu Ego's fellow Africans.

Why all this animosity towards the white man? Perhaps this is fueled by the sharp difference between Victorian values and Traditional Ibo values. Nobody asked Nnu Ego's people if they would like to be put to work at the hands of white foreigners in pursuit of their own individual economic gain. Therefore, being subjected to these standards and having to abide by them should seem quite difficult and eventually lead to disdain for whites. Emecheta's way of portraying whites as primitive and ugly facilitates her message that subjecting outsiders to your way of life is animalistic and brutal in itself.