Tommy
Orange’s novel There, There takes on the stories of many native people,
and in it we see three distinct female characters. The half sisters, Opal Viola
Victoria Bear Shield and Jacquie Red Feather, both live distinctly different
lives throughout the novel but seem to follow the same path in regard to their
roles as women. Each of these women reject their own femininity; maybe not
consciously, but in a way which seems to be required to survive as a native woman.
Femininity, in the sense of this argument, is traditional in its expected motherly
roles and emotional availability.
Jacquie is
the most blatant in her rejection of womanhood and femininity, made clear in
her refusal to take on a matronly role. Jacquie puts her first child up for
adoption, and it seems she was negligent to the second child she had, at least
to the degree that her daughter was able to become addicted to drugs. She has
no connection with her grandchildren; instead, “Opal [takes] care of [her]
three grandsons—whom she’d never even met” (100). Instead, Jacquie falls into
the traps of alcoholism, seemingly unable to keep any meaningful connection
with her family. Only when she gives up drinking do we see her make any attempt
to see or meet her grandsons, and even then, she isn’t coming back to take on
the role of a loving, involved grandmother. Jacquie is completely disconnected
from the motherly role she never even wanted to take on, and she seems to
believe that her survival depends on a lack of connections to anyone in her
life. This can easily be traced back to her trauma, but it causes her to reject
feminine motherhood and connections with her family.
Opal
herself seems to take on part of her grandmotherly role while rejecting other
parts of it. She is the person to raise Jacquie’s grandsons, Orvil, Loother,
and Lony, but because she must take on the role of the single parent to three
young boys, she seems forced to abandon some of the sentimentality of inherent
in that role in order to provide for them. She doesn’t take time imparting the
family traditions of native culture down to them, instead spending most of her
time working to pay for everything they need. Nor does she appear particularly
emotionally available to them—Orvil feels the need to hide his dancing from
her, forcing his brothers to “[promise] not to tell Opal” when they find out
(126). Opal herself even knows that their connection seems jilted, noting that “the
boys are afraid of [her], like she was always afraid of her mom” (165). She’s
lived a difficult life, and her past trauma has made her feel the need to
reject emotion and love, and to be “brief and direct” and “hypercritical”
(165). In Opal’s case, it seems she hasn’t just shed her femininity, but some
aspect of her humanity.
Jacquie and
Opal’s characters come from the same circumstances and go on to follow wildly
different paths, but their shared childhood trauma is a connecting force which
leads them both to abandon femininity and emotion within their lives.
I agree that the characters of Opal and Jacquie reject the cultural ideals of motherhood, but I do not agree with them rejecting their femininity all together. Throughout the novel we see Jacquie and Opal distance themselves from the stereotypical mother role, as Jacquie gives up her first-born child to adoption, and Opal is present but distant from the grandchildren, but isn’t femininity just the qualities that make up being a woman.
ReplyDeleteYes, motherhood is a part of femininity, but there is so much more to it. Jacquie proves that she is trying to improve her life when she attends rehab (102-112). She also proves that she can grow, she agrees to go to Oakland with Harvey (150), the man who destroyed her life. She tries to put the past behind and to get stronger, she is establishing to herself and to Harvey that she is a woman who is in control and isn’t that a large part of femininity.
Opal is forced into the role of a mother, but she does not seem to be a true mother to the grandchildren. Orvil is warry of her hiding his interest in his Native culture by dancing alone in his bedroom (118). She is distant from the grandchildren, but she still took them in, and she still loves them, so she has retained more of the motherhood than Jacquie did. Still, Opal has her femininity as she protects her sister, she hit Ronald over the head with a bat to prevent him from doing anything to Jacquie (166).
While they do not fit the stereotypical norm of femininity, both Jacquie and Opal still retain many qualities of strong women.
I find your analysis of the sisters very interesting because their gender was not something I personally considered while considering the actions of the characters. i understand what you are saying but I think traditional gender roles may be a better way of framing their rejection of the norms. In the case of Jacquie, I disagree that her negligence in regards to her family and her alcohol abuse are signs of her rejection of gender roles or femininity. These are not things inherent to the gender binary. I think in Jacquie's case her actions are due to trauma she suffers both in a transgenerational sense but also by being a teenage mother with a "deadbeat baby daddy", losing her mother early on in life, and living with a dangerous man after her mother's death. I agree with you in the case of Opal. Opal is described as being overweight, which she in fact prefers; she says that "she got big to avoid shrinking" (170). The implications of this statement are twofold in that women are ignored/"shrunk" so to speak in society, but also Native Americans experience this erasure. Ultimately I most agree with your claim that the sisters reject emotion in order to survive. Neither women are particularly emotional or sentimental until the end when Orvil is shot and in the hospital. I think an interesting way to further the claim you make would be to examine traditional cultural Native American gender roles and expectations, because perhaps those gender roles are more directly affecting the sisters as opposed to Western norms of womanhood.
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