By
Elnora Palmtag
After reading Recitatif by Toni Morrison as a freshman in college, I was asked to
determine which of the girls was black and which of them was white by Linda
Spain at Linn Benton Community College.
This seemed to be the primary theme of the work. However, now I have come to the conclusion
that there are many sociological, psychological, and metaphysical meanings to
this text. Sociologically, the relevance of social hierarchy in the school and
society, the hegemonic status of women in this world, and the difference in the maternal values of the girls, psychologically, the treatment of the Twyla and
Roberta by the big girls and the treatment of Maggie by all of them, and
metaphysically, in terms of Twyla’s mother’s religious belief (her truth) and
her unreal relationship to the rest of the world are only part of the new view of this work.
My main claim is the commonality of the
girls in both their lives and their relationships with their mothers. When the girls meet at “St. Bonny's,” an
orphanage, there is no mention of their race but more of their commonality, of
being poor and uneducated. There is only
one person at the orphanage, Maggie, “the kitchen woman,” who is
considered less than these two girls.
Why is there “trouble” as discussed by Judith Butler and how do the
girls cope with it throughout their lives?
What are the common feminine roles in the story and how does this affect
the lives of these two girls throughout their lives? And, finally, what role do these girls play
in the deconstruction of Maggie?
Recitatif starts
with two woman in “trouble,” as Twyla’s “mother danced all night, and Roberta’s
was sick.” Per Butler, trouble
“euphemized some fundamentally mysterious problem usually related to the
alleged mystery of all things feminine,” and these mothers are definitely
trouble.(T. C. Pg. 2540) They are also
hegemonic, portraying the ideology of the respective dominant/male ruling
specimens in their societies with a shared poor social status. If as Butler states “gender is culturally
formed” and “performative,” then these two mothers are not the normative of
society but the abnormal and definitely would not be understood by the general
society and especially the male contingencies of that society, for they do
epitomizes “trouble.” If as stated, they
are “trouble,” have they passed this
trouble on to their girls? Are these
women, the mothers and the big girls, in this story truly uncanny?
One
aspect of the commonality of these characters is their uncanniness in
both life and their position in the mainstream of life as expressed the first time
by Twyla when she stated, “I got sick to my stomach….it was something else to
be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.” Twyla further reinforces the standard set by
her mother when she says, “she said,” referring to her mother, “that they never
washed their hair and they smelled funny.”
The girls are uncanny to each other because their understanding of the
other’s race and culture is skewed through meaning “based on binaries” that are
“hierarchical and arbitrary,” per Derrida. What has caused this breach in
understanding? Is it because they come
from different but similar poor backgrounds?
When Butler states that “the real is replaced with the signified/signifier as a child
is a blank page and we fill in the page with our signifiers,” however,
the mothers in this story have shown signs that are wrong and the signifiers
that are miscued, then the signified (the girls) will be erroneous in their
perceptions and expectations of their roles in society. This confusion is displayed when Twyla said
of her mother, “I could have killed her,” when her mother came to visit her at
St. Bonny’s. The first signifier is of
the racial separateness is stressed by her mother, which Twyla signifies erroneously. Yet Twyla begins to recognize that her mother
is not normative of the rest of society and she wants to destroy this
abnormality. This sentiment is stated
again after her mother starts cussing in front of the whole church and Twyla
states, “All I could think of was that she really needed to be killed.” According to Raymond Williams, these actions
show “a difference between a process of setting limits and exerting pressures,”
(T. C. pg. 1426) and, in this case, Twyla’s mother is acting according to the
hegemony of her society, the predetermined external forces in her community and
trying to pass these on to her daughter,.
Roberta’s mother was “bigger than any man and on her chest was the
biggest cross….And in the crook of her arm was the biggest Bible ever made” per
Twyla. And although she carried a Bible,
she was definitely not a Christian personage, when “she didn’t say anything”
after meeting Twyla and her mother, Mary, just “grabbed Roberta with her
Bible-free hand and stepped out of line, walking quickly to the rear of it.” Again, here are mothers who have conformed to
the hegemonic base ideology of separateness of class, culture, and gender
expectations, according to their separate social structures. This is very apparent with one mother,
being hypocritical and wearing the wrong clothes in church, and the other
mother, always leaving her eight year old daughter alone, while she went
dancing, and later cussing in church.
With these differences being reinforced by their mothers, what caused
these girls to survive their mother’s uncanniness and abnormalities and not
accepting their hegemonic ways?
Per Naomi Zack, “women
are those human beings who are related to the historical category of
individuals who are designated female from birth or biological mothers or
primary sexual choice of men.” (Spelman,
pg. 201) So there is a commonality between the
girls and their mothers in their poor status in their respective
communities. Commonality in their
situation at the home, which is noted when Twyla imparts “it didn’t matter that
we looked like salt and pepper…We were eight years old and got F’s all the
time.” Both girls had handicaps in their
learning curve, Twyla because “I couldn’t remember what I read or what the
teacher said. And Roberta because she
couldn’t read at all and didn’t even listen to the teacher.”
Also, further perpetuating this aspect of
their commonality was the fact that they “weren’t even real orphans with
beautiful dead parents in the sky. We
were dumped,” which implies that they are outside the mainstream of society
below all others, like garbage, to be discarded at the will by their abnormal
mothers, with no fathers present to help raise them. Connecting because of their commonality, the
girls are bound in this “strange place,” “St. Bonny’s,” and were further pushed
to a closeness because “the big girls (“they were put-out girls, scared
runaways most of them”) on the second floor pushed us around now and
then.” Why did the girls focus so much
of their attention on these girls and what effect did this have on their
relationship?
Not only was their commonality reinforced
by “the big girls” but even though they were “big girls,” they were girls “who
fought their uncles off but looked tough to us, and mean.” This put the “big girls” out of their realm,
because “we were scared of them, and also put them almost in a male role, which
Twyla and Roberta were too young to understand.
What is the deconstruction of Maggie and its importance in the story?
Giving credence to this concept of the
deconstruction of Maggie was the brutality portrayed on her by the uncanny big
girls, because she was “the kitchen woman with legs like parenthesis” who “wore
this really stupid hat-a kid’s hat with ear flaps,” and she “couldn’t talk.” Maggie is the true epitome of femaleness,
having no voice or knowledge, and being of a diminutive size didn’t help. Adding to this is the uncanniness is the fact
that no one knew why Maggie could not
talk. How do Twyla and Roberta
contribute to the deconstruction of Maggie?
When Twyla and Roberta tried to be mean
to Maggie, they did not know how to do it, like the big girls, instead yelling
“Dummy! Dummy” and “Bow legs! Bow legs!”
They were not strong or big enough to cause any real harm and Maggie
knew this. However, Maggie was lower
than Twyla and Roberta due to her uniqueness, not only by not having a voice or
any real power but also because she was a nonentity, in that she was neither
black nor white.
All of these things brought the girls
closer together in these commonalities of circumstances, if not culture or
race. Still, did these things from their
past bring about a change in their futures? Or did they follow the hegemony of
the society that spawned them? Was
there a change in their futures and how much?
Because of their mutual non-acceptance of
their mother’s appearances and actions and the abandonment of parental roles in
opposition to societal expectations, both Twyla and Roberta became
self-educated and improved their circumstances beyond their parents. This is witnessed when Twyla asks Roberta
years later, “Did you ever learn to read?” Roberta proceeds to read the menu
perfectly for her. And Roberta sees the
“dark blue limousine” and asks Twyla “You married a Chinaman?” “No,” she laughed. “He’s the driver.” In some respects, the mothers are still
there. Roberta does rise above her
mother but not by not nearly as much as Twyla because she is “tired, tired,
tired,” and she states “we had to economize.”
However, Twyla was “on her way to the Coast” as a hippie with “hair was
so big and wild I could hardly see her face.”
And,when they meet later, she is married and living in “Annandale, a
neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives.” This begs to wonder what other changes have
taken effect in their lives and what are the repercussions of these changes?
Twyla went to
work at “the Howard Johnson’s on the Thruway before the Kingston exit. Not a bad job.” She married a man who “is as comfortable as
a house slipper.” Everything in her life
is down home and never changes because “to my husband’s family” their town of
Newburgh “was still some upstate paradise of a time long past.” Twyla noticed a change was coming. This change was demonstrated when she meets
up again with Roberta who has married into the upper crust and now “her huge
hair was sleek now, smooth around a small, nicely shaped head. Shoes, dress, everything lovely and summery,
and rich.”
Roberta is now
well above Twyla and she uses the deconstruction of Maggie to belittle Twyla
the way the big girls did them long ago.
When Twyla says she remembers the day Maggie fell, Roberta says, “Maggie didn't
fall.” Roberta insists, "No, Twyla. They knocked her down. Those girls
pushed her down and tore her clothes. In the orchard." This is the truest form of
deconstructionism, per Derrida, when he says, “Signified over signifier; intelligible over sensible; speech
over writing; activity over passivity.”
Still all of these changes are well above and beyond the
range of personal experiences from their childhood for both women. They have lost their childhood commonality
but “the
point of articulating the grounds for commonality among women is not simply to
prevent unwanted exclusion…; it also serves as “a moral basis to end oppression
by making liberatory efforts compelling to all women in their sameness”
(Spelman, pg. 202.)
The new commonality of femaleness is
stressed when they first meet up again and in the treatment of the education of
their children. At the Howard Johnson’s,
Twyla and Roberta meet but they are so different now that Twyla observes that
“there was a silence that came downright after I laughed,” for “laughter in the face of these is
indispensable for feminism.” At the end
of this awkward situation, their old commonality is renewed when they both ask
about the other’s mother before separating again. Twyla asks, “How’s your mother?” “Fine.” How’s yours?” “Pretty as a
picture.” These responses solidify their
old friendship and bring cohesiveness to their mutual commonality. What is the change?
When next they meet, it has been over 20 years
and “now we are behaving like sisters separated for much too long…Maybe it was
the thing itself. Just being there,
together. Two little girls who knew what
nobody else in the world knew-how not to ask questions. How to believe what had to be believed.” Both women are protective and caring of their
children in making sure they are given every opportunity to be better and
receive better than they did. When
racial “strife came to us that fall, Twyla’s son was being bused across town,
where Roberta lived and Roberta’s son was being bused the other direction. Roberta was against the busing, while Twyla
did not care as long as her son received a good education. Coming into conflict over this issue drove
the two friends into polar directions, especially when Roberta says, “It’s not
about us, Twyla. Me and you. It’s about our kids.” “What’s more us than that? Although they are in disagreement over the
school issue, they start a sign war that no one else understood. In this instance, even the signs were a
commonality, because they were addressing each other personally with the
signs. And, finally, the last sign
asking, “IS YOUR MOTHER WELL?” brings them back to their original commonality,
the bad mother. Being women with lots in
common, especially motherhood, after such a bad start in life, both women
strive to make the best of their lives.
There is a positive reckoning at the end
of the story when Roberta begs Twyla to sit with her in the coffee shop. Twyla counters with “I’d just as soon not
hear anything, Roberta. It doesn’t
matter now, anyway.” Is this because they have not been keeping in touch
through the years the way friends would?
Or does she just want to clear up the misunderstanding she caused with
her callus words earlier, when she said, “You’re the same little state kid who
kicked a poor old black lady when she was down on the ground?” She confesses to Twyla that she hadn’t
kicked Maggie when she was down, and “I don’t want you to carry that
around. It was just that I wanted to do
it so bad that day-wanting to do is doing it.”
They have come full circle and now try to reconstruct Maggie and their
commonality. What is left for them?
Bringing them
back to their beginning, so that they could continue on with their lives and
leave their past behind, Twyla says, “We were kids, Roberta.” "Did I tell you My mother, she
never did stop dancing." "Yes. You told me. And mine,
she never got well." When she took them away she really was crying.
"Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?"
Even though Morrison has brought the girls back to their common background and
to them“behaving like sisters separated for much too long,” they are
left in a quandary because they cannot reconstruct Maggie. This will always be this issue between them,
separating them.
It
begs the reader to find out what other issues are affecting both girls in this
simple tale. Do they have underlying
issues that cause all of this? What
about the mothers’ underlying issues and what about the Big Bozo? How does she figure in the female issue of
this story?
Works Cited:
Spelman, Elizabeth V. "Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave
Theory Of Women's Commonality." Hypatia 22.3
(2007): 201-204.Academic Search Premier. Web. 2
Mar. 2014.
Leitch, Vincent B., Johnson,
Barbara, McGown, John, et. al. “The Norton Anthology of Theory
and Criticism.” Second Edition (2010)
pg. 1-2758. College English: Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
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