In his article, “Junta, Rape, and the Religion in Haiti, 1993-1994,” Terry Rey cites the definition of “rape culture”:
It is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself (qtd. in “Junta” 75).
In this culture, Rey states, sexual violence is accepted as a method of maintaining relationships with women. He also cites Ira Lowenthal’s research on Haitian language to illustrate his point:
In terminology for intercourse … [a] subject/object relationship [is] rendered so apparent; the terminology also reveals that male aggression is part and parcel of the sexual act. Slang terms (gwo mo) for intercourse are active verbs, almost invariably taking a male subject and a female object in this context, and referring literally to such actions as “cutting” (koupe), “beating” (taye), “hitting” (frappe), “bending” (plwaye), “plucking” (plimen), “shaving” (raze), “pounding” (pile) and “killing” (touye) (qtd. in “Junta” 80).
Statistics illuminate the scope of sexual violence within the country. According to a 1990 study, “the first sexual experience of nearly one in three Haitian women transpires against her will. Thirty-seven percent of all Haitian women fall victim to sexual assaults, with more than a third of these involving rape. Eighty percent of Haitian men “cited cases in which violence against women is justified,” and over half (61 percent) claimed that their wives deserved beatings if they wasted money. Even Haitian law reinforces men’s objectification and abuse of women. Article 269 of the penal code permits a man to kill his wife should he catch her in the act of adultery: “Murder committed by a husband against his wife and/or her accomplice or both, should he surprise them and catch them in the act in the conjugal home, is excusable” (“Junta” 79-80).
Rey also points out that there is no such law permitting women to kill their unfaithful husbands, who face only a maximum $50 fine if they are convicted of adultery. However, rape is punishable by law. In the rare case that a rape conviction arises, it is categorized as an “assault on morals” rather than an attack against the physical, emotional, and psychological integrity of the woman. The “attack on morals,” essentially, damages the honor of the woman, whose value as property becomes lessened once her virginity is lost. As illustrated by the testing of daughters in Breath, Eyes, Memory, Haitian women are preoccupied with purity in order to provide men with honorable wives. If a man determines his new bride is not a virgin, he has the right to reverse the marriage and send the “damaged goods” back to her family (“Junta” 81). In her book, Haiti, History and the Gods, Joan Dayan claims that Haitian women are primarily “vessels for the taxonomic vocations of white male supremacy” who are “alternatively etherealized and brutalized, represented as angels, virgins, furies, or wenches.” She says that Haiti is a “world where purity [is] never simply metaphysical but physical as well, where a body trait (whiteness or blackness) [becomes] spiritual truth (purity or impurity, angel or demon) …” (“Haiti” 267). Dayan’s statement makes an important assessment, which is that male dominance in Haiti is reinforced through spiritual conventions.
Religion in Haiti is a strange breed of Catholicism and Voudou. In his article, “Politics and Religion in Haiti,” David Nicholis explains that Roman Catholicism was the official religion of the French colony of Saint-Dominigue, but that in the colonial period, it failed to convert large numbers of the African slaves. The white colonials thought of the slaves’ religious customs as little more than “superstition,” and ignored the religious and political dimension of Voudou. Although the Africans adhered to the ideology they brought with them, they were still willing to incorporate much of Christianity into their religion. Governed by one god and a plethora of loas, or spirits, Voudou made room for the inclusion of yet another deity, the Christian God (Nicholis 401-402). The church, Nicholis writes, has been generally tolerant of the cult, hoping to one day wean people away from Voudou beliefs and practices. However, the outcome of this tolerance is more a hybridization of the two religions (Nicholis 404). As colonials introduced elements of Christianity, the slaves adopted saints as loas, particularly relating to the story of the Virgin Mary. However, they made use of these Christian symbols by transfiguring them into their own African terms (“Politics” 525). As Elizabeth McAlister states in her book, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora, “To a significant degree, both Voudou and Catholicism have incorporated the other into its philosophies and practices. Each tradition is constitutive and revealing of the other” (123).
Of the colonials’ perception of Voudou as mere “superstition,” Nicholis writes, “The Haitian … is neither more nor less superstitious than people of other nationalities; he conserves his folk traditions in the symbols and in the liturgy of his folk religion” (404). The cult, he argues, has fulfilled an important social function by preserving Haitian tradition among the masses. This tradition not only gives collective strength to the community, but “preserve[s] the histories ignored, denigrated, or exoticized by the standard, ‘imperial’ histories” (“Erzulie” 5). The early leaders of Haiti were critical of the practice of Voudou, and encouraged the adherence to Christianity so that other countries would see Haiti as an independent and respectable nation. Toussaint Louverture banned dancing and outlawed religious and social gatherings at night, when Voudou rituals generally took place. Jean-Jacques Dessalines also forbade dancing, and occasionally punished Voudou worshippers with death. Henri Christophe, too, suppressed Voudou and attempted to reintroduce Christianity into the country. It wasn’t until the reign of Francois Duvalier (1957-1971) and his son Jean-Claude (1971-1986) that Voudou was formally recognized and, to some extent, accepted. Insisting that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church should no longer be foreign-dominated, the former Duvalier used folklore symbolism associated with Voudou to enhance his prestige among the masses and to subvert the colonial domination of the church (Nicholis 414). The Duvalier regime has the most political impact on the women in Breath, Eyes, Memory. With the use of religion, Papa Doc and Baby Doc turned Haiti into a terrorist state that permitted – and even mandated – the abuse of its women.
In her article, “Challenging Internal Colonialism: Edwidge Danticat’s Feminist Emancipatory Enterprise,” Newtona Johnson cites Ngugi wa Thiongo’s definition of “decolonizing the mind”:
[Colonialism’s] most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic or political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others (qtd. in Johnson 152).
Rey claims that “notions of suffering as redemptive, the legitimization of militaristic domination, and the socialization of Haitian women to accept, if not to aspire to, submissive forms of motherhood are three central factors in the development and perpetuation of Haiti’s rape culture” (“Junta” 89). He also points out that throughout Haitian history, military regimes have consistently benefited from a relationship with the Catholic Church. This relationship has allowed military leaders to impose “images of control, authority, and maleness” onto Haitian women, particularly through the positioning of God as the ultimate father. This tradition “sacralizes domination,” placing God first, men second, and women subjugated to both (“Junta” 89-90). Women are encouraged to remain passive and submissive through this ideology. Rey also claims that women who practice Voudou “fall most often victim to sexual violence in comparison with Catholics, Protestants, and women claiming no religious affiliation” (“Junta” 93). Since the Duvalier regimes supported the practice of Voudou, it is not surprising that Haitian women became the target of state-sponsored sexual abuse. Despite the comforting, healing notions it purports to offer, religion in Haiti has often served as a powerful tool for propagating patriarchy.
The “rape culture” of Haiti has basically existed since its colonization, and has been especially predominant in periods of political upheaval. Since the country’s inception, new regimes have implemented the sexual abuse against women associated with the former power (“Junta” 82). Dessalines authorized his troops’ rape and slaughter of French women; Christophe’s troops were responsible for a massacre of mulattos that was accompanied by a mass rape of mulatto women; Conquest rapes between black peasants and state authorities took place during the regime of President Sylvian Salnave; and during the first American occupation of Haiti, Marines were responsible for the drunken rapes of local Haitian women (“Junta” 83). In Breath, Eyes, Memory, the Caco name symbolically links the women to the Cacos, the peasant guerillas that maintained armed resistance against the Marines (Francis 77).
The most intensive period of militaristic abuse against women took place during the Duvalier regime. According to Rey, “there is ample evidence that Francois Duvalier employed sexual violence and humiliation both as a weapon of intimidation against his political opposition … and as a part of his agenda to create a black elite to counter the long-standing dominance of Haiti’s mulatto elite” (“Junta” 84). Under this regime, women emerged as a distinct category subject to surveillance, discipline and punishment. Yet, as Francis explains, “their narratives of sexual violations were rendered invisible as the state exercised its power to obscure violations against women by dismissing their testimonies as nonsensical or inconsequential to the political life of the Haitian society” (79). The Duvalier administration was responsible for employing and enforcing gender-specific violence on a wider scale than ever before in Haitian history. Prior to Papa Doc’s reign, patriarchal codes defined children, women, and the elderly as “political innocents,” with their status as dependents. As such, women were exempt from state violence. Duvalier’s administration, however, ushered in a new definition for women: “enemies of the state.” Under this system, “when women voiced their political opinions in support of women’s rights or the opposition party, they were defined as ‘subversive, unpatriotic and unnatural’ … [and] were deserving of punishment, which often took the form of sexual torture” (Francis 78).
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat illuminates a culture that had become infiltrated by the violent and bloody Tonton Macoutes, the Duvalier personal security force. This group infiltrated “the press, business, voodoo temples, labor unions, and especially the army,” bearing guns “as an ever-mounting body count attested.” According to Paul Farmer in The Uses of Haiti, “the best way of staying alive in Haiti was to have a powerful macoute as guardian angel” (qtd. in Johnson 153). In Danticat’s novel, Sophie’s mother, Martine, was raped and impregnated by a member of the Tonton Macoutes. She suffers from recurring nightmares, unable to escape her unspeakable past. According to Sophie, in Haiti, “nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms” (Danticat 234). These nightmares manifest themselves in the form of stories, like the tale about the woman who has blood pouring out of her skin, so she asks the Voudoun loa of love, Erzulie, to change her into a butterfly so she will never bleed again. Ironically, even though butterflies do not suffer as women do, they don't live very long lives. Martine takes her own life, becoming Sophie's butterfly, and exchanging her womanly suffering for a shortened life span. Sophie addresses her frustration with Haitian patriarchy and female abuse by attacking the cane in the field where her mother was raped. By attacking the cane, she is battling against her mother's perpetrator, the state-enforced oppression of women in Haiti, and men in general.
The Caco women have internalized the patriarchal mindset in Haiti, an indication of the depth of thought control imposed by colonial forces. They are active participants in what Sophie calls a “virginity cult,” where mothers physically test the sexual integrity of their daughters (Danticat 154). At the helm of this cult is the Virgin Mary, who is regularly referred to throughout the text, signifying her importance to the Caco women. Sophie actually recites the Virgin Mother's Prayer as her mother tests her for the first time. Since Martine was raped and impregnated with Sophie, Sophie has a “Madonna image” of her mother. She finds it hard to imagine her mother sexually. Sophie begins an internal spiritual, political and sexual transformation by recognizing the trauma that testing brings to Haitian women. Tante Atie describes Haitian mothers' treatment of their daughters:
They train you to find a husband … They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee, to find out if you're peeing too loud. If you pee loud, it means you've got big spaces between your legs (Danticat 136-137).
Sophie refers to the testing as “humiliation” (Danticat 123). She also says that to her, “men were as mysterious … as white people” (Danticat 67). Most men get wrapped up in the violence of the culture or lose their sense of obligation to the family's honor, and therefore, are simply not around to support the women of Haiti. Still, the practice of testing is solely for the benefit of males, and the culture awards greater political advantage to them. For example, as illustrated in the novel, when a baby boy is born, a light shines outside of the birthing house. If a baby girl is born, the light is extinguished for the mother to sit alone in the darkness with her new daughter (Danticat 146). Additionally, Tante Atie says that the men in Haiti “insist that their women are virgins and have ten fingers” (Danticat 151). Ife tells Sophie that it was her duty to keep her daughters chaste until they were ready for marriage. A woman's purity would directly reflect the honor of her husband. Sophie tells the story of a man who chose a virgin to marry, and on their wedding night, cuts her to make her bleed in order to defend his honor. The woman dies and the man parades around showing off sheets stained with her blood (Danticat 155).
Danticat exposes this internalization of patriarchy through a number of spiritual images that outwardly offer women peace and security, but inwardly bind them to the system that dominates them. During Sophie’s testing, Martine tells her that they “could be like Marassas,” spiritual twins in the Voudou religion (Danticat 85). According to Miriam J.A. Chancey, “Danticat uses the symbol of the marassa … to highlight the divisions that are created between two women who have been brought up to deny their sexuality as well as each other,” but that “the image of her mother as her marassa only serves to terrorize Sophie and alienate her from her identity, which becomes both sexualized and demonized in its association (by the mother) with Voudou” (120-124).
The Caco women’s devotion to the Virgin Mary stems from an association with the Voudou loa of love, Erzulie, who is referred to just as much within Danticat’s novel. Identifications and descriptions of Erzulie are many. To some, she is Venus, to others, the Virgin Mary herself. She is both a saint and the devil incarnate. She typically appears in one of three emanations – “as Erzulie-Freda, the lady of luxury and love; as Erzulie-Dantor, the black woman of passion identified in Catholic chromolithographs with the Mater Salvatoris, her heart pierced with a daggar; and as Erzulie-ge-rouge, the red-eyed militant of fury and vengeance.” Though a woman, she oscillates between masculine and feminine gender roles, taking on a “garb of feminity – and even speaks excellent French – in order to confound and discard the culturally defined roles of men and women” (“Erzulie” 6). Especially empowering for Haitian women, most accounts Erzulie pertain to her treatment of men and how they must serve her. Servants of Erzulie can, at least metaphysically, experience an escape from colonialism and the suffocating patriarchy it employs. Embedded in Erzulie’s image are “all the uses, pleasures and violations of women in Haiti” throughout history (“Erzulie” 16).
Still, the most binding aspect of Haiti’s rape culture is the widespread devotion to the Virgin Mary. Due to her symbiotic relationship with Erzulie, Haitians easily assimilated her story into their own religious ideology. However, “Orthodox Mariology, which depicts the Virgin Mary as a model of submission and obedience, has come under attack by many feminists as one of the linchpins of Christian – especially Catholic Christian – patriarchy.” Rey argues that “the traditional images and theology of Mary carry psychological messages which are patriarchal and destructive to women’s self-development.” He cites Mary Daly, who actually identifies the Virgin Mary as the original rape victim, “a reminder to women of their destiny to be raped, for in the patriarchal system, a virgin is a future rape victim” (“Junta” 91). Daly’s assessment is in reference to the Virgin’s spiritual Annunciation: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). She completely submits her body to the will of God, setting an example for passivity amongst righteous women. Because she was a mortal woman, she is not considered a distant, ethereal goddess, but a sister and mother embroiled in the struggles of womankind. Therefore, she becomes a powerful religious symbol for rape survivors in Haiti.
In her article, “Mary and Femininity: A Psychological Critique,” Patricia A. Harrington addresses the mentality behind feminine passivity, like exhibited by the Virgin Mary. She says that faith is defined as “a feminine attitude of passive receptivity to a loving father, and is most highly exemplified in a young woman consenting to conceive that father’s son. For someone to identify with Mary means, in psychological terms, that she would take up a passive attitude toward a father figure” (213). It follows, then, that servitors of the Virgin Mary should allow themselves to be both politically and sexually passive to male authorities. In many patriarchal societies, the Virgin Mary serves as a model for the femininity that all women are expected to exhibit. Harrington supports Rosemary Ruether’s argument that “the patriarchal split between activity and passivity along hierarchical sexist lines has resulted in the association of Mary with passivity, to the detriment of women.” She adds that “Mary cannot be a liberating symbol for women as long as [she] preserves this meaning of ‘femininity’ that is the complementary underside of masculine domination” (Harrington 213-214). A confusing duality exists within this construct of virgin mother. Women are expected to remain chaste but fill the role of a maternal figure. Despite the colonial projection of the Virgin Mary and its insistence on women’s purity, Haitian tradition tells women that it is not good to be a virgin, no matter what the priests, nuns, or prospective partners claim. One of the most feared spirits in Voudou culture is the djablesse. The djablesse is the ghost of a virgin having died before the opportunity to marry. She wanders the forests and cities, “condemned to walk for a number of years for the sin of having died a virgin.” According to Dayan, “If you believe in the Church, then you must remain chaste until marriage, but if you listen to the gods, then you must be physically possessed in order to rest in peace” (“Erzulie” 26).
Despite religious customs or conventions, Sophie ends the practice of testing by taking her own virginity with a pestle. Even though she does not participate in sexual relations with a man, she dismantles her chastity, breaking her bond to the Virgin Mary. Eventually, she recognizes that the individual agonies of the Caco women were “links in a long chain” of patriarchal abuse (Danticat 203). It is important to note that in addition to joining a sexual phobia group to deal with her trauma, Sophie also visits a therapist, who is an initiated Santeria priestess. Rey claims that “in Haiti, victims of politically motivated sexual assault have additional reasons for steering clear of secular authorities” and that “like rape survivors elsewhere, they are likely to be reluctant to trust male counselors.” Voudou priestesses and other women of traditional healing, who already serve as secondary health care providers for the majority of Haitian people, generally offer the best avenues of recovery for rape victims (“Junta” 97). The fact that a religious woman offers Sophie an avenue to heal herself indicates that challenging the trauma caused by testing is not blasphemous. Once Sophie learns that her mother is pregnant out of wedlock, the Madonna image is shattered. After Martine kills herself, Sophie dresses her for her funeral from head to toe in bright red, calling her a “Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them” (Danticat 227). Sophie abandons her Virgin Mary mentality for one that puts women in control. No longer will she allow spiritual conventions to control her sexuality.
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat pulls back the veil on a society that has repressed the history of sexual abuse amongst its women. She illustrates how women oppressed by patriarchy internalize the political and gendered weaponry utilized by men in a “rape culture.” This patriarchal structure depends primarily on religious images to distort the value of women and to inscribe specific gender roles upon them.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.
Dayan, Joan. “Erzulie: A Women’s History of Haiti.” Research in African Literatures 25.2 (1994): 5-31. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History and the Gods. Berkely: University of California Press, 1995. Print.
Chancy, Myrian J. A. Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels By Haitian Women. New Jersey: Rutgers, 1970. Print.
Francis, Donette A. “’Silences Too Horrific to Disturb’: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Research in African Literatures 35.2 (2004): 75-90. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
Harrington, Patricia A. “Mary and Femininity: A Psychological Critique.” Journal of Religion and Health 23.3 (1984): 204-217. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
Johnson, Newtona. “Challenging Internal Colonialism: Edwidge Danticat’s Feminist Emancipatory Enterprise.” Obsidian III Literature in the African Diaspora 6.2, 7.1 (2005-2006): 147-166. Print.
McAlister, Elizabeth. Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Print.
Nicholis, David. “Politics and Religion in Haiti.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 3.3 (1970): 400-414. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
Rey, Terry. “Junta, Rape, and Religion in Haiti, 1993-1994.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 15.2 (1999): 73-100. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
Rey, Terry. “The Politics of Patron Sainthood in Haiti: 500 Years of Iconic Struggle.” The Catholic Historical Review 88.3 (2002): 519-545. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.
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