White Spirit by Paule Constant (review)

156Women in French Studies Constant, Paule. White Spirit Trans. Betsy Wing. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Ppix-x;172. ISBN 0-8032-6441-0. $19.95. Colleagues interested in teaching original and thought-provoking texts about the French colonial period in English will welcome the translation of Paule Constant's novel White Spirit. Constant's tragic yet humorous depictions of the colonial situation have won significant critical acclaim, including the Prix Goncourt for Confidencepour confidence in 1998. White Spirit, as it is entitled in both French and English, is equally fascinating and Betsy Wing translates it superbly. White Spirit begins with a series of striking resemblances to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The tale begins in the west, where white Frenchman Victor answers a classified ad for a young man willing to work in the African branches of an import-export company. Victor wins himself a job and a place on The Will ofGod, a dilapidated ship that carries him to the unnamed colony and provides a foreboding first impression of what awaits him. A host of obstacles befall the ship's crew before they arrive at a disorganized banana plantation run by a psychotic French administrator. Victor is led gradually further into the heart of the colony and is ordered to staffthe general store. The goods that he is required to sell are useless surplus items from French markets but one product arouses the interest of the African consumers and becomes the catalyst for change in the plantation village's inhabitants. Rather than the white ivory that provided the drama of Conrad's novel, White Spirit, the brand name of a petroleum-based cleaner, provides the drama of this novel that takes its name. Lola, a half-white prostitute who aims to enter the acclaimed Sunset brothel, discovers that she is able to whiten her skin by applying the dangerous powder to it. Lola is spurred on by a twenty-year old book lent to her by the brothel's owner which teaches its readers that a woman is only beautiful, respected and socially acceptable if she is completely white. Lola thus daubs her entire body with White Spirit and, although she wins the Sunset's beauty contest as a result, she unleashes upon the villagers a thirst for the magic powder that leads to their destruction. The novel thus represents themes such as the danger of whiteness, colonial notions of cleanliness and purification, the colonizer's rush for financial reward at the expense of morality, and gendered experiences of colonialism. White Spirit offers many challenges to the translator, but Betsy Wing's text is a nuanced and thorough rendering of the novel. Wing has succeeded in recreating Constant's elusive writing style, which moves between short, abrupt sentences and long, sophisticated phrases as her narrative incorporates the various voices of its characters. The striking humor of Constant's writing, an essential element of her treatment of the apparently ridiculous colonial situation, is also apparent in Wing's version. The most difficult task for the translator of this novel is the choice of how to render a number of key words that appear in English in the original text. Constant used English for a series of important elements in the novel, beginning with the product that provides its title, white spirit. Constant's use of English, and particularly American English, recreates the way in which foreign languages were forced upon colonial subjects and Book Reviews157 reminds us of how language that arose from this process sounds odd or out of place to a native speaker. Wing chooses to keep these English phrases in English in her translation, whereas some might be tempted to translate them into French to maintain their striking effect upon the reader. Whilst the resulting text is less nuanced than the original, Wing's justification for this in her translator's note is very convincing; she argues that she chose to keep the phrases in English because they represent the postcolonial colonization of Africa by Western ideas and culture. Her choice renders a more accurate version of the text and hence is the most appropriate way of dealing with this obstacle. Furthermore, Wing...