M/othering the Nation: Women’s Bodies as Nationalist Trope in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

In Gender and Nation, Nira Yuval-Davis argues that constructions of nationhood usually involve specific notions of womanhood and manhood and masculinity and femininity as a way of determining gender roles (1). Addressing the nationalist or masculinist bias in gendering the nation, wherein women and women’s roles are relegated to the periphery, she remarks that it is “women who reproduce nations biologically, culturally and symbolically.” Yet, she concludes, they remain excluded or “ ‘hidden’ in the various theorizations of nationalist phenomena” (2). These theorizations describe a protracted list of dos and don’ts that consist of women’s exclusion from “practicing citizenship” and reduction to operating behind the scenes, as they thus reproduce the aphorism “children should be seen and not heard.” Through state mandates, these same prohibitions also require women to control their sexuality by espousing and practicing proper womanhood. Nationalism, as Tamara Mayer writes, functions as an approved language “through which sexual control and repression is justified and masculine prowess is expressed and exercised” (Mayer 1). Edwidge Danticat, in her debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, decodes this nationalist language that is, not surprisingly, articulated and dominated by men, and similar to the dominance they exercise in state institutions. Men assume the national stage as protectors and defenders of women and the state, and enforcers of state-regulated laws. It comes as no surprise then, as feminist theories of nationalism have drawn attention to this conflation, that nation and/or country is fundamentally constructed as feminine, a construction that deservedly requires being saved and protected. In other words, the nationalist language establishes what Myriam Chancy refers to as “the illusion that men have rights, which they exercise on behalf of themselves and their families, and that women are cared for . . . covered by legal rights extended to them as minors or wives” (27). In keeping with this theory, women are burdened with the task of maintaining the nation’s (read men’s) honor and integrity. As a result, they are accorded the title “mothers of the nation,” an assigned designation that surreptitiously further justifies controlling women’s sexuality.

In this article I demonstrate that despite making use of various state apparatuses, particularly conferral of the state title “mothers of the nation,” women are actually perceived and accordingly treated as second-class citizens. The discourse of nationalism that serves to define women and womanhood constructs them in the private, domestic sphere, while it designs the public, political arena to accommodate men and their nationalist pursuits. Drawing from theoretical analyses, including those of Nira Yuval-Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Deborah Gaitskell, and Elaine Unterhalter, among others, I reiterate and expand the point of view that women, who serve as complement and supplement to men, are also used to promote ethnic mobilization. Furthermore, policies are put in place to regulate women’s experiences (of motherhood) in defense of state interests. While I agree that some women are complicit in espousing the nationalist agenda, I nonetheless discuss that women in Danticat’s novel unwittingly adopt certain stereotypical roles. Nevertheless, these very women frame a counter-discourse by operating within the existing (patriarchal) structures of state violence, using their mutilated, abused bodies as weapons to resist and rebel against the nationalist agenda. These women are ever vigilant that this revised script refutes homogenous categorizations of women and mothers. In registering rebellion and resistance, these women celebrate difference and otherness while simultaneously enacting the “othering” of the nation.

In a close, analytical reading of Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, I demonstrate how women’s bodies undergo a form of dehumanization as they become subject to militaristic scrutiny by the nationalist regime over which men preside. Carolle Charles reminds us that “feminists in Latin America and the Caribbean have analyzed the direct impact of militarization and authoritarian regimes on the life of women” (138), and emphasizes that special attention was given to the ideology of motherhood and its possible impact upon women’s political lives. Moreover, militaristic scrutiny can take the extreme form of rape. Addressing male hegemony under the Duvalier dictatorship...