Discourse in Daughters based on Bakhtin’s theory

7/27/2019 Discourse in Daughters based on Bakhtin’s theory

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Mar. 2009, Volume 7, No.3 (Serial No.66) US-China Foreign Language, ISSN 1539-8080, USA

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Discourse in Daughters based on Bakhtin’s theory

LIU Hong-xiao (College of Foreign Languages, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin 300387, China)

Abstract: Paule Marshall is now acclaimed an important writer in contemporary black literature, though long

neglected in scholarly literary circles. Her works delineate the emotional growth and especially in her fourth novel

Daughters the self-consciousness of independence of black women who have discovered and accepted their heritage

from which the author goes out to seek back the equal and cooperative relationship between the black men and

women ever supporting their resistance to oppressions to promote the development of the black community. In light

of Bakhtin’s theory, this thesis expounds discourse from double direct and metaphor to explore the protagonist Ursa’s

development of consciousness of independence from the influence of her parents, her boyfriend and other black women and further examines the alienated relations between the black men and women.

Key words: Paule Marshall; Daughters; Bakhtin’s theory; discourse

1. Introduction

Among the foremost female West Indian American writers today, Paule Marshall’s fourth novel Daughters

(1991) has drawn only modest analytical studies. In the Pettis and Baer interviews prior to the novel’s publication,

Marshall points out the themes in her novel Daughters of seduction, dependency, and dominance and the struggle for

liberation from domination. The Dance and Graulich/Sisco interviews, conducted soon after the novel’s publication,

concern a sketchy overview of the novel’s structure and its major characters and conflicts and an observation

concerning the role of the references to Afro-American and Caribbean history and cultural traditions. In Bernhard

Melchior’s “Re/Visioning” the self away from home: Autobiographical and cross-cultural dimensions in the works of

Paule Marshall published in 1998, the narrative’s cross-cultural design and the contexts of the protagonist Ursa’s

cross-cultural existence in two worlds are expounded.

The novel intertwines the culture of African Americans in the United States and in the West Indies, deftly

shifting back and forth between New York City, home of Ursa Beatrice Mackenzie, a Black Diaspora in the Midland,

and the Caribbean island Triunion, Ursa’s birthplace and home of her father, a political reformer known simply as the

PM, and her American-born mother Estelle. When the story opens, Ursa has just had an abortion and is about to end

a stagnant relationship with her long-time boyfriend. She is recalled to Triunion by her mother Estelle in an attempt

to deter the PM from performing the scheme at the cost of community’s interest, resulting in his failure in election.

With numerous complexes, engaging portraits of the people of Triunion, Marshall employs in search of personal

wholeness and spiritual sustenance the basic cross-cultural constellation narrative framework through metaphoric

discourse and discourse by questioning quarrelling and debating. Since her independent discourse finally establishes

through clashes with other character’s discourse, each of which comprises one ingredient of the author’s, discourse in

Daughters echoes in Bakhtin’s narrative theory.

LIU Hong-xiao, associate professor of College of Foreign Languages, Tianjin Polytechnic University; research field: American

literature.




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2. Double-voiced discourse

Paule Marshall utilizes a polyphonic method to incorporate multiple and independent consciousnesses into the

text as a key artistic device, and double-directed discourse to subvert the monologic point of view of hegemonic

thought, language and culture. In Gardiner’s words,

Monologism, a concept that was anticipated in such earlier notions as “theoreticism” and “epistemologism”, describes a

condition wherein the matrix of ideological values, signifying practices, and creative impulses that constitute the living

reality of language are subordinated to the hegemony of a single, unified consciousness or perspective (Gardine, 2003, p.

XX)

According to Bakhtin (1984, p. 199), double-voiced discourse is discourse with an orientation towards someone

else’s discourse classified into three types: unidirectional double-voiced discourse, vari-directional double-voiced

discourse, and the active type (reflected discourse of another). The first type consists of such elements as stylization,

narrator’s narration, unobjectified discourse of a character that carries out (in part) the author’s intentions, and

Ich-Erzahlung. When objectification is reduced, these tend toward a fusion of voices, i.e., toward direct, unmediated

discourse, as an expression of the speaker’s ultimate semantic authority. The second is parodistic with all its nuances,

narration, and Ich-Erzahlung. A character’s discourse is parodically represented and someone else’s word transmitted

with a shift in accent. When objectification is reduced and the other’s idea activated, these become internally

dialogized and tend to disintegrate into two voices. The third is hidden internal polemic in any discourse with a

sideward glance at someone else’s word, a rejoinder of a dialogue and hidden dialogue. The other discourse exerts

influence from without diverse forms of interrelationship with another’s discourse are possible here, as well as

various degrees of deforming influence exerted by one discourse on the other.

Bakhtin’s interpretation on the interrelationship of the aforementioned types is flexible. In his words,

A concrete discourse may belong simultaneously to different varieties and even types. Moreover, interrelationships with

another person’s discourse in a concrete living context are of a dynamic and not a static character: the interrelationship of

voices in discourse may change drastically, unidirectional words may turn into vari-directional ones, internal dialogization

may become stronger or weaker, a passive type may be activized, and so forth. (1984, p. 199)

Discourse finds its way in a two-fold direction in artistic-speech phenomena: stylization, parody and dialogue. It

is directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and toward another’s discourse,

toward someone else’s speech (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 185). Stylization possesses in direct and unmediated object-oriented

discourse, a direct and unmediated intentionality expresses an ultimate semantic authority, and also makes its object

represented objectified discourse—the direct speech of a character. Within the limits of a single context, the direct

speech of a character conveys two speech centers and two speech unities: the unity of the author’s utterance and that

of the character’s. But the latter observes only a certain distance and perspective and serves as an element to beincorporated into the former as one of its components. Stylization forces another person’s referential intention to

serve as its new intentions. For one instance, PM’s claim on his marriage that he “went out and found (his wife) in

America” is only an imitation of his mother’s conventional values on material wealth under then colonial dominant.

His unconditional imitation predetermines the material pursuit in their marriage and later in his political career. For

another, Viney’s purchase of the old brown house in the black neighborhood, a copy of her previous generation’s

dream. Ursa’s disapproval foreshadows the disillusionment of her pursuit. Here the protagonist Ursa’s discourse is

treated precisely as someone else’s discourse, as an object of the authorial understanding and not from the point of

view of its own referential intention. The point to which she perceives may well in the money waste Viney invests.




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The author’s discourse, however, is treated stylistically as discourse directed toward its own straightforward

referential meaning. Authorial discourse is characteristic for a specific person, a specific social position, or a specific

artistic manner.

Bakhtin points out that “in contrast to stylization parody introduces into that discourse a semantic intention that

is directly opposed to the original one” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 193). No fusion of voices possible as in stylization, the

voices in parody are not only isolated from one another, separated by a distance, but are hostilely opposed. The

perceptibility of the other’s discourse must be particularly sharp and clearly marked. “Likewise, the author’s

intentions must be more individualized and filled with specific content” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 193). Estelle’s vision of

her marriage is a case in point. Ironically, she esteems the marriage as the incarnation of the vision and sacrifice of

Congo Jane and Will Cudjoe. Eventually, the purpose that he “went and found (her) in America” is not for

independence of the Triunion people but for his material wealth and power.

In a hidden polemic the author’s discourse is directed toward its own referential object, as is any other discourse.

A polemic blow is indirectly struck at the other’s discourse on the same theme, at the other’s statement about the

same object. The other words are treated antagonistically, and this antagonism determines the author’s discourse.Viney, sister/friend of Ursa, who is the godmother of the former’s son, keeps the most intimate relationship between

them. The former seems in every way the latter admires but the latter approves none: the different taste for scarf,

Ursa’s disapproval of buying that old brown house, her anxiety about his son’s education, and dissent from her on

her relationship with Lowell, as represented in the end:

Viney speaking of Lowel in this strange way, without her customary distain and the lip. She had stood over by the door,

her attaché case at her side, dressed in the killer clothes she wore to work — another Congo Jane who loved pretty

things — had stood there pleading Lowell’s cause. (Marshall, 1992, pp. 381-382)

Double-voiced discourse, as Bakhtin asserts, inevitably arises under conditions of dialogic interaction, that is, under

conditions making possible an authentic life for the word. (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 184)

The public and private spheres of discourse of Black women’s lives inform our struggle for self-definition and personalrespect in relation to the complexities of American life and culture. (Davis, 2002, p. 36)

3. Metaphoric discourse

Metaphor, based on condensation, and multidimensional images for their referents, delights in defining

similarity out of contraries producing the distancing necessary for critical scrutiny (Willis, 1990, pp. 20-21).

Discourse provides not only a space for experiencing and remembering, but also repudiating the myths and stereotypes

of Black women’s existence while recording our historical contributions on the contours of American life (Davis, 2002, p.

36).

The narrative concerning the statue of Will Cudjoe and Congo Jane serves as one metaphoric discourse. As an

enslaved couple spurning bondage to become co leaders, coconspirators, lovers, consorts, and friends, their

partnership, on the one hand, exemplifies the perfect male-female relationship, to illuminate the search for

independence, equality, and selfhood undertaken by many African American women. Furthermore, they

metaphorically incarnate the value of community and of Triunion’s historical resistance. On the other hand, the statue

is deliberately set up in a remote, isolated mountain area, intended to avoid offending the white investors. What’s

worse, Ursa’s senior thesis outline is rejected for the praising theme of the couple Will Cudjoe and Congo Jane by

her white tutor whom she thought to have liberal spirit.

Marshall employs the West Indian legend of Congo Jane and Will Cudjoe as the resistance that is the legacy of




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descendants of Africans in the Caribbean to trace the cooperative political ventures of Estella and Primus and aliened

relationship between the black male and female. Estella initially views her marriage to Primus as a union of romance

and politics as an incarnation of Congo Jane and Will Cudjoe. Not a born native and socially aliened, she remains

isolated on the island despite her supportive involvement in Primus’s social and political affairs and some recognition

from the local population for her practical engagement. The recurrent miscarriages and his problematic affairs with

Astral prior to Ursa’s birth put a strain on their relationship. The airport episode portrays Estella’s resistance and

struggle against the loss of her identity in both social and political situations and Primus’s dominance in their

relationship. Though in interdependent relationship in both private and public issues, Estella never succeeds in

influencing Primus except Ursa’s education. For one instance, she protests against being instrumentalized for the

projects of P and D Board. For another, he expresses his guilty feeling when hurting her and apologizes for it, but

does not admit to his affairs with Astral nor relinquish his sexual option.

Estella challenges his patronage in several unsuccessful attempts. She is reluctant to attend the reception and

argues over the P and D Board, resulting in failing to change his mind and she gives in. After another attempt to

attack the corrupt remnants of his political activity at the reception and outburst the pains in their marriage outsidethe building, Estella chooses not to fight in public. On the other hand, she keeps denouncing his collaboration with

the P and D Board and exerts pressure over the locality of his resort scheme at home. All the aforementioned protests

lead to the climactic act of subverting his dominance in election in the collaboration with her daughter.

Education schemed by her mother Estelle, Ursa is, on the one hand, imbued deeply with Africana consciousness

by her hair cropped into Afro style and the experience of being taken to pay homage to statues of Will Cudjoe and

Congo Jane in her childhood. On the other hand, American consciousness as well is developed by her education in

Connecticut and living with her maternal parents there and later alone in New York. Understanding of the two worlds

leads to her ultimate reconciliation with Astral and to the returning of the spirit of the community.

Abortions undertaken by Astral Dolores Forde, Estelle and Ursa are established as the other metaphoric

discourse, thematically signifying ruptured relationships. Marshall reinforces the significance of the discourse on

procreation by the remake of Ursa’s visit to the abortion clinic for juxtaposing the narrative’s two worlds in Tiunion

and American urban ghettoes. The three crucial women, all linked to Primus Mackenzie, the dominant polestar, go

out to voice their resistance to the oppression in gender, race and class.

Astral Forde, Primus Machenzie’s lover, has an unequal and one-way dependent relationship with him, whose

abortion, clinically induced but crudely performed, is depicted in several kinds of metaphoric discourse. Her abortion

is a parody of Ursa’s visit to the abortion clinic in the narrative first appears at the beginning of Book II and a

metaphor of the failure of White values in Africana community to reveal the oppression of class, gender and race. A

smart and pretty but orphaned country girl, Astral has various lovers before Primus, all helping her advance in the

work place for the compensation with her body. Her forced abortion suggests her incapability of getting rid of thedominance and violence of exploitation by the oppressive hierarchies by producing silence, division and invisibility.

Her miserable feeling as if the tool of extraction were left inside her body alludes to an instrument she is degraded by

the exploiters for the ruptured relationship. Her abortion, resulting from her date-rape by a boy at a dance paralleled

with the rape of the mare in Mackenzie yard and a servant image after Ursa’s birth in the public comprises the

resistance discourse to expose the inhumanity of the classical, sexual and racial oppression.

Her experience suggests that little or no opportunity for woman’s financial autonomy offers itself except

through the intercession of a man, who then expects sexual favors (Hunter, 2008 , p. 255). Intrigued by common

origin and her beauty and business competence, the relationship between her and Primus is characterized as a perfect




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match both sexually and culturally before the birth of his daughter Ursa. After that, she is degraded as an instrument

and forced into the role of servant and claque (Marshall, 1992, p. 208).

Astral, from economically and culturally deprived Triunion, is not only “the emblematic of the wasted potential

of poor island women exploited by gender and class” as Joyce Pettis claims, but culturally of the victim of power and

money centered American White values (Hunter, 2008, p. 255).

On the contrary to Astral, Ursa’s humanly performed abortion and received by a Caribbean receptionist at the

beginning imbues her with a feeling of power from black community. The March wind has already cut through the

fleece lining of her shearling coat and close in a vise around her head, yet she feels well enough, game enough to

walk the forty-odd blocks to her apartment on West 101st Street (Marshall, 1992, p. 5). She repeatedly mentions her

illusion that the abortion is undone, implying her hesitation to admit to her independence from people around her,

among whom her self-isolation raises strong repercussions. She keeps her abortion a secret from and worries her

intimate friend Viney. “Why have you got this machine on all the time? Why won’t you call me back? Something’s

happened… You know how I worr” (Marshall, 1992, p. 7). She feels tight link toward her people and perceives that

she is mature enough to be independent. “Finished, she inspects herself. Hardly a stain. Her third trip since coming inand still hardly a stain” (Marshall, 1992, p. 16). In her stream of consciousness, she seems to hear Celestine’s voice

of blame. “You should have had it, and sent it down for me to rise” (Marshall, 1992, p. 18). She even keeps her

boyfriend Lowell unknown of her fetus’s being aborted. Refusing to answer Lowell’s call, her inner voice responds:

“Go away. Said almost gently. The voice inside her is almost gentle. She’s long ceased being annoyed by Lowell’s

ritual with the phone. And by all his other irritating little rituals and habits” (Marshall, 1992, p. 19). In the end, she

gets the feeling of emptiness and loss. “Her abortion encodes her loss, rejection and disappointment, both in the

intimate relationships and in broader contexts” (Hunter, 2008, p. 255). She gets rid of her boyfriend Carruther’s

annoying diatribe about his work and her universalized disillusionment with her father’s static politics, and she

switches work from a higher position to a lower one for her people. Her abortion reveals that she finally gains her

consciousness of independence through her revelation of the metaphorical abortive completion. Ursa’s betrayal act

against her father in his election leads to her emotional liberation and incarnates the returning of the spirit of

community.

Estelle, Primus Machenzie’s wife, unlike Astral’s clinical and crude induction, naturally aborts several of her

own fetuses, which is metaphorically depicted as effect of Primus’s betrayal of their communal principles both their

family and the Black community. Her abortion “portends her gradual disenchantment with her husband and the

instability of political affairs on the island” (Hunter, 2008, p. 255).

Estelle and Ursa finally betray the dominant discourse they can claim for themselves. Each demonstrates an

Africana value, the interconnectedness of personal and community emancipation in spirit.

The metaphoric abortions of the three women best express the tensions arising out of more complicated domination. Despite the differences they all break up with their dominants in one way or the other. Estella,

cherishing no hope any longer for her husband in political ideal, sustains her pursuit for the Triunion people by

subverting her husband and supporting the young successor. Astral, for the disillusionment with Primus Machenzie

and the pursuit of material wealth, retires from the residence Primus Mechenize provides to her former room and

makes reconciliation with Ursa. Ursa is determined to cut off the relationship with her boyfriend, discarding her

parents’ marriage model and pursues her own ideal by resuming her thesis on the praising theme of Congo Jane and

Will Cudjoe and working for her people. “Discourse served to center the stories of black women brings to the fore

the relation between discourse and resistance” (Davis, 2002, p. 35).




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4. The relation between discourse and resistance

Peter Erickson contends that Daughters is not only open-ended but also resists closure. He asserts that this

resistance built into the formal structure involves two ways to read the novel and “the two readings sit in uneasy

relation to each other: their combination is what gives the novel its special authority”. The two readings concern

female ties and relations between black men and black women. Here the paradox is that Ursa’s friend Viney, the

figure who most seems to prove the validity and self-sufficiency of female bonds, is the one leads the novel in the

other direction. On the one hand, Viney’s successful career and her capability of coping with life confirm the idea of

giving up on black men. “Her elaborate project to locate a man results in her supporting Willis Jenkins, the very

emblem of an unreliable black male, whom she eventually throws out of her apartment so that she can go it alone”

(Hunter, 2008, p. 244). However, Viney is compelled to take a new stand for two black men, a begging voice toward

the end of the novel. From the illegitimate but endangering arrest of her son, Robeson, Viney comes to accept and

yield to the vulnerability of black men in a white dominant society. Ursa’s self-conscious development of

independence comes through:

Viney speaking of Lowell in this strange new way, without her customary disdain and the lip. She had stood over by the

door, her attaché case at her side, dressed in the killer clothes she wore to work — another Congo Jane who loved pretty

things — had stood there pleading Lowell’s cause (Marshall, 1992, pp. 381-382).

Employing the conscious conflicts between Ursa and Viney, the author attaches the importance to the firmness

of Ursa in pursuing the harmonious relationship between black men and black women in social life.

5. Conclusion

In light of aforementioned analysis of Paule Marshall’s narrative features in Daughters on Bakhtin’s narrative

theory, this paper has illustrated the author’s artistic techniques from doubled-directed and metaphoric discourse.Ursa’s self-consciousness develops at crucial moments through the internal dialogue of discourse of each character.

She admires her mother Estelle’s perseverance in pursuit of her political ideal and her tolerance of Celestine’s share

with her the emotions of her husband and daughter but disapproves of her compromise with her husband’s love

affairs with Astral regardless of their marriage. Ursa perceives her sister/friend Viney is superficially a vanguard, but

actually adheres to past practices from her cohabiting with her boyfriend Willis for five years and she alone nurtures

her boy child. After a long period of emotional stasis with her boyfriend Lowell, Ursa comes to realize he marries his

job with the image of a keloid of a frown on his forehead just as Astral does with a stone face and Celestine with her

mourning clothes on all the time. In the form of double directed and metaphoric discourse, what counts is the striving

of the author’s artistic energies and visualization of the inner character. Each help Ursa see her family and Triunion

society from a new perspective. Thus the consciousnesses of the author, the reader and the textual meaning are

immune to the influence of social dominant relationship.

The two events of abortion and the legend of Jane and Will Cudjoe, both in metaphoric discourse, best illustrate

Ursa’s self-conscious development of independence. The inseparable image of the two slaves

revolutionaries to become coleaders, coconspirators, lovers, consorts, and friends, forms the basis of Ursa’s

exploring the harmonious relations between slave men and women, embody effective resistance. Their vision and

sacrifice represent the values and resistance of Triunion people and Ursa. The relationship between both sexes in

reality differs from what Ursa has expected to be mutually supportive and attached. Be in the States or in Triunion,




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the black daughters confronted with an alienated society, have not harmonious and integral life.

Marshall demonstrates the whole truth of her presented world while the protagonist experiences and senses

her unique one in the author’s design and it is true with any other character. Accordingly, the author keeps the

readers at a distance of artistic authenticity.

References:

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Caryl Emerson. (Ed. and Trans.). Manchester: Manchester University

Press.

Davis, Olga Idriss. 2002. Theorizing African American women’s discourse: The public and private spheres of experience. In:

Houston, Marsha & Olga Idriss Davis. (Eds.), Centering ourselves: African American feminist and womanist studies of

discourse. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc., 35-52.

Gardiner, Michael E. (Ed.). 2003. Sage masters of modern social thought: Mikhail Bakhtin (Vol. II). London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Hunter, Jeffrey W. 2008. Contemporary literary criticism (Vol. 253). Detroit: Gale/Cengage Learning.

Marshall, Paule. 1992. Daughters. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Melchior, Bernhard. 1998. “Re/Visioning” the self away from home: Autobiographical and cross-cultural dimensions in the works of

Paule Marshall. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH.

Willis, Susan. 1990. Specifying: Black women writing the American experience. London: Routledge.

(Edited by Tina, Max and Sunny)

Discourse in Daughters based on Bakhtin’s theory

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