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A Question of Power

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A Question of Power

Close reading of the gender differences within Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

 

 

In Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, the narration is done through three generations of Cuban women. However, a male character named Jorge Del Pino has a strong influence on these women throughout his words and he is, in addition, the man of the family. His voice is a symbolized as a weapon in the image of the men in history books and the Revolutionary movement within Cuba. Although the men are less numerous and present than women in the story, it is outstanding to see that they have a stronger influence in terms of power. Women have the conducting line of the story’s plot but men, by a simple intervention, are able to earn in power when they speak or when they are mentioned in the story. That is why gender issues are felt when it is a question of power in the story. Thereby, the essay will focus on how the patriarchal dominance affects the representation of women in this postcolonial story. An author named Justin Edwards made an article on gender and a few examples from his work will allow to make connexions with some passages of Garcia’s work.

The patriarch over women in Dreaming in Cuban is symbolized by a flat character, Jorge Del Pino, whose intervention is decisive in Lourdes’ life. Even if men are less present than women in Dreaming in Cuban, Jorge has kept an influential discourse to say at a precise moment. He is already deceased when he confides himself in Lourdes who is able to interact with his ghost. Jorge is dead when he tells a shocking truth to his girl. His role of father has already an influential aspect but his approach symbolizes this patriarchal role of the men of the family. By saying “you haven’t begun to understand, Lourdes” (195) he is about to say something that she is not aware. He is about to drop a bomb, metaphorically, to touch her feelings and get her attention. By being “silent for a long time” (195), he takes the control of the situation and it foresees an upcoming shock that Lourdes is about to get. In Edwards’ article about gender it is said that “silence is used as a patriarchal weapon of control” (Edwards 103) and this silence symbolizes Jorge’s control in this situation with his daughter. Silence is associated to the terms of “weapon” and “control” that have a strong connotation of dominance. Jorge has the hold on both the situation and Lourdes. The fact that anyone speaks during this silence is because Lourdes is captivated by the revelation he is about to tell. The control enables Jorge to decide of the turn his declaration should take. That is why his revelation about Celia’s love for Lourdes and his advice of coming back to Cuba is followed by Lourdes. Besides, another declaration deserves to be mentioned. Indeed, Jorge’s desire, talking about Lourdes “to own you for myself. And you always be mine” (196) symbolizes this male ownership over women. The verb “own” and the pronoun “mine” has again a strong connotation of appropriation. Jorge wants his daughter for himself that is partly why he decided to send Celia in an asylum. The other reason is because she was in love with a Spaniard.

Lourdes’ rape symbolizes the inferiority of women over the power of men. The verbal attack she made when the military attacked her husband Rufino has had repercussions on her. Indeed, by feeling humiliated by this women, the militaries took their revenge because they are representatives of power within the country. People have to show them respect and they wanted to show their superiority by attacking Rufino. They wouldn’t be victims of a women so one of the two soldiers “placed the knife flat across her belly and raped her” (71). Speaking of Lourdes, this rape is a form of loss because she undergoes the consequences of her behaviour with the soldiers. The knife that the soldier uses to carve an inexplicable message in Lourdes’ belly is an obvious symbol of male power. This victimization of the female by this masculine power characterize Castro’s revolutionary movement. Therefore, that is true to say that in this case “women are usually the creatures of a male power fantasy” (Edwards 98). The transformation of women into “creatures” symbolizes the superiority of men in this example. Besides, this aspect of “fantasy” let the reader thinks that this is a kind of a game for the men. The soldiers’ grade speaks for them and let them do things they wouldn’t do if they were simple citizens.

According to Pilar, the historical events reflect inequality between race and they put women at a more inferior stage than men. History only remembers great masculine leaders whereas it should also remember other actors like women, for their suffering in the shadow of these men. She says she would remember other things in history, like “the time there was a freak hailstorm in the Congo and the women took it for a sign they should rule” (28) or “the life of prostitutes in Bombay” (28). She indirectly mentions black women to denounce that there are already not enough mentions of women in history books. Therefore, it creates a gap with what is known from history books. She says that “we only know about Charlemagne and Napoleon because they fought their way into posterity” (28). Their presence in books is due as a reward for the fights they made. People know them because they deserved it. The fact that men have power is a thing but but no mention of women shows that there is an opposition between both gender and race. Pilar shares her point of view and her voice joins a declaration made in Justin Edwards’ article. In this article it is said that “silence is used as a patriarchal weapon of control, voicing is self-defining, liberational, and cathartic in light of the fact that women are treated as second-class citizens” ( Edwards 103). If Pilar decided to stay silent, her voice would have never been heard. However, by giving her opinion it is “liberational” because it is better to say things than keep it for herself and it is also revealing of her personality. She speaks for the women’s cause because history do not show enough gratitude to them this is why Pilar makes the reader understand that women are unfairly considered as inferior to men.

Through the story of Dreaming in Cuban, women are the narrative voices who say the bottom of their thoughts and describe the characters’ life. However, amongst the density of information in the story, this is some short passages which make the difference and provide details on a bigger issue that touch the women in the story. This matter is the patriarchal influence that the reader discovers by giving a particular attention to the gender differences within the book.

 

 

Dawn of Madness

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Dawn of Madness

Close reading of page 75 and the 1st paragraph of page 76 of Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban

 

In Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, the reader discovers Felicia Del Pino as a crazy character by plunging in her thoughts. Throughout the passage, the third-person narrator does a character focalization on Felicia by setting out the situation she endures. Her hallucinations allow her to observe and listen things very distinctly. Despite her craziness, she demonstrates a clarity in her words regarding what she sees, hears and thinks. The essay will focus on page 75 from “Felicia del Pino doesn’t know” to “It is worse when she closes her eyes” in page 76. It will enable to discover her overdeveloped senses and her tangle of thoughts. Throughout the narrative voice’s expressions, figures of speech and lexical fields, the depiction of Felicia allows the readers to make an image of this woman’s deep imagination. In the description of Felicia in the beginning of the passage, the sudden increase of her sensorial abilities, as well as her thoughts makes the reader feeling small next to Felicia’s competence.

The intensification of sounds within Felicia’s head influences her sensitiveness to noises and damages her mind. Felicia does not know what happened to her, she “doesn’t know what brings on her delusions” (75). Her confusing situation gives to the “delusions” (75) a negative connotation. Theses hallucinations prompted an apparition of sounds that have a harmful effect to Felicia’s health. The multiplication of sounds is driving her crazy as perceived by the narrative voice saying that “they call to her all at once, grasping for parts of her” (75). Here again, the verb “grasp” (75) has also a negative connotation because it has a weigh on her brain. Each time the third-person narrator specifies that she hears another sound, it emphasizes the din and reinforces the mess in her head. When the narrator underlines that Felicia “can hear everything in this world and others, every sneeze and creak and breath in the heavens or the harbour or the gardenia tree down the block” (75) she mentions several noises from different places. The adverb “everything” (75) exaggerates the turn of this declaration and outlines this sentence as a hyperbole. Besides, small noises like a “sneeze” (75), a “creak” (75) and a “breath” (75) join the same lexical field of sounds and expose the extent of her craziness. Seeing that she hears them in “heavens” (75) and in the “harbour” (75) confirms that she is insane. The term “heavens” (75) symbolizes her mental state because she constantly seems to be in her own world.  Felicia gives the sensation that she is feeling oppressed by all the information coming to her mind.

Felicia’s sight is another sense that makes her feel both lucid and crazy. Her perception of the colours creates a poetic turn to the narrator’s declaration. The assonance “even the greens, her favourite shades of greens, flee the trees and assault her with luminosity” (75) seeks to make poetic this form of sentence. On the other hand, within this assonance, the metaphor “flee the trees” (75) displays the kind of images that are built in her head. It is meant to plunge Felicia in a madness by creating a character who sees weird things. Thereby, Felicia’s own representation of the colours has both a poetic and a crazy aspect in the extended metaphor from “the colours, too, escape their objects” (75) to “assault her with luminosity” (75). Another element that makes her an insane character is her objectification of the human being. Indeed, when Felicia looks outside “the people are paintings, outlined in black, their faced crushed and squarish” (75). She dehumanizes people because something is real only if she can touch it that is why the narrator says that “nothing is solid until she touches it” (75). This metaphor is used to say that Felicia only believes what is real, what she can touch.

Felicia’s thoughts are, at the same time, fragmented by her reason and her hallucinations. A metaphor is used to depict what is happening within Felicia’s head by saying that her “mind floods with thoughts” (76). Thereby, it creates an imagery to explain with water how full is her mind. She is in some way drowning herself in her thoughts, they are too numerous, especially because they are from “the past” (76), “the future” (76) and from “other people” (76). Besides, telling that Felicia’s mind is full of thoughts “from the past, from the future, other people’s thoughts” (76) is perceived as a hyperbole because it is exaggerated to say that she reached to know other people thoughts. She does not have any power to do that and in this example, her delusions took over her reason. Moreover, there is a second hyperbole in the same paragraph to describe Felicia’s tangle of thoughts since the narrative voice declares that “every idea seems to her connected to thousands of others” (76). Felicia overestimates her cognitive competence saying that “thousands” (76) of ideas seem connected to hers. The third-person narrator mentions a comparison that symbolizes her mental state, by saying “she jumps from one to another like a nervous circus horse” (76) speaking about her ideas. The adjective “nervous” (76) is used to compare Felicia’s state to a “nervous circus horse” (76). Therefore, this adjective takes a negative connotation which illustrates the damage that causes her hallucinations. However, some thoughts are real and the narrator did not forget to mention that. When it is related that “Things come back as symbol, bits of conversation, a snatch of an old church hymn” (76) it is an allusion to the time when Felicia used to go to church with her sister and her father. Besides, in the next paragraph Felicia mentions these memories, so it shows that there is still a part of lucidity in her thoughts that makes her struggle against her delusions.

Through a variety of figures of speech, this passage presents Felicia, a character who is flooded by her delusions but also lucid in her description of thoughts. The strong presence of technical features in this passage makes fascinating the reading of this book. The narrator’s monologue provides a distinct way to understand and imagine how messy are Felicia’s thoughts. Indeed, the reader discovers someone who is trapped by her two senses, that is the sight, the hearing as well as her thoughts.