Blossom and Marigold

Blossom

She upholds the diasporic experiences of a female black emigrant which is doubly painful due to the twofold struggle,to cope with the material and spiritual insecurities of exile and at the same time to fulfill the demands of family and work.In her fight against “Suffering” she refuses to be a silent and docile victim of a white man’s sexual abuse and also to be economically and emotionally exploited by a black husband.Being separated from her “homeland” and also from the white Canadian community this “Suffering” represents the “double-consciousness”(W.E.B Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folk).On one hand she has to escape from the gaze of her white “boss-man” who perceive her as a sex object and on the other she has to cope with her poverty-stricken life and also to fulfill her desire to get settled in a family life,like any other Trinidadian woman.W.E.B Du Bois states in The Souls Of Black Folk that such “double aims” result in the shattering of “courage and faith and deeds”.However,when Blossom faced this she resorted to her nativity and returned back to that forefather of Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River.This forefather who is Africa itself,connects with her through that mother language which had been long forgotten.This connection also imparts her some weapons of protest to fight.

Like Afua Cooper’s Negro Cemeteries Dionne Brand’s Blossom acknowledges and re-establishes native African culture,exhibiting her culture pride. “Obeah”,previously considered to be malignant is redefined here and used as a weapon of protest,much like in V.S Naipaul’s The Suffrage Of Elvira,transforming her from an ordinary voiceless Black emigrant to Oya,a warrior spirit and also a spirit of transition.Again,like in Afua Cooper’s Woman in Wail Brand has used dance to express repressed emotions and as Blossom presents “a new way of thinking/a new way of living”.

In her shift from a phase of resistance against exploitation to that of a self-assertion Blossom resembles the history of the “Black Atlantic” where she emerges out of her momentary identity crisis,blankness and hopelessness to “the new negro” (The New Negro,Alaine Locke).She raises her voice against enslavement and stereotyping,subverting the image of servility and inferiority.

Marigold, the other face of Blossom.

The “double-aims” of Blossom is also carried on in Marigold through Mr.Chetram.Though like Blossom he faces an identity crisis,unlike her Mr.Chetram could not hear a nativist call back from his “homeland”.His hyphenated identity pushed him into a “double-consciousness”(W.E.B Du Bois,The Souls of Black Folk) where he can not structure his life to normalcy as he feels estranged from everyone,even his wife and mother.While the warrior spirit of Oya within her made the female black self “blossom”,the “marigold” dreams of Mr.Chetram could not finally be”afloat” out of the “labyrinth”.While the former had fought for her emancipation,the latter always lied “to hold,to maintain serenity,accepting countless humiliations without rebelling,suppressing all aggression out of fear…”.However,it will not be right to say Chetram had no freedom et all as Jean-Paul Sartre states that freedom is the amount to make choices and not being able to avoid making choices and Chetram made the choice to surrender to “humiliations”.He was too preoccupied with “the look” of others (Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness) and the existential angst in him make him hugely conscious of what others feel for him or how they perceive him,compelling him to stand “alone in the staff room toilet”.In Being and Nothingness(chapter III),Sartre states that an escape from anguish is possible through action-oriented constructs such as visions and here Chetram’s dream of marigolds is his flee from a state of dystopia which do not lead him to any meaningful end.Instead he meets “failed dreams of completion” (Sartre) where all his efforts to transcend are doomed to “nothingness”.Though he rigourously tried to force order onto nothingness,ultimately his “whole existence”succumbs into a “bad faith”.Such experiences of recurring terror,loss and unsettlement result in discrepant temporalities which permanently eradicated “serenity” from Chetram’s life.He is forever entrapped in a life where freedom will never come,where nothing happens (as in George Lamming’s The Emigrants) except for some “futile gesture.”

Debanjana Nayek

PG I