John Mulcrone

Dr. Auge

Literary Criticism

18 October 2020

Postcolonial Analysis of Love Medicine

After reading Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, it is apparent that the story depicted in the

novel is one where the lasting effects and remnants of white oppression and dominance over

Native Americans and Native American culture are felt in almost every single aspect of life. The

novel shows these instruments of oppression largely through Catholicism and boarding schools.

At the same time, the novel does endorse a hybrid version of the Ojibwa identity, where the

characters of Lulu and Marie both embrace certain aspects of their Ojibwa culture while also

forgoing other aspects of that culture in favor of some assimilation into white culture.

The story “St. Marie” is one part of the novel where Catholicism is clearly identified as

an instrument of white oppression over Native Americans. Marie Lazarre wants nothing more

than to become a Catholic nun and join the convent nearby her home, which is located on a hill

high above Marie’s home. This is obviously purposeful, as the convent represents the societal

high ground that both whites and the Church sat on above the Ojibwa people. Marie is deeply

religious, and extremely disciplined in the way she practices. She knows she has Indian blood,

but she doesn’t have as much as many of the other children, and she believes that this will aid her

in her quest to become a nun. On page 43, Marie’s philosophy as a fourteen year old is outlined:
 “No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard. There was no use in trying to

ignore me any longer. I was going up there on the hill with the black robe

women. They were not any lighter than me. I was going up there to pray as

good as they could. Because I don’t have that much Indian blood. And they

never thought they’d have a girl from this reservation as a saint they’d have to

kneel to. But they’d have me. And I’d be carved in pure gold. With ruby lips.

And my toenails would be little pink ocean shells, which they would have to

stoop down off their high horse to kiss.”

Perhaps the most striking thing about that passage is the clarity with which Marie seems to

understand that her Indian blood is a problem, at least within the eyes of the white nuns. She

knows she’s already behind for reasons she cannot control. Also, the line that reads “which they

would have to stoop down off their high horse to kiss” just continues the trend already set by

Erdrich where the white nuns are elevated above the Ojibwa people to where they have to go

down in order to interact with them. However, the clearest instrument of oppression in this story

is obviously Sister Leopolda. Marie desperately wants to be accepted by Leopolda, but Leopolda

believes Marie to be inferior because of her Indian blood. It is also quickly revealed that this

convent is a convent where the nuns that are sent there are sent there because they have

misbehaved or been deemed unfit to serve in other convents. It is yet another example of white

oppression of the Ojibwa that the only nuns sent to serve the Ojibwa people are those that the

Church doesn’t want serving anywhere else.

Leopolda constantly reminds Marie that she has the devil inside of her, which is a thinly

veiled reference to her Indian blood. She convinces Marie that she can only be fully accepted
into the convent if the devil is fully driven out of her. The extent of the psychological torment

inflicted upon Marie by Leopolda is evident on page 53, where Erdrich writes:

Any sensible fool would have run back down the hill the minute Leopolda let

them up from under her heel. But I was snared in her black intelligence by then.

I could not think straight. I had prayed so hard I think I broke a cog in my mind.

I prayed while her foot squeezed my throat. While my skin burst. I prayed even

when I heard the wind come through, shrieking in the busted bird nests. I didn’t

stop when pure light fell, turning slowly behind my eyelids. God’s face. Even

that did not disrupt my continued praise. Words came. Words came from

nowhere and flooded my mind.”

Leopolda is essentially attempting to remove Marie’s Ojibwa heritage. This is a recurring theme

in the novel, where the white oppressor attempts to drive the Native American culture from he or

she who is being oppressed.

Marie is eventually able to recover much of the elements of her Ojibwa culture that was

taken from her throughout several points in the novel, but one of the most clear is in “Beads”,

where Erdrich added a second part to the story in a later revision of the novel. Marie is able to

forge a relationship with Margaret Kashpaw, or Rushes Bear, as she is referred to in this story.

Once enemies, they form a bond after Rushes Bear guides Marie through a difficult childbirth.

Marie’s newfound feelings towards Rushes Bear are outlined on page 101, where Erdrich writes:

“I never saw this woman the same way I had before that day. Before the birth of

the child, a son after all, Rushes Bear was a hot fire that I wanted to crush. After

that, things were different. I never saw her without knowing that she was my own
 mother, my own blood. What she did went beyond the frailer connections. More

than saving my life, she put the shape of it back in place. And even though her

wild moods descended again, and again, with more violence until she was lost in

those storms, sometimes for weeks, and even though sometimes she’d rise from

her place behind the chair and bolt for home, even though she was more trouble to

me than any child I ever had, I took care of the old woman every day of her life.

Because we shared the loneliness that was one shape.”

By connecting with Rushes Bear, Marie is able to gain some shared understanding of the plight

of Ojibwa women, and in turn, recover some of the Ojibwa culture that has been lost throughout

her life as a result of white instruments of oppression.

Boarding schools are another way that Erdrich shows the oppression exerted by whites

onto the Ojibwa people. In “The Island”, Lulu attempts to recover as much as she can of her

heritage that was so cruelly driven out of her through both her separation from her mother and

her time at a white boarding school. A crucial element of this story is Lulu’s desire to regain that

part of her heritage through her language and how that language was essentially taken from her

in her time at the boarding school. It is shown on page 68, at the very beginning of the story,

where Erdrich writes:

“Following my mother, I ran away from the government school. I ran away so

often that my dress was always the hot-orange shame dress and my furious

scrubbing thinned sidewalks the matrons forced me to wash. Punished and alone,

I made and tore down and remade all the dormitory beds. I lived by bells, orders,

flat voices, rough English. I missed the old language in my mother’s mouth.”
Lulu’s situation at the boarding school is one that shows just how vicious the cycle of oppression

is. She was put into this government school against her will and torn from her family and her

culture. In an unfamiliar place, alone, and with no support system, Lulu did what anybody with

their back against the wall would do; she acted out. She rebelled against the system that put her

in this horrific situation. In turn, that rebellion was not met with any sort of understanding or

assistance. That rebellion was used by her white oppressors as further justification for continued

and harsher oppression.

Lulu obviously longs for a return to her native culture, and in particular, her native

language. Lulu is able to recover some of this through her connections with both her Uncle

Nanapush and Moses Pillager. To Lulu, both her Uncle and Moses represent a return to

traditional Ojibwa culture. Her reunion with her Uncle Nanapush shows this, as Erdrich writes

on page 69:

“I ran to Nanapush, buried my face in the cloth of his rough shirt, and breathed

woodsmoke and dried ink, trapper’s musk and sun-heated dryness. I held him

close, around his hard waist. I held him near as I might a father, the pattern for all

other men. Climbing into the wagon behind him, I put my hand into the pocket of

his shirt where I knew he kept a string of tough black licorice.”

Her connection with Moses Pillager takes a bit longer to develop, but that is where she truly

seems to recover her own heritage and culture. Her eventual infatuation with him and their

subsequent relationship is perhaps the strongest indicator of Lulu’s recovery of her Ojibwa

identity. However, the way she approaches her pregnancy with Moses shows the novel’s

endorsement of a hybrid or liberated sense of Ojibwa identity in the face of white oppression, as

opposed to an essentialist or nativist form of Ojibwa identity.

 The hybrid form of Ojibwa identity endorsed by the novel is most manifested through

Lulu and Marie through the growth and evolvement that both of them experience throughout

Erdrich’s work. In the case of Lulu, her relationship with Moses Pillager shows her returning to

her native roots about as much as she possibly can, in that she moved to a remote place away

from the rest of society to begin a romantic relationship with a man who lives about as much of a

traditional Ojibwa lifestyle as one can live. This is detailed by Erdrich on page 77, where she

writes:

“He rose in a tense motion and turned away as if, suddenly aware that I could see

him, I frightened him. He went into the cave that was his house. He still wore

everything backwards- old dungarees, a shirt made from a blanket. Even his

moccasins tied at the heels. I smelled the smoky air from the doorway, the rich

air of tanned skins. He returned holding a little mirror glass and put it before my

face. Quickly, lightly, he stepped behind me and checked both our images at

once. He took the mirror inside, then came back offering a tin can with another

strip of tin soldered on for a handle. It contained a steaming brew of leathery,

thick leaves. A kind of swamp tea.”

Moses lives an extremely remote lifestyle, and after he and Lulu begin a relationship, Lulu

discovers she is pregnant. To me, this is where Lulu truly endorses a hybrid sense of Ojibwa

identity. Lulu knows she cannot deliver and raise this child on Moses’ island, no matter how

much she enjoyed her time there. She needs help, and the island is a harsh and unforgiving place

for a child. Moses is extremely rough around the edges, and Lulu knows she cannot stay on the

island, showed by Erdrich in this passage from page 83:

 “We slept curved in one shape, around the baby as it grew. We hardly talked

except by signs. We had no need of words. I grew bigger, bigger, my body

stretched unbearably. I grew so huge I frightened myself. By spring, the nights

shortened and the ice deepened its tones, cracked and shifted. The air around us

was still, a bitter black and the baby twisted in me. I would have to bear it when

the snow vanished. My heart thudded in fear. Women died in their blood.

Women snapped green sticks in their mouths. I needed a midwife to guide me, a

mother. The ice had broken and black water swelled. I couldn’t sleep. I knew

that this baby, still tied to my heart, could drag me under. And yet, each morning,

light rose in the trembling mica, and I turned away, to the darkness in his arms.”

While throughout the rest of the book, Lulu continues to hold her Ojibwa heritage close, I feel

that this conscious decision by her that she needed to leave the man that she went to in order to

further her connection to her Ojibwa heritage shows her embracing a hybrid identity.

While Lulu is a good example of a character in the novel who embraces a hybrid identity,

I believe that Marie is the best example of this. Throughout the novel, we see Marie distance

herself from her Ojibwa identity at some points and come back in touch with that part of her

identity at other points. In the story “Flesh and Blood”, Marie must cope with Nector leaving her

for Lulu. In that story we see Marie seem to distance herself from her Ojibwa identity. It is not

explicit, but I believe there are some parts of the story that point to this, primarily where we see

Marie clean her home. In this passage on page 161, we get some insight into how Marie feels

about the situation:

“They would say Marie Kashpaw was down in the dirt. They would say how her

husband had left her for dirt. They would say I got all that was coming, head so
 proud. But I would not care if Marie Kashpaw had to wear an old shroud. I

would not care if Lulu Lamartine ended up the wife of the chairman of the

Chippewa Tribe. I’d still be Marie. Marie. Star of the Sea! I’d shine when they

stripped off the wax!”

This, coupled with Marie’s return to the convent earlier in this story represents Marie distancing

herself from her Ojibwa identity and asserting her own independence. She doesn’t care about

Lulu or what she wears or even what she herself wears. She has herself, and has some faith in

herself. Her faith in Catholicism may not be what it once was, but she gets on her knees and

finds solace in work and applying herself.

“The Beads” is another part of the novel where Marie seems to distance herself from the

Ojibwa part of her heritage but later moves closer to her Ojibwa heritage through her bonding

with Rushes Bear through childbirth, as discussed earlier. The constant back and forth that so

many characters in Erdrich’s novel go through with their heritage is a type of hybrid identity that

can only arise in a postcolonial situation like the one depicted in the novel, where white

instruments of oppression exerted their dominance over the Native Americans for so long that it

forced the Native Americans to embrace a hybrid form of their Ojibwa identity because it was

necessary for them to survive. It is nearly impossible to hold on to every aspect of your native

culture when you are in a place where the dominant group views that culture as intrusive and

dangerous because it is different, and Louise Erdrich did a tremendous job of articulating that in

her writing of Love Medicine.