Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Lucie Procházková

Motherhood and Sisterhood in Gloria

Naylor’s Novels
Master‘s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M.A., Ph.D.

2012
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author‘s signature
Acknowledgment

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M.A., PhD.

for her kind help, valuable advice and revision of my thesis.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 5

2. Motherhood ................................................................................................................. 10

2.1 Earth Mothers: Mattie and Miranda ...................................................................... 10

2.1.1 Earth Mothers and Their Predecessors ........................................................... 13

2.1.2 Earth Mothers in Relation to Other Women................................................... 16

2.1.3 Earth Mothers as Community Leaders ........................................................... 17

2.1.4 Earth Mothers as Opposing Stereotypes......................................................... 20

2.2 Mother Figures with a Touch of the Supernatural ................................................ 28

2.2.1 Mama Day‘s and Eve‘s Supernatural Properties ............................................ 29

2.2.2 Eve‘s and Mama Day‘s Healing Rituals ........................................................ 35

3. Sisterhood ................................................................................................................... 41

3.1 Sisterhood as an Alternative for Other Relationships ........................................... 41

3.1.1 Sisters to Oppose Oppression and Discrimination ......................................... 42

3.1.2 Sisters to Share the Positive ........................................................................... 44

3.2 Sisters from the Past .............................................................................................. 46

3.2.1 Luwana Packerville‘s Diaries ......................................................................... 48

3.2.2 Evelyn Creton‘s Recipes ................................................................................ 50

3.2.3 Priscilla McGuire‘s Photos and Willa‘s Awakening ...................................... 51

4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 53

Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 58

Summary ......................................................................................................................... 62

Resumé............................................................................................................................ 63
1. Introduction
This thesis analyses motherhood and sisterhood in Gloria Naylor‘s novels,

namely in The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day

(1988) and Bailey’s Café (1992) and focuses mainly on the major women figures in

these novels, particularly on Mattie Michael, Mama Day (Miranda), Willa and Eve. I

concentrate on several crucial points that are implied by Naylor‘s novels. First, it is

unimportant whether the mother characters and the child characters are biologically

related or whether sisterhood is based on kinship. It rather seems that the most positive

relationships are those of an othermother and an informally adopted child. Second, the

motherhoods and sisterhoods in Naylor‘s novels prove to function as alternatives of

other relationships, for example familial or also marital. Third, the characters, especially

the major ones, are used by Naylor to oppose some stereotypes about black women.

Finally, the increasing use of the supernatural elements in Naylor‘s novels is a sign of

her intensified critique of societal restrictions placed upon women.

The concept of othermother is unique to African American culture as well as to

Naylor‘s fiction. According to Collins ―othermothers [are] women who assist

bloodmothers by sharing mothering responsibilities. … Grandmothers, sisters, aunts or

cousins act as othermothers by taking on child-care responsibilities for one another‘s

children‖ (195). However, ―in many African-American communities these

women-centered networks of community-based child care have extended beyond the

boundaries of biologically related individuals to include ‗fictive kin‘‖ (Collins 196).

Collins also cites multiple sources to demonstrate that othermothers do not always have

to be blood relatives (196). The fictive kin can be also neighbours of the mother and the

child (Collins 196) .

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 In Naylor‘s novels, the concept of othermother seems to be even broader since

for example Eve‘s character (Bailey’s Café) demonstrates, she is an othermother of all

the women she accommodates in her boarding house. Furthermore, the relationships of

the othermothers and their adoptive children in Naylor‘s novels are unique because

these relationships seem to be more happy and prospering than many of those between a

bloodmother and her child. For example Mattie Michael kept her son, Basil dependent

on her until his thirty years of age, Cora Lee liked her children only when they were

babies (The Women of Brewster Place), Ophelia unluckily lost her mother Grace in

childhood (Mama Day), Sadie was despised by her mother and sold as a child prostitute

(Bailey’s Café) and Ben‘s wife, Elvira, let her daughter be sexually abused by their

landowner (The Men of Brewster Place). On the other hand, Mattie finds a great

daughter in Lucielia, Ophelia (Cocoa) is brought up by two loving othermothers Abigail

and Miranda and Eve is a mother to all women who were oppressed because of their

sexuality.

However, the boundary between motherhood and sisterhood in Naylor‘s novels

may be blurred. For example, Mattie Michael acts as an othermother of Lucielia Louise

Turner but their relationship after Lucielia grows up and gains some experience in life

could be also viewed as sisterhood. As Khaleghi sees it, ―The bond here is not just that

of mother and daughter, even though Mattie had helped raise Ciel years earlier. It is

woman-to-woman. Their similar suffering makes them equal― (133).

Naturally, Naylor‘s fiction is influenced by her own life experience. Probably

the most prominent influence is her Christian belief. Gloria Naylor together with her

mother and two sisters became Jehovah‘s Witnesses in 1962 — when the writer was

twelve (Wilson 3) but she left this denomination in 1975 (Montgomery, Conversations

xiii). After graduating from high school in 1968, she ―set out on a seven-year
6
missionary excursion that took her back intermittently to her southern roots, in

particular North Carolina and Florida‖ (Wilson 5). Although she left Jehovah‘s

Witnesses, she still remains a Christian and as she herself admitted in her conversation

with Virginia Fowler, she ―find[s] the Bible interesting‖ (Naylor 127). The biblical

influence is the most obvious in her fourth novel, Bailey’s Café about which Gloria

Naylor says: ―I did nothing but rewrite biblical women, rewrite their lives. I‘ve used it

because I think it‘s a part of me‖ (Naylor 127).

As Wilson mentions, Naylor‘s novels are also richly inspired by many literary

works of the Western canon, which stems from her being a voracious reader from the

early childhood. She was encouraged by her mother to read and indeed, Gloria Naylor‘s

mother also had penchant for reading and one of the things because of which she moved

from the South to the North was access of her and her children to libraries and good

literature (2). During her school years she was encouraged to read ―Ellison, Austen,

Dickens, the Brontës, Baldwin, and Faulkner‖ (Naylor, ―Conversation with Toni

Morrison‖ 11). Naylor‘s novels do not only refer to the works of European literature but

also to the works of African American women novelists whom she however discovered

later in her life when she joined college in her late twenties. The decisive moment was

when she read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: ―It said to a young poet, struggling to

break into prose, that the barriers were flexible‖ (Naylor, ―Conversation with Toni

Morrison‖ 11).

Naylor has written six novels. The first four [The Women of Brewster Place

(1982), Linden Hills (1995), Mama Day (1998), Bailey’s Café (1992)] which were

subjects of my analysis were followed by the publication of The Men of Brewster Place

in 1998. Thus, Naylor completed a quintet of interconnected novels. After a seven-year

break, she published her so far last novel called 1996 (2005), which is significantly
7
different from her first five novels. Naylor herself is the main protagonist, harassed by

the government control and subjected to mind-control techniques. The longer breaks

between the publication dates of her novels prove that Naylor does meticulous research

for her writing. In 1993 she received the American Book Award for Best First Novel.

Besides writing novels, she was also the editor of Children of the Night: The Best Short

Stories by Black Writers, 1964 to the present a collection of short stories which was

published in 1996 (Montgomery, Conversations xiv).

Given that Naylor‘s novels are rich in intertextuality, she can surely be

considered as a postmodern writer. According to Wilson, she appropriates classical texts

(19). However, her writing strategy is not merely repeating what some other authors

have already written but her writing style is ―repetition and revision, or repetition with a

signal difference‖ (Gates xxiv), thus she is using the figures of Signifyin(g) as described

by Henry Louis Gates in The Signifyin(g) Monkey. Wilson lists the works after which

Gloria Naylor modelled her novels: Linden Hills is modelled after Dante‘s ―Inferno‖,

Mama Day after Shakespeare‘s The Tempest and Bailey’s Café indirectly after

Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales (19-20).

There are numerous other influences that can be traced in Gloria Naylor‘s

fiction, for example many critics see a Southern feature in her work, most obviously in

Mama Day, the novel which is set in the South, but also in The Women of Brewster

Place because Mattie and Etta come from the South and the Southern presence

occasionally shows up also in the other novels.

As I have mentioned, this thesis deals with motherhood and sisterhood in

Naylor‘s novels, and it is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on motherhood and

the mother characters and is subdivided into two chapters. Chapter 2.1 ―Earth Mothers:

Mattie and Miranda‖ introduces the concept of earth mother, describes, compares and
8
contrasts the qualities of the characters who belong to this group, namely Mattie

Michael (The Women of Brewster Place) and Miranda (Mama Day). I concentrate on

their predecessors (Miss Eva and Sapphira Wade), their relations to other women,

particularly those for whom they play the roles of othermothers, furthermore I talk

about their position as community leaders and about their wider functions in opposing

stereotypes held by the mainstream American society. Chapter 2.2. ―Mother Figures

with a Touch of the Supernatural‖ analyses Mama Day (MD) and Eve (Bailey’s Café),

in particular I am concerned with their supernatural properties and with their healing

rituals. I also demonstrate how the seemingly surreal elements in these novels indirectly

point at some flaws of the American society.

The second section is devoted to sisterhood, chapter 3.1 ―Sisterhood as an

Alternative for Other Relationships‖ looks at the sisterhood between Mattie Michael

and Etta Mae Jones (The Women of Brewster Place) and then at the sisterhood of

Miranda and Abigail Day‘s (Mama Day). In chapter 3.1 ―Sisters from the Past‖ I

analyse Willa‘s character and her sisterhood with the previous Mrs Nedeeds and I try to

demonstrate how destructive it might be if a woman shares no sisterhood. Finally, in

summarize the thesis as well as Gloria Naylor‘s portrayal of motherhood and sisterhood.

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 2. Motherhood

This part is devoted to motherhood and to chosen mother characters in Naylor‘s

novels. Chapter 2.1 ―Earth Mothers: Mattie and Miranda‖ focuses on how the characters

whom Naylor herself sees as earth mothers came into being and how they are similar to

their predecessors Miss Eva (The Women of Brewster Place) and Sapphira Wade

(Mama Day). These mother characters share similarities which are wisdom, concern for

the other women and also natural respect from the other members of their communities.

Besides their roles within the novels, the earth mothers Mattie and Mama Day are also

purposefully used by Naylor to oppose certain stereotypes about black women,

especially that of matriarch, mammy and the conjure woman.

In chapter 2.2 ―Mother Figures With a Touch of the Supernatural‖ two mother

characters are compared: Mama Day (MD) and Eve (BC). These mother characters are

given supernatural qualities to demonstrate different realities than most of the readers

are used to accept as valid. Furthermore, through these characters, Naylor offers

different alternatives of the Christian belief, alternatives that are not based on

patriarchal values. The communities depicted in these two novels thrive under the

leadership of two strong maternal leaders Mama Day and Eve who use their

supernatural properties to help others.

2.1 Earth Mothers: Mattie and Miranda

This chapter examines one type of mothers that play very important roles in

Gloria Naylor‘s novels, the earth mothers. I include Mattie Michael from The Women of

Brewster Place (TWoBP) and Mama Day (MD) in this category because Gloria Naylor

herself directly labelled these characters as earth mothers. During her interview with
10
Kay Bonetti, Naylor comments on how Mattie came into being, by which she also

slightly touches upon what she means by an earth mother. Naylor explains that Mattie

came into being in response to the needs of another character, Lucielia Louise Turner,

and that they were both originally figures in a short story called ―A Life on Beekman

Place‖ published in 1980 in Essence and from which The Women of Brewster Place

later evolved.

… The work began with that rocking scene. And I had written that as sort

of a catharsis for myself. I was going through what I considered as being

a great deal of pain. And I imagined a woman who would be feeling pain

that intensely but for other reasons. And I sat down and wrote that. And

what I had hoped for was a kind of earth mother to just knock down this

door and come sit here on this couch and just rock. I wanted to be rocked

out of my pain. And that‘s how I invented Mattie Michael in that scene.

(55)

In another conversation with Pearlman and Henderson, Mama Day is also labelled as

―an earth-mother figure to her niece, Cocoa, a New Yorker‖ (72). Based on these

interviews, the prototype of an earth mother in Naylor‘s fiction seems to be a kind of a

healer of the soul, someone who helps other people to overcome unbearable mental but

also physical pain. However, the characters have also much broader meanings and

functions apart from their roles as healers. To understand these meanings, it is necessary

to introduce the notion of earth mother in other areas.

The term earth mother has multiple meanings depending on the mythologies in

which it exists and the critical approaches by which it is studied. Generally, earth

mother embodies fertility and is closely associated with nature. For the purpose of this

thesis, I have chosen to work with the perception of nature that is introduced by
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ecofeminist critics. According to one of these critics, Carolyn Merchant, there are two

competing images of nature: the ―nurturing mother‖ and ―nature as disorder‖ (274). The

former is viewed as ―a kindly beneficient female who provided for the needs of

mankind in an ordered, planned universe‖ and the latter as ―wild and uncontrollable

nature that could render violence, storms, droughts, and general chaos‖ (Merchant 274).

Merchant argues that both of these images were ―identified with female sex and were

projections of human perceptions onto the external world‖ (274-75). Furthermore,

nature disorder ―called forth the modern idea of power over nature‖ (275) and the ―idea

of domination over the earth existed in Greek philosophy and Christian religion‖ but ―as

the economy became modernized and the Scientific Revolution proceeded, the

dominion metaphor spread beyond the religious sphere and assumed ascendancy in the

social and political spheres as well‖ (275-276). Similarly, another ecofeminist, Charlene

Spretnak, points out that ―the earth has traditionally been imaged as feminine, which

provides a clue to the connection between the oppression of the earth and the oppression

of women that began in earnest with the rise of patriarchal religion and culture some six

to seven thousand years ago‖ (1).

Based on these two viewpoints of earth mothers, nature and women, I decided to

structure this chapter into two main areas. First, I focus on Mattie and Mama Day as

maternal healers, especially on how they were influenced by other maternal healers or

their predecessors, then on their relationships with other women characters in the novels

and finally on their roles as community leaders. In the second area I start from the

aforementioned connection between the oppression of the earth and women and then I

introduce some other controlling images and explain how the earth mothers Mattie and

Mama Day oppose these images, namely the image of the matriarch, mammy and the

conjure woman.
12
2.1.1 Earth Mothers and Their Predecessors
Both Mattie Michael and Miranda Day have their predecessors in the novels. In

case of Mattie Michael, it is Miss Eva, whom she meets personally, who influences her

but who is not her relative. Mama Day‘s predecessor is Sapphira Wade, a great

grandmother whom she does not meet but she inherits her special abilities.

Mattie Michael, unlike Miranda Day, who was born with a natural ability to heal

others and lead the community, had to develop into the kind of nurturing woman she is

in the larger part of the novel. Although Mattie is literally the first earth mother in

Naylor‘s fiction (as it is stated in the above-mentioned interview, she was one of the

first on her mind even before she started writing the novel), she is given a precursor in

Miss Eva, the elderly woman who provides Mattie with a shelter when she searches for

new safer accommodation for her son.

Miss Eva‘s character seems to be partially surreal because she appears so

suddenly and unexpectedly, exactly at the point when Mattie is almost exhausted and

out of possibilities to what to do. Therefore, she could be likened to Eve in Bailey’s

Café who is even more obviously a surreal character. Indeed, her role is also very

symbolic as Whitt remarks that Miss Eva is like Papa Legba, a figure in African

American literature ―who meets characters on crossroads and leads them the way they

must go‖ (23). Whitt further explains that the crossroad on which Mattie stands is

figurative — she can either come back to Rock Vale (the home town she left because

she was afraid that her father would find out whose the child is and then kill the man) or

find new accommodation in the city. Miss Eva offers her a home, another alternative

and by this she ―… sets … a repeated pattern of concern, generosity, and love between

and among women‖ (Branzburg 118). With Miss Eva, Naylor puts emphasis on

sisterhood as an alternative when men disappoint women. Thanks to Miss Eva it is

13
possible for Mattie to live a happier life. Although, it takes Mattie thirty years to

become the wise woman who can judge even her own son critically, she approaches

people and situations with the same insightfulness as Miss Eva and she offers other

suffering women the mental support they need.

There are several similar situations happening between an older woman and her

younger counterpart that seem to repeat. For example, there are similarities in the

relationship between Miss Eva and Mattie and between Mattie and Lucielia, Miss Eva‘s

granddaughter whom Mattie helped raise. Miss Eva needed only one look to recognize

what was Mattie‘s problem: ―The woman looked at the way she held the child and

understood. ‗Ya know, you can‘t keep him runnin‘ away from things that hurt him.

Sometimes, you just gotta stay there and teach him how to go through the bad and good

of whatever comes‘‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 31). As Miss Eva was a great observer when

Mattie comes to her, Mattie later proves to be as good a listener when Lucielia talks

about the father of her daughter, Eugene, who seems to come back to them:

Oh, Mattie, you don‘t understand. He‘s really straightened up this time.

He‘s got a new job on the docks that pays real good, and he was just so

depressed before with the new baby and no work. You‘ll see. He‘s even

gone out now to buy paint and stuff to fix up the apartment. And Serena

needs a daddy.‘ ‗You ain‘t gotta convince me, Ciel.‘ No, she wasn‘t

talking to Mattie, she was talking to herself it was the new job and the

paint and Serena that let him back into her life. (Naylor, TWoBP 91-2)

Mattie‘s silence and plain but fitting comments make Lucielia realize that what is

important is her own judgment about Eugene. Lucielia doubts about Eugene‘s honest

return but refuses to believe it. Therefore, there can be seen a repeated pattern when one

14
elderly mother figure tries to warn the younger woman, the child figure, but the younger

women do not heed the warning and follow their own path.

Mama Day‘s ancestor, Sapphira Wade, is a different predecessor than Miss Eva.

Mama Day inherits Sapphira Wade‘s powers because ―she is the daughter of the

‗seventh son of the seventh son‘ of Sapphira Wade‖ (Blyn 252). The Sapphira Wade‘s

character is described as a legend and nobody on the island even says her name. It is

believed that she was an African born slave bought by Bascombe Wade, a slave owner

to whom the island Willow Springs used to belong. Sapphira Wade refused to be

enslaved and made Bascombe Wade free her seven sons and cede the island to them. In

Khaleghi‘s view Sapphira Wade ―represents women oppressed because of their strength

and sexuality. Because of her refusal to accept the role of a slave and because of her

knowledge of nature and female sexuality, she was given the title ―witch.‖ As midwife,

mother, matriarch, and archetypal Mother, Sapphira embodies maternality‖ (135). It is

the strength and knowledge of nature that Mama Day inherited from Sapphira Wade and

because of the strength her father called her Little Mama although she was still a child.

She had to help the family overcome great hardship, when her mother closed herself

from the outside world after her little daughter, Peace, accidentally drowned in a well.

Similarly, Sapphira Wade summoned up the strength to oppose her master and gain

freedom for her seven sons.

The analysis of Mama Day‘s and Mattie‘s predecessors demonstrates that

Naylor puts emphasis on the role of ancestors because of the wisdom and knowledge

transmitted from generation to generation. Although Miss Eva is not Mattie‘s blood

relative, she imparts a specific understanding of human nature to Mattie. In case of

Mama Day, she inherits a gift to heal others and to understand nature itself. Thus,

because of the importance of preserving wisdom, similarly as Mattie and Mama Day
15
had their predecessors, they also have their successors, namely Lucielia and Ophelia

and the relationships to them are discussed in the next subchapter.

2.1.2 Earth Mothers in Relation to Other Women

In this subchapter I compare the relationship of Mattie to her adoptive daughter

Lucielia and of Mama Day to her niece Ophelia. These comparisons demonstrate that in

Naylor‘s novels the relationships between the women are seen as possible supplements

of other relationships or missing families.

Both Mattie and Mama Day have known Lucielia and Ophelia from childhood

but none of the younger women had been raised by their biological mothers. Thus, both

Mattie and Mama Day play the roles of othermothers. As I have mentioned, Mattie

found a new mother in Miss Eva who helped her in one of the most difficult situations

in Mattie‘s life, when she had nowhere to go. Similarly, Lucielia, Miss Eva‘s

granddaughter finds an othermother in Mattie. When Lucielia‘s little daughter tragically

dies, Lucielia wants to give up her life. Mattie is the only one who can really help Ciel

because she loves her so much and knows that ―words alone are not going to be her

salvation‖ (Whitt 40), so Mattie rocks Ciel out of the pain, she helps ease the pain, she

treats her like a newborn and symbolically baptizes her, so that she can start a new life.

In this case, as Khaleghi argues, Mattie not only plays the role of a mother but the two

women share the experience of an immense psychical pain (133). Furthermore,

Khaleghi notes that ―Ciel recovers as a result of the magical powers of Mattie‘s love‖

(133).

It seems that the ―magical powers of love‖ or belief in beating the evil play a

similar role in Mama Day when Ophelia (Cocoa, Baby Girl) is poisoned by Ruby, an

older woman, who acts as a friend but who is in fact jealous of Ophelia. Mama Day

believes that it is not only the poison itself that almost kills Cocoa but also the evil
16
coming out of Ruby‘s house. To be saved, Cocoa, like Lucielia, needs more than just

medical treatment but also spiritual salvation of which Mama Day tries to convince

George, Cocoa‘s husband. However, above all it is Mama Day who saves Cocoa‘s life

because of her knowledge and wisdom: she discovers the poison in Cocoa‘s scalp and

she convinces George to help her save Cocoa. Therefore, Mama Day and Mattie both

get into situations in which they must heal their adoptive daughters and they both

succeed.

As I have previously stated, neither Lucielia, nor Cocoa was raised by her

biological mother. Instead they both grew up with their grandmothers. Cocoa was raised

by two othermothers, her grandmother Abigail and a great aunt Miranda (Mama Day).

She describes them two together as creating a perfect mother: ―I guess, in a funny kind

of a way, together they were the perfect mother‖ (Naylor, MD 58). Among the two

Miranda is the stricter and tougher mother. It is also Miranda from whom Cocoa inherits

the ability to save others and thus she becomes the successor of the legendary Sapphira

Wade. In Levy‘s view, ―Together Sapphira, Cocoa, and Mama Day form a sort of

woman‘s trinity with mother, daughter, and spirit‖ (283). Thus, Naylor creates a

different alternative of Christianity or a counter religion as opposed to the widespread

patriarchal Christianity with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Willow Springs,

its inhabitants not only practice a different religion than the mainstream American

society but they are also lead by a matriarch.

2.1.3 Earth Mothers as Community Leaders

This subchapter discusses the roles of Mattie Michael and Mama Day as

community leaders. Undoubtedly, both of these women are greatly respected by their

communities, i.e. by the Brewster Place women and by the Willow Springs inhabitants.

17
The authority of these women stems from their age and wisdom because they are both

older than the others and they both have knowledge of human nature. In the following

paragraphs I will compare these roles of the earth mothers.

Both characters, Mattie Michael (TWoBP)and Mama Day (MD), as well as their

predecessors, Miss Eva and Sapphira Wade, confirm Naylor‘s emphasis on strong

maternal leaders in African American communities. When such women are missing,

like in the case of Linden Hills, the communities cannot function well. Indeed, Gloria

Naylor herself stresses the community and the women leaders in her interview with

Carabi while describing the hometown of her parents:

Angels Carabi: From the beginning of your work, you create a

sense of place, a sense of community where people interact.

Gloria Naylor: For various reasons, I am drawn to this sense of

community. What makes a writer do what he or she does derives from so

many rivulets of influences. I come from a very large, close-knit, and

extended family. … Besides, family and class community is my

communal history as a black American. Our survival today has depended

on our nurturing each other, finding resources within ourselves. The

women in Robinsonville, Mississippi, who dealt with herbs, for instance,

played a crucial role in our community. They weren‘t just magical

women. They had a definite medical purpose, because you could not

depend on the outside hospitals to take care of your needs. So people

grew up within a community that birthed you and laid you away when

you died. Community is what I know and what I feel most comfortable

with. (Naylor, ―An Interview with Carabi‖ 114)

18
What Naylor says about her belief in a community and the importance of the women

who dealt with herbs is also reflected in The Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day.

Although Miss Eva is not a herbal healer, Mattie‘s salvation depends on her and later

Mattie also rescues Lucielia. Similarly, Sapphira Wade‘s courage and free spirit win the

freedom of Bascombe Wade‘s slaves. Mama Day gives up a lot in order to save the

lives of the islanders and gives birth to many children. The novels also share an

emphasis on heeding the warnings of elder women because when the warning is not

heeded, the consequences are serious. For example, Mattie did not accept Miss Eva‘s

advice that she should not be so overprotective of her son, Bernice took some ―fertility

pills,‖ although Mama Day did warn her against them and in Linden Hills Grandma

Tilson‘s warning not to lose the mirror in one‘s soul was also forgotten.

Naylor‘s experience with the southern life is obviously reflected in Mama Day.

Like the women in Robinsonville, also Mama Day partially substitutes a doctor and the

Willow Springs‘ inhabitants still depend on her although at the time of the narration

they can also receive medical care from a university educated doctor. Her medical

knowledge is really almost equal to that of the doctor‘s and that is why he respects her:

―Although it hurt his pride at times, he‘d admit inside it was usually no different than

what he had to say himself – just plainer words and a slower cure than them

concentrated drugs. And unless there was just no other choice, she‘d never cut on

nobody‖ (Naylor, MD 84).

Some authors explain that the idea of a mother leader of the community has

roots in African culture. For example, Levin points out that ―the vision of the women‘s

leadership can be traced to West African women‘s traditions‖ (70). Furthermore, she

believes that the ―surreal elements in novels may be read as signs of an African

presence, while the mother figures may be viewed as expressions of a conception of

19
female authority derived from West African women‘s traditions‖ (Levin, 71).

Considering the surreal elements in Mama Day, but also in The Women of Brewster

Place, it is likely that Mama Day and Mattie are African influenced characters. The

African influence in Mama Day‘s character is further analysed in chapter 2.2 ―Mother

figures with the touch of the supernatural‖.

On one hand Mattie and Mama Day are strong maternal leaders similar based on

the African maternal community leaders but, on the other hand, Naylor‘s depiction

stands in opposition to the US society‘s stereotype of black women as matriarchs.

Mattie‘s name even seems to illustrate the irony about such stereotypes. As Fraser

observes, Mattie is short for matriarch (98), which is a one of the widespread

controlling images ascribed to black women. This controlling image was introduced in

1965 by Patrick Moynihan‘s government report The Negro Family: The Case for

National Action which, according to Collins, argued that ―African-American women

who failed to fulfil their traditional ‗womanly‘ duties at home contributed to social

problems in Black civil society‖ (92). Fraser points out that Mattie is ―an incarnation of

the Mat(tie)riarch deplored by Moynihan‖ (98). Therefore, Naylor takes the supposed

matriarchs and reshapes them in order to subvert such stereotypical believes held by the

mainstream American society. This topic is further analysed in the subsequent chapter.

2.1.4 Earth Mothers as Opposing Stereotypes

In this subchapter I start from the ideas of nature as nurturing mother, nature as

disorder and the idea of domination over the earth, which I explained in the introduction

to chapter 2.1 ―Earth Mother: Mattie and Miranda‖. I also embark from the fact that

these views of women and nature are myths which were utilized in order to oppress

women and I will add some other myths or controlling images of women that the

characters Mattie and Mama Day are meant to oppose. I have already touched upon the
20
view of Mattie and Mama Day as nurturing mothers and as having relation to the view

of nature as disorder. In my opinion, that Naylor sees Mattie and Mama Day as earth

mothers does not only mean that they are the good nurturing mothers helping other

women overcome hardship but they also have a wider purpose.

Starting from the names of the characters, the wider meaning becomes more

obvious. Mattie may be short for matriarch, as Fraser (98) pointed out. However, while

reading her story, it turns out that she is a unique individual, completely resisting any

stereotyping. Mama Day suggests even stronger mother character. Looking closer at the

surname Day, we can find out that it was chosen by Mama Day‘s grandmother,

Sapphira Wade, for her family of seven sons. Therefore, since it is entirely Sapphira‘s

choice, it can be perceived as an act of resistance by the woman because she refused to

accept a surname that her sons would have had inherited from her owner, Bascombe

Wade. However, there is much more behind the name. Under the family tree, which

prefaces the novel itself, we can read a note clarifying the surname Day: ―‗God rested

on the seventh day and so would she.‘ Hence, the family‘s last name‖ (Naylor, MD 1).

This note suggests Sapphira Wade‘s supernatural or maybe godlike qualities, possibly

equal to those of the Christian God because, according to the tree, it looks like she had

created her seven sons in seven days. Indeed, throughout the novel, Sapphira Wade is

treated like a mythical figure about whom the truth is not really known and various

versions of the myth are presented. However, because of the touch of the supernatural

around Sapphira, and the fact that she is also pointed to as the Mother may mean that

she was the Great Goddess or the Mother Earth to whom Mama Day prays for guidance

and who is the Goddess ruling through the figure of Mama Day on Willow Springs. The

small island community of Willow Springs stands in opposition to the mainland U.S.

where the majority of people believe in Christianity, the patriarchal religion. The
21
uncertainty about Sapphira Wade‘s story together with her supernatural properties sets

an important feature of the novel, which is the ―questioning of the concept of reality‖

(Wilson 87). The supernatural qualities of Mama Day and of Bailey’s Café will be

discussed in the next chapter.

In this chapter I would like to examine a different aspect of the questioning of

reality. When reality is questioned, it may be proved that certain beliefs were

mistakenly taken as facts and subsequently some myths, upon which important and

extensive decisions were made, may turn out to be wrong. At this point I am coming

back to the aforementioned identification of women with nature, nature as nurturing

mother and nature as disorder which were utilized as justifications of women‘s

oppression. The overall story reflects a different reality in which the nurturing mother

(Mama Day) is the leader of the community. The people living on the island of Willow

Springs follow different rules than people from the mainland U.S., who are represented

by George, a New Yorker and Cocoa‘s husband. Ironically, Willow Springs is lead by

an earth mother figure of Mama Day, a woman who believes in God who seems to be

the Christian God but the religion she professes is different from the version of

Christianity practiced by most people in the U.S., a culture with history based on the

acceptance of the idea of the man‘s domination over the nature.

Thus, labelling Mattie and Mama Day as earth mothers indirectly leads to the

fact that these characters resist any generalizations and that their stories show that

certain beliefs which were taken as truths were mistaken. Gloria Naylor‘s novels rather

try to make clear that African American women are a diverse group and that no woman

can be simply classified according to a stereotype. Therefore, in the following text I

would like to demonstrate how the characters of Mattie and Mama Day contradict the

22
stereotypes about black women which have persisted in the American society, namely

the image of the matriarch, the mammy and the conjure woman.

First of the stereotypes that could be mentioned here is that of the matriarch

because Naylor directly addresses this stereotype with Mattie‘s name. According to

Collins matriarch is the ―bad Black mother‖ which was

introduced and widely circulated via a government report titled The

Negro Family: The Case for National Action [which] argued that

African-American women who failed to fulfil their traditional ‗womanly‘

duties at home contributed to social problems in Black civil society

(Moynihan 1965). Spending too much time away from home, these

working mothers ostensibly could not properly supervise their children

and thus were a major contributing factor to their children‘s failure at

school. (92)

The phrase ―traditional womanly duties‖ mentioned by the Moynihan report suggests

that the controlling image of the matriarch had to be created in relation to another

controlling image. This phenomenon is well explained by Hazel Carby: ―stereotypes

only appear to exist in isolation while actually depending on a nexus of figurations

which can be explained only in relation to each other‖ (20). Carby points out that the

creation of stereotypes about black womanhood depended upon stereotypes of white

womanhood and that the most popular is the ―cult of true womanhood‖ (21). While

defining what is meant by the cult of true womanhood, Carby cites a feminist historian,

Barbara Welter, who characterized it subsequently: ―the attributes of True Womanhood,

by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and

society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and

domesticity … With them she was promised happiness and power‖ (gtd. in Carby 23).
23
 Mattie‘s story is an instance of how such a woman who might be labelled by the

majority society as a matriarch may live. Mattie‘s character successfully refutes any

generalizations about black women because she is so unique and in such a complicated

the situation. Naylor does not try to create the story in a way that would apologize

Mattie for her actions but it certainly leads readers to rethink their previous assumptions

about the black mother. From the beginning of Mattie‘s story, she is to some extent

influenced by the aforementioned ―cult of true womanhood‖ since her father, Sam

Michael, wants his daughter to be the pious, pure woman and tries so desperately to

protect her from being sexually active. Sam loves his daughter so much that he reduces

her freedom and when Mattie disobeys his rules, the consequences (an illegitimate

child) are unbearable to him because he ―lives and breathes for [her]‖ (Naylor, TWoBP

20). This turns out to be destructive to the family. Sam also fails Mattie because the

mores he had internalized seem to be more important to him than his love for his own

daughter. Therefore, Mattie has no other option than to leave home.

Later, Mattie is portrayed as determined to keep the baby, a boy whom

she names Basil, and to whom she gives everything that he needs. Mattie takes full

responsibility for herself and her child by finding a full time job while an elderly

landlady, Mrs. Prell, takes care of her son during the day. Naylor depicts how stressful

and difficult it was for Mattie to leave her baby and miss his first steps and words: ―It

was heartbreaking when she missed his first step, and she had cried for two hours when

she first heard him call Mrs. Prell ‗Mama‘ (Naylor, TWoBP 28). This illustrates

Mattie‘s unhappiness about her having to spend so much time outside home but the

circumstances leave her no other option. However, the people creating the policies of

that time refused to acknowledge that single Black mothers might have needed

assistance: ―… by becoming mothers, even unwed mothers, Black women were simply
24
doing what came naturally. There was no reason for social service workers or

policymakers to interfere‖ (Solinger 299). Black single mother experienced not only

reluctance from the government but also resentment from the inhabitants. This fact is

well demonstrated when Mattie searches for a new safer and cleaner accommodation for

her son after he was bitten by a rat that creeped out of a hole in the wall of their rented

apartment. However, because of the hostility against unwed mothers, it is almost

impossible to find different accommodation. Some of the reactions to Mattie and her

baby are: ―ʻWhere‘s your husband?ʻ ʻI ain‘t got one.ʻ ʻThis is a respectable

place!ʻ‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 30). Such a negative response clearly illustrates the social

reality in the post war America where many believed that ―… the baby‘s existence

justified a negative moral judgement about the mother and the mother-and-baby dyad‖

(Solinger 298). When Mattie meets Miss Eva, who is a white woman but she makes a

difference with her unconventional attitude, it seems to be rather unbelievable, almost

miraculous. This implies that it may be so hard to get out of such a difficult situation

(being a black poor single mother with no place to go in post-war America) that

something unexpected must happen, there must be some amount of luck. In a way, the

unexpectedness and miraculousness of this encounter even amplifies the hopelessness

of the supposed matriarch‘s situation and therefore, controlling images established by

the ruling group of people are indirectly attacked.

Similarly as Mattie, the name Mama Day also implies a connection to certain

stereotypes. Thus, Naylor plays with the readers‘ expectations of the book and its major

character. However, one may be surprised by a character that cannot be as simply

classified. This character can be seen as opposing a mixture of various stereotypes, for

example the matriarch, mammy or a conjure woman. The mammy figure is defined by

Christian as being ―in direct contrast to the ideal white woman, … black in color, fat,
25
nurturing, religious, kind, above all strong, … enduring. She must be plump and have

big breasts and arms‖ (BFC 2). Naylor does not give Mama Day such physical qualities,

instead George is surprised about Mama Day‘s appearance when he first meets her: ―I

don‘t know why I thought your Mama Day would be a big, tall woman. From the stories

you told about your clashes with her, she had loomed that way in my mind. Hard.

Strong. Yes, it definitely showed in the set of her shoulders. But she was barely five feet

and could have been snapped in the middle with one good-sized hand‖ (Naylor, MD,

175-6).

The conjure woman, according to Christian, appeared in the literature of the

nineteenth century and functioned as ―a reservoir for fears – fears … of the unknown

spiritual world‖ (BFC 2-3). In another article, Christian explains why the image of

conjure woman was treated with fears: ―the conjure woman image incorporates the

signs of traditional African religions that the southern gentry pointed to as dark and evil

heathen forces‖ (―Shadows Uplifted‖ 193). However, Christian also admits that ―the

conjure woman image, although a stereotype, includes within it true elements – in this

case that black people not only kept alive certain aspects of various African religions

such as herbal medicine, folk wisdom and ritual, but also that women were also able to

be leaders in the rituals of many African religions‖ (―Shadows Uplifted‖ 195).

The image of the conjure woman is resurrected in the figure of Mama Day and it

is reshaped to present a totally different conjure woman. Rather than being the evil

conjurer, Mama Day can be seen as ―a version of maternity [that is offered by] the

superiors of West African women‘s secret societies‖ (Levin 73-4). Levin compares

Mama Day to the Sande Sowei, a leader of the ―society of women who have reached the

age of puberty‖ (74). Levin lists similarities between the Sowei (leader) and Mama Day:

―a powerful woman who was elected to the office‖, ―mastery of social practices‖ (75),
26
―the chicken [as the] woman‘s confidant and protector‖ (76). Furthermore, other

characters who stand in opposition to Mama Day amplify her function. Levin identifies

Ruby as Gonde, rival of Sowei (the leader, Mama Day) and as a ―vision of failure‖ (75).

Coming back to the definition of the conjure woman stereotype, the novel also

gives an account of other characters that help ridicule certain stereotypes. For example,

Pearl, Bernice‘s mother-in-law could be considered as a caricature of ―the southern

lady‖, an image that has a direct relationship to the conjure woman. ―Above all her

other attributes, the lady was expected to be a Christian; in fact, her qualities of

submissiveness and purity were based on her deep Christian faith‖ (Christian, ―Shadows

Uplifted‖ 195). Naylor describes Pearl with a great deal of mockery and irony during

Pearl‘s conversation with Mama Day when they meet on the way to the beauty parlour

where Dr. Buzzard, a Willow Springs inhabitant who regards himself as a conjurer and

a colleague of Mama Day, sells some supposedly magical ingredients: ―‗Ain‘t it awful,‘

she says to Miranda, nodding toward Dr. Buzzard‘s crowd. ‗It makes you downright

embarrassed being part of the Negro race, with all them ignorant superstitions.

Reverend Hooper says we all should get together and run Dr. Buzzard out of Willow

Springs – this is a Christian place and he‘s doing the devil‘s work‘ (Naylor, MD 92).

Mama Day remembers Pearl‘s indifference to Bernice‘s health problems then and she

replies: ―‗Well, Pearl, the devil – like the Lord – works in mysterious ways. And maybe

he‘s using Buzzard to let folks see the big difference between the way he‘s living his

life and the way you‘re living yours‘‖ (Naylor, MD 93). One of several implications of

this conversation points to the ridiculousness of such stereotypes as the pious lady and

the conjurer. On one hand, there is the exaggerated piousness of the woman who is in

fact indifferent to another person‘s suffering. On the other hand, there is a conjurer

whom the lady abhors but whose slyness is as morally corrupt as her hypocrisy.
27
 Thus, Mama Day‘s function is not only that of a healer and leader of the

community but also that of giving moral lessons or pointing to some faults of the

society. Similarly, Mattie plays an important role within the novel but through her

character, social reality of a black woman is depicted and some controlling images, such

as the above-mentioned matriarch, attacked. Furthermore, when I mentioned Mattie‘s

encounter with Miss Eva, I touched upon the trace of the supernatural which may even

amplify the critique of the reality. This pattern repeats also in other Naylor‘s novels,

especially Mama Day and Bailey’s Café, where she moves between social realism and

the mystical or the supernatural, therefore I have decided to explore the supernatural

qualities of Mama Day and Eve, a leading woman character in Bailey’s Café, in the next

chapter.

2.2 Mother Figures with a Touch of the Supernatural

This chapter discusses Gloria Naylor‘s mother figures that have supernatural,

magical or divine properties. These figures are particularly Mama Day (MD) and Eve

(BC). On the one hand, these characters considerably differ in their qualities: Mama

Day is rather a non-Christian but highly spiritual, coming from an African tradition and

the worship of nature, thus she represents an alternative religion. Eve is a Christian

woman, herself based on the biblical Eve, however her character demonstrates a

different version of Christianity than has been widely presented by patriarchal cultures.

On the other hand, both Eve and Mama Day are leaders of their communities and both

can do what could be considered as magical to help other people, especially women.

Through the portraits and actions of these characters Naylor points to the flaws

of the American and European societies and especially to the interpretations of

28
Christianity that discriminate against women. I believe that the more supernatural and

magical qualities can be found in Naylor‘s novels the more heightened her critique.

Thus, among other things, I would like to demonstrate that with Mama Day and

Bailey’s Café Naylor intensifies her critique of the Western society and Christianity.

This chapter is further divided into three subchapters in which I compare and

contrast Eve‘s and Mama Day‘s portraits and their functions. First the supernatural or

divine qualities of Eve and Mama Day are described and compared, than the healing

rituals performed by these mother figures are analysed.

2.2.1 Mama Day’s and Eve’s Supernatural Properties

This subchapter describes, compares and contrasts the supernatural qualities that

are ascribed to Mama Day and Eve. I will start from the roots or ancestors of these

characters because there is something mystical around the origins of both Miranda and

Eve.

As the family tree and the prologue of Mama Day documents, Mama Day is a

descendant of a slave woman named Sapphira Wade. As mentioned in the previous

chapter, Sapphira Wade‘s portrayal suggests that she possesses some divine qualities

because she is equalled to the Christian God. ―‗God rested on the seventh day and so

would she.‘ Hence, the family‘s last name‖ (Naylor, MD 1). The family tree presents

Sapphira‘s seven sons who were named after men from the Old Testament and her

seven grandsons, all of whom were given names after figures from the New Testament.

The prologue enhances Sapphira‘s portrait as a partially divine woman:

A true conjure woman … She could walk through a lightning storm

without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand;

use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine

pot: depending upon which of us takes a mind to her. She turned the
29
 moon into salve, the stars into a swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds

of every creature walking up on two or down on four. It ain‘t right or

wrong, truth or lies; it‘s about a slave woman who brought a whole new

meaning to both them words, soon as you cross over here from beyond

the bridge. (Naylor, MD 3)

This passage illustrates Sapphira‘s powers which she draws from nature. It also shows

that truth may be subjective (depending on who is talking) and that the boundary

between the true and the false may be blurred, which is in fact one of the central themes

of Mama Day. The two documents that appear at the beginning of the novel, the bill of

sale of Sapphira and the family tree, stand in opposition to what is said in the

above-cited paragraph. In the prologue someone is talking about Sapphira, transmitting

a legend, whereas the bill of sale and the family tree are instances of official written

sources which are generally taken in the Western society as being more authentic. This

contrast can be seen as a critique of the Western culture where ―written official papers

[are needed] to prove the authenticity or validity of things‖ (Sánchez 61). However,

whereas the family tree and the bill of sale are known only to the readers, it is unknown

to the characters in the novel. There is no such document as a family tree possessed by

Abigail or Miranda. Their knowledge of their family was transmitted to them orally.

Miranda has access to the bill of sale but it is illegible: ―In the bright light of the

bedroom, there‘s nothing to be read in it. Too old. Too long gone. She finds a slip of

paper in the back that tells her just how old‖ (Naylor, MD 279-80). Therefore, on the

one hand, the reader might have an advantage as opposed to the characters because s/he

may think s/he knows the truth because of the widely held belief that an official

document reflects objective truth. On the other hand, given Naylor‘s critique of such a

belief, the reader might be manipulated to believe something that may be one of many
30
possible reconstructions of history. Thus, it seems that through the case of Sapphira

Wade Naylor also questions the reality based on written evidence that is too much taken

for granted. Maybe it is as subjective as what is transmitted only orally, like the legend

of Sapphira Wade that appears in the prologue.

The questioning of reality and some widely held beliefs is also an issue in

Bailey’s Café. One of the characters through which Naylor criticizes certain

interpretations of the Bible is Eve. The leading woman Eve‘s connection to the divine

origins is stronger because this character is a revision of the biblical Eve, the mother of

all living. As Chavanelle points out, Eve, like the first woman, has ―no father and no

mother and has proven her worth in ordeals‖ (68). Unlike Mama Day, she does not

know who her parents were or when she was born because there is no one to tell her

about it and there are no documents of her birth. During childhood she is raised by a

man whom she calls Godfather but he refuses to tell her little about her age and her

parents: ―The very day he said he found me in a patch of ragweed, so new I was still

tied to the birth sac and he had to bite off the umbilical cord with his teeth and spit it out

to save me from being poisoned: And going through all that for any she-creature earns

me the right to decide when it was born‖ (Naylor, BC 83). Since Eve‘s story, like the

whole Bailey’s Café, is richly inspired by the Bible, Godfather is a version of God and

thus he could be the creator of Eve. He implies by the above-cited comment about Eve‘s

age that he has authority over her life and birth but by saying that ―going through all

that for any she-creature‖ he suggests his superiority over women. This is a hint at the

interpretations of the Bible as a justification for patriarchy. Later, after Godfather finds

out Eve‘s sexual pleasure from ―earth-stomping‖ with Billy (a boy from the

neighbourhood), he throws her naked and hungry out of his house.

31
 During her journey from Pillottown to Arabi, Eve determines her age: ―And

when I finally reached Arabi, … I sank to my knees to think. Ten miles outside of New

Orleans. By then I‘d lived a hundred years ten times over, so there was a lot to think

about‖ (Naylor, BC 90-91). According to Montgomery, ―that Eve walks, she tells us, a

thousand years before reaching Bailey‘s, is an important allusion linking her role among

a community of women to the millennial reign of Christ‖ (29). Based on this argument,

Montgomery sees Eve as ―a redemptive figure‖ (29). Similarly, Ivey argues that Eve‘s

character ―resists the stigma attached to Eve as the ‗mother of sin‘.‖ Instead, she is, in a

very practical way, a savior to replace the traditional sacrificial Christ figure‖ (89).

During this journey, Eve also realizes that ―Godfather always said that he made

[her], but I was born from the delta‖ (Naylor, BC 90), by which she means the rich

Louisiana soil. At this point, Eve not only overcomes immense hardship but also assert

power over her life by deciding about her origin. She rejects God as her creator and

instead it seems that the Mother Earth is her creator. Indeed throughout the book Eve

has a close relation to the earth, for example by growing flowers. In this case Naylor

offers a different possibility than a God as creator, an idea that appeared in Mama Day

as well. Sapphira‘s description suggests that there might be a mother as a creator. As

Ivey points out, ―in Mama Day, Naylor replaces this image of the creator as father with

the image of creator as mother she has ―created,‖ or birthed, most of the inhabitants of

Willow Springs. Naylor's creator is not the virginal mother represented in Christianity

by the Madonna, but a figurative mother‖ (99). Therefore, Eve‘s character has a similar

purpose to that of Mama Day‘s.

Mama Day‘s role as a creator stems from her knowledge of nature: she knows

―how to get under, around, and beside nature to give it a slight push. Most folks just

don‘t know what can be done with a little will and their own hands‖ (Naylor, MD 262).
32
She can be considered as being on the boundary between the natural and the

supernatural because some might see her healing abilities as miraculous and some as

purely an excellent knowledge of the human body and of herbal medicine or nature, as

she herself explains. Nevertheless, there are moments in the book when her deeds

contradict logic or any scientific knowledge.

A peculiar situation occurs when Cocoa tells Mama Day about a job in George‘s

company which she would like to take but which she had to refuse because of her

annual visit of Willow Springs. When Mama Day learns about it, she forces Cocoa to

write George a letter saying she is still interested in the job and she insists on mailing it

herself. It seems that Mama Day knows something that neither Cocoa nor George

foresees. Sánchez believes that ―[Mama Day] is actually responsible for the initiation of

George and Cocoa‘s romance because she sprinkles a magic yellow powder in the letter

that Cocoa sends him after a job interview‖ (75). George describes the letter to Cocoa:

―The small envelope was stuck between a batch of project proposals an I split it open

without a glance at the return address. Too bad, lady, the job is taken, but you‘ll survive

– we all will. And it would have stayed in my trash basket if I hadn‘t noticed the film of

yellow powder on my hands. It was the consistency of talc and very sparse – as if I‘d

touched a goldenrod‖ (Naylor, MD 54). The powder may be taken as magical or not,

because Cocoa and George seemed to be attracted to each other from the first moment

and the powder in the envelope could have been a little push from the old wise woman.

Or, given that she summoned the lightnings on Ruby‘s house, she might have actually

enchanted George. However it may have been, this situation again demonstrates the

tricky boundary between the magical and the realistic.

Another even more magical situation happens when Miranda summons two

lightnings on Ruby‘s house because she put nightshade in Cocoa‘s hair and because of
33
the hate Ruby felt towards Cocoa. In Mama Day‘s and Abigail‘s eyes hate is the most

destructive: ―How bad is hate, Abigail? How strong is hate? It can destroy more people

quicker than anything else‖ (Naylor, MD 267). The hate is a reason for Mama Day to go

to Ruby‘s house and after calling on her three times (so that she can say to Lord at

Judgement that she gave Ruby a sufficient chance to save herself), she spreads some

magical powder out of her walking stick around the house.

Are you in there, Ruby? … Well, three times is all that she‘s required.

That‘ll be her [Mama Day‘s] defence at Judgement: Lord, I called out

three times. She don‘t say another word as she brings that cane shoulder

level and slams it into the left side of the house. … Powder. … There‘s a

long thin crack in her walking cane, running down the back of one snake

and cutting through the head of another. … The door don‘t open when

she leaves, and the winds don‘t stir the circle of silvery powder. (Naylor,

MD 269-70)

Shortly after Mama Day conjures Ruby‘s house, while she is in, a short lightning storm

comes: ―It hits the bridge, though, taking out the new tarred boards and a day‘s worth of

work. It hits Ruby‘s twice, and the second time the house explodes‖ (Naylor, MD

272-73). This event demonstrates several things. One of them suggests Mama Day as

being a Christian, since she mentions Lord and Judgement. Mama Day risks her rewards

in Heaven and takes justice in her hands by punishing Ruby for the poisoning and the

hate that almost kills Cocoa. This example illustrates that probably Naylor sees as better

someone who actually does something for justice and for the good of the others rather

than for his/her rewards in the afterlife as opposed to the overly pious Christians, like

Bernice‘s mother-in-law, Pearl.

34
 The critique of false piety is repeated again in Bailey’s Café. In some respects,

Pearl and Sister Carrie are similar characters and both Mama Day and Eve point to their

hypocrisy. Whereas Mama Day does not go to church or read the Bible, she is morally

superior to Pearl (as their conversation shows, see chapter one), ―Eve uses [scripture] to

combat false piety. … Through the conflict between Sister Carrie and Eve, Naylor

makes a blatant critique of mainstream Christianity by suggesting that the religion

expressed in the Bible and the Christianity professed by billions of people in the world

are not necessarily and definitely not always the same thing‖ (Ivey 89-90). The conflict

is provoked by Sister Carrie who attacks Jesse Bell, one of Eve‘s whorehouse

inhabitants, by citing a passage from the Bible which is hard on adulteresses but, as the

narrator explains, ―Jesse‘s salvation isn‘t the thing uppermost on Carrie‘s mind. It‘s like

she wants Jesse to strike her, like it would prove something‖ (Naylor, BC 134). Sister

Carrie rather acts out of hate, the most destructive power, as it is said in Mama Day.

2.2.2 Eve’s and Mama Day’s Healing Rituals

This subchapter focuses on rituals and healing procedures that are performed by

Mama Day and Eve, how they help other women by these rituals and on Mama Day‘s

and Eve‘s wider meaning. Namely, this subchapter analyses Mama Day‘s ―fertility rite‖

in the other place that helps Bernice to conceive, the ritual to save Cocoa‘s life after she

was poisoned, Eve‘s healing rituals that manage to cure Jesse Bell of drug addiction and

the birth of Mariam‘s son, George.

One of the most magical moments in Mama Day is the fertility rite performed by

Mama Day with Bernice, Cocoa‘s friend who long tries to conceive. Mama Day decides

to help her and after some time of preparations, she takes Bernice to the other place, the

old home of the Days. The place itself has a history of immense pain: Miranda and

Abigail‘s sister Peace drowned in the well, then their mother went crazy and committed
35
suicide. It is also very mystical because it is a place ―where flowers can be made to sing

and trees to fly‖ (Naylor, MD 139). The description of the rite is related in a somewhat

detached language which makes one wonder whether it is reality or fantasy. Indeed, at

one moment, the narrator says: ―In the morning she can tell herself it was all a dream‖

(Naylor, MD 140), which enhances the dreamlike atmosphere of the ritual. Bernice‘s

name is never mentioned throughout this passage and the rite itself would be considered

impossible in reality. During this rite, Bernice is supposed to eat a freshly laid egg while

it is still wet but she waits a bit too long and the egg dries. The rite is magical to such a

detail that the chicken lays one more egg and Bernice is given one more chance,

however, as Whitt remarks, ―every poultry farmer knows that chickens lay one egg a

day, but this is the other place, where flowers sing and trees fly, so a single chicken can

easily produce more than two eggs in a short span of time‖ (140-41). Then through the

nine openings in her body, Bernice swallows another egg and ―nine openings [melt] into

the uncountable, ‗cause the touch is light, light. Spreading each tiny pore on each inch

of skin. … Pulsing and alive – wet – the egg moves from one space to the other‖

(Naylor, MD 140). Throughout this rite, Mama Day performs her role as a creator.

However, although she is the ―creator‖ of most of Willow Springs inhabitants, she has

never given birth to her own child because she ―caught babies till it was too late to have

[her] own‖ (Naylor, MD 89). This paradox proves that good motherhood does not have

to be necessarily conditioned by biological relation between the mother and the

children. In fact, Naylor has shown in her whole work many mothers who somehow fail

in the care of their biological children: Mattie and Basil, Cora Lee and her children

(TWoBP), Sadie‘s mother (BC), Ben‘s wife and their daughter (The Men of Brewster

Place). Instead, there have been many positive relationships between othermothers and

their ―adoptive‖ daughters: Miss Eva and Mattie, Mattie and Lucielia (TWoBP), Roberta
36
and Laurel (LH), Eve and residents of her boarding house (BC), etc. With Mama Day‘s

character as a creator but as a non-biological mother, Naylor subverts the fact that

throughout history and in many cultures, a woman‘s worth has been measured by her

biological fertility. For example, Mama Day‘s position as a matriarch is inspired by

African cultures where ―the African mother is a spiritual anchor; thus she is greatly

respected in African societies. By giving birth to children, African women ensure their

people‘s continuity, both in the here and the hereafter. But if the African woman was

‗barren,‘, she was an outcast in her society‖ (Christian, ―An Angle of Seeing‖ 96).

Mama Day offers a variation of the above-cited African mother: she does not give birth

to her own children but she is a spiritual anchor for the Willow Springs inhabitants and

with her healing and midwifery she ensures her people‘s continuity. Thus her character

indirectly questions what is barren and the way in which a woman‘s value is measured.

In some respects similarly miraculous event happens at the end of Bailey’s Café,

particularly when Mariam gives birth to her son, George. The birth is miraculous

because Mariam is a virgin. Eve explains that ―it‘s not unusual along the shores of the

Blue Nile for virgins to give birth. But I‘ve bathed this girl and seen her body; no man

has even tried‖ (Naylor, BC 152). Such as the other characters in the novel are based on

people and events in the Bible, the birth of the child is a revision of Christ‘s birth.

―Naylor ties George Andrews to Christ through Mariam's position as virgin mother and

through the setting of the birth itself. Eve's device for numbing the pains, the use of

light, makes the hut in the back of the café where Mariam gives birth much like the

famous stable in Bethlehem lit by an enormous star‖ (Ivey 97-98). Similarly as Mama

Day helped Bernice conceive, Eve assists during Mariam‘s childbirth. Eve partially

plays the role of a creator of the Christ figure, George, and her use of the lights to calm

down the pain contributes to the miraculousness of the birth. The use of magic to soothe
37
the pain during the childbirth contrasts with the brutality of such practices like

clitoridotomy. First Eve gives details of a bit harsh reality: ―I‘ll have to cut her before

her water even breaks. You know, she‘s sewed up like a …‖ (Naylor, MD 224). Then

she decides to spare the girl from pain but also the reader is spared from being the

witness of the horror such a childbirth would be ―No, this girl has been through enough,

Eve said. I can‘t do anything about the blood, but there‘s a way to alter the pain‖

(Naylor, BC 224). Instead, the Café is lit up by beautiful light: ―Sequins of light that

swirled and spun through the air. Cascades of light flowing in, breaking up, and rolling

like fluid diamonds over the worn tile‖ (Naylor, BC 225). Although, the childbirth is

accompanied by such breathtaking beauty, it implies that the more beautiful the lights,

the more horrific the childbirth would be. Furthermore, it implies that Eve, though she is

not a charitable person as we are reminded by Bailey and she herself went through a lot

of hardship, for the first time in the book feels compassion for a woman which leads her

to make the childbirth a bit easier for Mariam through using her magic.

There is one more character in Bailey’s Café whom Eve helps through using

magic, Jesse Bell. She is a heroin addict who gets Eve‘s calling card in the women‘s

house of detention and she decides to find Eve. After they meet, Jesse swears she wants

to quit drugs and Eve agrees to cure her. Then the method she uses can be partially real,

partially not. Eve leads Jesse to a bathroom looking exactly like the one she wanted

when she was a child. After Jesse survives the couple of days without drugs, she gives

her several bags of pure heroin and a silver needle. After four days of rehabilitation, she

gives her a golden needle and pure heroine, then a platinum needle, etc. It seems to be

miraculous that Eve manages to cure Jesse in a relatively short time (about a month).

However, there is a paradox in this situation. Ivey points out that ―Eve's Eden is actually

a boarding/whore house‖ (88). When Jesse Bell asks ―None of this can be real. Where
38
am I?‖, Eve answers ―Hell‖ (Naylor, MD 138). This implies that Eden can be false. In

Eve‘s Eden, Jesse can put in her veins the high-quality heroin but after that she goes

through such a pain that it is a hell.

The last ritual that closes the events in Naylor‘s quartet of novels is Mama Day‘s

effort to save Cocoa with the help of George. As it has been mentioned above, the most

destructive power in Miranda‘s eyes is hate but Abigail replies that ―there‘s a power

greater than hate‖ and Miranda says ―Yes, and that‘s what we gottta depend on – that

and George‖ (Naylor, MD 267). Then she asks George to go to the chicken coop and

find whatever he finds. Since Mama Day uses eggs for her conjuring throughout the

novel, it is highly probable she wants George to bring her the eggs. Furthermore, she

implies it by saying ―Back at my coop, there‘s an old red hen that‘s setting her last

batch of eggs‖ (Naylor, MD 295). There are varying opinions on what George was

supposed to do. Whitt claims that ―in the end, why George goes to the chicken coop is

less important than the fact that he does go and that he returns with those empty hands

to Mama Day‖ (152). Sánchez believes that ―Miranda sent George to the coop to bring

her eggs – he fails because he does not gather the eggs and thus acknowledge his

feminine side‖ (83). Ivey points out that ―when she [Mama Day] sends him to the

chicken coop carrying her father's cane and her great-grandfather‘s ledger, asking him

to bring back whatever he finds, all she needs is for him to bring back his empty hands;

however, because he does not believe, he cannot do as she asks‖ (104). Whatever it may

be that Mama Day wanted George to do, he fails to trust her that they can save Cocoa

together. As George was born a Christ figure in Bailey’s Café, he dies sacrificially like

Christ. He is ―figuratively crucified, wounded by the chickens on his ankles and wrists,

and dying of heart failure. When he finally reaches Cocoa after this ordeal, the blood

from his hands ends the voodoo curse, and he therefore succeeds in saving her;
39
however, her salvation is bought at the needless expense of his life‖ (Ivey, 104).

George‘s sacrifice for Cocoa‘s survival and also for her successive continuation of the

tradition which was set up by Sapphira Wade and transmitted to Cocoa by Mama Day is

in a certain way similar to Willa‘s death at the end of Linden Hills. Willa dies in flames

with her husband Luther Nedeed and thus she rids the community of the patriarchal

order which was imposed by generations of Nedeeds. Her death might be viewed as

unnecessary as well but also as a sacrifice for better future of Linden Hills and possibly

also for sisterhood of its women. In case of Mama Day although George died

unnecessarily he did not die in vain. At the end of the novel, years after George‘s death,

Cocoa is seen as successfully preserving the wisdom of the Day women.

40
3. Sisterhood
This part examines some sisterly relationships between women characters in

Naylor‘s fiction. Sisterhood in Naylor‘s novels has multiple functions, ranging from

ordinary friendship to substitution of other relationships or missing families. Sisterhood

helps the women to overcome difficulties or hardship of various kinds but also to share

the positive and joyous sides of life. In her work, Naylor puts a great emphasis on such

a sisterhood and she also demonstrates in her second novel Linden Hills how destructive

it may be for a woman if she lacks a sisterly relationship. This topic is discussed in

chapter 3.2 ―Sisters from the Past‖ where I focus on Willa Nedeed‘s character and her

gradual awakening due to the messages left by her ―sisters‖ (previous Mrs Nedeeds)

from the past. Chapter 3.1 ―Sisterhood as an Alternative of Other Relationships‖

focuses on the existence of true sisterhood in The Women of Brewster Place and Mama

Day.

3.1 Sisterhood as an Alternative for Other Relationships

In this chapter I concentrate on two pairs of women: Mattie Michael with Etta

Mae Jones (TWoBP) and Miranda Day with Abigail Day (MD). Mattie‘s and Etta‘s

relationship can be labelled as sisterhood to oppose oppression and discrimination

because their paths somehow meet at the moments when they experience oppression:

Mattie seeks Etta‘s help after she is forced out of her home because of her

out-of-wedlock pregnancy and Etta seeks Mattie because she is discriminated due to her

race and gender. Miranda‘s and Abigail‘s sisterhood also involuntarily substitutes other

relationships but they share much more positive sides of life as they together are

othermothers of their granddaughter and niece, Ophelia. Thus, the two novels, The

41
Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day, both present a different function of

sisterhood.

3.1.1 Sisters to Oppose Oppression and Discrimination

While Miranda and Abigail are blood sisters, there are different interpretations

of Mattie‘s and Etta‘s relationship. Fraser points out that ―Mattie serves as a spiritual

substitute for the husband Etta Mae … failed to obtain‖ (98). On the other hand,

Andrews sees their relationship as ―[t]he best example of sisterly friendship without the

maternal connection‖ (289). In my opinion, there is some truth in both of these

interpretations because their sisterhood has different functions in different situations. In

the first chapter of The Women of Brewster Place, they are two young friends, none of

them having much experience in life but both being in trouble. It is the first instance of

sisterhood in order to overcome difficult circumstances. Etta helps Mattie in the first

months of her life away from her parents, i.e. during her pregnancy and after Basil‘s

birth. At this point Etta may be considered as partially substituting Mattie‘s husband or

her mother who would have normally stood by her during this period.

At the beginning of Etta‘s story, she is seen in a Cadillac that she has stolen from

a lover she has run away from: ―The apple-green Cadillac with the white vinyl roof and

Florida plates turned into Brewster like a greased cobra. Since Etta had stopped at a

Mobil station three blocks away to wash off the evidence of a hot, dusty 1200-mile

odyssey home, the chrome caught the rays of the high afternoon sun and flung them

back into its face‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 56). She is coming to Mattie who is just sitting in an

armchair by the window watching her out the window: ―Mattie sat in her frayed brocade

armchair, pushed up to the front window, and watched her friend‘s brave approach

through the dusty screen. Still toting around them oversized records, she thought. That

woman is a puzzlement‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 57). At this point, it is explicitly stated that
42
the place where Mattie lives is also Etta‘s home. Their roles shift because Mattie plays

the role of a family that Etta did not manage to establish during her life. Furthermore,

Mattie is the only person to whom she can always come back and be herself. She lends

Etta an ear when she needs it. In this situation, they are more like sisters. For example,

when Etta arrives after the 1200-mile journey, Mattie offers a safe harbour for her: ―Sit

on down and take a breather. Must have been a hard trip. When you first said you were

coming I didn‘t expect you to be driving‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 58). And then Etta confides

to Mattie that she has stolen the car from her ex-lover. ―To tell the truth, I didn‘t expect

it myself, Mattie. But Simeon got very ornery when I said I was heading home, and he

refused to give me the money he‘d promised for my plane fare. … So one night he was

by my place all drunk up and snoring, and as kindly as you please, I took the car keys

and registration and so here I am‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 58). This conversation is depicted as

amusing but, on the other hand, it shows that the man had failed Etta and that the only

person on whom she can count is Mattie. Unfortunately, another man fails to live up to

Etta‘s expectations, although she thinks that this time, when she meets Reverend

Woods, she will settle down and get married.

When Etta is invited to go out with Reverend Woods, Mattie tries to warn her

rather like a mother or an older and wiser woman: ―‗Etta, I meant a man who‘d be

serious about settling down with you.‘ Mattie was exasperated. ‗Why, you‘re going on

like a schoolgirl. Can‘t you see what he‘s got in mind?‘‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 69). After

Etta finds out that Mattie was right, she comes back to her, relieved that there is

someone waiting for her. ―Etta laughed softly to herself as she climbed the steps toward

the light and the love and the comfort that awaited her‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 74). At this

point, Fraser‘s comment that Mattie is a spiritual substitute for the husband Etta has

43
never found is fitting. Therefore, Mattie and Etta‘s relationship is an example of

sisterhood as an alternative to other relationships that had failed.

3.1.2 Sisters to Share the Positive

Mama Day‘s and Abigail‘s sisterhood also can be viewed as having multiple

functions. First, Mama Day acts as othermother to Abigail when their own blood mother

isolated herself from the outside world after her youngest daughter, Peace, drowned in a

well. Years later, she supports Abigail, when her daughter, again named Peace, dies as a

baby. On the other hand, Abigail remains Miranda‘s only family, when she herself gives

up having her own children because she is busy healing others and assisting during the

births of other women‘s children. Their sisterhood is mutually emotionally nurturing

because Abigail allows Mama Day to mother Ophelia and thus transmit the wisdom and

healing tradition inherited from the legendary Sapphira Wade. Furthermore, Miranda

and Abigail‘s character traits seem to complement each other, as Cocoa has mentioned:

―I guess, in a funny kind of a way, together they were the perfect mother‖ (Naylor, MD

58). Taking this into consideration, it might be said about the relationship between

Miranda and Abigail that they share similarities with the relationship of Mattie and Etta.

The most crucial similarity is that these sisterhoods somehow substitute the families

both of these couples for various reasons do not have. Etta, Mattie and Miranda have

never married. While in the case of Etta and Mattie the men in their lives somehow have

not been able to live up to their expectations, in Miranda‘s case she remained unmarried

because she wanted to help others. The portrayal of men in Mama Day is rather more

positive than in The Women of Brewster Place and thus there seems to be a shift in the

functions of sisterhood. Andrews analyses the development of sisterhood in Naylor‘s

first three novels and he observes that ―[Naylor] has moved from a view of the power of

sisterhood as a refuge from oppression to a celebration of sisterhood as empowered by

44
folk tradition, by nature, and by abiding spiritual forces‖ (300). Indeed, as I have

demonstrated above, Etta and Mattie are drawn together more or less because they both

were in certain ways influenced by the negative assumptions of the society about black

women. Etta was born and spent her childhood and teenage years in the South in a

period before the World War II. She experienced segregation but a woman like her

searched for ―a place where she could be herself‖ (Whitt 26). She refused false

deferential behaviour: ―The whites in Rock Vale were painfully reminded of this

rebellion when she looked them straight in the face while putting in her father‘s order at

the dry goods store‖ (Naylor, TWoBP 59). According to Whitt, she probably also

refused to submit to the White people‘s assumption that ―black women had strong

passions and always desired sexual relations‖ (Whitt 26). Etta‘s story implies that she

had to run away from Rock Vale because she rejected sexual advances from a white

man. Although Etta and Mattie have different personalities, they have been both

oppressed and they virtually have no other option than to live in a place like Brewster

Place. These women can rely on each other but on no one else. Naylor admits that they

are ―powerless to a degree‖ (―A Conversation with Virginia Fowler‖ 125) but she does

not ―see them as victims‖ because ―victims don‘t fight back‖ – unlike the Brewster

Place women. As Andrews remarks, the way Naylor portrays men and women really

changes throughout her work and in my opinion the change seems to be related to her

changing view of feminism. She describes her development as a feminist in a

conversation with Virginia Fowler:

it is quite true that in the early days of my coming into feminism, I fell

into that school that thought, if we only had a chance we would do it

better because we have known what it‘s like to be oppressed. Slowly,

with maturity, I have changed; I have seen that when women have
45
 assumed positions of power, they have not handled it better. … at one

point I did think women were morally superior. I no longer feel that.

(Naylor 125-26)

The fact that women can be as abusive as men is most powerfully illustrated in Bailey’s

Café by Sadie‘s mother and also in The Men of Brewster Place by Ben‘s wife Elvira. It

seems that if the power is only in the hands of one gender, the community does not

function well and if a woman does not participate in sisterhood, she can do little to

change things for the better. This is one of the messages of Linden Hills, which is the

topic of the next chapter.

3.2 Sisters from the Past

Although in Linden Hills there is no such community of women as in the

Brewster Place, this novel gives an account of sisterhood opposing patriarchal

oppression. The sisterhood in Linden Hills is special because none of the ―sisters‖ lives

in the same time period. The sisters are generations of Mrs Nedeeds, wives of Luthers

Nedeeds. Willa, the last Mrs Nedeed, finds the other Nedeed women‘s diary entries,

letters, recipes and photographs which make her realize her own self. Subsequently,

Willa puts an end to the century and a half old dynasty of the Nedeeds but also to the

patriarchal order they maintained. This chapter deals with Willa‘s gradual awakening,

from the death of her son, through her discovery of Luwana Packerville‘s diaries,

Evelyn Creton‘s recipes and Priscilla McGuire‘s photos until her realization of who she

is and what she wants.

Willa‘s story starts quite similarly as those of the previous Mrs Nedeeds – she

marries Luther Nedeed in order to gain the status of a wife of a respected man. The birth

46
of their son is a turning point in the whole history of Nedeeds because it sets into

motion a series of events that put an end to the Nedeed dynasty. This son is the sixth

Nedeed in the dynasty but the first Nedeed not resembling the father. Instead, he takes

after his grandmother, as Willa says: ―‗Why don‘t I look like Daddy?‘ … ‗Do you see

this picture? Well, that‘s your grandmother and you look like her.‘ ‗But I‘m a boy.

She‘s a girl.‘ ‗So, boys can look like girls. And don‘t you think she‘s a pretty lady?‘‖

(Naylor, LH 93). This conversation between Willa and her son illustrates ―the

patriarchal myth … that the son must duplicate the father‖, as Christian explains

(―Gloria Naylor‘s Geography‖ 115). According to Christian the generations of Mrs

Nedeeds were erased in order to maintain the patriarchy (115). That his son does not

bear the father‘s features is crucial to Luther. Luther‘s reaction (Naylor, LH 18-19)

suggests that what matters is whether the son resembles his father and if not it is the

same as if his wife had committed adultery. Luther rather believes that his wife was

unfaithful than see the features of his own mother in the little boy‘s face. That he does

not see the resemblance proves how successful Luther‘s father was in the erasure of his

wife because he cannot even remember what she looked like or what her name was.

However, the visage of the son also shows that the Nedeeds are not powerful enough to

win over the forces of Mother Nature.

Furthermore, the white son symbolizes that Linden Hills have not become the

ebony jewel, as the generations of Nedeeds wished, but a neighbourhood in which the

residents sacrificed their souls to ―making it‖ and Luther Nedeed is aware of that, as

Naylor describes: ―It had finally crystallized into that jewel, but he wore it like a

weighted stone around his neck. Something had gone terribly wrong with Linden Hills‖

(Naylor, LH 16). What has gone wrong is the Nedeed‘s original vision of a successful

black community of Linden Hills. The sacrifice that the Linden Hills residents had to
47
make is well explained by Engles: ―Rising in terms of race … or in terms of class …

both entail erasure of that which marked one as Other. Naylor effectively metaphorizes

this process as a washing-away or bleaching-out, a ―whitening‖ as it were, of what one

was before‖ (662-63). The Nedeed men‘s bleaching-out becomes both literal and

symbolical. The last Nedeed‘s whiteness is an ironic reminder to his father that Linden

Hills residents have lost their souls to gain material wealth.

Therefore, Luther Nedeed cannot look at the son and he decides to lock him and

his wife in the cellar. However, he cannot divert his own destruction even by

(indirectly) killing his son, instead the death of the son sets another series of other

crucial events into motion. Willa discovers the confessions of the previous Mrs

Nedeeds, gradually realizes her identity and finally causes the destruction of the Nedeed

dynasty. Willa finds the old bridal veil of Luwana Packerville and wraps the dead body

of her son in it (Naylor, LH 92-93). According to Whitt, in the novel ―the bridal veils

become the medium through which enormous sacrifice is symbolized in the present and

in the past‖ (104). For Willa the child is an immense sacrifice because we learn further

in the novel that children, a husband and a home are all she ever wanted. The veil is a

link which leads Willa to find the confessions of the previous Mrs Nedeeds.

3.2.1 Luwana Packerville’s Diaries

First Willa finds the Bible with the letters of Luwana Packerville, the first Mrs

Nedeed who came to Linden Hills in 1837. Willa learns that Luwana was a slave bought

by her prospective husband but never freed. Instead Luwana was ceded as a property to

her manumitted son. Luwana‘s story illustrates what becomes even more obvious after

Willa sees the other Nedeed women‘s books and what Naylor herself has said about the

Nedeed women: ―… the treatment of the Nedeed women symbolizes the way that men

have regarded women throughout history – as means of generation that have no value in
48
themselves. As far as men are concerned, women have no history because they do not

really exist‖ (qtd. in Ward 79). In Luwana Packerville‘s case the nonexistence is literal

because Luther maintains her in the status of a slave and therefore she is nonexistent as

a person, only as property. Since Luther Nedeed does not regard his wife as a person

having value, he also does not feel the need to manumit her. Although he is a black man

himself, she is to him maybe even less than she was to the white slave owners, i.e. a

slave who is kept for two basic functions: productive labour, i.e. ―physical labour

related to the production of ordinary goods and services‖ (Shaw 237) and reproductive

labour, i.e. ―all the tasks related to the generation of and maintenance of human life‖

(Shaw 237). Luther invested in Luwana as in reproductive labour in order give him a

son that would maintain the patriarchy.

As soon as Luwana gives birth to their son, Luther starts her gradual destruction.

First, he reminds her that he owns her and the child by which he ensures that she does

not have a strong bond with the son. Indeed, throughout her letters, Luwana largely

talks about her son as about ―the child‖ and not ―my child‖ because it literally is not her

child. By her fourth letter, when the son is ten, Luwana‘s bonds with him are utterly

broken because he is almost continually with his father. At this point her child and

husband are already estranged from her, which means that she has no family. Second,

Luther hires a housekeeper who does all the work in the house which leaves no

responsibilities to Luwana. As she has no friends or other relatives and as she gradually

comes to believe that there can be no God if he lets this happen, she realizes that she has

no one else but herself. Luwana‘s letters reflect her helplessness and gradual loss of

sanity. They prove that oppression is not only physical or verbal violence but also silent

isolation and elimination.

49
 Luwana is gradually silenced as no one listens to what she wants to say. Her

speech is reduced only to the good mornings and evenings, so she starts carving lines in

her chest and stomach every time she is called on to speak. When she carves the 665th

line, she writes her last letter in which she anticipates the 666th time she would have to

speak. Willa desperately seeks the last letter because she does not want to believe that

the morning of Luwana‘s 666th utterance was the last one. As Luwana was highly

religious, it had to be the end for her because she finally had the number 666 on her skin

which meant that she was the devil‘s (Luther‘s) servant believing that ―there can be no

God.‖

Willa feels compassion for Luwana and her confession leads her to find some

similarities in her own experience, i.e. being isolated, lonely and ignored by Luther. In

Brown‘s view, for Willa, the letters in the Bible left by Luwana are ―secret scrolls‖ left

by an angel (487). The letters really appear as a warning or an incentive for Willa to

think about her life with Luther. She comes to realize that just as Luwana was estranged

from her husband, she also is a stranger to Luther, a similar one as she is to a beautician

or a mailman.

3.2.2 Evelyn Creton’s Recipes

Then Willa finds the recipes of Evelyn Creton Nedeed and they make her think

more strenuously in order to interpret them. It also leads her to a reflection on her own

life with Luther Nedeed. It becomes more and more clear that there is no difference

between the previous and the current Luther. Although Evelyn Creton leaves no direct

personal confession, her recipes again imply that she suffered from a mental disorder,

particularly a kind of eating disorder because she cooked (and probably ate) huge

amounts of food and bought a lot of purgatives. The point when Willa finds shame

weed in Evelyn‘s recipes is crucial because it reminds her of the great aunt Miranda.
50
She knows from her that shame weed is an ingredient that should fuel sexual desire.

This makes Willa realize that she is in the same situation as Evelyn, only reading

women‘s magazines and buying expensive cosmetics to pursue Luther‘s passion. It

becomes clear that this Luther, like the previous Luthers, is interested in Willa only as

in a means of reproduction, having no sexual interest in her. Instead, Naylor hints

several times in the book at Luther‘s peculiar interest in dead bodies but both Willa and

Willie who notice this interest rather refuse to believe it. However, this peculiar interest

affirms two things. First, the hidden depravity of Luther Nedeed – no one in Linden

Hills really knows what evils Luthers Nedeeds do but they all suspect it. Second, it

confirms Luther‘s overall attitude to women: he sees them only as bodies and he likes

only submissive women. Similarly, the Nedeeds choose submissive women because all

of them serve only the purpose of reproduction.

3.2.3 Priscilla McGuire’s Photos and Willa’s Awakening

When Willa discovers that Evelyn Creton finally committed suicide, she is angry

both at the reality and because she does not want to end up like the other Mrs Nedeeds.

When she comes across Priscilla McGuire Nedeed‘s photo album, she notices that

Priscilla is gradually disappearing from the photos until there is only an empty space

with a word ―me‖ inscribed at the place where her face should have been. This makes

Willa think about her own identity, to remember her name and to look at her face to

ensure that she exists. Willa realizes that she really wants to be Mrs Nedeed, to have a

family and to take care of the household. Therefore, she decides that she does not want

to be erased by Luther Nedeed and lose sanity like the other Nedeed women. Her

rebelliousness is different than it might be expected. She wants to say that she has her

place in the household and she is contented with being a housewife therefore she

decides to climb upstairs. However, as she decides that she likes to be Mrs Nedeed, thus
51
she is a woman who ‗sold her soul‘ by coveting and pursuing at such length the position

of a rich, respected man‘s wife‖ (Engles 675), she is doomed to ―tear that whole house

down to the ground, or [the] book won‘t make any sense‖ (Naylor, ―A Conversation

with Toni Morrison‖ 31). Therefore, Willa sets the home to fire and she, Luther and

their dead son burn together into one ―massive bulk‖ (Naylor, LH 303). Okonkwo

interprets Willa‘s death as self-sacrifice. He argues that Willa is a female messiah for

which he gives several powerful reasons, especially that ―the novel‘s plot spans a

discursive prologue and, tellingly, the six days before Christmas day, December 25,

which in Judeo-Christianity marks the birth/arrival-day of Jesus the Christ, the biblical

messiah‖ (121). Although, it is not clear what is in her head when the fire breaks out, it

surely cannot be classified as the intention of suicide because her previous thoughts

showed that she was determined to live. Therefore, the deed was heroic because she

sacrificed herself to the destruction of Luther Nedeed and his century-and-a-half old

oppressive patriarchy.

52
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to summarize three features that are significant to

Naylor‘s novels and that were also crucial to my analysis: her emphasis on supportive

women relationships (motherhood and sisterhood), the supernatural elements and the

uniqueness of Naylor‘s characters, which lies in her ability to create true-to-life figures.

These three features classify Naylor as belonging to the group of contemporary African

American women writers but at the same time she uses these features in a way that

differentiates her style from the style of other writers .

Naylor‘s novels demonstrate a great emphasis on supportive relationships

between women. Her novels also show women who do not give up despite difficult

circumstances like racial and gender oppression, discrimination, poverty, hate and

betrayal. Some women characters are oppressed by their biological mothers and some

mothers do not succeed in taking care of their biological children. However, there are

many successful relationships between women who are not biologically related. Naylor

rather focuses on the qualities of the characters and the relationships themselves. One of

the features of a good mother character is concern for and the ability to heal the souls of

the other women. As I mentioned in chapter 2.1, Naylor‘s first mother character, Mattie

Michael, was born out of another character‘s (Lucielia Louise Turner‘s) need of

someone who would rock her out of the psychical pain she was going through. Mama

Day‘s character acts as a healer or a midwife for the whole community of Willow

Springs and is considered as a symbolic mother of all the Willow Springs inhabitants.

In connection with the prominent role of othermothers in Naylor‘s fiction, one

essential question arises: why does she portray so many good othermothers and why

does she put less emphasis on biological mothering? In my opinion, Naylor‘s own life

53
experience can be a partial reason since she does not have her own children but, as it

was mentioned in her dialogue with Wilson, she has been a kind of an othermother of

her nephew (192). Whatever the reason might be, the fact that she stresses

othermothering has many implications, which depend on readers‘ interpretations.

Although Naylor never gives any solutions to social problems, she is good at observing

things happening around her and at portraying the characters and the situations in which

they appear. Thus, rather than offering a solution, her version of othermothering and

sisterhood serves as an incentive for rethinking the role of othermothers. Even though

African American communities throughout history greatly relied on women-centred

networks of community-based child care, according to Collins, recently these networks

have been eroded and there is a ―need to refashion these networks or develop some

other ways of supporting Black children‖ (200). Certainly also today, othermothering

can be of immense help to blood mothers (I believe that to mothers of any race,

ethnicity or class) when they have to work outside the home or when they for various

reasons they cannot take care of their children. Above all, othermothering should serve

children but Naylor‘s novels show that it can also be beneficial to the women who could

never have their own children. Today, when infertility in developed countries rises, not

only adoption itself can be a way for a woman to become a mother but also being an

othermother to another woman‘s child.

Another feature that is central to Naylor‘s fiction is the supernatural elements.

Although this thesis discusses the supernatural qualities only in Mama Day and Bailey’s

Café, they are evident also in Naylor‘s first two novels, The Women of Brewster Place

and Linden Hills. If one reads the novels in chronological order as they were published,

the presence of the supernatural elements gradually increases, while Naylor shifts her

style from social realism to magical realism and reduces the line between the real and
54
the unreal. In The Women of Brewster Place the supernatural touch is the least evident

but still present. Miss Eva‘s character could be seen as partially surreal because she

appears right at the moment when Mattie is desperate and out of possibilities what to

do. However, at the same time one cannot firmly say that such a thing could not happen.

Mattie‘s dream at the end of the novel is presented as real but finally we learn that it is

not. Linden Hills seems to contain more partially surreal elements. The Nedeed men‘s

properties are somewhat devilish, the people living in Linden Hills do not seem to be

real, instead they are rather soulless persons, and the fates of the Nedeed women appear

to be quite unbelievable but one must admit that it could happen. In Mama Day, Naylor

gives the major protagonist Miranda magical abilities and links her grandmother,

Sapphira Wade, to the Christian God. Through Mama Day‘s deeds Naylor forced

readers to question the accepted reality. Furthermore, she offers a different alternative of

religion than that professed by most Americans. In the world of Willow Springs that

Naylor created in Mama Day, the patriarchal Christian God has a female counterpart,

supposedly Sapphira Wade. In Bailey’s Café the touch of the supernatural and the

divine is even more intensive because the book is obviously a revision of the stories

about biblical women. The supernatural properties are used effectively to expose certain

assumptions about women‘s sexuality. The leading woman, Eve, is expelled from home

by her Godfather (like God expelled Eve from Eden) because of harmless innocent

pleasure. Instead of accepting Godfather as her creator, she decides for herself that she

came from the earth. Like Eve‘s, also the other women‘s stories are instances of various

cases of women‘s sexual oppression. Ironically, these women find peace and happiness

in the boarding/whore house, Eve‘s version of paradise.

The third very significant feature of Naylor‘s novels is her ability to create

unique characters. Naylor succeeds in portraying personalities who certainly cannot be

55
characterized simply according to any stereotypes, either negative or positive. Naylor

avoids any glorification of the strength of her women characters. Instead, she makes

them full personalities with a range of both good and bad features. In fact, Naylor

herself has a specific attitude towards a person‘s good and bad sides, as we can observe

from her conversation with Virginia Fowler:

VF: Do you believe that human nature is essentially corrupt?

GN: No, I believe that within human nature, side by side and intertwined,

are the potential for incredible corruption and the potential for incredible

heights. But I don‘t believe that the essential material of human nature is

corruption and evil and that we always strive away from that. I don‘t

believe that. I believe that human nature is a mixed suit, that both are

there, and that it just simply depends on how you dip into it. That‘s what

I think. I think that I am capable right now of the most degrading, the

most heinous acts that have ever been perpetrated on this earth. I, Gloria

Naylor, am capable of doing what Hitler did, of doing what Idi Amin did,

I am capable of that. (Naylor 128)

Although there are few characters who seem to be good but capable of the most cruel

deeds, like Ruby (MD) for instance, we can find a variety of women, some quite kind

and some really evil but mostly they possess a mixture of the good and bad properties

similarly as Naylor believes that real people do. For example, Mattie is overall a good

character despite she brought up her son in a way that made him totally dependent on

her. Willa herself virtually does nothing wrong but she gives up her soul to be a wife of

a rich man in a respected position. Mama Day saves many people‘s lives but she sends a

lightning on Ruby‘s house and thus kills her. Eve helps the women she shelters but not

Sadie, one of the saddest cases in Bailey’s Café.

56
 Naylor also depicts the stories of women who at first glance could be

condemned by some people but she succeeds in rendering their lives in a way that

readers can put themselves in the characters‘ shoes. To conclude, it can safely be said

that Naylor successfully reflects the variety that can be found within the group of

African American women. Hopefully, her fiction addresses not only African American

women readers, but also other groups and contributes to greater understanding,

tolerance and respect for African American women.

57
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Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates and K.A. Appiah. New

York: Amistad P., 1993. 285-301. Print.

Blyn, Robin. ―The Ethnographer's Story: ―Mama Day‖ and the Specter of Relativism.‖

Twentieth Century Literature 48:3 (Autumn, 2002): 239-63. JSTOR. Web. 12

Oct. 2011.

Branzburg, Judith V. ―Seven Women and a Wall.‖ Callaloo 21 (1984): 116-19. JSTOR.

Web.12 Oct. 2011.

Brown, Joseph. A. Rev. ―With Eyes Like Flames of Fire. ‖ Rev. of Linden Hills, by

Gloria Naylor. Callaloo 24 (1985): 484-88. JSTOR. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.

Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American

Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.

Chavanelle, Sylvie. ―Gloria Naylor‘s Bailey’s Café: The blues and beyond.‖ American

Studies International 36.2 (Jun. 1998): 58-73. ProQuest Central. Web. 21 March

2012.

Christian, Barbara. ―An Angle of Seeing: Motherhood in Buchi Emecheta‘s Joys of

Motherhood and Alice Walker‘s Meridian.‖ Mothering: Ideology, Experience,

and Agency. Ed. Glen, Evelyn Nakano et al. London: Routledge, 1994. 95-120.

Print.

---. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York:

Teachers CP, 1997. Print.

---. ―Gloria Naylor‘s Geography: Community, Class, and Patriarchy in The Women of

Brewster Place and Linden Hills.‖ Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and

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 Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad P.,

1993. 106-25. Print.

---. ―Shadows Uplifted.‖ Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex Class, and Race in

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Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. London, GBR: Routledge, 2000. ebrary.

Narodni knihovna CR. Web. 15 Apr. 2011.

Engles, Tim. ―African American Whiteness in Gloria Naylor‘s Linden Hills.― African

American Review 43.4 (2009): 661-789. ProQuest Central. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.

Fraser, Celeste. ―B(l)ack Voices: The Myth of the Black Matriarchy and The

Women of Brewster Place.‖ Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and

Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates and K.A. Appiah. New York: Amistad P.,

1993. 90-105. Print.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary

Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.

Ivey, Adriane L. ―Gloria Naylor Rewrites the Passion.‖ Melus 30.1 (2005): 85-108.

JSTOR. Web. 10 Oct. 2011.

Khaleghi, Mahboobeh. ―Female Leadership in Gloria Naylor‘s Novels: Bloodmothers,

Othermothers, and Community Othermothers.‖ Journal of Social Sciences 26.2

(2011): 131-138. Google Books. 20 Jan. 2012.

Levin, Amy K. ―Metaphor and Maternity in Mama Day.‖ Gloria Naylor’s Early Novels.

Ed. Margot Anne Kelley. Gainesville, FL: UP of Florida: 1999. 70-88. Google

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Levy, Helen Fiddyment. ―Lead on with Light.‖ Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives

Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates and K.A. Appiah. New York:

Amistad P., 1993. 263-284. Print.

Merchant, Carolyn. ―The Death of Nature.‖ Environmental Philosophy. From Animal

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Saddle River, 2001. 273-286. Google Scholar. Web 12 Mar. 2012.

Montgomery, Maxine Lavon. ―Authority, Multivocality and New World Order in Gloria

Naylor‘s Bailey’s Café.‖ African American Review 29.1 (1995): 27-33.

ProQuest Central. Web 21 Mar. 2012.

Naylor, Gloria. ―A Conversation.‖ Morrison, Toni. Conversations with Gloria Naylor.

Ed. Maxine Lavon Montgomery. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004. 10-38.

---. ―A Conversation with Gloria Naylor.‖ Fowler, Virginia. 123-37.

---. ―An Interview with Gloria Naylor.‖ Kay Bonetti. 39-54.

---. ―An Interview with Gloria Naylor.‖ Carabi, Angels. 111-22.

---. ―Gloria Naylor.‖ Ed. Pearlman Mickey, and Katherine Usher Henderson. 70-75.

Naylor, Gloria. Bailey’s Café. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.

---. Linden Hills. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. Print.

---. Mama Day. London: Vintage, 1990. Print.

---. The Women of Brewster Place. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Print.

Okonkwo, Christopher N. ―Suicide or Messianic Self-Sacrifice?: Exhuming Willa‘s

Body in Gloria Naylor‘s Linden Hills.‖ African American Review 35.1 (2001):

117-31. JSTOR. Web. 19 Oct. 2011.

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Sánchez, Maria Ruth Norriega. Challenging realities: magic realism in contemporary

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Shaw, Stephanie J. ―Mothering under Slavery in the Antebellum South.‖ Mothering:

Ideology, Experience, and Agency. Ed. Glen, Evelyn Nakano. London:

Routledge, 1994. 237-58. Print.

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2001. ebrary Narodni knihovna CR. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

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Summary
The aim of the thesis is to analyse and trace the development of motherhood and

sisterhood in Naylor‘s first four novels: The Women of Brewster Place (TWoBP),

Linden Hills (LH), Mama Day (MD) a Bailey’s Café (BC). Naylor‘s mother characters

often act as othermothers of other women, thus the line between motherhood and

sisterhood in her fiction is very thin. Naylor seems to put less emphasis on biological

motherhood but more on the quality of supportive women relationships and she

broadens the term othermother that is typical of African American culture. The thesis

deals with the mother characters and the supportive relationships in four chapters.

The first chapter discusses the earth mothers, Mattie Michael (TWoBP) and

Miranda (MD) and their predecessors, relations to other women, roles as community

leaders and their broader function as opposing stereotypes. The second chapter analyses

mother figures with a touch of the supernatural. The supernatural properties and healing

rituals performed by Mama Day (MD) and Eve (BC) are compared and contrasted. The

third chapter deals with sisterhood as an alternative for other relationships. Mattie and

Etta (TWoBP) as sisters to oppose oppression and discrimination and Miranda and

Abigail (MD) as sisters to share the positive are discussed. The fourth chapter looks at a

different version of sisterhood, particularly at sisters from the past who are previous

Mrs Nedeeds who left their diaries, recipes and photos which are found by Willa

Nedeed to whom they help to remember her own self. The conclusion summarizes three

major features of Naylor‘s novels: the emphasis on supportive women relationships, the

supernatural qualities of her novels and the uniqueness of her characters.

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Resumé
Cílem této práce je rozebrat a nastínit vývoj zobrazení mateřských a sesterských

vztahů v prvních čtyřech románech Glorie Naylorové: The Women of Brewster Place

(TWoBP), Linden Hills (LH), Mama Day (MD) a Bailey’s Café (BC). Postavy matek v

románech Naylorové často hrají roli neformální náhradní matky jiných, už dospělých

žen. Hranice mezi vztahem matka — dítě a sestra — sestra je velmi tenká, protože, jak

se zdá, Naylorová neklade tak velký důraz na biologické mateřství, ale spíše na

vzájemnou podporu mezi ženami. Rozšiřuje tak pojetí náhradní matky, které je typické

pro afroamerickou kulturu. Tato práce se zabývá právě postavami náhradních matek a

zobrazením vztahů, v nichž se ženy navzájem podporují.

První kapitola pojednává o mateřských ženách, tedy o Mattie Michaelové

(TWoBP) a Mirandě Dayové (MD). Jsou zde analyzovány vlastnosti, které zdědily od

svých předchůdkyň, vztahy s ostatními ženami, jejich vůdčími rolemi v komunitách, do

kterých patří i na jejich širší role, které zcela odporují stereotypům širší americké

společnosti o afroameričankách. Druhá kapitola porovnává nadpřirozené schopnosti a

ozdravné rituály postavy Mama Day (MD) a Eve (BC). Třetí kapitola se zabývá

sesterskými vztahy jako možnými alternativami jiných vztahů. Rozebírán je tu vztah

Mattie a Etty (TWoBP) jako sester, které drží pohromadě, aby čelily utlačování a

diskriminaci a vztahu Mirandy a Abigail (MD), sester, které naopak sdílí pozitivní

stránky života. Čtvrtá kapitola se zaměřuje na odlišnou formu sesterstva, konkrétně

ženami z minulosti, které po sobě zanechaly své deníky, recepty a fotografie, jež

následně pomohou v současnosti žijící Wille Nedeedové znovu nalézt sama sebe.

Závěr shrnuje tři hlavní rysy románů Glorie Naylorové: důraz na vzájemnou

podporu mezi ženami, nadpřirozeno v jejích románech a jedinečnost jejích postav.

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