The Glass Bottle Trick: male stereotypes

Although in this class there is a lage focus on women and culture, I was suprised when I saw how the male, Samuel, was portrayed in the story. Stereotypically, women are the ones that are uneasy with their appearances. In this case, Samuel appears to be the person that stuggles the most with his identity. Samuel tells hsi wife Beatrice, "Yo don't have to draw attention to my color. I'm not a handsome man, and I know it. Black and ugly as my mother made me" (269). Then there is Beatrice the female that can find beauty in skin color, she thinks to herself, "She remembered him joking that no woman should have to give birth to his ugly black babies, but she would show him how beautiful their children would be, little brown bodies new as the earth after the rain. She would show him how to love himself in them" (267). This passage is interesting not only because it shows Samuel's insecurities (a female stereotype), but also that Beatrice is the one that feels she has to show Samuel to love himself. Again, stereotypically, women are the ones that have to be told that they have to learn to love themselves. Beatrice is portrayed as the confident character while Samuel's character is more feminine and and he is a much less confident individual which leads to very strange behaviors reavealed at the end of the story.

The Bottle Trick: Gender Expectations

   Beatrice falls into the norms of being a wife.  Once she marries her grades in college decline.  Her mother reinforces these norms by supporting her loss of interest in school because she has a man in her life.  Then she becomes pregnant.  Without consulting her husband she assumes that Samuel will be pleased with their child, "a baby would complete their family.  Samuel would be pleased, wouldn't he?" (267).  Her thoughts lead her to trouble however.  Samuel does not want to bring a baby of his color into the world.  As Beatrice learns, Samuel takes drastic steps to prevent a child of his to be born.

Dessa Rose: Females

Althouh the book heavily focuses on race, there are also issues on gender. The gender talked about in this novel does not discriminate based on race. Towards the end of the book, both Dessa and her Mistress start to realize they both have in common with each other because of their sex. There was the scene where the two women shared a room at Oscar's home while traveling. While there, Oscar tries to force himself upon the Mistress, showing Odessa that white women are subject to the same mistreat from men as she is and the rest of the female slaves (Williams).
I was glad to see that the novel touched on this issue on top of the obvious race issues that arose as well. It is true that through history women as a whole have been supressed due to the "power" of men. In this way both of the characters in the novel had something that they both could relate to without even realizing it. This could be saide even today. Now that slavery has been abolished, African American women and women of all other ethnicities in the United States, can say that they all have struggled for equal rights with men. Although this struggle was easier for white women, it was a struggle regardless, and a part of history that any woman can appreciate.

Dessa Rose: Gender

It had not occured to me until reading this novel about the realities of gender and slavery. I was aware from history classes and such that there were a lot of instances of sexual crimes against women slaves. I did not realize that similar incidents were also true for the males. I had not realized that it was not totally uncommon for women slave owners, or wifes of slave owners, to have sexual encounters with thier male slaves as the white males did with the women slaves. This also makes me wonder about other typed of sexual crimes that may have been commited on plantations.
Today it is not uncommon to hear of sexual crimes that are not commited by someone of the oppostie gender of the victim. Now a lot of crimes are carried out by people of the same gender as the victims. Dessa's encounter with the very cruel wife of her owner, further makes me question the roles of white women during this time in history. I wish that the book touched on this subject more than it did. Althoug, it did do a great job of bringing this mistreatment to my attention that I had not previously heard of.

Dessa Rose: Racial Interactions

   The content of the literature in the class has been narrowly focused on issues within races and the oppression they face from caucasians in the United States.  They books and selections seem to be isolated from caucasians.  Dessa Rose breaks the boundaries between a minority and caucasians in America.  The novel follows the life of Dessa and her many interactions of Southern Whites, learning about each other's culture even though they live in the same country and even on the same farm.  Dessa ends up defending and helping a white woman, Mr. Oscar's wife.  She fends a man off the white woman's bed with pillows and shoves him out the door.  They laugh together and have this moment of bonding.  Dessa laid awake most of the night, "I didn't know how to be warm with no white woman.  But now it was like we had a secret between us, not just that bad Oscar-though we kept that quiet" (Williams 153).

   In Breath, Eyes, and Memories, Bone, and other novels there is almost no interaction with caucasians giving the sense that they are a foreign race.  In The Antelope Wife,  there is an interaction between caucasians and Native Americans.  The book opens with the story of Scranton Roy and his unofficial adoption of a Native American baby.  He begins to adopt some of the philosophy, the philosophy which he originally attacked.  This is the parallel that exists between Dessa Rose and The Antelope Wife, both races begin to integrate and attempt to reverse the oppression minorities face.

Dessa Rose: Court

Dessa exemplifies the concept of constructed knowledge very clearly in explanation of the court.  "She had no idea what a "court" was; she had never been more than five miles from where she as born before being sold... She understood "court" as white folks for trying to figure out if everyone on the coffle had been caught" (36).  Her construction of court is the reflection of white people's idea in the south of a slave.  They don't believe slaves are equal to that of men and Nehemiah is talking with Dessa to figure out how to continuously condemn this group of people.  Nehemiah soon learns how smart Dessa can be, she strategically answers all questions to give no advances to the story Nehemiah is looking for.

The Antelope Wife: Reality

Windigo Dog visits Klaus in Chapter 12 but is very harsh to him.  It is expressed that the Klaus is only food for the dog.  He is not a human who judges, "Utter animal hunger that did not care whether you were sober or brave or had your hard-won GED certificate let alone a degree.  No matter.  Just food" (166 in large print book).  Although Windigo Dog was not there to judge Klaus he was only visiting for food.  He gives Klaus a sense of reality, begins licking Klaus until he cries hysterically.  At this point the dog breaths into his face and tells him a "dirty dog joke"(166).  Windigo Dog was punishing him for being drunk yet again.

The Antelope Wife: Respect

With the fact that there are multiple that are in various generations, each one is warranted some amount of respect.  The one most commonly thought about when respect is brought up is your elders. “He was excited by this ancient working out of the old-way vengeance, pleased young Shawano had taken his advice.  He nodded all around at the other men, grinning. “ (132) Anything an elder said was taken to heart, and if advice was given a person took it with gratitude.  If they advised you that you adopted someone to replace your dead brother, the quoted passage, you did so and tried your best to succeed and uphold their instructions.  Older members of a group usually get the respect they get due to all the years they have experienced and survived.  That is why in most traditions one wouldn’t do anything until approved by an elder,  or the family would wait for the elder to go first before any of the others, “When they all had the cake in hand, they looked at it hungrily and waited for the elder to taste.” (138) But not only do elders deserve respect.  Anyone that is older than you should get your respect.   A mother deserves respect, but not only because of her age but because she is your mother.  One may not think somebody young deserves respect, for example one as old as twenty years.  But they still deserve it, they have ideas of their own that may not have been thought of before.  So stereotypical or not, you do have to respect your elders – who do know a lot from their years of living.  But also, one must consider the minds of the younger ones who have been raised in different ways than the elders and exposed to different things.

The Antelope Wife: Colors and Beads

There was a lot of symbolism embedded in this novel. There were two symbols and words that jumped out at me the most: beads, and colors. Beading seems to be a popular practice among the Native American women. Particularly in this class, where we have looked at various Native American books and art, this seems to be a popular trend amongst the women "Zosie's beadwork was tight and true" (Erdrich 208). There are parts of this novel have whole chapters that almost completely focus on beads alone. There is one scene at the end of the novel where Cally thinks to herself "I have got to know what the necklace of beads looks like, that blue" (Erdrich 217). Beads are a huge part of the Native American culture and come up several times in this novel and other Native American works.

Color, too, appears a lot in many Native American stories and novels. In this book, color was usually used to describe an object. Mainly for this book colors were described in great detail and often went along as descriptors for the beads. It also is interesting that colors are never simple. Often in schools and Western culture colors are just one word in length and simple. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet are how most people describe colors. Even when people venture outside of these six colors, even more elaborate words are simple; magenta for example. In this novel colors are complex, "Like a mist, like an essence, a blueness that is a hook of feeling in the heart" (Erdrich 217). It was very interesting to see how different Western novels are compared to Native American novels and how Western Cultures interpret the stories as well.

The Antelope Wife: Connectivity

This novel was particularly unique in how the story was told. The story did not follow a linear pattern much like is seen in the majority of novels that are written today. It appeared as though everything had a way of connecting back, almost in a circular pattern. Many of the things I read as I progressed through the novel at times really troubled me. The story often would jump between different characters stories and from their past stories to their present stories. This was even more complicated because there was no background information given in the first part of the book. Characters stories came into perspective as the book neared its end, and the reader had ample amounts of past and current information on the characters. Even with all of this information, it still took a while for me to get a handle on what the big picture was because I had to put all of the pieces together; it wasn't spelled out for me on the pages.

Choosing to write the chapters of this story in this way is interesting because of the connectivity between all of the characters in the novel. For me, I had a hard time following how all of the people in the novel were related or connected until the very end of the book. Having the chapters jumping between characters and past and present didn't make the interpretation of the book any easier either. For instance, it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized that Cally was actually related to all of the people in the book in some way or form; through blood or by marriage. "Already, you want them, I know. But you will have to trade for them with their owner, your uncle's wife, Sweetheart Calico" (Erdrich 218). This was the only time in the novel that it was explicitly stated how two characters were related. There were implications in other parts of the novel but none were as explicit as this scene. This connectivity and how it was presented made for a challenging read, but was still an interesting story all the same.

The Antelope Wife: Almost Soup perspective

"You hear things you'd never want to know," states the dog of Cally, Almost Soup.
The perspective of the dog is rather odd at first, the purpose is unclear.  The more I read in chapter 8 the more I realize that an animal's perspective gives an outsider's perspective to human reality.  The dog sees and understands things in ways the humans overlook.  Humans are too wrapped up in their own issues that they cannot take a moment to look at their lives thoroughly and reflect.  The dog hears things that are disturbing and "doesn't want to know."  It took me back a bit when an animal didn't even want to know about the lives of humans, that it was too horrid to want to know.

The Antelope Wife: Windigo Dog

I find it interesting that a section of the book was written in a dog’s point of view.  Previously I had been wary of the changes in the story that was brought about different characters from different generations telling what happened to them.  But when I fully realized that a dog, a real dog, was telling the chapter, I was much more confident that I would be able to understand what was going on because they probably wouldn’t be able to realize minute details of the actions and people around them.  It was interesting how he spoke of not only his own, personal origins, but of the origin of the first dog and dogs’ role to humans.  The chapter was not only different because it was told by a dogs point of view but because it seemed like it was directly speaking to the reader. “You’re only going to get this knowledge from the real dog’s mouth once.”  It was only in the following chapter (9, still told by the dog) that things became strange and I got somewhat lost as a reader.  I understood the relationship and the commitment that a dog has to man, as described by Windigo Dog/Almost Soup.  On page 90 Almost Soup says that he put Cally’s life back into her, “It was then, in the hospital room, halfway asleep, that Rozin feels me put her daughter’s life inside of her again.”  I don’t question so much as the dog’s ‘ability’ to take the daughter away, having been told the close relationship a dog can have with a human, it’s just when did he actually take it?  The dog goes on to narrate nearly every bit of action that happens but then leaves out this bit where he takes the girl’s ‘life’?  Along with that, there is the sudden jump back to the sewing of beads and such.  It’s a very interesting tale, and the way it is told is what makes it that way.