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.