Haitian Women's Fiction

Abstract

The object of the present study has yet to be defined. Of course, it can readily be said that there is recognizable body of texts written by Haitian women. It is also obvious that common language, in this case French, serves to establish the identity of their work. What needs to be explored is whether one can speak of feminine writing in Haiti and whether women writers are bound by common concerns, perceptions, and practices. Are they aware of each other's existence? Is there territory of the feminine in which their project acquires its full meaning? Haitian male writers do form verifiable community with history and traditions. They have, over the years, engaged in continuous dialogue which has fostered strong affinities or violent animosities among them. The woman writer in Haiti in contrast appears solitary figure, isolated, deprived of literary history per se and community to sustain her project. Haitian literature has been and remains, to large extent, male dominion. The purpose of this examination, however, is not to analyze the circumstances which have forced Haitian women into relative literary silence nor to provide definitive answers to the questions raised above. Rather, I will survey the works of authors who have insisted on making their voices heard. Collectively, they have produced body of texts which point perhaps to new territories of the imagination and announce the emergence of new consciousness. The work of Marie Chauvet and Marie-Therese Colimon[-Hall] -two important figures in Haitian, and for that matter Caribbean, literature -will receive special attention. The first Haitian novel, Stella, by Emeric Bergeaud, was published in 1859. The first woman novelist, Mme. Virgile Valcin (nee Cleante Desgraves), published some seventy years later two novels: Cruelle destine'e (1929) and La blanche negresse (1934). Written in the sentimental language of romanticism, they tell stories of unhappy and impossible love. The first one recounts the passionate and fatal love of woman, Adeline, for her brother, Armand. The death of the heroine provides resolution to the sentimental and existential dilemma. One can note in passing that the incest motif (a major component of European romanticism) treated here is also found in more recent novel by Alice Hippolyte, Ninon, ma soeur (1976). Valcin's second novel shares in its spirit characteristics of nineteenth-century novels such as Ourika by Mme. de Duras. In both instances, history and race constitute impassable barriers separating lovers. The story is that of French woman who is loved by Haitian and an American. She loves the Haitian but marries the American. When, through fortuitous twist of events, she discovers that she has a drop of African blood, she is mercilessly rejected by her white husband. In relating these tales of baffled love, unhappiness, rejection, and death, Mme. Valcin goes beyond mere imitation of trite literary formulae. One