The Paradox of Female Agency in
Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s NOVELS BY TERESA BONDS In Marie View-Chauvet’s provocative triptych Amour, Colère, Folie, the author directs her aim at governmentsanctioned terror and violence, and through the use of three unconnected,revolutionary female protagonists offers a scathing and realistic portrait of life under a ruthless dictatorship. When contemplating the importance of women’s narratives, novelist and playwright Marie Vieux-Chauvet (19161973) is considered to be one of the most influential writers to comeout of Haiti. In addition to her œuvre, her lived experience as a member of the “occupational generation”1 served as a critical examination of a politically divisive Haiti after French colonization and subsequent US occupation. Vieux-Chauvet’s body of work provided a first- hand documentation of life under totalitarian rule, with particular focus on the social inequalities in Haiti that saw a small, wealthy “mulatto” middle class ruling over a poverty-stricken black majority. This social and economic disparities became more disconcerting under the reign of populist François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ran on a campaign that centered himself as a champion of the exploited and historically undervalued masses, shifting special attention to the country’s disenfranchised black middle class. Though colorist rhetoric, “Duvalier strongly emphasized the color issue, exploiting the fact that in Haiti as in other parts of the Caribbean there has been, since colonial times, a general coincidence between color and class, so that most rich are mulatto and most poor are black” (Nicholls 1239-1240). This extensive cultural practice of colorism does not escape Marie Vieux-Vieux-Chauvet, either, and through her work she explores the complex and often overlooked interrelation of colorism and misogyny, using her unique tapestry of tragic and ambiguous female characters to reflect the “psychopathy of mixed-race identity in Haiti” (Asibong 147). The widespread implementation of Duvalierism further divided the already embattled nation; thestruggle between race and class relations further soured; it added new layer of fear for Haiti’s already disenfranchised women. In her masterwork Amour, Colère, Folie, Vieux-Chauvet lays bare the experience of the Haitian woman through three different, yet correlating paradigms, with each of her characters representing different aspects of gender-based persecution, state- sponsored terror, and the traumatized womanhood. Chauvet’s status in Haiti’s elite upper echelons of Haitian society drew some criticism, and illustrated the challenges of writing about experiences related to destitution while living a life of professional and academic opportunity. Her lack of awareness and social positioning left her far removed from the political unrest of the country, and the inner turmoil of its impoverished lower-class demographic. “As a bourgeois ‘mulatto’ woman writer who claimed no explicit political affiliation, Chauvet was long placed at a remove from existing canons (anti-colonial, nationalist, and social realist, in particular)” (Glover and Benedicty-Kokken 1). Whilescholarly interest in Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s texts has been renewed in recent years due to feminist interpretations of her work, her writings were notoriously absent from the Haitian literary canon, while the works of her notably male contemporaries have seen far more visibilityin the academic and scholastic sphere. “This exceptionalized status has much to do with the factof her nonparticipation in the gender-bound political culture of her time. While her narratives offer terrifically scathing portraits of Haitian society, they identify no clear ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys, and her biography suggests a real wariness with respect to activism and practical engagement” (Glover 7). Despite her lack of performance in radical Haitian politics, Vieux- Chauvet, like many other intellectuals under Duvalier’s dictatorship, was labeled a dissident after her scathing denouncement of the government was considered a threat. As a result, Vieux-Chauvet and her family faced heavy surveillance and persecution from the regime. Scholars speculate that genderpolitics might have caused her omission from the Haitian literary canon, but despite the growing
Vieux- Chauvet was born a year after the US Invasion of Haiti, launching an occupation that would last 19 years, with President Woodrow Wilson promising to deliver on his commitment to making the world safe for democracy.
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