SHATTERED PASTS, FRACTURED SELVES: TRAUMA AND MEMORY IN DESIRADA

Romanic Review, May-Nov 2003 by Abeysinghe, Nayana P

Maryse Condé's Desirada, published in 1997, chronicles the lives of three generations of women, Nina, Reynalda and Marie-Noëlle Titane. The story begins shortly before 1928 with the birth of Nina in la Désirade, Guadeloupe, and ends in 1990s Boston with the story of Marie-Noëlle. The lives of all three women are marked by separation from home, rape and sexual abuse. In this essay I shall attempt to analyze the intergenerational impact of these traumatic events on the lives of the characters. Such an analysis implies a theoretical exploration of the nature of trauma and of the structure and functioning of memory. In this, I am inspired by the works of Cathy Caruth and Dori Laub, M.D., whose work in the field of trauma theory has contributed to the re-examining of these questions that originate in psychoanalysis within the framework of literature.

Nina, Reynalda and Marie-Noëlle share certain events in their lives that have made an indelible mark on their being. These events are characterized by their profoundly traumatic nature. All three women are torn from the place of their birth, where, despite the harsh conditions, they feel rooted in a sense of well-being and belonging. Nina is raped and Reynalda is either molested or raped, or indeed both. Marie-Noëlle escapes the violence of rape, but becomes a witness to a form of insidious sexual violence in her role as watchdog for her friend's wretched sexual activity, which is a heart-breaking attempt at procuring the necessities of everyday life. Furthermore, all three women grow up in the shadow of the missing father and, perhaps more significantly, in the shadow of the missing mother. For in the case of Reynalda and Marie-Noëlle, the mothers are emotionally absent from their lives, while in the case of Nina, the mother has died. The looming presence of Il Lago di Como signals and conceals an unknowable truth about the history of the three women. It is the most significant site for the transmission of memory, as their individual encounters with it mark each woman deeply.

The pathology of these three women is first and foremost characterized by a rupture in the continuity of their history, a fissure in their being, a wound on their psyche, a trauma. The American Psychiatric Association defines trauma as "an event outside the range of human experience." And indeed, all three women experience such an event, not just once, but repeatedly. All three are traumatized by having been wrested away from their homes, from the land of their birth, a place to which all show a great attachment despite the harshness of their life there. Let us look at three passages uttered by Nina, Reynalda and Marie-Noëlle, respectively:

Nina indulges in the following reflection,

Quand je réfléchis, je m'aperçois que ces années-là n'ont pas été les plus dures de ma vie malgré le travail et la faim. J'avais ma Bonne-Maman [ ... ] Ma Bonne-Maman qui ne parlait pas beaucoup, mais qui avait toujours une douceur pour moi, cachée dans son corsage, des topinambours, un sucre à coco tête-rosé, un nougat pistache.

These memories are an echo of similar thoughts revealed by Reynalda,

C'est à la Désirade que je suis née. Les gens de la Guadeloupe ont une mauvaise idée de la Désirade à cause des sacripants et des lépreux qu'on y envoyait dans le temps et aussi, parce que rien n'y pousse. [ ... ] Mais pour moi, petite fille, c'était vraiment "Desirada", île désirée surgie sur la mer devant les yeux des marins de Christophe Colombe après des jours et des jours. Je possédais tous ses recoins. Je respirais son odeur quand le soleil qui l'a chauffée toute la journée repose enfin sa tête au fond de l'eau. Je pouvais soulever une roche et nommer avec certitude le nom de l'insecte caché en dessous. Je connaissais ses razyé. [ ... ] Elle (Nina) a donné un tour de clé à la porte et nous voilà parties. Moi, j'étais à l'agonie.

And finally, although voice is relinquished to a third-person narrator, the reader is privy to Marie-Noëlle's thoughts on her homeland,

Les premières années de Marie-Noëlle furent une magie. Sa main dans celle de Ranélise, elle chemina dans un sous-bois tapissé de fougères arborescentes, de daturas très blancs et d'héliconies aux lourds pétales ourlés de jaune. Ça et là, fusait la fleur pourpre du balisier. Un vent frais soufflant à l'entour mélangeait à hauteur de narine tous les parfums des fleurs de la terre, du vent et de la pluie, et l'enfance était un jardin odorant.

In the absence of mothers (and fathers), it is the land, along with surrogate mothers, that nurture them-and give them continuity and identity. La Désirade and Guadeloupe are the land of their ancestors, and despite the paucity of resources, this land gives them enough on which to survive. Suddenly, however, without warning, Nina's life on la Désirade is forever changed by the death of her grandmother, forcing her to leave the countryside and the mountains to live with her aunt and work in the French-run hospital for lepers. Here, she experiences yet another trauma: she is raped by her cousin Gabin. Reynalda is similarly torn away from her idyllic home on la Désirade to work in the home of Gian Carlo Coppini in La Pointe, where she is witness to the sexual escapades of her mother and her employer, and where she herself is raped or somehow molested and becomes pregnant. This history of brutal separation continues when Marie-Noëlle, having been abandoned by Reynalda as an infant, is sent for after 10 years of silence. The blow to Marie-Noëlle's young mind caused by the thought of the loss of her home and her surrogate mother, Ranélise, manifests itself as a physical illness, from which she nearly dies. She recovers, but is never quite the same: