So originally I had thought of writing on how so many of the characters we have read about struggle with knowing their identity, but Julie said that was too darn broad so here's what I am thinking.
While reading both Wide Sargasso Sea and The Mimic Men, it is very clear that both Antoinette and Ralph have no idea how to define themselves. They both start out as children from the island, but also suffer from "otherness" due to their family circumstances and their social lives (or lack there of). This alienation they experience in their childhood is what contributes to their search for identity throughout their entire lives.
With Ralph, we know just from the title that he is a "mimicking man," and there are signs that he is uncomfortable with his identity from the very beginning. He changes his name at school, and later on in life he is unable to cultivate any deep, meaningful relationships because of the overwhelming angst he feels because he doesn't know who he is. He sleeps with numerous strange women, even keeps a sex diary, and yet when he is in bed with a woman he actually enjoys (the chubby woman), he is unable to perform. Even when he marries he is unable to keep that relationship on the right track. His childhood experiences of being unwanted, ashamed of his family and even bullied are what attack his self esteem to the point where he isn't able to discover who he is, no matter what country or identity he takes on.
In Antoinette's case, it is the estrangement she experiences from both her mother and from her community that eventually causes her to loose touch with reality. She is constantly bullied as a child, and her mother is not the comforting support system that she would otherwise need to sustain a healthy self esteem. The sad truth is that Antoinette's mother is a detriment. She abandons her daughter, practically ignores her while she tends to her son, and this is something Antoinette carries with her through adolescence and into adulthood. She doesn't have a real family, nor does she find acceptance in her community. She was screwed from the beginning.
Even though the alienation these characters experience is brought on by different life situations, they are inherently the same in that it stemmed from childhood, and therefore their adulthood suffered because of it. Ralph has his insecurities held onto from childhood neglect and tries to find love through promiscuous sexual encounters, while Antoinette attempts to shed her family's stain of insanity by trying to fulfill a "normal" woman's destiny- getting married. Their parents directly effect their situation, and it is sad to watch the characters suffer at the hand of poor parenting.
If you have any suggestions at all how else I could spin this or narrow it down, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!! Thank you!
Annotated Bibliography
Stenberg, Gunilla. "Effects of maternal Inattentiveness on Infant Social Referencing." Infant and Child Development 12.5 (27 Nov 2003) : 399-419. Print.
Stenberg's experiment was to try and discover how big the connection was, if any, between a mother's attentiveness to her infant and the baby's response to the attention or lack thereof. This brings interesting information to my argument that Antoinette's insanity is brought on by an entire childhood of her mother's inattentiveness, and that she was in fact psychologically effected by her mother's general lack of interest in her.
Schmitt, David P., Gahyun Youn, Brooke Bond, Sarah Brookes, Heather Frye, Stefanie Johnson, Jennifer Klesman, Caitlin Peplinski, Jessica Sampias, Melissa Sherrill, and Christine Stoka. "When Will I Feel Love? The Effects of Culture, Personality, and Gender on the Psychological Tendency to Love." Journal of Research in Personality 43.5 (Oct 2009): 830-46. Print.
This is probably the most useful resource that I came across, as it directly effects both of the characters I am analyzing. Schmitt discusses how human childhood directly contributes how adults love or feel the need to love. It is a psychoanalysis of the different reasons adults search for love, and how childhood experiences influence this. It helps me prove how Ralph attempts to fill his emotional needs by having sex with countless partners, stemming from childhood neglect. It also explains why Antoinette tends to show "lower levels of emotional investment," being that she dealt with a stressful home life growing up.
"Displacement and Belonging." The Caberra Times (Australia) 13 Dec 2008: A.11. Print.
This article is basically a review and interview of Gillian Stovo, a South African author who wrote a book titled "Black Orchids." I didn't really use the information regarding the book, but in the interview portion Stovo discussed her experiences of losing her identity as she moved away from her home country of South Africa, and her testimony is valuable in describing the plight that both Ralph and Antoinette both face. However, I will be using this source specifically for Ralph, as it is more applicable because he leaves the islands to go to London.
Walker, Sue, Donna Berthelsen, Kym Lung. "Temperament and Peer Acceptance in Early Childhood; Sex and Social Status Differences." Child Study Journal 31.3 (2001): 177-92. Print.
This article I found particularly useful, as it delves into explaining how social relationships are effected by temperaments in children. Honestly a l lot of this article seemed like common sense, however I do feel like it explains how the unpopularity that Ralph and Antoinette both experience is later ingrained in their inability to function in normal social relationships. This of course all links back to the parenting situations that each of them face.
Wu, Nancy S., Laura C Schairer, Elinam Dellor, and Christine Grella. "Childhood Trauma and Health Outcomes in Adults With Co morbid Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders." Addictive Behaviors 35.1 (2010): 68-71. Print.
Wu defines exactly what emotional abuse and neglect consist of in the homes of children, and therefore it relates to my topic completely. Both Ralph and Antoinette suffer from being outsiders, not only in their communities but in their own homes, and I just used the working definitions that Wu provided of these terms to help explain both of their situations.
This "alienation they experience in their childhood is what contributes to their search for identity throughout their entire lives" is appropriately narrow, so just go forward with that.
ReplyDeleteThe sources are fine, with the exception of the Gillian Stovo thing -- the only way you could really use that is if you're specifically saying "and hey look, other people experience this," which I don't think in this case is particularly necessary and would more likely than not just appear as a tangent in your own text.
Did you look at all for critical articles on this topic in the texts that might already exist? Those would be especially useful as support for the argument, if they exist.