"Breath, Eyes, Memory", written by Edwidge Danticat, gives the first person view of a rape child growing up in Haiti. The story expresses the experiences of Sophie Caco ultimately ending with her development into a woman via her mother's death. The struggles that Sophie and her family go through all seem to revolve around two things, rape of the mother and the testing that happens to each woman.
Sophie’s mother, Martine, was raped as a 16 year old girl and from this Sophia was born. Soon after the raping Martine moved to New York to start anew. Sophia’s aunt, Tante Atie, brought Sophia up in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti. Out of the blue Martine called for Sophia to come to America to live with her giving much stress and sadness to Tante Atie. While in America, Sophia meets a new gentleman and upon the exposure of their possible relationship Martine takes upon “testing” for Sophie’s virginity like her mother used to do to her before she was raped. The experience of testing and the rape seemed to have a negative effect on all women in the family. For Sophie it lead to the dissatisfaction with her body, bulimia and an inability to have a healthy sexual relationship with men. For Martine it lead to insanity and the never ending nightmares of the man who raped her. For Tante Atie the experiences lead to the separation of her and her sister which tended to be a common theme for the rest of her life with people suddenly leaving her and not being able to have a loveable close relationship with anyone.
For all of them the experience of ‘testing’ was a cultural influence that enforced the role of men as dominant and degraded women to the stature of sexual items. Specifically, it was shown that women are not valuable unless virgins until marriage. Since “A mothers reputation is dependant on her daughter”(?, I couldn’t find the exact quote) it was imperative that the mother did anything possible to make sure that the daughter made it to marriage by being a virgin. For some this cultural tradition would work out for the better but in this case only harm seems to follow. This is why Sophie says that, “[She] will not test Brigette” because she does not want her go through the trauma that she did.
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I agree that the testing that these women experienced caused significant harm, physically and emotionally. It is hard to believe that after Sophie’s mother went through the testing and knew how damaging it could be that she would do this to her own daughter. Sophie says that she would never to do this to her own daughter, but precedent seems to suggest otherwise.
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