A Lost Identity Within I Am A Martinican Woman :: essays research papers

in that location is no single criterion that provides a necessary basis for identity, and uncomplete is there a threshold, a critical mass of sufficient conditions. It is doable to assume that because a happened to a person, and b happened to the same person that he or she is a c-type person however, its impossible to nark up a description which covers all that there is about identity. In the novel I am a Martinican Woman by Mayotte Capecia, the proofreader sees the main character, Mayotte, hopelessly striving to find a static definition of her identity. Mayotte has a need to feel anchored in something that she can define herself as, tho at the very same time, she feels torn between who she is and what she needs in life. These contrasting feelings only lead to the exaggeration of Mayottes emotions through her thoughts and actions, and her deficiency of identity becomes magnified to the reader. By analyzing the theme of racial identity and the strengthened presence of patria rchal structures at heart the Martinican society, one is able to see the obstacle in Mayotte finding a separate identity for herself.Throughout the novel, Mayotte denigrates melaniseens, when, in fact, she is partially black. At the very beginning of the novel she depersonalizes herself from the groups of young black girls that carry baskets filled with food on their heads (Capecia, 34). Mayotte observes them and their graceful manner, but in no way associates herself with them, and even ventures to describe the crude details of how the girls stop to meet a need right there on the path later which, she would simply wipe herself with her skirt and go on her way(Capecia, 34). by and by her mother tells Mayotte the story about her grandmother, she expresses how proud she is that she had a light grandmother, except she ventures to ask How could a Canadian woman have loved a Martinican?(Capecia, 63). She is amazed, it seems, that a white woman would stoop to marry a black man. Ma yotte specifically states that a grandmother was less commonplace than a white grandfather(Capecia, 62).Here, it is evident, that Mayotte sees blacks as inferior. But at the same time, she is partially black. umpteen critics see this as an expression of the lactification complex,or the mind frame of idolizing whites as well as a desire to be white, that silently existed within not only Martinican society, but also throughout the Caribbean (CLA, 260).