Ou Libéré? A Close Reading of Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (2015)
The novel Breath, Eyes, Memory by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat follows Sophie Caco’s displacement from Haiti to New York and her subsequent returns to Haiti. After leaving Haiti at the age of twelve to live with her mother, Sophie becomes entwined in the familial legacy of sexual assault and emotional abandonment. Through the lens of key passages, this essay explores Sophie’s journey to free herself and her daughter from the legacy of emotional and physical hurt.
Sophie first experiences the legacy of sexual assault in chapter 11. Martine learns of Sophie’s relationship with their older neighbour Joseph and deals with it the only way she knows how– by “testing” Sophie to see if her hymen is still intact. During the violation, which had also been performed on Martine by her own mother, she tells Sophie that “[t]he love between a mother and daughter is deeper than the sea” (85). It is clear that Martine sees this violation as an act of love. During this testing Martine tells Sophie the story of the Marassas, lovers that were so similar they were like twins. She ends the tale saying, “[y]ou and I we could be like Marassas. You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand?” (85). While Martine does not realise it, by reenacting the same violence of the testing her mother did to her when she was a child, she is creating a similar pathological fear of sex and intimacy in Sophie. Later, when she and Sophie begin their tentative reconciliation in chapter 26, Martine admits that she does not realise until the moment of that conversation that she considers the testing as much an assault as her rape. She tells Sophie, “I realize standing here that the two greatest pains of my life are very much related. […] The testing and the rape. I live both every day” (170). She also admits that she tested Sophie because “[her] mother had done it to [her]” (170). Martine wants her and Sophie to be like the Marassas and does so by making her daughter experience assaults similar to what she experienced.
While the novel shows Sophie taking active steps to deal with her trauma through her sex phobia support group and her therapist, it is not until she has had the conversation in chapter 26 with Martine that Sophie can truly understand the repercussions her mother’s experiences have had in Sophie’s own life. In chapter 31, following her sex phobia session, Sophie narrates: “I didn’t feel guilty about burning my mother’s name anymore. I knew my hurt and hers were links in a long chain and if she hurt me, it was because she was hurt, too” (203). By acknowledging the interconnectedness of her and Martine’s trauma, Sophie feels as though she has become “a little closer to being free” (203). It is after this session that Sophie resolves not to pass this trauma to Brigitte, her infant daughter, and ensure that Brigitte would “never [sleep] with ghosts, never [live] with nightmares, and never [have] her name burnt in the flames” (203).
In keeping with Sophie’s progression, in chapter 32 we see a dialogue between Sophie and her therapist. This dialogue follows Sophie’s return from her unexpected trip to Haiti and the tentative reconciliation with Martine. In the conversation, the therapist names the theme of abandonment and the parallels between Sophie and Martine’s experiences that are central to the novel:
“The fear of abandonment. You always have that in the back of your mind, don’t you?”
“I feel like my daughter is the only person in the world who won’t leave me” (210).
The therapist echoes what Martine tells Sophie during the first testing: “You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before.” As Sophie often processes internally and does not share or articulate her feelings with others, the dialogue between Sophie and her therapist serves as a device to articulate the conflicts in the book through an outside party. When the therapist says, “Do you understand now why your mother was so adamantly against your being with a man, a much older man at that? It is only natural, dear heart. She also felt that you were the only person who would never leave her[.]” (210), the reader understands that Martine’s desire for the two to become Marassas has come full circle in their shared fear of abandonment.
While it is clear that Sophie recognises and wishes to break free from the familial legacy, by the end of the novel it is unclear whether she has achieved this or will ever be able to do so. As the novel ends, Sophie once more acknowledges, “Yes, my mother was like me” (234). In light of her mother’s own succumbing to mental illness, it brings into question whether Sophie thinks she can ever free herself or if she will ultimately end up like her mother. In chapter 32, Sophie’s therapist suggests that she and Martine go together to the canefield where Martine was raped, suggesting that Sophie would be “free once [she had her] confrontation” (211), but Martine dies before they could return together. However, as Sophie stands in the canefield after her mother’s funeral, her grandmother tells her:
[T]he daughter is never fully a woman until her mother has passed on before her. There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: ‘Ou libéré?’ Are you free, my daughter? […] Now, […] you will know how to answer (234).
In this sense, the daughter finishes the story, and there is the implication that Martine’s death could give Sophie the same freedom that visiting the canefield with her mother would have done. The grandmother’s final statement and the book’s closing line serves as a reminder to the reader that Sophie’s freedom lies solely in her hands.