From the Shackles of Bondage to Wings of

FROM THE SHACKLES OF BONDAGE TO WINGS OF FREEDOM:
ALICE WALKERS’S “POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY”

Much of the world’s literature has been dominated by a canon that dismissed women’s writing.  The role of women was most often to inspire rather than to create.  But in due course women’s literature has evolved to show common experiences, a sense of sisterhood that questions the recurring face of patriarchy.  Unlike any other woman, black women in order to survive and empower had to generate their own definition and in due course tried to gain their lost humanity through their art and literature.

Black writing constitutes one of the supreme enrichments of black culture and black life.  The function therefore of black literature has always been to illuminate and elevate the condition of black people.  They challenged the conventions and mores of their era to speak publicly against slavery and in support of their rights.  Black women write from their own consciousness, they believe that their own enslavement was a way to salvation.  Many black women writers like Alice Walker believe in healing the adverse effects of race and gender by positioning black women at the centre of their texts.  As Claudia Tate says: Black women writers write primarily for themselves, as a means of understanding their experiences and observations, and as a means of discovering hidden truths about themselves as well as others.

Alice Walker, recognized as one of the leading voices among African-American women writers, depicts vividly the sexism, racism and poverty that make their life often a struggle but she also portrays as part of that life, the strengths of family community, self worth and spirituality. Her women characters display strength, endurance and creativity in confronting and overcoming oppression in their lives.  She gives insight into the intimate reaches of the inner lives of black women without hiding the harsh realities.

Alice Walker is credited for introducing the word womanist for African-American feminism.  For her, womanist is one who is committed to the survival and integrity of the entire black race.  She being a womanist deals with black women’s struggle in order to change their lives and secure a rightful place.  During this process of struggle they absorb the psychic pain involved and shatter the iron bars of gender, which limit their empowerment.  This is clearly illustrated through Tashi, protagonist in the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992).

Possessing the Secret of Joy is about suffering and breaking taboos, and when taboos are broken new forms and modes of discourse must evolve to speak what has been unspeakable previously.  Its subject matter is ritual clitoridectomy and genital mutilation of young women.  Clitoridectomy is the partial or total removal of clitoris, while infibulation also called ‘phraonic’circumscion is the suture of the flesh after performing clitoridectomy leaving a small opening for further biological process.  In this novel, Alice Walker focuses on the consequences of blindly accepting the traditions inhibiting human life and women’s physical and psychological well-being.

Alice Walker examines the practice of genital mutilation focusing the novel on Tashi, a woman who willingly requests the ritual in part because she is unaware of what the ceremony involves, since discussion of the ritual is taboo in her culture.  Tashi is ignorant of the impact the procedure will have on her life. Finally it becomes Tashi’s mission to kill her tribe’s honoured tsunga, the woman who mutilates her.  The novel revolves round the trial of a black woman, Tashi, charged with the murder of her circumciser or tsunga.

Tashi, the protagonist, a native African explores the complex web of relationships between pain, resulting from ritual and womanhood, resulting from resistance.  During the process she shows how the struggle is needed to change the ritual. Tashi is conflicted over her cultural identity because though an African, she lives in America.  She symbolizes the new African-American woman that no longer believes pain equals love and is the dominant voice created by Alice Walker. Though she views the operation as painful she does it as a sign of loyalty to her people, to her Olinkan tribe.  Tashi says: We have been striped of everything but our black skins. Here and there a defiant cheek bore the mark of our withered tribe.  These marks gave me courage.  I wanted such mark for myself.  My people had once been whole, pregnant with life.

On the other hand, Tashi’s attempt to serve the African culture almost destroys her, physically and emotionally. When she goes to the United States, she realizes the high price she has to pay in her future life for taking such a decision, namely reduced sexual pleasure, brain damage for her baby and abortion.  She determines to mend her mistake, this time by asserting her identity as woman, and not as faithful member of the Olinkan tribe.  As Tashi does not have the power to destroy the ritual she decides to destroy the agent, M’lissa, who is ironically, a victim of the age old process of initiation.

In contrast to Tashi’s character M’lissa, the aged circumciser though victimized by the ritual in turn uses the ritual to victimize others. She refuses to struggle against the tradition that cripples women and instead follows the tradition of patriarchy believing in its validity.  Her conception is that pain of the woman preserves and transmits the tradition.

M’lissa is presented as the victimizer manipulating nature’s designs. Walker portrays two aspects of M’lissa’s character. One is the outside one, the strong woman who carries the honourable tradition, handed down to her from the ancestors, it is this woman who talks about her job being hereditary.  The other is the inside one, she is the one who questions and reasons the utility of her practices, but who does not speak out, behind this human national monument are the tears and sadness of someone who seems to possess the secret of joy.

Though Tashi’s criminal act is delayed but not avoided she finally kills M’lissa and brings about her own death.  There is a parallel between M’lissa and Tashi as both attain freedom when they die.  M’lissa is liberated from her emotional burden of silence and her lameness which is both physical and psychological.  Tashi’s act gives her a sense of identity, which she lacked before. Yet the two are differentiated, as M’lissa remains silent to the external world, while Tashi decides to speak out against oppression.

Even till date there are women, such as M’lissa, who seem to possess the secret of joy and to be happy with their situation subjecting themselves to male dominance. At the same time there are others like Tashi who know that:

If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.

Tashi in Possessing the Secret of Joy literally lifts the African-American women to the level of history, which has circumcised their identity. She breaks the web of silence, resists the mutilation and celebrates the true secret of black people’s joy, which lies in resistance. “RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY!”

Like Tashi, black women have resisted themselves from all kinds of oppression and have declared their independence.  Despite the circumstances, today black woman is playing a prominent role defining herself, voicing herself, elevating her status and regaining her individual self.

‘She has successfully proved that BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL’.