カリブ海の老女たち

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The anglophone Caribbean islands came under the dominance of the American economy and culture after emerging from the political dominance of England. The material cu1ture flowed in through the American television screen and influenced the value system of the people in the Caribbean. Generally speaking,material culture tends to be youth-centered as young people produce the most and consume the most. As a result, old people tend to be marginalized and ignored. Beryl Gilroy(Guyana) in Frangipani House,Paule Marshall(Barbados) in"To Da-duh,In Memorial," and Michelle Cliff (J amaica) in No Telephone to Heaven respectively focus on an old woman as victim who is pushed away by cultural invasion. This figure of a marginalized old woman also represents the marginalized state of the Caribbean itself. However, the noticeable thing is that all three writers restore the elders' positive function in their works. Mama King is sent into an expensive eventide home `Frangipani House' by her daughters living in America,and her senility is thought unavoidable. Yet she does not give in,and finally escapes from the protective controlment of the eventide home. By living in the dangerous but vital world of the poor,she takes back her senses and her autonomy to such a degree that she even declines her granddaughter's offer to live in America with her. Gilroy's personal wishfor the spiritual independence of Caribbean people may be expressed in her depiction of MamaK ing's life. In the case of Marshall and Cliff,it is in their later works that they restore the old women's function,and in a similar way at that. In Praisesong for the Widow by Marshall and Free Enterprise by Cliff,the old women finally decide to hand down their memories of unwritten history to the younger generation. Marshall and Cliff are aware that those memories embedded in the minds of old people might be irrecoverably lost once the tradition of story-telling by old people is gone,and emphasize their function as griot. Here a short mention of the story-telling tradition in the Caribbean may be not so irrelevant. These works remind me of other Caribbean novels in which old women keep the story-telling tradition ; Crick Crack,Monkey by Merle Hodge (Trinidad),Breath, Eyes,Memory by Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) where grandmothers finish or begin their story-telling with the phrase"Crick, Crack." Though Marshall and Cliff have beenliving for a long time in America,they seem to carry that tradition deep within them.

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