All within two short pages, Antoinette's friendship with Tia starts and ends, making it seem like a side-note of unhappiness in Antoinette's generally unhappy childhood, that only emphasizes how no little glimmer of happiness in her childhood, even in the form of what seemed to be a close friendship, can't last long. However, as proven by the later scene when Coulibri is burned and Antoinette runs up to Tia, assuming that she can life with her, the two page insubstantial friendship still meant something to Antoinette, even after the reader assumes that it had ended. The interactions of Antoinette and Tia and Antoinette's apparent interpretation that what appeared to be an abrupt ending to their friendship was actually just a minor argument can give us some insight into Antoinette's understanding of her society.
Although the initial cause of the argument between them was Tia's betting scheme to take Antoinette's pennies, what eventually lead to Tia storming off wearing Antoinette's dress was Antoinette bringing up the arguments she (presumably) heard from her parents. While before, their argument was purely kids' stuff, when Antoinette called Tia the n-word, she brought the whole argument into the real adult world. However, it could be argued that she didn't know how serious she had just made their argument. She probably thought that it was pointless to argue the original topic, which was a somersault, any further, so she decided to argue that she was just inherently the better person in the same way she had heard all the other white people arguing the point, even if their disagreements had nothing to do with racial superiority. She just sees that insult as a passive, all-encompassing argument for use on black people. However, Tia, who is clearly the better arguer, understands more about being insulted in this way than Antoinette does about insulting. She immediately had the upper hand and managed to walk off with the pennies and the dress.
This shows that Antoinette's childhood might have been rather tragic partly because she didn't understand society and the way society shaped the interactions of the people around her, so the way she thinks she can communicate with the people close to her keeps her from finding lasting happiness.
I like your idea that what keeps Antoinette from forming lasting relationships is that although she thinks she can communicate with people, there are crucial social and cultural conventions she fails to grasp. We see this again when she thinks she can convince Rochester to love her again by giving him a love potion/drug. She is convinced this will succeed, ignoring the fact that it is rape, and that Rochester not only says it was unnecessary, but feels poisoned afterwards.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite sad to think about how Antoinette's upbringing and perception of people of a different race was shaped by what she heard during discussions about them in her white established home, but this idea is so valid that it is even found in our society today... I'd say most children repeat what their parents say, whether it's opinions on sports teams or political inclinations. Therefore, the whole idea of Antoinette believing it's acceptable to use the n-word as a insult towards black people because of what her family says at home makes complete sense. But it's just truly awful and I think that's what makes this scene such a key point in the novel - we see Antoinette's naivety in such clarity, and it foreshadows her inclination to rely on others for solutions to her problems, such as trusting Christophine's obeah love potion to make Rochester love her.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't see a whole lot of reflection or intention in Antoinette's n-bomb here. She's frustrated and humiliated, and she's trying to save face, and she reflexively reaches for whatever social leverage she might be able to wield over Tia. It seems clear to me that neither of them "cheats"--there's a fair dispute over whether or not a somersault that goes too far, so that she comes up coughing and sputtering, is really a "true" somersault. Did she do it, or not? The judges could debate, and Tia's "you call *that* a somersault?" response is very much in keeping with the tone of the dare--"Bet you can't do this trick like you say you can!" I don't see nefarious aims on either side--this is typical kid stuff ("bet you can't!" "bet I can!") that quickly goes off the deep end. Which is, again, a reflection of the larger social context and history encroaching on this little edenic pool in the forest, where a pair of kids teasing each other about doing tricks in the pool escalates into a major racial incident.
ReplyDeleteI find the shortness of Antoinette's reflection on her friendship with Tia as a sort of embarrassment. It is almost as if Antoinette realizes that, while narrating her life story, skipping over the Tia section would leave a significant gap in the narrative, but she is embarrassed about the whole incident and thus wants to move over it quickly.
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