History and Fantasy in Black Witch of Salem - Essay Example

History and Fantasy in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem Many individuals have endeavored to understand the happenings surrounding the witches of Salem of the seventeenth century. These efforts include those by playwrights, filmmakers and novelists. The outcomes of these efforts have been pieces of works that try to reconstruct the psychological, political and social context within which the witches of Salem lived. These works endeavor to present the facts of the occurrences surrounding the witches of Salem. They do so through the use of different instruments including symbolism, history and fantasy. One such a piece of work is Maryse Conde's book, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. The first publication of this book was in 1986 in French and then translated into English. This paper discusses the use of history and fantasy in Maryse Conde's book. Conde causes Tituba to narrate real life situations that the reader can relate with what they understand from dominant history. For example, Tituba narrates the lives of people, stories and fortunetelling escapades with different people. She engaged in fortunetelling with people like Abigail Williams, and a group of girls. She recounts her experiences when she during apprehension, questioning, imprisonment, and torture. Tituba shares a cell with Hester Prynne, a character that Conde borrows from Nathaniel Hawthorne in his work, The Scarlet Letter (Jalalzai 413). It is Hester who tries to console Tituba with the hopes of a utopian society in the hands of feminists. Hester does this while encouraging Tituba to confess before ministers and judges. Conde alludes to Ezekial Cheever’s account of Tituba Indian’s court confession of 1st March, 1692. This historical document is available in the archives of Essex County. Tituba narrates the spread of witch hysteria until when Governor Phips stops witch trials. Conde uses elements of fantasy and history to provide the reader with an opportunity to decry the ordeals of sexual exploitation and slavery. Tituba’s account of her mother’s rape by an English sailor on the ship, Christ the King satirizes the colonization of Africa. The ship is a symbol of how Christian nations condoned and justified this colonization. Conde uses Tituba to illustrate the stereotype about how people expected traditional Afro-Caribbean women to practice magic, tell folk tales, dance and sing. John Indian and Christopher typify traditional Afro-Caribbean men. Davis Darnell demonstrates how white settlers raped and abused African female slave women. Conde uses Samuel Parris to represent loyal Puritans pre-occupied with Satan, pious sadists and sexually repressed (Conde 3). Benjamin Cohen d’ Azevedo represented the kindheartedness, success in business and the hatefulness that is typical of Jews. Conde had an intention to revenge Tituba’s representation by historians. Her blatant dismissal of Arthur Miller’s work, The Crucible suggests her desire to challenge the way white male writers’ portrayal of Tituba. The happenings in Tituba’s jail scene greatly anticipated contemporary Anglo-feminist discourse. Most importantly, it anticipated the power relations that exist between women of color and white liberal feminists. Conde’s use of Hester Prynne in the jail scene is quite fascinating. Sources document that Hester Prynne served jail term five decades before Conde’s account of Tituba’s imprisonment. Conde presents that Hester commits suicide while pregnant. This kills Hawthorne’s heroine, and this could be interpreted as another gesture of Conde’s revenge against American intellectual establishment (Jalalzai 414). This vengeance may have resulted from the fact that Nathanial Hawthorne was John Hathorne’s descendant. John Hathorne was one of the judges who heard Tituba’s case. This has a twofold implication on feminists who cherish the heroine in Hester, and on Hawthorne who feels threatened by feminism. Conde's employment of history and fantasy in her writing raises questions about how real writers need to be when writing about real events and people. Conde creatively reconstructs the historical Tituba using careful appropriation of history of given events. Tituba’s gender, race, and native spirituality were the contributing factors to her trial as a Salem witch. She presents from a politically indicting dimension of hypocrisy and racism practiced by Puritans. Tituba was the result of the rape of an Ashanti captive by an English sailor on Christ the King ship that helped to transport slaves. She witnesses her mother’s execution and she ends up as a foster child to an elderly woman. Her foster mother teaches her an African art of communicating with spirits and healing infirmities (Conde 11). At a tender age, Puritan master bought Tituba into servitude in his home. Tituba appears before a court of law in Salem when she cures the wife and daughters of her master. After reprieval, she goes to work for a Jew who has suffered the blunt edge of persecution. The Jew frees Tituba, and she goes to Barbados. This satirizes racism among the whites at the time. Conde’s depiction of Tituba illustrates the contention of contemporary historians about how both literary and historical textuality functions through akin dynamics. There is, however, a rare touch with Conde’s historicism. This comes out in the fact that mere historical indeterminacy does not hold her back. It reveals truths, not only about Tituba and Puritanism, but also about the New England of the seventeenth century (Jalalzai 415). In a way, she depicts Tituba using fantasy, but she depicts Puritans with an apt arty and political sense. Conde’s writing brings her out as a postmodern bricoleur. This is one who forms new accounts drawing from the remnants of prevailing historical accounts. She is also one whose sides diverge at inapt portrayal and assemblage of different time periods and personages. There are artistic and political intentions evident in Conde’s work that does not rely entirely on historical discourse, but also the structure of these discourses. She uses these intentions to accord a voice to a woman seemingly written off by history. In her account of Tituba, Conde gives her a childhood, adolescence and old age. This is clearly with an impulse to make up for the gaps found in most dominant historical accounts. The historian, Hayden White, observed that the structure of a narrative embodies the legitimacy of history. This illustrates modern discussions of both fiction and history as brought out in diverse distinctions of imaginary and real events. The truth of an event derives from the perceived reality about that event for as long as it possesses the element of narrativity. This is to say that writers of history and fiction like Conde desire to create narratives (Conde 21). This makes them break off a bit from the responsibilities of a common truth-seeking historian. Conde acts as a historian in the sense in which she conceptualizes disarrays in history and crafts Tituba’s untold story. In so doing, Conde challenges conventional narrative by conjuring the fantasies of the likely happenings in the life of Tituba whom she believes history forgot. She creatively breaks off from mere creation of a model character by presenting a Tituba that is rather ridiculous and naive. It is significant that she tells her story from a first-person point view. This is so as to underscore the indispensability of the protagonist and her identity as a champion written back into history (Jalalzai 416). Conde also makes a rather striking distinction between memory and standard historical writing. Writing from memory captures banal and small details in life and not the verbatim history. This is what she uses to curve out personal elements of Tituba’s life. Conde illustrates how local and individual stories influence history. In a way, Conde suggests that an alternative history should not ignore indigenous content and forms, or individual accounts relative to national accounts. In her work, she incorporates imagined recollections of occurrences that have actual accounts captured in the official history. On the whole, Conde’s account of Tituba shows clearly that it is not easy to draw a distinct line between history and fiction (Conde 27). In fact, she uses the two interdependently. It suffices to say that because of the way Conde’s book reflects renewed reconstructions of past occurrences, the book serves as Conde’s input to history. This would be enhanced more when one considers how the novel engages people’s current imagination about these events, and how it displays ideas in their fresh rime. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem illustrates the role of writing a historically inspired fiction that reflects and informs people’s understanding of that piece of history. Historically inspired fiction offers more information about an author’s moment than about the said historical period. This writing also avails an invaluable interpretation of the said historical period and offers an insightful commentary of that period’s culture and history. Delphine Perret sees Conde’s characters as individualists who disregard the voices of the past. This points to how Conde emphasizes the individual above the ancestors as seen in Tituba’s constant resistance to spirits guides. She comes out as one whose destiny depends more on her choices and desires, and less on how much she obeys her ancestors (Jalalzai 417). This portrays Conde’s new historical and literary interpretations that work for individual authors’ desires. This is a relationship to history that Perret typifies with how non-Westerners engage the past. Conde presents a conception of relationship with historical truth that resonate griot. She, however, calculates liberties with the historical Tituba with such consciousness that is different from the way she engages the Puritans. She, in a sense, acts as a messenger similar to the notion of griot. Conde’s representation of her historical persons draws from her simplistic assumptions about their characters and motivations. It is their deprivation of childhood that makes Parris’ daughters act out. To Tituba, Parris’ act of striking both her and his wife sealed out alliance (Conde 27). It clearly comes out that Parris and his wife are not free in their sexuality. Tituba recounts how Elizabeth complains of how Parris insists on having sex with his wife without them removing their clothes. Elizabeth, however, demonizes Tituba when she challenges the sexuality’s sinfulness. This satirizes the dogmas within Puritanism. Puritanism prohibits unrestrained sexuality, but holds that the sexuality between married couples as sensual. Conde presents Parris’ mock tape upon Tituba symbolically and not a mere literal attribution. According to Conde, Parris collaborates with other two men in assaulting Tituba so as to make her confess. Tituba’s assailants wear black hoods that herald the violence that blacks suffered under Ku Klux Klan (Jalalzai 418). There have not been found any historical evidence to the violence perpetrated against Tituba. Conde intended to depict the sexual violence that black women have suffered in the hands of white men. One cannot satisfactorily argue that Conde’s imagination of such events is entirely fictitious. Conde displays her perception of the power women can use to challenge their oppressions using whatever available means. Dominant discourse implicates such women by how much they resort to such discourse’s means of resistance. Conde’s concept of witchcraft and magic represents a similar dynamic. She paints Tituba as using the available power using terms that later brings her misfortune. It is as if Tituba is a postcolonial individual seeking to form a unique oppositional voice. This supports Wole Ogundele's perception of African literature as responding to a historical experience that is its very genesis. It does so with mythical rather than a historical imagination. Postcolonial subjects remain resistant and reliant on the systems that give rise to them. They seek to surmount the circumstances from which they emerge (Conde 37). In the book, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, Tituba fails to surmount Puritan demonization of her as a witch. Her witchcraft and involvement in anti-colonial activities gets her hung in Barbados and not in New England. Conde emphasizes how possible it is to empower people oppressive systems. She also emphasizes the role of women’s relationships and feminism in resistance, in such systems. She also points out Tituba’s potential role in the trials of the witches of Salem. By this, Tituba challenges societal definition of good, evil, and reality. Tituba also pinpoints the sources of Puritan disparaging witchcraft. Conde dares the risk of falling into the snare of the terms of Puritan witchcraft, which would help restitute Tituba. It is evident that there is a dearth of definitive understanding of the historical Tituba. This comes out in how differently writers handle Tituba both literary and historically. Different writers infuse Tituba with varying political, artistic and historical significance (Jalalzai 419). As such, Conde’s Tituba adds on to the many representations that people conjure about Parris’ slave woman. Conde’s have succeeded variously in demonstrating that appealing to history is still helpful in the creation of self-referential fiction. She does this by engaging Tituba using and her wavering allegiance to historical accuracy. This is important in harboring a post-modern skepticism towards meta-narratives. In conclusion, Conde is skillful in her use of history and fantasy in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. She employs these two elements to communicate multiple nuances in her account of Tituba’s experiences. She dares to challenges dominant intellectual establishments. Conde successfully demonstrates the misconception in writing off historical accuracy in different writings. Her inventive collaboration of the elements of fantasy and history in her writing served to expose the assumed difficulty in telling them apart. Conde’s account of Tituba shows clearly that it is not easy to draw a distinct line between history and fiction. She also demonstrates how plausible it is to use history interdependently with fantasy in a single work. Works Cited Conde?, Maryse. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Charlottesville: University Of Virginia Press, 2009. Print. Jalalzai, Zubeda. Historical Fiction and Maryse Conde’s “I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem”. Journal of African American Review 43.2 (2009): 413–425. Print. Read More