Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall - Book Report/Review Example

The stomach ache upsets Avey to the extent that she disembarks at Grenada with all her luggage to cancel the remainder of her cruise vacation and catch the first flight home to North White Plains, New York. What was the cause of "the bloated feeling in her stomach and under her heart" that Avey begins to feel when she tries to eat the peach parfait She had a "mysterious clogged and swollen feeling" which at its worst feels as though "a huge tumor had suddenly ballooned up in her center" (p.52).

The peach parfait (frozen dessert) is a social symbol as is Bianca Pride, and her residence. Avey living in North White Plains and cruising on the Bianca Pride (White Pride) suggests that her middle-class values equal a certain degree of whiteness. The attention to food and the detailed description of the parfait create a parody of rich white folks stuffing them. The illness powerfully indicates, with bodily experience as a point of reference, the barrier between Avey and any association with her complex cultural origins.

It is indicative of the layers of accumulated wealth and superficial respectability which have left Avey bloated with false values. Excessive consumption has worked to suppress her connection with her past or origin.While troubled by the event, Avey remains unaware of their significance. What has contributed to this situation is the perspective on the world that she and her husband Jerome developed during the years of their marriage. All pleasure in themselves became subsumed within an attempt to prove themselves on equal terms with white folks, by accruing material possessions.

Using the wealth and status that her husband Jerome strove for all his working life, Avey loved the cruises, starting with her first sight of the "dazzling white steel" of the Bianca Pride (p.15). The color and name perpetuate the same associations as Avey's suburban home in North White Plains. Her emphasis on the importance of material things in life is demonstrated by the excessive luggage she takes, and her perception that whiteness is synonymous with status is revealed by her ardent desire not to behave any differently from the rest of the (mainly white) passengers.

To them, however, she simply does not exist. In order to maintain her dignity, Avey has taken to ignoring anything that challenges her belief that she has gained social equality in the eyes of white society. Yet on this trip, reminders of white rejection begin to bother her. The waves of extreme anxiety and exasperation that overcame her after eating a dessert parfait may be said to represent punishment for the wholesale rejection of her cultural heritage that consists of African female deities, jazz, blues, poetry, and her immediate heritage as a descendant from the Ibos who were enslaved in South Carolina.