DARKNESS PURSUES BUTTERFLY!
(A Reading of Sembane Ousmane’s Black Girl as a story of ‘Racial Conflict’ and’ Protest’)
Dr. Ch. A. Rajendra Prasad
In those days
When civilisation kicked us in the face when holy water slapped our cringing brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their talons
The blood stained monument of tutelage...
–David Diop in The Vultures.1
The appropriateness of ‘racial conflict’ as a theme for creative writing by an African is rightly substantiated by Chinua Achebe in one of his prose writings: ‘It is clear to me that an African creative writer who tries to avoid the social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up being completely irrelevant-like that absurd man in the proverb who leaves his burning house to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames. ... The fact is that some of the great issues of Africa have never been issues at all, or else have ceased to be important, for, say, Europeans. Take for instance the issue of racial inequality, which-whether or not we realise it-is at the very root of Africa’s problem and has been for four hundred years.” 2
In fact Charles R. Larson the editor of the anthology entitled:
Modern African Stories 3 in which the story under discussion is included points out in his introduction to the book that Africa and the West and the clash of cultures is undoubtedly the most common subject of all African fiction -- the novel and the story included. 4
In this paper an attempt is made at reading Sembane Ousmane’s short story, Black Girl, included in the aforesaid anthology, from the viewpoint of racist conflict. And also an attempt is made at reading the story as a ‘protest story.’
Sembene Ousmane is a Senegalese and has written the story originally in French. Subsequently the story is translated into English by Ellen Conroy Dennedy. Ousmane as a man who has firsthand experienced the trauma of colonisation ably shapes his story which is based on “an actual letter printed in French newspaper revealing the plight of a young girl who goes to France to work for a white family but commits suicide out of frustration.” 5 While fictionalising a letter printed in a news paper, Ousmane transfigures it as an experience that symbolises the essential conflict between the coloniser and the colonised. What has been said about consummate artist is truly applicable to Ousmane: “It is the task of the artist to find order that exists within our experiences in a way, the artist may be said to master experience, to transform it from, its apparent irrelevance into something substantial and significant.” 6
The narration of the story begins with the news of the death of a black girl, Diouana. The sad events behind the death are revealed in a retrospective narrative manner. While delineating the pathetic story of the girl, the writer has rightly chosen the medium of irony since this literary device bares gap between reality and expectation. Further the ironic mode of narration rightly highlights the apathy and indifference that spread all over the story. The opening of the story aptly sets in the tone of the story-ironic: ‘It was the morning of the 23rd of June in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-eight. At Antibes, along the Riviera, neither the fate of the French Republic, nor the future of Algeria nor the state of the colonial territories preoccupied those who swarmed across the beaches below La Croisette.” (P. 13)
The investigation team which includes a police chief from the town of Grasse, a medical officer and two police inspectors from Antibes arrives in the “Villa of Green Happiness” where the black girl is found dead. The writer described the villa in ironic vein: “There was nothing green about the Villa to Green Happiness except its name.” (p. 13).
The narration progresses along unravelling the parodying of the death of the girl. One of the well-wishers of Madame Pouchet, the employer of the dead black girl, casually puts in by way of confirming the death rather as a suicide: “Why? said the retired officer...Oh! who do you think would make an attempt on the life of a Negro girl? (p.15).
As if continuing the job of parodying the death of the dead girl, Madame Pouchet wonders aloud: “I don’t know why she killed herself. She was well treated here, she ate the same food, shared the same rooms as children” (p.15). Taking part in the game of ridiculing the death, even the press reporters are impatient with the whole proceedings of the investigation: “The reporters were getting impatient. The suicide of a maid--even if she were black--didn’t amount to a hill of beans.” (p.15). Ultimately after having done a semblance of investigation the police chief and others hasten to the ‘conclusion’ that the death is suicide, and might have been due to ‘homesickness.’
It is through Madame Pouchet’s compelling find guilt-ridden retrospection that we come to witness the sowing and snowballing of the predicament of the black girl. Through this retrospective narration we visualise Diouana’s ill-fated pursuit of the ‘wonders’ of Europe.
Unaware of the trap laid for her by Madame Pouchet, Diouana succumbed to the bait of going to France. In fact, she was so thoroughly caught up with the frenzy of going to France, she feared most any last minute change of mind on the part of the employer. For Diouana going to France was so ‘vital’ since she viewed it as a ‘passage’ to the fulfillment of all her desires: “Doouana wanted to see France, this country whose beauty, richness, and joy of living everyone praised.....Already, without having left African soil, she could see herself on the dock, returning from France, wealthy to the millions, with gifts of clothes for everyone.” (p. 17).
She was so engrossed in her dreamland that it was no surprise her turning a deaf ear to the advice of her close relation, Tive Correa. Perhaps the attraction was so fatal and compelling, even the ruined state of Tive Correa failed to withhold Diouana for a minute from her ambitious ‘pursuit’: “Diouana would have nothing to do with the drunkard. She didn’t listen to Tive Correa’s advice. An old sailor, Tive Correa had come home from Europe after twenty years absence. He had left, rich and youth, full of ambition, and come home a wreck.” (p.21).
As a man who had tasted the ‘bitter fruits’ of distant lands, Tive Correa could not help foreseeing the imminent disillusionment for Diouana. His altercation with Monsieur, Madame Pouchet’s husband, revealed his agony and his true concern for the wellbeing of Diouana and his people: “what young African doesn’t dream of going to France? Unfortunately, they confuse living in France with being a servant in France. I come from the village next to Diouana’s, in Casamance. There, we don’t say the way you do that it is the light that attracts the butterfly, but the other way round. In my country, Casamance, we say that the darkness pursues the butterfly. (Emphasis mine) (p. 21).
Tive Correa’s words reveal the double tragedy involved in the whole episode. His words throw light on the situation of blacks ‘volunteering’ to be victims in the hands of whites out of their innocence and ignorance. Hence it is darkness pursuing butterfly!
In a way Tive Correa stands as a double to Diouana’s character, and invites comparison with her, and thereby intensify the tragedy of the work. He forecasts the coming tragic end for Diouana. On the whole presence of Correa’s character brings in thematic wholesomeness for the story.
Coming back to the retrospective narration of the story, Tive Correa’s anguish was a cry in the wilderness since the near and dear of Diouana pinned great hopes on her visit to France: “They were chatting along, each begging a little souvenir. Diouana promised happily; she was smiling her white teeth gleaming.” (p. 21).
Diouaua was swept off her feet the moment she landed on the shores of France by looking at the suddenly unveiled grandeur of the new land. Like a person who starved, she began to gulp down the wonders of the land with her eyes: “She packed every detail into her head. It was beautiful. Africa seemed a sordid slum by comparison.” (p.23).
But before long disillusionment began to set in with Madame showing up her true colours. To her great dismay; Diouana had to realise that she was actually ‘lured’ to France by Madame with a view to tying her to the peg of chores of the household: “Madame had been good to her, but in a self-seeking way. The only reason for her attentiveness had been to wind the strings round Diouana, the better to make her sweat...” (p.25). The bitter reality in her life was gradually sinking into Diouana’s mind. She had to admit to herself that Tive Correa’s predictions “had been cruelly true.” (p. 26).
To her great astonishment, she found herself being harassed by Madame’s children. She couldn’t comprehend the fact that the same children whom she was fostering as Madam had been evading her maternal responsibilities, ganging up against her and making objectionable comments on her complexion. For the first time in her life she was more aware of her complexion, and she was at a loss to realise that she belonged neither to the place nor to the people. The dawning of this ugly reality frightened Diouana thoroughly and intensified her loneliness.
Finally the smouldering resentment and disillusionment in the heart of Diouana flared up with the wrong accusation of Madame that Diouana had left a bathroom dirty after using it. Diouana’s attempts to defend herself by saying the fact that the children did the act met with harsher accusations from Madam: “You are dirty, in spite of everything. You might have left the bathroom clean. ... The children are tidy. It might be that you’re up with them. But to find you telling lies, like a native, that I don’t like. I don’t like liars and you are a liar.” (p.27).
The callous accusation of Madame brought in the proverbial last straw on the patience of Diouana. Stung by venom of the accusation, Diouana was hard put to be restrained, and with great difficulty she “kept silent though her lips were trembling with rage.” (p. 27). Possessed by anger and helplessness and being unable to come out of the snare she was caught in for she was an illiterate and not-so-worldly-wise black girl, Diouana decided to put an end to her sordid tale.
She rushed up to the bathroom and locked up herself inside it about whose uncleanliness she was made responsible in a false manner, and committed suicide by cutting her throat with a kitchen knife. This time Diouana ‘did unclean’ the bathroom by letting her blood flow over the floor of the place. Diouana intended to protest against her oppressors through her death.
Notes and References.
1 David Diop, ‘The Vultures.’ Modern Poetry From Africa Ed. Gerald Moore and Ulli Beeir (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 64.
2 Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet On Creation D Day (New York: Anchor Press, 1975) pp. 137 - 138.
3 Charles R. Larson Ed. Modern African Stories (Glasgow: Collins, 1977). (Subsequent references are to this edition, and are parenthetically incorporated.)
4 ibid., p. 11.
5 O.R. Dathorne, African literature in the Twentieth Century, (London: Heinemann, 1976), p. 303
6 Willoughby Johnson and William C. hamlin, Ed. The Short Story (New York: American Book Company, 1966), p.e.