Writing Cultural and Gender Difference: Sylviane Telchid’s Throvia de la Dominique

In her article Odile Ferly considers the literary movement of Creolite. This arose in the French Caribbean in the late 1980s and is characterised by the use of a French heavily influenced by the Creole language. Ferly examines how the linguistic project of Guadeloupean writer Sylviane Telchid has many similarities to those of the creolistes in its elaboration of a border language that recreates the rhythm and imagery of Creole, while remaining accessible to non-Creole speakers. She considers how Telchid succeeds in gendering her text, thereby challenging the sexist assumptions of many of her male counterparts – in particular the leaders of the creolite movement – that men are the main producers of culture in the French Caribbean.

4 dans sa main (tout ça pour te dire qu'elle avait coiffé Sainte-Catherine depuis bien longtemps)'. 11 Often these Creole insertions are not accompanied by any translation or typographical marker, which achieves a greater fusion of the two languages, as can be assessed in the following examples: '[elles] passèrent ensuite le plus clair de leur temps à driver dans les champs', 12 or 'elle remercia ces deux bons vieux-corps'. 13 Here the meaning of 'driver' (to drift, wander), or 'vieux-corps' (elderly) is to be inferred from the context. thus 'toutes ses patates douces avaient perdu leurs tiges rampantes', is translated by the footnote 'elle avait perdu tout espoir'. 16 5 Thirdly, numerous creolisms (that is to say, lexicon or syntax correct in Creole but semantically different or ungrammatical in French) permeate the text. In 'ceux qu'on crie 'Négropolitains' pour se moquer d'eux', 17 for instance, 'crier' does not have the standard French meaning of 'to shout' or 'to scream', but the Creole meaning of 'to call', 'to name'. In 'les portes [...] se fermaient vitement', 18 on the other hand, 'vitement' is incorrect in French, but not in Creole. Another creolism found in the novel is the phrase 'pas ... encore' to mean 'no longer', which in standard French would be 'ne … plus', 'pas encore' meaning 'not yet'. In other cases, she uses a Creole word with a close French equivalent but whose suffix is only correct in Creole, such as 'tourmenterie'. 19 Another typical feature of Creole that Telchid transposes into French is compound nouns.
These can be divided into two categories. Firstly, compound nouns one of whose two components is redundant, as in 'franche-vérité'. 20 Secondly, words that are in fact an adjunction of several nouns, 'deux-mots-quatre-baisers', 21 often without the articles, partitives, genitives or prepositions that would have been expected in standard French, as in 'saison-Carême', 22 'bancs-feignants', 23 or 'personnes-Guadeloupe' 24 -this last phrase being the exact calque of the Creole moun Gwadloup, meaning Guadeloupeans. Such a feature is actually not restricted to nouns: it is found with adverbs too, as in 'vitement-dépêché'. 25 These compound nouns and adverbs convey the rhythm of Creole speech, reproducing its concision.
Furthermore, some linguistic features specific to Creole are applied to French. A good illustration is the use of 'même', an emphatic Creole interjection derived from the French adverb 6 même (as in quand même) and best rendered in English by 'very' or 'really'. For instance, in: 'On te fait partir? Tu pars. Mais tu trouves un canot qui te ramène une fois même', 26 31 or 'le car entier rit kra kra kra', 32 or even 'elle ne fit que le larguer blip', 33 'blip' suggesting a quick and sudden action. 7 Together with interjections and onomatopoeia, the use of the second person singular in the narrative confers orality on the text. The narrative voice switches abruptly from third to second person, as if the narrator suddenly materialised and addressed the reader directly: 'Petite et grassouillette, elle débordait d'énergie et allait d'un bout à l'autre de la salle avec la légèreté de l'oiseau foufou. Son entrain décuplait ton énergie, sa chaleur te descendait tout droit dans le coeur.' 34 This sudden materialisation of the narrator recalls, of course, the convention whereby the storyteller concludes the tale with a phrase that explains how s/he arrived in front of the audience to tell them the story. 35 Finally, imagery and proverbs play a most important role in Telchid's elaboration of a creolised text. Even common French expressions such as 'une cage à lapin' (a rabbit hutch), 'le chant du coq' (the cock's cry), or 'faire une salade' (to get confused) are replaced by Creole equivalents such as 'une caloge à poules' (p. 17), 'le chant de l'oiseau sucrier' (p. 28), 'faire une soupe-à-Congo' (p. 15). As for the imagery, it draws on the local flora and fauna, so that, even without landscape descriptions, the text constantly evokes the Caribbean: 'Aussi vivement que la Marie-Honteuse derrière ses feuilles, Pétrolina cacha sa pudeur en émoi sous ses paupières', 36 or 'pareil aux racines du figuier-maudit, le chômage étendait ses ramifications d'un bout à l'autre de la Dominique'. 37 Some imagery reflects the Creole psychology, as in the following example where life is animated and seen as treacherous: 'Elle m'aide de toutes ses forces à supporter les croche-pieds de la vie.' 38 The same personalisation or animation of an abstract concept is found in the following metaphor: ' cette angoisse qui, tel un chatrou, s'agrippait à son estomac.' 39 Standard French is thus systematically challenged, undermined, 8 adapted to a Caribbean reality. In a metaphor such as 'des économies aussi étiques que vache Grande-Terre en saison-Carême', 40 creolisation is achieved at two levels, first in the simile itself, whose full understanding requires a knowledge of the topography and climate of Guadeloupe, and secondly in the language, since the omission of articles and partitives reproduces Creole speech.
The numerous proverbs are directly transposed from Creole. Many are inserted in the narrative, such as: 'L'anoli ne peut donner que le peu de sang qu'elle a, pas vrai?' 41 ; 'chacun savait que dans les situations difficiles une main ne peut se laver sans l'autre' (from the proverb sé yon lanmen ka lavé lot); 42 or 'le cabri fait des crottes en pillules, ce n'est pas pour autant qu'il est pharmacien'. 43 Other proverbs are inserted in interior monologues or dialogues. Thus Pétrolina reflects: 'La deveine est une femme folle, elle frappe n'importe où, n'importe comment' (note once more the personalisation of an abstract concept); 44 or even 'on n'a jamais vu la rivière remonter à sa source, n'est-ce pas? Alors, il ne servait à rien de regretter l'absence d'un défunt'; 45 or she tells her man: 'Colosse, dans une calebasse, il n'y a que deux couis, alors à toi de choisir.' 46 As for Throvia, she reflects: 'Le ravet n'a jamais eu raison devant la poule.' 47 Here Telchid draws on the Creole subtext, allowing her to say more than what is actually spelt out. The full proverb goes ravèt pa ni rézon douvan poul. Tèlman i sav i pa ni rézon, i ka obliyé i ni zèl! (The cockroach facing the hen is always in the wrong. So much so that it does not think of flying away). By recalling this proverb, the text suggests that the situation that Throvia is facing (expulsion because of her illegal immigrant status) is actually an injustice. At the same time, it implicitly states that French law never favours the weak, in this case the 9 Guadeloupeans (or many Dominican and Haitian immigrants) steeped in the oral Creole culture and largely illiterate in French.
Telchid thus succeeds in elaborating an écriture métissée in Throvia. What is more, this linguistic métissage is shown in the text to originate mostly from women. The novel thereby presents women as cultural producers and transmitters. Indeed, because the author/narrator and main characters of the novel are female, this culture passed on through proverbial wisdom is naturally associated with women in the text. In fact, there is a sharp contrast between the female and male characters regarding their attitude to and use of language. Pétrolina's own attitude towards language and culture is ambivalent: although she is primarily Creolophone (p. 15), she insists that her children speak English at home (p. 16, p. 76), thereby hoping that they could retain the official language of their native island, while acquiring at school the official language of their adopted island, that is to say French. So Pétrolina, like many Caribbean women, clearly understands that official languages and cultures are the key to social mobility. However, the fact that the custom of speaking English at home is gradually lost attests to the artificiality of the measure; indeed, after living in Guadeloupe for ten years, Throvia finds that she can hardly speak English. Although she subsequently decides to practice English with her mother Pétrolina, it is clear that their natural means of communication is the vernacular common to both Guadeloupe and Dominica, Creole. So all the dialogues in creolised French in the novel are actually meant to be carried out in Creole. 10 Yet not all Caribbean women are shown as upholders of the official culture and language in the novel. Pétrolina's attitude contrasts with that of Throvia's schoolmistresses, obvious fictional alter egos of the author herself. These adopt a very different stance towards their dual heritage and find another way to accommodate the diglossic predicament of the island. Indeed, they use Creole as the foundation on which to build the children's learning of French, which when they start school is a foreign language to them. Significantly, the teachers' approach to bilingual education is justified by a Creole saying: 'La Parole dit: "Quand le petit chat a perdu sa mère, il tête la chienne". Alors les maîtresses n'eurent plus qu'une chose à faire, laisser les enfants libres d'utiliser leurs éperons naturels. Mieux, elles s'en servirent: la classe se fit donc en créole d'abord et le français, à pas prudents, fit son entrée dans le petit poulailler' (this extract makes a passing reference to a second proverb: kréyòl sé zépon natirèl an nou, 'Creole is our natural spurs'). 48 Even when women are defenders of what is official, like Pétrolina, their role is ambivalent, since along with a respect for the official culture, they transmit Creole culture to their children. That Pétrolina, who communicates with her children primarily in Creole, passes on Creole wisdom to Throvia is clear when, for instance, the latter recalls a Creole proverb that she has often heard from her mother, translated in the text as 'le cabri libre dans la savane ignore ce que souffre le cabri attaché.' 49 The Guadeloupean socio-linguist Dany Bébel-Gisler notes the traditional association between Creole language and the womb. She quotes the Creole saying: kréyòl sé grenn vant an nou (literally Creole is the seed of our womb, which she broadly translates as '[le créole, c'est] notre patrie intérieure'). 50 She then explains: 'Implanted in the "existential womb", Creole 11 language is an intrinsic part of ourselves, it is the premise on which we discover the world and the others, "thus the site and milieu of a sense of belonging based on the body, and of a communication system" '. 51 Later she reports how the Creole saying pawòl vant (literally, 'words of the womb') means 'essential words' (p. 107). Although Bébel-Gisler does not comment on this aspect, it is significant that both these images used to express the relationship to Creole language should refer to the relationship to the mother. Women -and here it should be remembered that the primarily Creolophone sector of Francophone Caribbean societies is largely matrifocal -are thus seen to play a pre-eminent role in the transmission and production of Creole language and culture in these sayings. The vision of the role played by women in the cultural process that transpires from the Creole popular tradition is thus radically different from that of the créolistes, who envisage the male story-teller as the nearly exclusive progenitor of French Caribbean culture. 52 Telchid's text certainly reinforces this close association between women and Creole language and culture, if only implicitly. Indeed, neither of the major male characters, Colosse and Burton, is shown as an important producer of Creole speech -and, by extension, of Creole culture -in the novel. Colosse is particularly laconic, so there is hardly any direct or indirect transcription of his language in the novel. The one time he is seen to use a proverb 'les affaires du cabri ne sont pas celles du mouton', 53 the reader later finds out that he did not actually utter those words, but that these were a product of Throvia's imagination (in a nightmare). So here it 12 is actually a female character who is associating Colosse with a proverb. All the other sayings and proverbs associated with Colosse are reported by the narrative voice.
Like Colosse, Burton acts as a father figure for Throvia (being, like her, Dominican), but his is more the role of a spiritual father. He is for her a mine of knowledge on Dominica and Guadeloupe. Yet, here again, Burton is not so much associated with the Creole culture as with the official culture (whether that of English or French), since he acts as Throvia's informal English teacher (p. 73). That Burton's culture belongs more to the written word is clear in the story he once tells Throvia, about slaves buried by their masters after digging a hole to hide their treasure. The French used in this story -flawless, like Burton's English -is very standard: 'Après l'esclavage et pendant des années, il s'est passé des faits inquiétants sur l'habitation.
Des animaux tombaient malades sans raison, des épidémies décimaient les troupeaux. Des ouvriers qu'on avait vus la veille forts et bien portants mouraient subitement…' 54 Significantly, too, the information Burton is disclosing is about the white, official world: so that this world is mostly associated with men in the novel.
As mentioned above, the natural means of communication between Throvia and her mother is Creole. French is a foreign language to Pétrolina, as it was to her children on their arrival in Guadeloupe. As the text explains, Pétrolina never had any communication problem in Guadeloupe because she communicates primarily in Creole. Her elder children, on the other hand, faced enormous difficulties at school, because French is the language of instruction. So 13 Pétrolina's world is predominantly that of the oral, Creole cultures (and language) common to Dominica and Guadeloupe. Significantly, the novel opens on an episode of storytelling, where the storyteller is Pétrolina and the audience Throvia, eager to hear how her parents met. Thus while collective wisdom is passed down through proverbs, the family history is passed down through stories. In either case, the continuity is shown to be ensured through the bond between mother and daughter. In this respect, it is also interesting to note the ending of the novel.
Pétrolina and her youngest two children are expelled from Guadeloupe because of their illegal status. What is significant about the episode, however, is the context of Pétrolina's explusion: it is a written act that triggers it, a letter sent by an envious neighbour to the authorities. The importance that the written word takes on for these primarily oral communities is underlined when the neighbourhood recognises the gravity of such a gesture: 'Écrire! Awa! Si la parole, c'est du vent, l'écrit ça laisse des traces. Il y a des jeux à ne pas faire.' 55 The text thus seems to signify that Petrolina's world and culture are endangered by the official world, not only in legal terms, but in cultural terms too. Here it is also worth noting that Throvia, originally expelled with her mother, manages to survive in the official world (she returns to Guadeloupe to pursue her studies) precisely because of her determination to master both of her official cultures (those of French and English) while remaining attached to the unofficial, Creole one (notably through her relationship with her mother).