Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma
Virginity and Violence
Home
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past
Summary
Analysis
Sophie does not tell Joseph what her mother has done to her before he leaves for Providence for five weeks. The virginity testing continues while Joseph is away—Martine must keep working night shifts and cannot keep an eye on Sophie, so she tests her each morning when she returns home. After Joseph returns from Providence, Sophie tries to avoid him. One night, he comes to the house and tells her he is moving to Providence for good, and she coldly rebuffs him.
Sophie is so ashamed by her mother’s testing that she tries to hide it from the one person who could help her. It is clear that Sophie has reached a turning point—she must decide whether she is going to let her mother continue to abuse and shame her, or whether she is going to try to escape the generational trauma being perpetuated against her day after day.
Themes
Sophie goes inside, but after a few minutes, she begins to hear Joseph’s saxophone playing and becomes deeply sad. Martine is out with Marc, and Sophie wanders into the kitchen, takes the pestle from a cabinet, and brings it up to bed with her. As she clutches it to her chest, she thinks of a story she was once told about a woman who, for 12 years, walked around with blood spurting out of her skin, unable to control or treat her disease. After consulting with Erzulie, the vodou goddess of love, the woman realized that if she wanted to stop the bleeding, she’d have to give up being a human being and turn into a plant or an animal. Erzulie transformed the woman into a butterfly, and she never bled again.
The story of the bleeding woman serves as a metaphor for Sophie’s own entrapment in a shameful, painful situation. Sophie knows that to free herself from her mother’s testing, she must transform. As she holds the pestle to her chest, she contemplates mutilating herself—unlike the woman in the story, Sophie must bleed to be free.
Themes
With the story of the bleeding woman in mind, Sophie takes the pestle, places it between her legs, and shoves it into her vagina. She can feel her flesh tear, and watches as the sheets turn bloody. She stuffs the sheets into a bag and replaces them, then lies on the bed and waits for Martine to come home. When Martine arrives home to test her, Sophie pushes aside the horrible ache within and lets her. Upon feeling that Sophie is no longer a “virgin,” Martine throws Sophie’s belongings at her and orders her to go and try her luck with the man who has ruined her.
Sophie knows that in order to free herself from her mother, she must do something painful and drastic. By mutilating her vagina and breaking her hymen, Sophie knows that she will transform herself from pure to impure in her mother’s eyes, since Martine’s concept of virginity is based solely on whether or not a girl’s hymen is intact. In performing this gruesome act, Sophie essentially closes off the person she once was in order to provoke her mother’s rejection of her, and thus free Sophie from her horrific abuse.
Themes
Sophie waits until Martine is asleep, then packs her things and runs next door to Joseph’s. Limping, she enters his apartment and tells him she is ready to get married right away. Sophie takes comfort in the fact that she is bound for a place called Providence—“a place that destiny [is] calling [her] to.”
Sophie has disentangled herself from her mother, and is now free to be with Joseph. She carries the physical and emotional wounds of what she’s done to herself, however, as the price she’s paid to secure her own liberation.
Themes
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