Breath, Eyes, Memory

by

Edwidge Danticat

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Themes and Colors
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma  Theme Icon
Virginity and Violence Theme Icon
Home Theme Icon
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Virginity and Violence Theme Icon

“I have heard it compared to a virginity cult, our mothers’ obsession with keeping us pure and chaste.” So says Sophie Caco at a crucial point in the novel as she reckons with the legacy of violence that defines the lives of Haitian women. Throughout Breath, Eyes, Memory, the loss of virginity is seen not as a rite of passage or an entry into womanhood, but as an act of theft, violence, and disgrace. As Edwidge Danticat explores the link between virginity and violence, she argues that in an effort to save their daughters from the violence of men—and the world more largely—mothers who “test” their daughters’ virginities actually end up inflicting a larger, more insidious type of physical, emotional, and sexual violence upon their daughters.

In a society where purity is seen as a mandate, where sex is hardly ever spoken of, and where religion, tradition, and a history marked by colonial violence permeate all facets of life, an “obsession” with virginity emerges. Sophie’s estimation of her family’s culture as a “virginity cult” is extreme, but not inaccurate: there is a singular, obsessive focus on a girl’s virginity or lack thereof; there is a code of silence and shame which makes speaking out against testing impossible; and there is the fact that the very perpetrators of testing’s violence—mothers—are themselves victims of the same trauma. Throughout the novel, Danticat unleashes both deep empathy and wild rage against the cycle of abuse that maintains the violent practice of testing, ultimately showing how the physical and emotional scars of testing are equal to those of rape—and the trauma that follows victims of testing throughout their lives is destructive and inescapable.

Shortly after her mother begins testing her, Sophie, unable to take the humiliation and pain, decides to put an end to things by mutilating herself with a pestle from the kitchen, breaking her hymen and severing her relationship with her mother Martine, who believes Sophie has lost her virginity. Sophie’s reclamation of her own freedom is much more violent than the act of losing one’s virginity through intercourse, but Sophie feels that in order to truly get free of the violence of testing, she has to commit an even greater act of violence against herself—one that leaves no doubt that Sophie has been forever changed, whether or not it happened at the hands of a man. The climactic act of violence Sophie inflicts upon herself forever alters her body, leaving her with chronic pain that makes actual intercourse with her husband, Joseph, physically difficult—multiplying and compounding the emotional difficulty that sex carries after so many months of her mother’s tests. Later on in the novel, when Martine becomes pregnant with another baby, she feels so betrayed by her own body—and so unable to accept the willing conception of a child through loving sex, given the violent conception of her first child—that she commits suicide by stabbing herself in the stomach 17 times. Martine’s violent act against herself parallels, albeit more intensely, Sophie’s own mutilation of herself earlier in the novel. Both women’s acts center around a sense of self-hatred—and a fear of sex and all things associated with it—which mirrors the violence and violation of the testing they were submitted to as girls.

Danticat shows how Sophie, a victim of testing, and Martine, a victim of both testing and rape, each struggle with trauma, shame, and self-hatred. After meeting in Haiti for the first time in several years, Sophie and Martine decide to give their relationship a new start. As the two talk more than they ever have, they find a set of startling similarities in their own experiences of pain, trauma, and self-inflicted violence—all stemming back, Danticat suggests, to the rhetoric around virginity and violence with which they were both raised. Both Sophie and Martine suffer disordered eating—both women are described as bony and rail-thin, and Sophie confesses to her mother that she is bulimic. Both women find that they must “double,” or dissociate, during sex with their respective partners—they feel a duty to submit to the act, but they are totally disconnected from sexual pleasure due to the violence of their pasts and the “virginity cult” that defined their childhoods.

Though the book never explicitly touches upon it, it is also worth examining the unspoken connection between the compulsive ritual of testing among the Haitian women in the novel and the lingering violence of colonialism. Colonizers throughout history have used the rape of a colonized society’s female members as a method of controlling both men and women within that society. It is possible, then, that the compulsive need to “test” girls was born of the oppressed society’s desire for some semblance of control in the face of colonialist violence. “If a child dies, you do not die. But if your child is disgraced, you are disgraced.” Granmè Ifé uses this as her explanation when Sophie asks her why generations of mothers test their daughters, creating an endless cycle of pain. The “disgrace” and injustice of colonialism is pain enough—in testing their children, perhaps Haitian mothers, throughout the generations, have been attempting to exert some control over the disgraces inflicted upon their families.

“You must know that everything a mother does,” Granmè Ifé tells Sophie, “she does for her child’s own good.” Though testing is intended as an act of care and protection, Danticat shows how placing such an intense, unyielding focus on virginity—along with the physical violation of the tests themselves—actually leaves the same violent imprint on the lives of girls who are tested as those who are raped. In making parallel the self-harm, anxiety, and depression that Martine and Sophie experience, Danticat suggests that testing is equivalent to rape—and that a mother’s compulsive monitoring of a girl’s virginity is an act just as violent as having one’s virginity stolen by someone else.

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Virginity and Violence Quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory

Below you will find the important quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory related to the theme of Virginity and Violence.
Chapter 6 Quotes

Ou byen? Are you all right?” I asked her.

She shook her head yes.

“It is the night,” she said. “Sometimes, I see horrible visions in my sleep. […] Don’t worry, it will pass,” she said, avoiding my eye. “I will be fine. I always am. The nightmares, they come and go.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco (speaker)
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 45-46
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You’re a good girl, aren’t you? […] You understand my right to ask as your mother, don’t you? […] When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie […] used to scream like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother is supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibility to keep her pure.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Tante Atie, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

As she tested me, to distract me, she told me, “The Marasas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person, duplicated in two. […] What vail lovers they were, those Marasas. Admiring one another for being so much alike… When you love someone, you want him to be closer to you than your Marasa. Closer than your shadow. […] You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before. You and I we could be like Marasas. You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand? There are secrets you cannot keep.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Joseph
Page Number: 83-84
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

The story goes that there was once a woman who walked around with blood constantly spurting out of her unbroken skin. This went on for twelve long years. […] Finally, the woman got tired and said she was going to see Erzulie. […] After her consultation, it became apparent to the woman what she would have to do. If she wanted to stop bleeding, she would have to give up her right to be a human being. She could choose what to be, a plant or an animal, but she could no longer be a woman. […]

“Make me a butterfly,” she told Erzulie.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“Your husband? Is he a good man?”

“He is a very good man, but I have no desire. I feel like it is an evil thing to do.”

“Your mother? Did she ever test you?”

“You can call it that.”

“That is what we have always called it.”

“I call it humiliation,” I said. “I hate my body. I am ashamed to show it to anybody, including my husband. Sometimes I feel like I should be off somewhere by myself. That is why I am here.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Granmè Ifé (speaker), Joseph
Page Number: 121-122
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

I had spent two days in the hospital in Providence and four weeks with stitches between my legs. Joseph could never understand why I had done something so horrible to myself. I could not explain to him that it was like breaking manacles, an act of freedom.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph
Page Number: 127-128
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“They train you to find a husband. […] They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee… If you pee loud, it means you’ve got big spaces between your legs. They make you burn your fingers learning to cook. Then still you have nothing.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“Now you have a child of your own. You must know that everything a mother does, she does for her child’s own good. You cannot always carry the pain. You must liberate yourself.” […] [Granmè Ifé] walked into her room, took her statue of Erzulie, and pressed it into my hand. “My heart, it weeps like a river,” she said, “for the pain we have caused you.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Granmè Ifé (speaker), Brigitte
Page Number: 156-157
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“I did it,” she said, “because my mother had done it to me. I have no greater excuse. I realize standing her that the two greatest pains of my life are very much related. The one good thing about being raped was that it made the testing stop. The testing and the rape. I live both every day.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 172-173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

After Joseph and I got married, all through the first year I had suicidal thoughts. Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat wondering if my mother’s anxiety was somehow hereditary or if it was something that I had “caught” from living with her. Her nightmares had somehow become my own. […] I looked back at my daughter, who was sleeping peacefully. […] The fact that she could sleep meant that she had no nightmares, and maybe, would never become a frightened insomniac like my mother and me.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph, Brigitte
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Because of you, I feel like a helpless cripple. I sometimes want to kill myself. All because of what you did to me, a child who could not say no, a child who could not defend herself. It would be easy to hate you, but I can’t because you are part of me. You are me.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Buki (speaker)
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“Your mother never gave him a face. That’s why he’s a shadow. That’s why he can control her. I’m not surprised she’s having nightmares. […] You and your mother should both go there again and see that you can walk away from it. Even if you can never face the man who is your father, there are things that you can say to the spot where it happened. I think you’ll be free once you have your confrontation. There will be no more ghosts.”

Related Characters: Rena (speaker), Sophie Caco, Martine Caco
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 214-215
Explanation and Analysis: