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Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
754 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
754
PROGRESSION AND NARRATIVE DESIGNIN “MATTIE MICHAEL” BY GLORIA NAYLOR
Corina Lirca
Lecturer, PhD, ”Petru Maior” University of Tîrgu-Mureş
Abstract: The analysis of Gloria Naylorřs story can greatly benefit from a rhetorical approach to it which
reveals the artistic method and design, the authorial intention and the correct way in which readers and
viewers should understand and react to the way in which the events are narrated and the title character is
depicted.
Key words: Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place, the rhetorical approach to narrative,
progression, characters attributes and functions
―Mattie Michael‖ is Gloria Naylor's first story in the 1982 short-story cycle titled The
Women of Brewster Place. The cycle celebrates the black female experience, by depicting in
seven short stories the lives of seven women striving to survive in an impoverished and male-
dominated environment. In order to ensure unity, to link the stories, the author creates two short
texts, ―Dawn‖ and ―Dusk‖ (one is the prologue, the other the epilogue), describing the tenement
neighborhood, called Brewster Place, where these women live – ―Dawn‖points to the emergence
of the residential area, whereas ―Dusk‖refers to this neighborhood waiting to die.
In the analysis that follows, I shall pursue the rhetorical view to narrative689
, which
foregrounds the text as communication between author and reader. In order to account for such
689The analysis method and working theory I apply is James Phelan‘s framework for a rhetorical approach to
character in connection with the progression of the story.
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
755 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
755
communication, I will study the principles upon which Gloria Naylor chooses to construct the
narrative, the resulting structure and effects of the text, trying to make my judgments according
to the conventions under which the author is operating. The method of analysis focuses on
technique but emphasizes the affective quality of the text, showing how technique influences the
emotional/psychological/ethical experience of reading.
When one sets out to write about the stories in this cycle, one becomes immediately
aware that the creation of characters is the focal point of Naylor‘s text. According to one reading
convention called the rule of notice, as it was pointed out by Peter J. Rabinowits in his seminal
study titled Before Reading. Narrative Conventions, titles tell the readers what to concentrate on,
and provide ―a core around which to concentrate an interpretation‖ (61). Six short stories in the
cycle are titled so as to focus the reader‘s attention on their female main characters: ―Mattie
Michael‖, ―Etta Mae Johnson‖, ―Kiswana Browne‖, ―Lucielia Louise Turner‖, ―Cora Lee‖, and
―The Two‖ – clearly highlighting them in contrast with the rest of the community.
Having established that I am supposed to do a study of character and bearing in mind that
character is, in the words of Henry James, the determination of incidents and incidents are
illustrations of a character, it becomes clear that my analysis of “Mattie Michael”must
necessarily combine discussions of action or progression with discussion of character
construction; I must adopt a double focus: character and progression. Also, because I choose to
read the first story in Naylor‘s The Women of Brewster Place as rhetoric, I should not forget that
to approach Naylor‘s telling (and the narrator‘s telling), the voice, the audience, and the purpose:
all the elements that help determine the shape and effect of the story.
In the prologue to the volume, Naylor by means of a heterodiegetic narrator provides her
audience with a code to ease their production of a cognitive explanation, consisting of categories
that organize the numerous signals in the language of the text into fewer more general units: the
dead-end street, the dead-end lives, ―hard-edged, soft-centred, brutally demanding, and easily
pleased‖ (5) women.
Symbolically the audience‘s familiarization/first contact with the fictional world of the
Brewster Place is marked by the arrival of a key character in the quarter, who like the readers is
fairly ignorant of what the place is truly like. When the audience gets to discover and understand
Mattie‘s destiny and the circumstances that have brought her in the slum, they also witness the
first demonstration that the Brewster Place is inhabited by ―hard-edged, soft-centred, brutally
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
756 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
756
demanding, and easily pleased‖ (idem) women who have all ended up living in a blind alley
feeding into a dead end.
A rhetorical analysis of the character Mattie Michael must be developed through an
examination of the range of relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components of
the character. Because progression and character are so closely interrelated, observing how the
narrative progresses will also illuminate the relationship between Mattie's mimetic and thematic
dimensions. The synthetic component of Mattie remains in the background of the work.
If we examine the story-discourse or progression (a narrative is a dynamic event which
moves in both its telling and its reception through time) of ―Mattie Michael‖ in order to determine
how the author generates, sustains, develops, and resolves readers' interests in the narrative, we
realize that the movement of this tale is generated solely by means of creating a tension of
unequal knowledge between the narrator and the audience. The movement of this tale is one
stratagem serving the purpose of the whole story-cycle, being a movement toward the disclosure
of an individual character, not a movement toward the disclosure of events involving other
characters.
Interestingly, the story basically refers to events that unfold over the course of a few
minutes – representing Mattie Michael‘s arrival in Brewster Place, from the moment her taxi
enters the alley to the moment she enters the apartment building – but by means of Mattie‘s
associative memory the narrator discloses (what is going to be the most part of the text)
information about the major events of Mattie‘s life between her early twenties and the event that
forced her to move to this neighborhood. The story introduces and complicated no instability.
Despite the introduction to the book that places Mattie's actions into a broad thematic
context, Naylor's initial treatment of Mattie is directed toward emphasizing her mimetic function.
Naylor relies greatly upon the manipulation of point of view to establish Mattie's mimetic
function. Mattie is consistently the focalizer in the narration; we see things as Mattie sees them,
though frequently the voice used to express Mattie's vision is the narrator's.
Naylor sees no need to shift the main principle of movement from the resolution of
tension to the complication of instabilities. Having established the overarching thematic
background in the introduction, Naylor here designs the trajectory of the main action around our
mimetic interest in Mattie and her struggle. And as Naylor confines us to Mattie's vision through
the point of view, she has us participate in the trajectory of Mattie's own emotions in the main
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
757 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
757
action. For example, like Mattie, we take pleasure in her having succeeded on her own, or when
Basil is arrested we share her feeling that such an event was inevitable, but our knowledge offers
no solace for the disappointment we feel.
The large parenthesis the narrator makes in between Mattie‘s getting out of the taxi and
her getting into the apartment building is the core of the tale and it serves to disclose information
about the events that led to Mattie‘s current situation, information that is necessary for the
authorial audience's understanding of why she acts with so much weariness and resignation as
she does in the focused narrative of related events. Her attitude and arrival in this place at the
beginning of the narrative is brought into a coherent relationship as we draw upon the past events
to infer the motives behind her ending up living in Brewster Place. This arrangement makes the
lack of instability in the story have little importance. Naylor chooses to propel the reader forward
by relieving tension between them and the narrator and what emerges from the tension and the
reader‘s interest in Mattie is her clear mimetic portrait. According to this technique, the author
and the narrator know all about this character and plunge into the narrative. The narration begins
in ultimas res, i.e. the point of attack occurs after the climax and near the end. Consequently, our
reading is driven only by a desire to reduce this tension and find out the causes of the effects.
This orients us toward the acquisition of information that will influence our judgments,
expectations, desires, and attitudes about the protagonist.
The audience learns that Mattie Michael is a middle aged woman who moves to the gray,
cold and decaying Brewster Place. The first person she meets on arrival is the janitor, then the
odor of cooking resembling for an instant the smell of freshly cut sugar cane triggers an extended
flashback of the circumstances and the events that brought her there. (This development by
means of flashbacks is a sign of Naylor's characteristic narrative economy, which helps fulfil our
expectations about the progression of the whole narrative. She has Mattie by some smell-
memory association device immediately recall events in chronological order. The disclosures
about Mattie‘s world and life reduce most of the tension and lead to closure.) Thus the audience
learns that her childhood was dominated by the father figure, a strict, fair, somber, spiritual and
overprotecting parent, who stifled her development as a woman. After a trip to the cane fields
with Butch Fuller who determined her to yield to long-repressed desires, Mattie became
pregnant. Four months into her pregnancy, Mattie suffered a savage beating by her father, which
determined her to leave home for good and go to Ashville, North Carolina. At the end of several
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
758 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
758
terrible months there in dilapidated accommodation, she and her son Basil end up sheltered into
the home of Miss Eva Turner, where they would live for almost three decades. Mattie invested
heart and soul in her son, to compensate the lack of love in her life, but this overwhelming care
and love turned Basil into an indolent, ungrateful, unreliable, jobless man. When Basil, at the age
of thirty, accidentally killed a man, he chose to run away from being prosecuted and caused his
mother to lose their house (put as collateral for his bond). Thus, Mattie and her belongings (her
precious houseplants) end up in the cramped walk-up apartment in Brewster Place, the last place
her destiny will ever bring her.
As mentioned before, there are no instabilities to resolve in this story; there is also no
tracing of the Mattie‘s ordeal (once Basil vanished) into her total defeat. Although such a
resolution of the progression‘s tension has been implicit in the narrative from early on, Naylor is
able to maximize its power by suddenly showing us that the tension between her knowledge of
Basil‘s intention to run away and ours. In consistently restricting us to Mattie's vision Naylor can
legitimately ―surprise‖ us with the truth about Basil.
The last paragraph signals both closure and completeness. The tension has been
completely relieved, the audience having understood the circumstances that brought Mattie to
Brewster Place as well as the fact that this is the place Mattie will live in for the rest of her life.
Closure is achieved by describing her making for the building entrance and completeness by
describing a snowflake melt into a shape resembling a tear, an image meant to reinforce the
feeling of defeat: ―Mattie grasped the cold metal key in one hand and put the other on the cold
iron railing and climbed the stoop to the front entrance. As she opened the door and entered the
dingy hallway, a snowflake caught in her collar melted and rolled down her back like a frozen
tear‖ (54).
The return to the current circumstances of Mattie contributes further to the unsettling,
chilling experience of the narrative, especially the way its ending causes the authorial audience
to reconsider its understanding of Mattie, and the place in which she is going live from now on.
It also effects the emphasis of Mattie's thematic dimension, the progression giving new
importance to the thematic sphere in the story as a whole. Mattie is the first female representative
(to be depicted) of this dead-end street and thus of a dead-end destiny. Her destiny further
identifies Mattie as a representative Afro-American female—she is a woman who has created a
world for herself and her offspring so as to live as far as possible from the dominance and the
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
759 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
759
negative influence of men of her ethnicity, but her destiny is nevertheless always strongly
determined by men‘s influence.
By the end of the large parenthesis in the progression, our knowledge of Mattie's world is
complete, and the tension between the narrator and the authorial audience is greatly diminished:
we know the kind of world we are reading about, we come to understand why she came to live in
Brewster Place, and this knowledge has significant consequences for our understanding of
Mattie's personality, as through representing Mattie in numerous contexts, Naylor also reveals
most of Mattie's major attributes. By the end of the story, the most salient attributes of Mattie's
character to emerge are: her hard-edged nature, her soft and caring heart, her determination to
improve other people‘s lives, and her eventual resignation – exactly what the narrator anticipates
in ―Dawn.‖ The central issues of the whole volume have been confirmed for the first time: a
complex woman defeated by life circumstances has resorted to moving to Brewster Place as her
last solution. There was no need to set up an instability in the story. The woman has surrendered.
The progression leads us to read Mattie thematically: she comes to represent the
individual female who after a lifetime of hard work and struggle, accepts defeat at the hand of
men in her life. So far, Mattie is a character with thematic attributes, but no thematic function.
The narrative progression of the entire The Women of Brewster Place will convert her
dimensions into functions, willeventually give the greatest weight to the thematic functions of
the character Mattie Michael; the effects of those functions depend crucially on Naylor's ability
to make Mattie function initially as an effective mimetic character.
The conclusion to be drawn is that Naylor's representation of Mattie as a consistently
mimetic character is fused with her use of that character in exploring and exemplifying thematic
issues. Mattie is the first representation in the book of the idea of African-American women
defeated by external forces. Naylor uses only one type of movement in this short story:
progression by tension, because at this point in the volume her main purpose is to provide the
mimetic portrait of Mattie. For that reason, Naylor's handling of Mattie's character follows this
pattern: she emphasizes Mattie 's mimetic function, increases our involvement with her
progression toward her fate as itself an emotionally affecting experience,and then ultimately
subordinates that function and our involvement to her communication of the larger thematic
point. The success of the volume depends very much on the accomplishment of Mattie Michael‘s
portrait, as in later stories her thematic dimension will turn into function and she will become the
Iulian Boldea (Coord.) Globalization and National Identity. Studies on the Strategies of Intercultural Dialogue
LITERATURE SECTION
760 Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, ISBN: 978-606-8624-03-7
760
emotional center of the book,the dominant presence of the community, the woman who puts her
wisdom at the service of the other women in the block, the mentor, the mother, the healer and the
confidante.
Bibliografie
1. Naylor, Gloria: The Women of Brewster Place. A Novel in Seven Stories. New York:
Penguin Books, 1985
2. Phelan, James. Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the
Interpretation of Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
3. Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of
Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.