Yvonne Battle-Felton

My grandmother was born in 1919.

She was not the typical woman of her era. In her lifetime my grandmother went to college, married, worked a full time job as a nurse, raised four children, owned four houses and managed and owned a guest house. At the end of her work day she cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, helped with homework, read to little ones, paid bills and managed to find time to spend with her husband. As a child I remember watching her come home for the weekends clean the house, cook dinner for the week and prepare my grandfather's medications for the week. I hated that my grandmother had to work so hard. My grandfather was retired so I felt that he had time to cook and if the medications were important, he would remember to take them. Still, I never questioned my grandmother's weekly routine but I remember thinking "I will never do all of that for any one." I can't say he didn't appreciate it, only that he had grown to expect it.

And why not? She had trained him to expect her to do everything so if it ever bothered her nearly as much as it bothered me, it would have been difficult but not impossible, to change the situation. But she never did. Why not? She loved cooking or rather she loved to have home cooked meals but surely cooking had not been her passion in life, why was so much of her life consumed with it?

My grandmother has hundreds of suggestions on how my sister and I can improve our marriages by accepting more. We are both mothers, married, full time employees and full time students. When I ask more of what, she questions how long it has been since my husband and I spent time without the kids. At times I marvel at how progressive she is in her thinking. Those times are often overshadowed when she says we should reconsider our separation until the children are older I never fail to ask, "What have I done to deserve to be unhappy for so long?" She does not understand my question.

My grandmother is selfless and expects my sister and me to be the same. She expects us to happily postpone our lives for the sake of our children who she reminds us, "did not ask to be here" yet why, I ask, does my unhappiness guarantee their success? And why can't I ask and expect my husband's help with the children and household chores after he gets off of work? My grandmother was not born this way; she was not always grandmother, mother, wife, she did not always belong to someone else. She was born Charli Ruth Watson, it is a name she changed as soon as she could, assuming not only a new name but a new more feminine identity. But at what cost? For some reason she gave up any dreams she had of childhood along with much of her autonomy in her roles of dutiful daughter, selfless mother and industrious wife. When did it happen?

According to The Marriage and Family Experience "black women's conceptions of womanhood emphasize self-reliance, strength, resourcefulness, autonomy, and the responsibility of providing for the material as well as emotional needs of family members." (Strong et al 126). I have inherited the very chains that bind me and the wings that set me free for motherhood is at times a rather heavy gift to carry. As an African American woman, I am charged with the task of keeping my family together at all costs, even if it costs me my sense of self.
Women in general, African American women specifically, are sacrificing ourselves for the goals of the family. We are losing sight of our goals, dreams, inspirations and souls while assuming identities others find pleasing. Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow, explores Avey Johnson's loss of identity as she merges in to the woman Jerome Johnson needs her to be, the woman Jerome Johnson can love.

Sometime before saying "I do" women seem to learn to think, feel and say "I will." Women appear to accept and encourage others to take our kindness as weakness and our strengths fore granted. We are constantly taking on new challenges, new goals to please someone. Successful women in media and literature are selfless, generous and tireless and if they are in a relationship they are working toward family goals or eventual marriage. The woman outside those boundaries, the woman who follows her own dreams first, is typically single and seldom by choice. If she is not single then she is "out of her cotton pickin' mind," (Marshall, 24).

Avey Johnson has spent much of her adult life becoming a woman she does not know. When she begins questioning herself and Jay's commitment to her she is sacrificing her identity as a strong, confident woman. Jay's late nights at the office give rise to her fears of his affairs with white women "that would be more likely to appeal to him," (Marshall, 92). These fears and her insecurities with her body and her pregnancy transform her one Tuesday evening into the woman on Halsey Street who represents the struggle of the African American woman (Marshall 106). That night he pulls away from her and she pulls as well, she continues transforming in the seconds it takes him to choose to stay with the family or leave "before either she or Sis could think to run after him or find the voice to call him back," (Marshall 111).

Through the years Jay's pursuit of education, rejection and eventual success transforms him into Jerome Johnson. He becomes critical of the things from their past from Halsey street to the music and especially of other African Americans. Avey feels the move from Halsey Street "was an act of betrayal," (Marshall 122) yet she moves for the sake of the family to a better neighborhood. She keeps her memories to herself, memories of what Halsey Street represents to her which is not the same as the poverty and embarrassment it represents to Jerome Johnson who is unable to say the streets name. Avey continues to keep most things inside "at a deeper level...unreconciled to the change, and as distressed and uneasy as she had been the first day," (Marshall 130). Seldom does Avey speak her mind, seldom do her thoughts venture far from Jerome Johnson's.

To speak her mind is to be victim to the "unsparing, puritanical tone that had developed in his voice," (Marshall 132) and to risk the delicate base holding their marriage up. Avey worries that Jerome Johnson will think the things she misses from her marriage to Jay "would even appear ridiculous, childish, cullud," (Marshall 136). And Jerome Johnson does not think highly of African Americans.

Avey resembles this cynical, joyless man: "they were getting to look, even to sound alike...
According to an essay by Dagmar Pescitelli some theorists believe a woman's identity is not formed until she has married or has children, that the family experience is needed for a woman to become complete or whole (Pescitelli). Pescitelli also finds that other theorists believe women's self concepts reflect the images of those around them. (Pescitelli). In "Praisesong" Avey's presence on the beach represents a certain place in life, being at a certain place at a certain time causes others to confuse her with someone else, someone that belongs. The people on the island "immediately stripped her of everything she had on and dressed her in one of the homemade cotton prints the women were wearing..." (Marshall 72). Alone, Avey is not afforded a separate identity from those around her; she is absorbed in to the group as one's identity is absorbed in to a family.

According to Sociology in a Changing World the role and contributions of the African American mother is all inclusive because it has to be. It appears few studies have been conducted on how the individual goals of African American wives and mothers exist before, during and after child rearing or marriage. My research on this subject has primarily returned negative information where African American families are headed by African American women largely because of "the difficulties faced by young black men with limited education when seeking jobs," (Kornblum 508) and that "life in the black community has been conditioned by poverty, discrimination and institutional subordination," (Kornblum 509). That may be true for some people; the women in my life suffer similar situations as mine: we all give unselfishly of ourselves.

I have learned the more I am willing to give, the more others are willing to take. According to Nancy Woloch's Women and the American Experience, historically various women in America have been responsible for child rearing, farming, making goods, cooking, housework, field work, laundry, working, etc. yet have been expected to be subservient and "deferential" to their husbands (Woloch). Women were expected to assume the identities of their husbands, their political opinions, goals and aspirations were to be of one mind, his. It is 2005 and as far as women have come, some where others of us are still finding ourselves unwittingly giving ourselves up when we say "I do." But we are waking up; we are realizing happiness does not begin when we end. It is important for women to maintain, enhance and encourage our identities. Analyzing Praisesong, I have had the opportunity to learn that women can do it all, we can be happy, seek our education, raise a happy family, be successful ,be productive and live happily ever after even after "death do us part."

Works Cited
Kornblum, William. Sociology in a Changing World. 6th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003.
Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow. New York: Plume, 1983
Pescitelli, Dagmar. "Women's Identity Development: Out of the "Inner Space" and in to New Territory." Simon Frasier University. 10 Dec. 2005 < http://www.sfu.ca/~wwwpsyb/issues/1998/spring/pescitelli.htm>.
Strong, Bryan, Christine DeVault, Barbara W. Sayad, and Theodore F. Cohen. The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society. 8th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001.
Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience A Concise History. 2nd ed. New York: Mc-Graw Hill, 2002.

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As submitted on AC