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Dialogues@RU is published annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume One
Spring 2002
Maya Angelou:
Finding a Voice through her Complex Vision of Self and Shakespeare -
Page 4
by Lisa Giberson
Angelou's silence is critical to the development of her identity. According to Richard Teleky, of York University, in his article "'Entering the Silence': Voice, Ethnicity, and the Pedagogy of Creative Writing": "Writers live poised between the power of silence and the power of language. Silence is essential not only to the writing process itself but to the process of building an identity as a writer. In a quite literal sense, claiming and transforming silence is a crucial aspect of finding a voice" (207). Teleky is saying that to form an identity, a writer must begin with silence and then find a way to reclaim and change the voice. For a writer, silence can be just as powerful as language. Angelou's silence is her way of dealing with the rape and certainly it reflects the inability of the black community to speak out against the injustices they endure. However, Angelou must find a way to take back her voice after the rape and in so doing find an identity separate from the helplessness of the black community.
Angelou's relationship with a neighbor in Stamps helps further develop her love of literature and at the same time draws Marguerite out of her silence. Angelou's grandmother encourages the young and silent Angelou to form a relationship with a neighbor, Bertha Flowers, who shares Angelou's love of literature. When describing Mrs. Flowers, Angelou writes, "Mrs Bertha Flowers was the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She had the grace to appear warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private breeze which swirled around, cooling her…She was our side's answer to the richest white woman in town" (93). Mrs. Flowers affords the young Marguerite an image of a black woman she was unaccustomed to seeing in Stamps. Mrs. Flowers was able to exude grace and control under any circumstances. According to Mary Vermillion, in her essay, "Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Save Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings":
Angelou […] is not content to let the mute, sexually abused, wishing-to-be-white Maya represent the black female body in her text. Instead she begins to reembody Maya by critiquing her admiration for white literary discourse. An early point at which Angelou foregrounds this critique is in Maya's meeting with Mrs. Bertha Flowers. Presenting this older black woman as the direct opposite of young Maya, Angelou stresses that Flowers magnificently rules both her words and her body (162).
Vermillion is portraying Mrs. Flowers as the opposite of the young Maya and therefore a critique on her wishing to be white and her love of white literary discourse. Vermillion is correct that Mrs. Flowers provides Angelou with a strong black female image, however it is Mrs. Flowers connection to the "white" world that attracts Angelou. It is Angelou's penchant for white literature that is her way of giving a voice to her silence and life back to her identity that has been crushed by sexual abuse and racial oppression. The young Maya is unable to control her body or what happens to her, but Mrs. Flowers controls her body and her words. Mrs. Flowers is unlike any of the other black women in Stamps, she speaks and carries herself as if she were "white". Angelou identifies with the unique Mrs. Flowers and basks in her attention. What they share is a love of literature that allows Angelou to open up. Angelou writes of her attraction to Mrs. Flowers:
She appealed to me because she was like people I had never met personally. Like women in English novels who walked the moors (whatever they were) with their loyal dogs racing at a respectful distance. Like the women who sat in front of roaring fireplaces, drinking tea incessantly from silver trays full of scones and crumpets. Women who walked over the 'heath' and read morocco-bound books and had two last names divided by a hyphen. It would be safe to say that she made me proud to be Negro, just by being herself (95).
Mrs. Flowers reminds Angelou of the "white" characters in English novels. Characters that lead interesting and romantic lives. Her associating Mrs. Flowers with these characters enables Angelou to envision a different sort of life than is presented in Stamps and at the same time a black role model in Mrs. Flowers. Mrs. Flowers presents an image of romance that is different and more powerful than the rest of the black community. Young Marguerite sees Mrs. Flowers as having control of her own destiny. Angelou makes the association that by controlling her words she like Mrs. Flowers can also have control of her own body. Through Angelou's connection to Mrs. Flowers and the literature they share she is able to control and find her voice again as well as provide herself with a positive image within the black community.
The fact that literature helped Angelou find a voice, which enables her to create an isolated self, is further evidenced in how she deals, in her autobiography, with the issue of her rape. Vermillion writes, "A study of a woman's written record of her own rape can illustrate the dual consciousness which Susan Stanford Friedman identifies as a primary characteristic of female life-writing" (153). Vermillion goes on to say that, "Angelou's most complex and subtle examination of Maya's attachment to white literary discourse occurs when she lists as one of her accomplishments the memorization of Shakespeare's "The Rape Of Lucrece" […] I believe, Angelou's reference to Lucrece subtly indicates that Maya's propensity for the verbal and the literary leads her to ignore her own corporeality" (163). Vermillion is saying that how a woman writes about her own rape can also show how that woman creates another consciousness that enables her to write about the rape in a detached manner. In the case of Angelou, Vermillion sees Angelou's reference to Lucrece as a way of removing her body from the actual act of the rape. Angelou, by identifying with Shakespeare's Lucrece is able to examine the rape as an outsider rather than the victim.