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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 5
by Lisa Giberson
Choosing Shakespeare's Lucrece is Angelou's way of transforming her voice and building an identity. According to Christine Froula, associate professor of English at Yale University, in her article, "The Daughter's Seduction: Sexual Violence and Literary History", "[f]itting her voice to Shakespeare's words, she [Angelou] writes safe limits around the exclamations of her wounded tongue and in this way is able to reenter the cultural text that her words had formerly disrupted". (60) Froula is making a connection between Angelou's use of Shakespeare and the claiming and transformation of her voice. Froula's theory parallels and further enhances that of Richard Teleky. Teleky's assertion that writers use the power of silence as a way to reclaim and transform that silence is echoed in Froula's idea of Angelou using Shakespeare to guard her "wounded tongue" and enable her to reclaim her voice within her own cultural identity.
The choice of Lucrece is also important to Angelou's creation of an individual consciousness within the black community, because Shakespeare's poem is full of references to the whiteness and purity of Lucrece contrasted by the dark and tainted rapist, Tarquin. Angelou's reference to Lucrece, is again a way of identifying with the white literary world rather than the oppressed black culture that surrounds her. According to Arthur L. Little, Jr., author of Shakespeare: Jungle Fever, "[t]he classical Lucrece, a template for representing and narratively situating the early modern raped woman, participates in an 'ethnographic allegory,' the scrutinizing and allegorizing of Other cultures as a way of writing about one's own; in addition to being a writing about cultural Others, […] ethnographic allegory represents the culture of an Other as a way of redeeming or chastising the self" (4). Little is stating that the raped woman, Lucrece in this case, represents the white culture and her rape by a "cultural Other" is a way for the white culture to redeem itself. Little goes on to say that:
[…] the issue of rape, which, even when committed by someone from within the community, is often ascribed to a racial Other - a stranger, someone from outside the community. In early modern drama the black man frequently stands in this place, at least the symbolic place, of the rapist. Western imperialism has forged and continues to forge natural racial and gender bonds between the black male and rape (4).
Little is commenting on the propensity of the Western world to attribute the rapist with the qualities of a racial other, and most often a black man. Angelou memorizes "The Rape of Lucrece" in order to create a way to rationalize what happened to her. Angelou wishes to see herself as the pure, white, and chaste Lucrece. Angelou, by referencing "The Rape of Lucrece" is redeeming and chastising herself along with creating a new consciousness by identifying with Lucrece. Despite the fact that she was raped by a black man from her own community, Angelou by identifying with Lucrece has complicated Shakespeare's intent and created her own "ethnographic allegory" which allows her to redeem herself and see herself as the victim of a "cultural Other". By reciting Shakespeare's poem she is able to give voice to her own pain as a victim of the white culture that surrounds her.
In conclusion, Maya Angelou through her love of literature and Shakespeare creates a "dual consciousness" which enables her to construct a unique vision of self that is both isolated and connected to the black community. This identity Angelou forms also lends a voice to her autobiography. As a writer she enlists silence to find and transform her own voice. Living in a racially oppressed black community and being the victim of a rape at a young age threaten to silence her, but Angelou finds her voice in the white literary discourse she admires. In Shakespeare's "Lucrece", Angelou is able to form an "ethnographic allegory" that allows her to redeem her voice and her identity thus enabling her to put forth a complex model of self.
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.
Fischer, Michael M.J.. "Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory." The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 <http://www.kuenstlerhaus.de/haus.0/SCRIPT/txt2000/08/memo.HTML>
Friedman, Susan Stanford. "Women's Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice." The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Shari Benstock. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. 34-62.
Froula, Christine. "The Daughter's Seduction: Sexual Violence and Literary History. Modern Critical Interpretations: Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1998. 47-68.
Little, Arthur L.. Shakespeare: Jungle Fever. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Teleky, Richard. "Entering the Silence": Voice, Ethnicity, and the Pedagogy of Creative Writing. Melus 26.1 (Spring 2001). 205-219.
Vermillion, Mary. "Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". Modern Critical Interpretations: Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1998. 153-166.