Praisesong For The Widow

Chapter 4 of Part 3 begins the physical part of Avey’s journey towards her cultural regeneration. The chapter briefly covers her movement from one end of the beach to another, as well as the journey from her hotel back to the wharf, to demonstrate that by physically moving backwards, she can begin to emotionally and spiritually move forward. This is all done, though, with a tinge or irony. When Avey laughs about taking a trip with a stranger and realizes that her own name sounds “like someone else’s name” (186), the novel is pointedly demonstrating how Avey is as much a stranger to herself as anyone else around her.

The chapter also refocuses the cultural significance of language through the surrounding sounds of Patois. When Avey is on the boat, listening to the “odd cadence” of the language, she realizes how significant it is to her because it reminds her of the sounds of Tatem (196). Avey comprehends that this entire journey—the physical one as well as the search for self—was prompted by the sounds of Patois, which stirred her deeply buried obligation to her great-aunt Cuney.

The sounds and sights of the wharf also resurface a childhood memory that reveals the familial ties Avey forgot she has, further exhibiting the great loss she suffered. The power of these familial ties is represented by the threads Avey felt physically connect her to the other Gullahs visiting the park. These threads are a lifeline to Avey: though they were thin, she felt the threads were strong enough to be felt across the Hudson River—that she could swim to its deepest point and the “moment she began to founder those on shore would simply pull on the silken threads and haul her in” (191). Here, Avey remembers the bond she felt to near strangers because of its blatant absence in her adult life. However, her childhood thought of the threads’ ability to save her from drowning suggests a similar power saving her from what she suffers now. Over the last few decades, Avey drifted far from her familial and cultural ties, but the overpowering bond she shares has potential to pull her back in. Therefore, the chapter works to convey the isolation Avey feels in having these ties severed, and the comfort she may find in rediscovering them.

The dream-like church memory in Chapter 5 serves as an extended metaphor for the beginning of Avey’s cultural regeneration. Within it, she reverts to a child-like state, thrilled and terrified. The boat’s shaky movements are translated into the vision as the church begins moved by the excitement of the church goers. As they passionately perform the call and response, the emotion of the practice is taken on by Avey, who is stirred to sickness. The sudden intensity of her illness and its proximity to the call and response suggest that Avey’s sickness, though indeed very physical, represents the emotional and spiritual cleansing she must undergo. Whatever emotions or thoughts she must expel come without warning, and she, like a child, needs the care and protection of others when the feeling takes hold.

Chapter 6 expands on the purging Avey must undergo as she suffers unrelenting vomiting. As “her entire insides erupted” (204), Avey removes her old self to start anew. The women looking after her understand this; they console her and bestow encouragement through the repetition of “Bon” (205). Again, Patois becomes very present, particularly in relating the importance of Avey’s rebirth. The women, as church mothers, guide Avey through this painful experience. The most poignant image of the chapter comes after Avey soils herself and lays, surrounded by the smell of her filth, in the deckhouse. There, she feels she is not alone—instead surrounded by “[a] multitude […] packed around her” (209). Here, the novel positions Avey in a microcosm of what millions of slaves experienced while imprisoned on ships. Avey’s ability to sense these bodies around her—to sense the pain that greatly eclipses her own—is the first indication that she has tapped into a far-reaching connection with the past, specifically, her ancestral past. In this way, the chapter successfully embodies cultural memory by having Avey’s body communicate what she has conditioned her mind to ignore or forget: the far-reaching power of cultural memory.