An Ecofeminist Exploration of Women and Flora in Annie Desroy’s novel Le Joug (1934)

• In Event: Framing Women's Life

Description for Program

This paper uses an ecofeminist lens to examine the connections between women and nature in Annie Desroy’s novel Le Joug (1934). Published at the end of the nineteen-year occupation of Haiti by the United States, this novel depicts tensions between two neighboring households: the Vernons, a young Haitian couple, and the Murrays, an American couple affiliated with the United States Marines Corps. A key scene details the husband Murray’s violent sexual assault on his neighbor Mme Vernon. During this assault, Mme Vernon is depicted as merging with the surrounding tropical flora, suggesting that the exoticism of the landscape exacerbates Murray’s violent impulses.

Building on ecofeminist theories around the overlapping domination of women and nature, and the symbolic ties between women’s bodies and the land, this paper explores how rape operates as a central trope wherein the violent “taking” of the body of Haitian women mirrors the literal “taking” of Haiti. The American man’s violence against Mme Vernon is embedded in both gendered and imperialistic forms of subjugation and domination. I subsequently draw on Jennifer C. James’ “Theory of the Bottom,” to further investigate modes of relation between Black Haitian women, flora, and the broader US imperial and capitalist project of the occupation. I contend that Mme Vernon’s marginalized position at the “bottom” provides her with a unique vantage point for countersurveillance, which in turn enables her to successfully predict and ultimately thwart Murray’s attempted rape.

Author

• Shanna Jean-Baptiste, Rutgers University