Creolisation and On Beauty: Form, Character and the Goddess Erzulie

Abstract

There are many facets of feminist creolisation within Zadie Smith's novel On Beauty (2005). This article locates and analyses the novel's feminist subtext by assessing the characterisations of black women and Smith's use of Vodou symbolism in the form of the goddess Erzulie. The argument is made that Smith's black women, imbued with aspects of Erzulie's diverse personae, defy their marginal positions in the narrative and become its driving force. After outlining the principles of creolisation and the attributes of the goddess Erzulie, this work identifies where and how Smith has incorporated both creolisation and feminist creolisation into the structure of her text. Glissant's notion of creolisation as, in part, being ‘open to change’ provides a rubric for understanding and analysing the relationships and the key differences between and amongst black women in On Beauty, in addition to their alignment with Erzulie. These overlapping threads are taken up in an analysis of Carlene Kipps, one of the text's most marginalised characters. In discerning the attributes of Erzulie (a syncretic, creolist figure) in Kipps, and to a lesser extent in Kiki Belsey, these women are revealed as multi-dimensional rather than simplistic, powerful rather than passive. An analysis of Smith's alignment of her black women characters with Erzulie causes the surfacing of a subtle erotics of friendship between Kipps and Belsey. As complex New World subjects, Smith's black women are not just shaped by creolisation, they also operate as its agents. In conclusion, the article maintains that Smith's feminist and creolist aesthetic not only structures the novel through form and characterisation, but also crucially shapes its standpoint and perspective.

Keywords:

• black women
• creolisation
• erotic
• Erzulie
• feminism
• feminist creolisation
• On Beauty
• Vodou
• Zadie Smith

Notes

¹There are many commentators on Smith's use of Forster; see esp. Tynan (2008).

²Smith borrows from Forster in an eclectic fashion, but quite proudly and forthrightly. In her acknowledgements she writes, ‘It should be obvious from the first line that this is a novel inspired by a love of E. M. Forster, to whom all my fiction is indebted, one way or the other. This time I wanted repay the debt with homage.’

³For early conceptualisations of creolisation, see Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1971), The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica; Rex Nettleford (1978), Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica; and Wilson Harris (1983), The Womb of Space: The Cross-cultural Imagination.

⁴Examples of women writers who make use of creolisation in their narratives include poets Louise Bennett, Merle Collins and Grace Nichols, and novelists Erna Brodber, Maryse Condé and Nalo Hopkinson.

⁵As Fischer remarks, to associate Victoria with Erzulie ‘adds a much-needed dimension to understanding Victoria's sexuality and transformative power in the novel’ (Fischer 2008: 115).

⁶Audre Lorde (1984), ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’, in Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, California: The Crossing Press, pp. 53–9.

⁷Given how little the average reader can be expected to know about Vodou, I would agree with Fischer and Walters that the prevalence of derogatory stereotypes of black women in the text might have been ‘better served by rather broader hints’ (Fischer: 115).

⁸A few of the more prominent texts in this established tradition include Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Aimé Cesaire's Une Tempête, and Derek Walcott's Omeros.