Breath, Eyes, Memory

In Edwidge Danticat’s novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, a story is told of a young girl who has to deal with the past of her mothers life. Sophie Caco, who was raised in Croix-des-Rosets by her Tante Atie until her mother sent for her from New York. Sophie loved her aunt more than her own mother due to the fact that she had no recollection of her mother. As she moved to America though she would never be able to forget the past of her mother. Even at their first meeting together, Sophie’s mother, Martine asks her daughter, “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” (60). This question leads Sophie into a constant recollection of her mothers past of testing and being raped. Purity was a very important thing for the Haiti people and was said that if the daughter was impure that it brought same upon her family.
When Sophie began to have feelings for Joseph, Martine started to test Sophie and would “double” in order to distract herself from being tested. In her later life, Sophie would double again in order to try and have sex with her husband which was painful because Sophie destroyed her body in order to have her mother stop testing her. Sophie lost her desire and feeling to really love her husband because of her mother and what she put her daughter though (123). Sophie lost her mother when Martine thought that Sophie was impure, and after that Sophie had a great obsession of purity. Learning about the honor of a husband when his bride was a virgin and how each mother obsessed with keeping their children pure until that day (154-155).
One mother and daughter had reconciled with one another, Sophie asked why Martine had tested her which Martine replied by saying, “Because my mother had done it to me. I have no greater excuse. I realize standing here that the two greatest pains of my life are very much related. The one good thing about my being raped was that it made the testing stop. The testing and the rape. I live both every day/” (170). This shows a relationship between mother and daughter because of how both of their testing were stopped. Although Martine loved her daughter she just wanted to be a good mother, as she had learned from her own mother.
Throughout the novel Sophie struggles with this constant theme of purity. The constant obsession of this makes Sophie mad in a way but lets it go in her group meetings with others who had been raped. Being freed from hating her mother for these actions allows her to give up herself. Each woman around her had been affected by testing, her grandmother, aunt, mother, and herself. She had to choose to let her past and her mothers past go in order to live a life in America with her husband.
Testing was a cultural part of Sophie’s life, and as an American she could stop this control over her own daughter. She had moved from her birthplace and had started a new independent life where she could free herself and her daughter from the family’s past.