Female Sexuality and Power in "The Canebrake" and "Night Woman"

Introduction: Two Stories, One Theme

On the surface, "The Canebrake" by Mohammed Mrabet and "Night Woman" by Edwidge Danticat are two completely different stories. The former is about a disgruntled housewife; the latter is about a prostitute. However, a fundamental theme ties these two stories together: each explores how female sexuality can be exploited to gain power and control. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss how the female protagonist in both stories uses sex to get what she wants.

Kacem's Wife: Imprisoned and Plotting

In "The Canebrake," Kacem's wife is not very pleased with her husband. He drinks too much and shows little interest in her. Moreover, he will not let her leave the house. She is a prisoner of sorts: "No matter how much she entreated him and argued with him, he would not even let her go to the hammam to bathe." Her inability to do as she pleases creates the central drama of the story. The reader wonders how she will overcome her suppressive living situation.

Kacem's wife has a plan — albeit a rather shocking one — but a plan nonetheless. She is going to cheat on Kacem with his best friend, Stito, in the canebrake, and then show him "dripping" evidence of the affair. In a way, she wants to demonstrate that despite his efforts to keep her away from other men, she can and will find a way. The moment in which she presents her husband with this evidence has a sobering effect on him: "She reached out her hand, opened it, and let what she had been holding drip onto the taifor beside Kacem's glass... Kacem stared. He had been drunk a moment before, and now he was no longer drunk." Kacem is duly shocked by his wife's resolve and gumption. He realizes, in that moment, that she too has power and control over her own life. In short, her plan works.

The Prostitute's Plan: Hope Through Motherhood

Similarly, in "Night Woman" the female protagonist finds herself in a difficult bind. She is a prostitute whose home is dilapidated, its roof riddled with holes: "I watch his shadow resting still on the curtain, my eyes are drawn to him, like the stars peeking through the small holes in the roof that none of my suitors will fix for me, because they like to watch a scrap of the sky while lying on their naked backs on my mat." As with Kacem's wife, the reader wonders what this woman will do to improve her situation.

The prostitute's plan, however, does not involve a scheme or a sudden, vengeful plot. Rather, it involves taking care of her young son. She finds hope in his developing existence and dreams that he will one day transcend his meager upbringing. He is the vehicle for her spiritual salvation: "I tell him of the deadly snakes lying at one end of a rainbow and the hat full of gold lying at the other end. I tell him that if I cross a stream of glass-clear hibiscus, I can make myself a goddess. I blow on his long eyelashes on his nose. I want him to forget that we live in a place where nothing lasts."

She has a deep desire to keep her son insulated from the hardship she faces. She lies to him about why she dresses up and why she has visitors. She wants to instill in him the notion that there are two worlds — one of snakes and one of rainbows — a duality she references explicitly: "I watch as he stretches from a little boy into the broom-size of a man, his height mounting the innocent fabric that splits our one-room house into two spaces, two mats, two worlds." She would like to believe that his world, his future, is one free of snakes and filled with rainbows. Her plan is built on hope and faith.

Conclusion: One World, Not Two

It was the purpose of this paper to discuss how the female protagonist in "The Canebrake" by Mohammed Mrabet and "Night Woman" by Edwidge Danticat uses sex to get what she wants. In "The Canebrake," the theme of feminine empowerment through the exploitation of sexuality plays out in a relatively positive way. The affair gives the husband and wife a chance to reset their marriage on equal terms, and the sex pays off for the female protagonist.