Praisesong for the Widow: Analysis of Major Characters
"Praisesong for the Widow" is a compelling narrative centered on Avatara (Avey) Johnson, an affluent African American widow in her sixties, who grapples with her past and identity during a transformative Caribbean cruise. Initially determined to escape the confines of her vacation and return to New York, Avey's journey becomes one of emotional exploration as she confronts memories of her late husband, Jerome, an influential yet complex figure who struggled against societal racism and ultimately sacrificed his identity for success.
Avey's encounter with Lebert Joseph, a proud West Indian elder, leads her to embark on a ritual journey to Carriacou, where she reconnects with her African heritage and participates in cultural practices that had shaped her childhood. The narrative also features Aunt Cuney, Avey's deceased great-aunt, whose stern guidance and haunting presence compel Avey to embrace her roots and confront her lineage. Rosalie Parvay, Lebert's daughter, adds another layer to the story, showcasing themes of familial duty and healing. Through these interconnected characters, the novel delves into themes of identity, cultural heritage, and the complexity of personal loss, offering rich insights into the African American experience.
Praisesong for the Widow: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Paule Marshall
First published: 1983
Genre: Novel
Locale: A Caribbean cruise ship, Grenada, Carriacou, and New York
Plot: Social realism
Time: The late 1970's
Avatara (Avey) Johnson, an affluent, determined, and head-strong African American widow in her early sixties. She is driven, as the novel opens, to escape her two friends aboard a fifteen-day Caribbean vacation cruise and return home. Feeling compelled by memory, dreams, and the ill effects of a rich peach parfait dessert, Avey has packed her six suitcases in the middle of the night and has made arrangements to leave the majestic Bianca Pride at its next port of call and fly home to White Plains, New York. Always a strong-willed, self-possessed woman who has known precisely where she is going and what she is doing, throughout the novel Avey finds herself suddenly out of control, confronting her past through dreams and unbidden memories that shift her between the past and the present. An aunt long dead returns to haunt her; her late husband, Jerome, also returns to stand in disapproving judgment over her current, inexplicable, actions. Once on the island of Grenada, Avey discovers that she cannot immediately take a plane to New York. After an emotionally draining night, she begins to act on whim and impulse. Yielding to an invitation, almost a command, to accompany an old man she just met on a walk up the beach, Avey is persuaded to participate in a ritual excursion to the small outer island of Carriacou. Despite her fears and suspicions, she nevertheless agrees to go with Lebert Joseph and steps into a small weathered sailboat filled with islanders returning home, all strangers to her. The channel crossing proves both physically and emotionally challenging; however, after purging her body and her spirit, Avey finds the journey redemptive. She recognizes her ties to black people from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.
Jerome Johnson, Avey's dead husband, a powerful presence in the novel. Jerome, called Jay in the early, warm days of their marriage, suffers a crisis and undergoes a metamorphosis during the marriage. He changes from Jay, a hardworking yet tender and playful husband and father, to the stern, driven, grimly-determined-to-succeed Jerome Johnson figure. Faced with all the economic and societal barriers raised against black men, Jerome Johnson essentially loses his identity in the struggle to overcome such racism. He adheres so closely to the American work ethic in an effort to provide material wealth for his family that he sacrifices the value of his racial identity and, equally important, denies himself any pleasure in the marital relationship. Weary of being underpaid for doing twice the work at one job, Jay holds down two jobs and attends night school to acquire training as an accountant. No white firm will hire him, so, after obtaining credentials as a certified public accountant, Jay opens his own business, catering to small black firms. Eventually, his business is so well established that he can afford to move his family from the deteriorating urban neighborhood to suburban, upper-middle-class White Plains. When Jerome Johnson dies of a stroke, his widow can find no trace of Jay, and when she looks at his face in the coffin, she sees only a laughing mask.
Lebert Joseph, the disabled but active, proud, and independent old West Indian who befriends Avey on Grenada. He owns a rum shop. He persuades Avey to go with him on the ritual journey back to his home island of Carriacou. Lebert Joseph serves as a conduit, assisting Avey. He asks her questions about the “nation” to which she belongs or the dance she can do, helping her reconnect to an African cultural heritage and to a more immediate ritual in which she formerly participated first as a child visiting her great-aunt in Tatem, South Carolina, and later as a young married woman.
Aunt Cuney, Avey's deceased great-aunt, who, when Avey was a child, required every August that she be sent to Tatem. Stern, proud, and unrepentant in her youth, Aunt Cuney gives her the name Avatara and tells her the oral narrative passed down about the Africans of Ibo Landing. They were brought to Tatem for sale as slaves. Once ashore, although still chained from their voyage in the holds of slave ships, these powerful people took one look around them and subsequently turned around and walked back across the sea to Africa. Aunt Cuney also introduces her young niece to the Ring Shout, a religious circle “dance” in which the feet must never leave the floor, practiced by the older black people of Tatem. It is Aunt Cuney's vivid appearance in Avey's dream and her insistence during the dream that Avey come with her that, in part, compel Avey to leave her vacation cruise.
Rosalie Parvay, the strong, capable, middle-aged daughter of Lebert Joseph who has remained on Carriacou despite the fact that her children and grandchildren live in the United States or Canada. After Avey is stricken by illness on the excursion boat, Lebert Joseph takes her to Rosalie's home. Rosalie assists Avey almost as a native healer, bathing and tending to her and, in a “laying on of hands,” massaging her entire body to help it recover from years of encasement in long-line girdles and other unnatural garments. When not ministering to Avey, Rosalie, who is a younger image of her father, rails against Lebert Joseph's stubbornness, maintaining vigorously that he is too old to live alone in Grenada. She wants him to remain on the small island and live with her, something he has never done.