Power & Suffering: The Embodiment of Mary & Eve in Edwidge Danticat’s “Night Women”

Edwidge Danticat’s “Night Women” is an instance story, in which a young female narrator speaks of the “dread” she feels when the night comes and she must work as a prostitute to provide for herself and her son. She watches him sleep while meditating on the intimate time she spends with him—whispering stories into his ear and stroking his cheek with her lips—as well as the predictable idiosyncrasies of her clients who come to her in the night. The narrator expresses purity through the love of her son, and her earnest undertaking of all of the parental roles she must enact in lieu of having a partner—provider, protector, nurturer, mother, father, etc. She maintains complete power over her household, and over her body. At the same time, she is a seductress engaging herself in the world of sexual depravity and exploitation. Again, exerting this physical notion of power over males in her life. In this way she is impure, tarnished, and subordinate to both men and other women who earn a living by more dignified means. All of these circumstances make the narrator both the Madonna and the whore. She is Mary and she is Eve, all at once and not only in the night. So, while one may assume at first that the story of a prostitute struggling to survive is one wrought only with the suffering of woman, it is the narrator’s embodiment of these figures upon which men depend and for which they harbor great reverence that makes her the hero.

Edwidge’s choice to make the narrator’s child a son was not accidental. The mother/son dynamic in this story is central to the narrative and applicable not just to the young boy, but also to the narrators’ clients. Her treatment of all of them is gentle, caring, accommodating, and in many ways maternal. Beginning with her son, she dotes on him throughout the entire piece, a testament to her devotion. In return she receives love and reverence from her son, so great that he believes she is in contact with “the angels.” Furthermore, the narrator’s son is not the only one who holds her in sacred esteem. Her suitor, Emmanuel, brings flowers for her every time he arrives—a sacrament. He, along with her other clients, looks through her roof and into the sky while she is on top of him, suggesting a heavenly or higher quality to the time he spends with her.

She is Mary for all of these reasons. Her son’s belief that she has access to heavenly spirits paints her as an unlikely mystic. Her devout clients come bearing gifts (for both her and her son) looking for more than just sex, as the accordion player demonstrates during his post-coital ritual of rocking his head on the narrator’s belly—they come looking for comfort. Because the pain of childbirth was part of Eve’s punishment for her offense, Mary was conversely granted the painless delivery of Jesus, which undid the Fall and restored Adam back to his pure, pre-fall state (Tumanov, 14). The narrator’s clients rely on her maternal instincts to ease them into guiltlessness and, transitively, purity. This purity also extends to her son; she bestows it upon him and works to maintain it in more conscious ways. She understands that they are living in a world where “nothing lasts” (205) and regales him instead with stories of a different world.

However, her acceptance of the state of the world she and her son live in suggests a knowledge that one can only glean from experience. Conversely, the alternate realities she creates for her son are dotted with serpents and rainbows, containing utopic pictures reminiscent of Eden. It is the story of Eve—the “inventor of sexuality” (Tumanov 10)—coming from the mouth of the narrator. The philosophical argument over whether Eve was truly at fault for seeking the knowledge that led to the Fall has been long-standing. This is centered on the question as to whether or not the introduction of sexuality was actually that big of a crime. With that in mind, the socially unacceptable reputation of the narrator’s profession would be completely rectified if it were considered that sexual intercourse is not a transgression or a weakness. In fact, there is such a thing as the World Whores’ Congress during which leaders of the sex work industry lobby for the rights of those involved. A statement from the Congress of 1986 reads that, “they object being treated as symbols of oppression and demand recognition as workers” (Overall 706).

The importance of this lies in the fact that Eve is not only the creator of sexuality but could also be seen as the originator of sexual-choice (Tumanov 10). This is a threat to masculinity, and patriarchal culture in general, because it implies a female's control of her own body (Tumanov 10). This is not to say that the narrator is fully choosing to subject her body to the hazards and discomforts of her line of work. However, with prostitution as a form of sexual-choice in mind, the narrator can be viewed as a more powerful force than her male counterparts who feel the necessity to seek redemption for their indiscretions. She is in all-encompassing entity in that she is both the source of the indiscretion and the hand that deals redemption.

If the narrator is the source of both of these things—the incarnation of Eve and Mary—then perhaps it can be argued that these are basic tenants of femininity itself. Femininity is the chosen term, as it does not have to apply exclusively to women. There is a feminine quality to the narrator’s son, for example, as there is in all children. The gentle nature possessed by children, as well as their culturally imposed subordination, is mirrored more accurately in grown women than in men. The narrator’s son, while more of a symbol than a source, also demonstrates indiscretion and redemption for the narrator.

In “Night Women,” Danticat has created a narrator with an inherently solemn story. Her circumstances on the surface level paint her as the victim of patriarchal society. However, in actuality, the narrator of this story is in more control than meets the eye. She has the divine powers of femininity on her side—the knowledge and agency of Eve, and the same capacities to purify and redeem as Mary.

Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge . Night Women. New York: Soho Press Inc. , 1993. Print.

Overall, Christine. "What's wrong with prostitution? Evaluating sex work." Signs 17.4 (1992): 705-724.

Tumanov, Vladimir. "Mary versus Eve: Paternal uncertainty and the Christian view of women." Neophilologus 95.4 (2011): 507-521.