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Paola Quinones

AML 4300

Professor Angley

29 November 2012

Native Feminism and Motherhood in Love Medicine

The three waves of Feminism, from it’s earliest roots in white middle class women

fighting for rights and recognition and freedom form the shackles of motherhood to a shift

towards the end of the second wave to a broader and more inclusive movement revitalized

by the voices of women of color and ethnicities that didn’t fall into the white middle class.

Disenfranchised women began to fight to have their voices heard and to make their plight

known and assert their sovereignty independent of feminist and tribal identities

influencing their roles. Towards the end of the second wave “…women of color authors…

are also examples of theorizing from embodiment, during this period, to call attention to

the intersectionality of racism, and heterosexism with sexism, further illustrating the

unevenness in the movement of second-wave feminism into third-wave feminism.” (Mack-

Canty 158).

Authors such as Louise Erdrich now tackle issues such as Intersectionality becoming

an important theory in conjunction with feminism to expand the recognition of

disenfranchised women, particularly indigenous and Native communities, in that “Native

scholars’ privileging of race and tribal nation over gender is problematic, since indigenous

women are disenfranchised simultaneously by race as well as by gender (Smith 2002;

2005). Sexism, therefore, becomes too easily forgotten and is not adequately dealt with in

Native scholarship and communities“ (Ramirez 26). Louise Erdrich establishes a Native

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Feminist identity through the mother-child relationships experienced by Marie Kashpaw

and Lulu Nanapush.

Louise Erdrich is an American author who focuses on the lives of Native Americans

of the Anishinaabe or Ojibwa tribe, particularly the story of women in these tribes and

reservations during the Christian assimilation of the Native people. Erdrich as a half Ojibwa

half German woman presents an interesting perspective of feminism from both the white

feminist point of view as well as the perspective of an indigenous woman and the obstacles

faced by being a minority within a minority. As a female author Erdrich, not only presents

the plight of women, but more specifically the day-to-day life women in tribal communities,

particularly mothers within these reservations and the subjugated position demanded of

the women in order to further the cause of the tribe’s sovereignty at the hands of the male

tribal leaders.

Love Medicine presents the struggles of individuals to grappling with their identities

as individuals as well as their tribal identities through seven distinct points of view

interwoven into a connected story about the tribe through time and distance. As Louise

Flavin states, “The novel is clearly feminist in its depiction of the two strong women who

raise families in adverse situations and, in the end, bond with each other after their

children are raise and the man they both had loved has died. Marie and Lulu not only

survive but look back on their lives with satisfaction, having endured without the support

of a strong male figure or the help of God or the government” (Flavin 57). The novels

publication in 1984 places in the center of evolving conversations in feminist issues where

the issue of motherhood and intersectionality ideas where being challenged and applied.

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The mother-daughter relationship between Marie Lazarre, later Kashpaw, and her

mother, Sister Leopolda is the first physically and emotionally violent mother-daughter

relationship expressed in the novel. Marie is at the convent wwith Sister Leopolda and is

Sister Leopolda’s protégé in the convent. Sister Leopolda and Marie are continually

antagonizing each other. “But I wanted Sister Leopolda’s heart. And here was the thing:

sometimes I wanted her heart in love and admiration. Sometimes. And sometimes I wanted

her heart to roast on a black stick.” (Erdrich, 29). “I was afraid. I tried to scramble up, but

her foot came down lightly behind my ear, and I was lowered. The foot came down more

firmly at the base of my neck, and I was held. ‘You’re like I was’ she said” (Erdrich, 52).

“Tears glittered I her eyes, deep down like a sinking reflection in a well…’It was so hard

Marie,’ she gasped…” (Erdrich 53).

While this isn’t a direct mother-daughter relationship in the fact that Marie doesn’t

know that Sister Leopolda is her biological mother, it highlights how Sister Leopolda works

as a mother figure for Marie and how they continue trying to best each other and torture

one another in a volatile relationship where the line between love and hate is blurred. The

connection between Sister Leopolda and Marie is not made clear without the family ties

explained in Erdrich’s novel Tracks, where it is divulged that before becoming Sister

Leopolda Sister Leopolda was named Pauline Puyat and was mixed Native American who

became obsessively devout to Christianity and God. Before her conversion to Christianity

Pauline, or Sister Leopolda, gave birth to a baby girl named Marie—Marie Lazarre—who

she leaves behind and pretends is not her child to be able to join the convent. Marie and

Leopolda and then presented once again at the beginning of Love Medicine in the convent

where their violent relationship is described.

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When Marie realizes her victory over Sister Leopolda in reaching sainthood and

worship she realized the fact that she is the last soul Leopolda will devote herself to,

recalling, “I smiled the saint’s smirk into her face. And then I looked at her. That was my

mistake…There would be no one else after me. And I would leave. I saw Leoppolda kneeling

within the shamble of her love.” (Erdrich 60). Their relationship, while told only from the

daughter’s point of view, shows an understanding of what Sister Leopolda feels towards

Marie and shows the effect Christianity and a white culture brought upon her. It cause for

her to have a violently obsessive relationship with Sister Leopolda, her Christian mother

figure.

“I never grew from the curve of my mother’s arms. I still wanted to anchor myself

against her. But she had tore herself away from the run of my life like a riverbank. She had

vanished, a great surrounding shore, leaving me to spill out alone.” (Erdrich 68). Lulu

Nanapush’s relationship to her mother is plagued by resentment due to Fleur’s

abandonment of Lulu. While Lulu loved her mother she cannot forgive her for leaving and

sending her to the Christian school. In Track, the history of Lulu’s relationship with her

mother is better presented in showing how Fleur raised Lulu and had a small family with

Eli Kashpaw and Nanapush.

Lulu spent her early childhood within the tribal land and experiencing a lifestyle

more in tune with the traditional Ojibwa lifestyle with her mother, Fleur. Her more tribal

upbringing gave Lulu a feminine strength and power that form an early age she uses to her

advantage to get what she wants. Lulu does not rely on men but rather relies on herself to

raise her family. Lulu’s strength not only reflects her mother’s influence but also gains force

from the influence of Nanapush’s lover, Margaret Kashpaw , who is with Nanapush when

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Lulu returns from the school and is around to shape Lulu’s upbringing in the way that she

is another strong woman in the tribe making her own way most of the time.

Both Lulu and Marie Lazarre encounter negative incarnations of western culture,

which shape their rejection of traditional white feminine roles and push them to find

strength within themselves rather than the community, God, or the government. Marie’s

encounter with white culture initially comes through her experiences in the convent with

Sister Leopolda and once she leaves she never comes back, stating of her beliefs “I don’t

pray. When I was young I vowed I never would be caught begging to God. If I want

something I get it for myself” Marie clearly rejecting God and religious fate for herself, a

construct, which is a characteristic of white culture (Erdrich 96).

Jennifer Purvis states of her observations of Third-wave feminist texts in regard to

previous incantations of the movement, “In my encounters with third-wave texts and

practices, I have detected not simply a rebellion or short sighted insertions of either/or

binaries, but an accurate and prevailing awareness that the world is increasingly

complicated by the intricate workings of power, and we are all too implicated by its web to

fit into the model of a perfect feminism,” (Purvis 106), showing the movement towards

shifting ideals and recognition of feminism outside of the stereotypical white middle-class

feminism.

Keteryna Chornokur states of Sister Leopolda’s obsessive piety, “The main reason

why she gets tempted by Christianity, is because, as white people’s  religion, it can  elevate

her  above  the  tribal  people” (Chornokur 33), going on to explain Marie’s choice to follow

a more “native lifestyle due to “ Pauline’s  abandoned  daughter  Marie  experiences

physical and mental hardships in being a devout Christian due to the encounter with her

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mother. As a girl, she intends to become a nun, but changes her mind after the tortures

Sister Leopolda, who turns out to be Pauline from Tracks and consequently Marie’s mother,

puts  her  through” (Chornokur 34) which drives Marie from the white Christian ideals to a

more native and pagan lifestyle. 

Lulu’s connection to a Christian and white lifestyle isn’t as traumatic as Marie in that

her mother didn’t abuse her, but Lulu also faces abandonment, which fuels her resentment

towards her mother as well as her drive to become independently strong. When Lulu is

sent away to the Christian school she runs away and doesn’t get along because she fights

against the schools imposition on her beliefs and behavior. After Nanapush finally pulls her

out of the school, Lulu once again embraces her native culture. Lulu’s struggles in the

Christian school show how she doesn’t follow the Western norms and beliefs imposed on

her by the so she tries to run away and reject the rules imposed on her.

Motherhood in Native Feminism takes on a different meaning than it does in white

feminism. To white feminists, motherhood became a kind of burden and trap through

which they must hold onto men and continue to be tied to their subservient and nurturing

roles in order to be able to raise a family. During the Second Wave and early Third Wave

feminism movements the issue of motherhood and choice of when and whether or not to

have children began to take precedence. Women of the second wave stating, “…As Barbara

Ehrenreich and others pointed out, the word 'family' was a grave in which the more

autonomous word 'women' got buried. The problem with defining any cohabiting group as

family and leaving it at that was the disappearance of any discussion of power within that

group”(Snitow 42), and that as women there was a struggle between identifying with

wanting to be a mother and letting go of the “nurturer” role, where “We give up something,

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a special privilege wound up in the culture-laden word 'mother' which we will not instantly

regain in the form of freedom and power” (Snitow 43).

The issue of motherhood and whether or not to continue to give into the nurturer

role befalling women is a movement largely characteristic of white feminism. The same

sensibilities are not indicative of Native Feminists. Native feminists find strength and

independence in taking on the role of mother. The nuclear family was not necessarily the

type of family women in tribal communities were adopting as their own. A nuclear family is

comprised of “a married male-female couple oriented toward the bearing and raising of

children. This family ideal is pervasive in popular culture; legitimated by religious…It

places gender and sexuality at the heart of family ideology, being both hetero-normative

and dependent on a gendered division of labor oriented around reproduction. It is also

based on a white, middle-class cultural orientation…“ (Docka 27). Clearly, showing the

usual white middle-class household as the “nuclear family”, which none of the households

in Love Medicine particularly embody.

These divisions of roles and power structures were not the norm to Native

American cultures such as the Ojibwa, and Erdrich’s characters clearly do not follow these

incarnations of the nuclear family. Native communities tend to place a higher value on

tribal and communal connections rather than blood relations. Roles are not defined by

gender and identity doesn’t come specifically from the father’s side. In Love Medicine,

Erdrich presents a type of household that is starkly different to the typical nuclear family in

that traditional Western concepts of gender divide the gender roles into separate and not

exactly equally valued roles. The Western culture places an emphasis in the Male’s role

whereas Native American gender roles are also characterized by a division of gender roles,

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but these genders roles work to complement each other and are of equal importance to the

tribe, allowing men and women to switch roles as necessary in their own lives (Peay 12).

The conflicts faced by the women in second wave feminism cannot entirely be

applied to women of tribal groups because not only do the traditionally Western gender

roles apply to native women as well as women of color, but the fact that Gender roles and

relations are different in each individual tribe (Peay 13). Erdrich presents multiple strong

female characters that find strength in their domestic roles and their ability to raise and

wrangle multiple children without any outside help, whether it comes from men, the

government, or God. Marie and Lulu both control households full of children with

continually absent male figures, from Marie’s husband Nector, repeatedly disappearing for

days and Lulu’s string of partners both women manage to successfully raise children as a

way of establishing their strength.

Marie’s family is characterized by an overwhelming amount of children running

around the house; some of them hers, some of them adoptive. Marie states of taking in June,

another parentless child in the tribe, “I didn’t want June Morissey when they first brought

her to my house. But I ended up keeping her the way I would later end up keeping her son,

Lipsha…I didn’t want her because I had so many mouths I couldn’t feed. I didn’t want her

because I had to pile the children in a cot at night. One of he babies slept in a drawer to the

dresser. I didn’t want June” (Erdrich 85). Later Marie continues reflecting on her

relationship with June, “So I took the girl. I kept her. It wasn’t long before I would want to

hold her against me tighter than any of the others. She was like me, and she was not like

me…” (Erdrich 87) While being realistic about the situation at home and the lack of space

and possibly food for one more child, Marie still takes in June and loves her as much as her

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own. She also identifies with abandoned children feeling a tie to them due to the fact that

her mother also abandoned her.

Marie takes in many children but still manages to run the house and have the

children respect her although they are not all biologically hers. In a Western white feminist

ideal, Marie would be in a position of serious disadvantage and weakness being shackled to

so many children and having to work tirelessly follwing the children caring for them and at

the same time caring for her husband, but for Marie who embraces a more Native kind of

lifestyle, it is empowering to be able to care for all these children. Nector while largely

absent does notice the growing household but does not feel threatened form not know

which children are his nor does her particularly care. The lack of attention to paternity in

Nectors case shows the differences in values between Western ideals and the Native ideas.

Nector describes their acquisition of children and growing household,

“…sometimes I was juggling them from both arms and losing hold. Both Marie and I

lost hold. In one year, two died, a boy and a girl baby. There was a long spell of quiet,

awful quiet, before the babies showed up everywhere again. They were all over in

the house once they started. In the bottoms of cupboards, in the dresser, in trundles.

Lift a blanker and a bumdle would howl beneath it. I lost track of which were ours

and which Marie had taken in. It had helped her to take in after our two others were

gone. This went on…”

(Erdrich 126).

Marie finds a comfort in taking in children after losing two, in the face of a loss or failure on

her part as mother, she gains strength by accepting children that aren’t hers to continue

being a mother and to continue to provide for the children. Her role is making sure these

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children grow up strong and continue being connected to the tribe. Marie is a reflection of

the kind of Native feminism that embraces the idea that ”…in many   tribes   childbearing

meant empowerment’…regardless of the fact whether the children were one’s own or

adopted…Marie is ‘both biological  and  adoptive  mother’ …for out of sympathy she takes

in several orphans regardless of the fact that she can barely feed her own family“

(Chornokur 44). Marie’s taking in of other children shows strength within the tribal values

in that it reaffirms tribal and kinship ties and connections while keeping with certain

elements of the nuclear family with the mother-father figures being present (Chornokur

43).

Lulu presents another kind of subversion to the typical nuclear family primarily in

that she does not have the male-female couple to model and raise the household. She had a

husband, Henry Lamartine, but he dies and she later admits that not one of the children

were Henry’s. Lulu’s presents a large portion of her strength in her family dynamics and

the control and power she has over her children, “That was how she was. Even with eight

boys her house was neat as a pin. The candy bowl on the table sat precisely on its doily. All

her furniture was brushed and straightened…” (Erdrich 114), illustrating the neatness and

order she manages in her home even with a small tribe of boys living in her house. The kind

of neatness and automatic way the way Lulu’s household functions is also explained when

Beverly visits and he sees the family set up to have dinner where everything seamlessly

appears on the table and before Beverly even has a chance to finish his meal, the children

are all done eating and out of sight. Beverly describes, “Lulu was bustling about the kitchen

in a calm automatic frenzy…the table jumped to set itself. The pop foamed into glasses, and

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the milk sighed to the lip…everyone sat down. Then the boys began eating with a savage

and astonishing efficiency” (Erdrich 119).

The relationship between Lulu and her boys is also explained when Beverly

Lamartine comes to visit and observes the behaviors of the boys in relation to Lulu and

Lulu’s household, he describes,

“Lulu managed to make the younger boys obey perfectly, Bev noticed, while the

older ones adored her to the point that they did not tolerate anything less form

anyone else…Lulu’s boys had grown into a kind of pack…They moved in dance steps

too intricate for the noninitiated eye to imitate or understand. Clearly they were of

one soul…They were bound in total loyalty, not by oath but by the simple,

unquestioning belongingness of part of one organism”

(Erdrich 118)

The family of bastard sons feels and acts like a small tribe, and the children follow their

mother. She is like the leader of this small tribe-like household and her strength lies in her

ability to raise these children and live her life the way she pleases. Moreover, Lulu’s tribe

like household reflects the importance of tribal kinship and “The source of her power

comes from her inner harmony and her all-embracing love to the whole world” (Chornokur

45), showing how the way Lulu’s household runs itself with her guidance is a testament to

her own strength as a woman and individual.

Marie and Lulu both faced the oppressive Christian and Western ideals at a young

age at the hands of their mothers. Their individual stance against being adopted into the

Western lifestyle is shown through their devotion to making a home and raising a lot of

children in non-conventional ways that stray form the typical “nuclear family”. For Native

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communities the concerns over motherhood and gender roles differs from that of Western

constructs, making sure to avoid the assumptions that ”Native American mothers feel the

need to be relieved of either the burdens of child care or the dominant myth of motherhood

in order to develop the kind of autonomous selfhood or freedom from the oppressions of

femininity” but rather to realize that in fact, “for indigenous women, as further analysis will

reveal, the acquisition of personal freedom and the recuperation of national identity and

tribal wholeness are inextricably connected to the “burden”  of  motherhood” (Chornokur

41).

Marie’s Christian encounter with Sister Leopolda made her actively decide against

becoming a nun like Leopolda and leading a pious life married to God and forego marrying

and giving birth to a bunch of “Indian brats,” as sister Leopolda puts it, Marie finds success

in her efforts to raise a family, take in children, and pushing Nector into a respectable

government position representing the tribe. Marie sees herself as the brains and work

behind her household and family, which she is, and she moves and adjusts everyone to

work towards her goal and take pleasure in her family. Even in the face of Nector’s

intended abandonment Marie shines, she reasserts her strength reaffirming that she does

not need anyone; she will continue to be strong (Chornokur 45).

Lulu’s aversion to the nuclear family ideal can be traced back to her mother’s

influence on her life and her choice to love freely and take on multiple lovers as she pleases

despite the fact that she is a mother and is looked down upon by both Christian and Native

culture for indulging her pleasures while having a house full of children. Lulu leads a

lifestyle that is independent of social norms, she takes pleasure form running her

household and does a great job at establishing an ebb and flow where the children govern

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over each other and she governs over her children. She is a woman with a lifestyle closer to

that of Native women before her time, such as her mother.

The motherhood roles assumed by Marie and Lulu give them both strength and

power in their ability to run their own lives within the system encroaching on their tribal

culture. Neither woman falls into the typical archetypes of motherhood presented in

literature and pop culture of “good-mother and “bad –mother” which set up the expectation

and role model of the behaviors for mothers, instead the women are made up of

characteristics form both ends of the spectrum where they do what they can for their

families without losing sight of their own personal identities and desires (Peay 157). Marie

runs her household and molds Nector into a public servant to establish a desirable social

station in the tribe. Her molding of Nector shows her power over the man in her life as well

as her drive to use the system and culture she lives under to work for her own gains. Lulu

nonchalantly runs her household and indulges in personal pleasures without regard to the

social implications. These women find strength and support in their motherhood roles and

use their lifestyles as actions against prescribed feminist ideas and typical gender

constructs in general.

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Works Cited

Chornokur, Kateryna. "Postcolonial Religion and Motherhood in the Novels by Louise

Erdrich and Alice Walker." South Florida, 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Docka, Danielle and Penny Edgell. “Beyond the Nuclear Family? Familism and Gender

Ideology in Diverse Religious Communities.” Sociological Forum 22.1 (2007): 25-50.

Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Harper Collins, 1984. Print.

Flavin, Louise. "Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: Loving Over Time And Distance." Critique:

Studies In Contemporary Fiction 31.1 (1989): 55-64. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Mack-Canty, Colleen. “Third-Wave Feminism and the Need to Reweave the Nature/Culture

Duality.” NWSA Journal 16.3 (2004):154-179. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Peay, Cassandra M. "Challenges to Western Constructs of Motherhood in Novels by

Danticat, Erdrich, and Tan." Louisiana at Lafayette, 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Purvis, Jennifer. “Grrrls and Women Together in the Third Wave: Embracing the Challenges

of Intergenerational Feminism(s).” NWSA Journal 16.3. (2004): 93-123. Web. 27

Nov. 2012.

Ramirez, Renya. "Race, Tribal Nation, And Gender: A Native Feminist Approach To

Belonging." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 7.2 (2007): 22-40.

Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Snitow, Ann. “Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading.” Feminist Review 40

(1992): 32-51. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.