Love Medicine

Voice battle to be a saint in Love Medicine

“…Before the start of the voice battle in Love Medicine , readers may find that the 14‐year‐old Marie looks tormented up on the hill to Saint Heart Convent. Calling herself “dark fish” and considering herself as “ignorant” as the sky, whereas in the meantime taking pride in her fair skin color and her praying harder than other reservation pupils (Erdrich, [1984] 2009, 43), the teenage girl who aspires to become a Catholic saint is apparently torn between self‐abasement and self‐confidence. When readers wonder why Marie's self‐awareness is full of contradictions and paradoxes, a source of discord quickly looms large—the influence of Sister Leopolda, or, behind Leopolda, the American Indian boarding schools, a unique and ubiquitous niche of power in North America from the mid‐nineteenth to the early twentieth century.…”

“…In the reservation school, Leopolda is definitely the parrhesiastes who manipulates the indigenous children with her authoritarian voice. With Erdrich's foreshadowing of the nun's hypocrisy by her “veils of love which was only hate,” of her ferocity by her “deadly hook‐pole for catching Satan by surprise,” and of her brutality by her “most‐hard trial to anyone's endurance,” it is not surprising that Leopolda's voice sounds like a sign of terror and horror to the pupils who “could only breathe if she said the word [Satan]” (Erdrich, 2009, 45–46). Here, Leopolda's voice to articulate “Satan,” from the perspective of semiotics, serves as a sign‐vehicle whose object is “the lowly Indian deity and the filthy Indian beliefs,” and whose interpretant is “all Indian manitous and beliefs […] as lowly and filthy as Satan who seduce Indians to sin.” Besides, there is another interpretant of “Satan”: in whites’ minds, the Great Spirit in Indian myths is regarded as the “Dark One” who controls the forbidden places jammed with “thick bush,” “wild dogs,” and “Indians” (p. 45).…”

“…Among the schoolchildren, Marie is deemed the “worst” and thus positioned at the bottom of the dualistic power hierarchy because in Leopolda's repetitive charges, Marie is wanted by Satan “most of all” (Erdrich, 2009, 44). Facing Marie as the supreme enemy entering the convent, Sister Leopolda starts destroying the girl's Self by brainwashing her, saying in a malicious voice that she is the favored child of “Satan.” At first Leopolda shrieks, “He wants you” (p. 48).…”

“…In addition to her vicious curse of “Satan,” Leopolda also “get[s] [Marie] in her clutch” (Erdrich, 2009, 44) since her voice is not merely interpreted as “a thought, but an action or experience” (Peirce, 1994, 332). The action of “clutch,” in the Cambridge International Dictionary of English , is defined as “to take or try to take hold of (something) tightly often in a state of fear or anxiety.” Here, noticeably, Sister Leopolda is the one tightly clutching and controlling the girl with “anxiety,” but conversely, Marie is the one “in a state of fear” for being tightly clutched and controlled by the nun.…”

“…The direct consequence of Leopolda's abuse of her disciplinary power is that the religiously fervent girl is utterly defeated. On the surface, Marie becomes “quiet” and muted for she knows that she “should not have spoke,” and meanwhile, her body is scalded, injured, and even paralyzed since she “couldn't move” (Erdrich, 2009, 52). As a matter of fact, however, what is even more serious is that the pupil has internalized the disciplines and values of white society, and hence loses her inner harmony and peace.…”