Erdrich, Louise: Title Commentary

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LOUISE ERDRICH: TITLE COMMENTARY

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LAURA E. TANNER (ESSAY DATE 1994)

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

ON THE SUBJECT OF…

ERDRICH'S MYTHIC WOMEN

In fashioning Fleur, Antelope Wife, and Windigo Dog, Erdrich becomes a mythmaker like her characters who stand as symbols of the possibility that the unknown spirit world can still assert itself in the lives of her contemporary Chippewa people. When Fleur brings the great powers of the spirit bear and Misshepeshu into the lives of her people, she exemplifies the possibility of living in right relationship to the spirits. Chippewa people regularly used to seek access to manito powers through the Midéwewin ceremonies, and this relationship remains available, even in modern times, to those willing to seek it. [.…] The possibility and probability of a continued relationship with the manitos exist through several community members by the end of the North Dakota novels: Shawnee Ray knows how to talk sweetly to the spirits, and her uncle Xavier Toose serves as an intermediary to the spirits by directing traditional sweat lodges. Lipsha bumbles along being granted visions he does not understand and powers he does not know how to use, but he is beginning to understand the role he is destined to fill in the community. The urban Indians, likewise, still have access to animal helpers if only they live in respect and right relation with them. [.…] In her novels, Erdrich creates female characters who embody or are recipients of manito power still aiding her Indian people. Fleur's story and Cally's story are Erdrich's tribute to an enduring spiritual dimension in Chippewa life, and the myth Erdrich creates around Fleur and Antelope Wife positions Erdrich as a secondary hero, one who passes on traditional stories in contemporary form. Erdrich through her novels sustains the mythic tradition of a people who, having survived for at least a millennium, enter the twenty-first century attended by the presence of their ancestral spirits.

Jacobs, Connie A. An excerpt from "'Power Travels in the Bloodlines, Handed Out before Birth': Louise Erdrich's Female Mythic Characters." The Novels of Louise Erdrich. Stories of Her People, pp. 173-74. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]