36 pages • 1 hour read
Brown Girl in the Ring
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Character Analysis
Ti-Jeanne
Ti-Jeanne experiences spiritual and personal growth through a series of hard lessons throughout the novel. Hardened by her mother’s abandonment of her at an early age, Ti-Jeanne has inherited her mother’s dependency on men for love and affirmation as well as her rejection of the family’s folkloric beliefs and spiritual traditions, dismissing it as “old time nonsense” (36). Upon learning of Tony’s betrayal and Rudy’s pattern of abuse in her family, Ti-Jeanne comes to the realization that to stop the cycle of violence perpetuated by men in her life, she must learn about her culture and history through her grandmother. She wrestles with what it means to be a “good daughter” (126), not only within her family but also to the spirits, like the Prince of Cemetery, who visit her. She comes to realize that being a good daughter means respecting her lineage while forging her own autonomous path.
Ti-Jeanne is guided by the spirit known as the Prince of Cemetery or Legbara, an aspect of Eshu who is known for guarding the crossroads between life and death. The Prince of Cemetery has claimed Ti-Jeanne as his “daughter” (95), which frightens her at first given his proximity to death. However, Mami reminds her that the Prince of Cemetery also oversees new life. This recognition of the conduit between life and death enriches Ti-Jeanne’s understanding of her seer ability where she receives visions of how people die. While this gift once terrified her, her growing relationship with the Prince of Cemetery teaches her that her connection is not only to death but to new life as well. Her recommitment to raising Baby with full emotional attention towards the end of the novel emblematizes this. As part of her healing the cycle of violence and death in her family, she decides to nurture new life, fostering the possibility of greater healing in a future generation.
Gros-Jeanne/Mami
Gros-Jeanne, also known as Mami, is the mother of Mi-Jeanne, grandmother to Ti-Jeanne, and the wife of Rudy. She possesses a wealth of spiritual knowledge and healing practices that earn her respect among the poorer residents of Toronto’s city center while also inciting fear and ridicule. In the absence of reliable medical care in the debilitated city center, its residents have turned to Mami for her herbal remedies, which prove to be more effective than modern medicine. Even the band of children that arrives at Mami’s door with a child and her broken leg in tow knows about the old woman’s healing abilities though the younger ones fear the rumors of her of being a witch. Rather than submit to these rumors, Mami remains committed to healing the wounded, showing kindness and patience to the children even when they feared her.
While Mami and Ti-Jeanne’s relationship may be strained at times, there is an underlying love that persists through the old woman’s strict sense of discipline towards her granddaughter. She does not express her love for Ti-Jeanne through the warmth she demonstrates towards the orphaned children, but rather through a firmness that her granddaughter once mistook for disapproval. Yet Mami also shows Ti-Jeanne patience in her own way, such as “cooking in the love she couldn’t express” (142) when her granddaughter returns home in distress after Tony abandons her. Her tough demeanor towards her granddaughter comes from an urgency to prepare her for the violence she will face in her lifetime, a quality that Ti-Jeanne will eventually come to realize after Mami’s death.
Mi-Jeanne
Mi-Jeanne is Gros-Jeanne/Mami and Rudy’s daughter, the mother of Ti-Jeanne, and Baby’s grandmother. She is absent from Ti-Jeanne’s life, having abandoned her daughter at an early age. According to Mami, she has “run away into the craziness that Toronto had become” (20), suggesting that Mi-Jeanne has lost her sanity along with the debilitating state of Toronto following the Riots. Her whereabouts are unknown to Ti-Jeanne until the discovery that she is being controlled by Rudy after having chosen to live with him over Mami.
She appears first in the novel as Crazy Betty, a mentally unstable old woman without eyes who threatens to eat Ti-Jeanne’s baby. Crazy Betty is what remains of her human form, as Rudy has captured her spirit to turn her into his duppy who carries out his murderous biddings. In her duppy form, Mi-Jeanne is a Soucouyant, a creature who lives off human blood. While in her duppy form, Mi-Jeanne does not have any control over her actions, only able to delay her movements for a short time before her hunger takes over. Each murder causes her shame and remorse. She is shown to have brief moments of fighting her Soucouyant instincts when Rudy forces her to kill her own daughter, flashing a look of “pleading and anguish” (201) at her master before the bloodthirst takes over. However, she controls herself long enough so that Ti-Jeanne can free her, permitting her to rejoin her human form.
Rudy
A ruthless patriarch, Rudy’s violence presides over Mami, Mi-Jeanne, and Ti-Jeanne’s lives until his eventual demise. Prior to his rise to power as Toronto’s most feared crime boss, he was addicted to buff as well as an abusive husband to Mami. When Mami took on another lover, Dunston, and kicked him out of the house, Rudy exacted revenge by adapting Mami’s spiritual rituals and traditions for his own personal gain. He called upon the Prince of Cemetery to kill his enemies, retaining Mi-Jeanne’s spirit as his duppy to carry out these murders.
Throughout the novel, Rudy shows little to no remorse for his crimes, demonstrating exceptional cruelty towards the women in his family. His violence distances him from any residual affection towards the women in his family, considering them “Gros-Jeanne’s brood” (200) instead of his own kin. While he distances himself, he also uses his position as a member of the family to manipulate Mi-Jeanne and Ti-Jeanne into serving him, perpetuating his abuse across generations of women.
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