Doing Penance in the Old West: 'Sisters' As Andre Dubus's Final Word On Suffering Rape

Summary

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Dubus viewed "the whole world as a Catholic" (qtd. in Samway, 123); therefore, Dubus's stories nearly always involve one or all of three thematic discourses - that of the Catholic Church as center of meaning and value, the symbolic and healing power of rites and ritual on the human heart, and the ethical and spiritual dilemmas that drive human existence.

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Doing Penance in the Old West: 'Sisters' As Andre Dubus's Final Word On Suffering Rape

IN the May / June issue of 1999, the journal Book posthumously published "Sisters," a short story by Andre Dubus sent to the editors two days before his death in February of that same year. Imbued with the mystique of nostalgia and vigilante justice, "Sisters" is the story of a woman raped and avenged in southern California circa 1890. Remarkable, if not unique, as a Western, "Sisters" is also a story of suffering rape, a topic addressed most notably by Dubus's earlier and more widely read short story, "The Curse" (1988; 1996), in which a male protagonist, Mitchell Hayes, helplessly looks on while a nameless young woman is gang raped in a bar. Both "The Curse" and "Sisters" suggest that the experience of rape initiates a penitential process in the protagonist; however, "Sisters" goes one step further by making its protagonist the female victim, Adrienne Beaumont, and adding - not a male bystander, per se - but a male avenger, die African-American cowboy, Stephen Leness. "Sisters" also suggests that for the female victim of rape, suffering rape ultimately results in an act of forbearance, which in turn may one day yield total and unconditional forgiveness. This act of forbearance is also, in a way, an act of penance for the hatred and desire for revenge the victim feels. Finally, with the help of prayer, forbearance becomes the purgation that may yield grace.

Conversely, the male penitent, who in "The Curse" is a bystander of rape, attempts to purge his soul in other ways. Mitchell Hayes fails to act, both to stop the rape and to kneel at the end of the story in an ersatz act of penance. The case of Stephen Leness is more complicated. On the one hand, he is absent at the time, and on the otiier, he still feels responsible. Also, in another setting where such acts may be done with blazing impunity, he sets a purifying fire symbolic of vengeance. Dubus's implication seems to be that it is not for the male bystanders consciously to forbear. To the degree that they were powerless to act at the time - or felt powerless - these male protagonists also enter a problematic dynamic of masculinity and emasculation, as much as they enter a dynamic of penance and grace similar to that of the female victims.

Furthermore, because "Sisters" is not only the last story Dubus submitted for publication but...

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