Tag: Moon and the Mars

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Expedited Girlhood in “Moon and the Mars”

Essential to becoming an adult is experiencing hardship and challenges that force an individual to prioritize aspects of their identity and reshape their perception of the world around them. While these challenges are significant, they ought to not be experienced too early in life so as not to taint the joys and obliviousness of childhood. This expedited childhood is a key theme in Kia Corthron’s Moon and the Mars, especially among the female characters; the racial, financial, and political strife faced by the young characters force them to shift the way they view the world and rob them of childlike carelessness. 

The most obvious example of expedited girlhood is found in the protagonist, Theo. As discussed in class, Theo is more of a witness than a spectator to the changing world around her, as she has a more involved role. The social and political developments she witnesses, such as the Fugitive Slave Act or the dissolution of Five Points, are hardly digestible topics for a young girl and force her to adopt feelings of strong independence and caution. Despite being an orphan, Theo was hardly alone as a child: she had a large hodgepodge family that cared for her. Still, when they leave to go West as Five Points dissolves and the Civil War approaches, Theo finds herself increasingly alone. This independence is paired with the development of Theo’s beliefs, as she forms opinions about current events and voices them to her family. Her naiveté and distinct knowledge of her surroundings allow Theo to push the envelope in conversation with both sides of her family. One example of this is Theo’s comment about the Sioux hangings, as she narrates that “Everybody hears this and stops frozen to stare at me, like my Cahill family did yesterday when I mentioned the Choctaws owned slaves” (Corthron 435). The dramatic political moment occurring in her childhood prompts Theo to form political opinions and have difficult conversations sooner than she may have otherwise.  The supporting characters of the novel also experience expedited girlhood, as proven through the characters Hen and Kaelyn. As a teenage girl in pursuit of guaranteed freedom, Hen ventures to Canada alone, already filled with “disappointment” and “discouragement” (400) in regards to the life she experienced in America. Kaelyn, a young girl arrested for stealing bread, has faced such strife in her eight-nine years of life that she prefers life in jail. As Kaelyn explains, “You know what they have in jail? Food” (420). The girls of Moon and the Mars are so robbed of their childhoods that they must already look for new opportunities to provide themselves a better life, and they must do this alone.

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Theo’s Development through the Lens of Double Consciousness

While the intricacy of language employed by both Gilroy and Roach in their respective books leaves me with as many questions as answers, upon first reading I was immediately drawn to the shared use of the phrase “double consciousness” in the first paragraph of each author’s introduction. Despite the intersection of topics discussed by the two authors, their individual understandings of double consciousness do not entirely align. My interpretation of the ways in which Gilroy and Roach approach double consciousness prompts me to consider how Theo, a child meddling between two distinct cultures, experiences this form of doubleness throughout her development. 

As a naive seven-year-old, Theo has a strong sense of identity that we, as readers, gain access to through her inner monologue. This confidence is juxtaposed by strangers’ confusion regarding Theo’s appearance, seen through her experience with being called names like “mongrel” by onlookers who cannot seem to decipher her identity (Corthron, 18). This division between Theo’s identity and image corresponds to Gilroy’s portrayal of double consciousness, or doubleness, as a distinction between one’s individual existence and their existence in the eyes of others. Theo is not bothered by her perceived doubleness, however, as she is confident in her identity as a mutt and is not disturbed by the remarks of Nativists. 

Theo’s identity remains strong and steadfast throughout her adolescence, but with age and experience she assumes new roles in both her family and society at large. The dissonance between Theo’s identity within her Irish family and her role as an abolitionist becomes apparent upon her learning that her relatives complete work for companies that enable the continuation of slavery. In the eyes of her Cahill family, Theo is a child with as many privileges as other Irish children in the Five Points District. As an African American, however, Theo assumes the role of an aspiring abolitionist, refusing to support any systems that promote the enslavement of her people. This division between Theo’s perceived identity and her self-assumed role connects to Roach’s definition of double consciousness as “the self-reflexive interaction of identity and role” that engenders “demanding psychological obligations” (Roach, 1). Growing up as a mixed child in two families of different racial and cultural backgrounds becomes more of an issue as Theo gains an understanding of her ability to serve as an abolitionist, and this coming-of-age experience is complicated by the Cahill family’s late acknowledgement of the importance of race in Theo’s life.