 and the character Tituba is very aware of her feelings and actions, that may suggest she is in on the joke too. In addition, Condé is refusing to conform to the boundaries of what most readers consider to be historical fiction, in which we would assume characters that are based on real people would act as we suspect people of that time would, or were at most ‘ahead of their time.’ Nonetheless, while Condé is using this appropriation to highlight the problems in such a technique, she is still using it. The feminism of Tituba may create dissonance within the text, but whatever Condé’s intentions are, she is still asking questions about feminism and bringing it to a certain readership. Arguably, Tituba has been appropriated for the purposes of highlighting the flaws in appropriation, which is postmodern in its self-reflexivity.
But, it is not only historical figures that Condé appropriates. Her postmodern reference to Hester from The Scarlet Letter is similar to her use of Tituba. Hester is a feminist figure in Tituba : she feels that “life is too kind to men, whatever their color ” (Condé, 1986, p. 100) and she recognises the hypocrisy of her situation since “the man who put this child in my [her] womb is free to come and go as he pleases” (Condé, 1986, p. 97). Hester’s feminism transplants her outside of her historical and social context, into some place more modern, much like Tituba. Hester even uses the word “feminist” (Condé, 1986, p. 101) around 1692 in the chronology of the text, but ‘feminism’ was coined over 100 years later, in the 19 th century. In fact, the term ‘feminist’, meaning an advocate of women’s rights, only existed from around 1893.
Hester is partially a point of comparison for Tituba. Condé could be using the interactions between these two characters to demonstrate that modern feminism is conflicted on some issues. Tituba is aware that Hester disagrees with her opinion of relationships, since she avoids talking about John Indian because she ‘knew only too well what she would say, and… wouldn’t be able to stand it’ (Condé, 1986, pp. 100-101). Also, Hester is used to reveal further intertextuality, since it could be argued that Condé is likening Hester towards Charlotte Perkins Gilman, when she says that she would like to write a book “where I’d describe a model society governed and run by women” (Condé, 1986, p. 101), a passing reference to Herland (1915). Also, there is humour in Condé’s Hester, when Tituba addresses her as mistress Hester says “don’t call me mistress” (Condé, 1986, p. 95). There is dramatic irony in that the reader knows Tituba would address an authority figure as mistress, but that Hester would know it to mean a woman, like herself, that was part of an extramarital affair. Hester, in Condé’s novel, is written with a self-awareness that can be described as postmodern, relying on Hester being characters in more than one piece of fiction.
Ultimately, the most postmodern aspect of the characters of Hester and Tituba is that they receive the same treatment by Condé, despite one being ‘real’, and the other ‘fictional’. Interestingly, Hester has a ‘real’ past in the form of The Scarlet Letter which shapes her future in a different text, and yet the more historical Tituba has a fictional or at least uncertain past, shaped by her treatment (or the lack thereof) by grand narratives. What this achieves is a blurring between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘fictional’ in such a way as to question the nature of reality. Condé does not preserve Hawthorne’s representation of Hester, though they have a lot in common. It is the simultaneous presence of the fictional and ‘historical’ pasts of Condé’s characters that provokes questions about what we consider to be ‘real’. There is the argument that neither has any reality, only it is perhaps more legitimate for Condé to appropriate Hester for her own purposes, for she only ever existed in fiction. Unlike with Tituba, she cannot be accused of trying to re-write history, by appropriating figures from the past for her own political purposes. But postmodernist thought suggests that her Tituba can be one of many. Condé is not trying to change any ‘real’ Tituba, for that Tituba never truly existed. Arguably, Tituba could be considered 3 rd or 4 th order simulation. Considering whether the novel “masks the absence of a basic reality” or “bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own simulacrum” ( Baudrillard, 1988, p. 423), there are arguments for either side. For the former, the absence of a basic reality can relate to the absence of a reality for the ‘real’ Tituba, which Condé fills with her particular feminist creation. And there is strong evidence to suggest that this creation is a simulacrum which bears no relation to any reality, since T ituba is such a bricolage of fictional characters, historical figures, genres (magical realism, historical fiction, satire etc.), different ideologies and cultures, not tied down to their particular context, that there is no reality it could possibly be based on.
Finally, as a counterpoint to this argument, it could be argued that Condé is making a clear distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fictional’. Her character of Tituba can be read as a humorous take on what the ‘real’ Tituba could never have been, by exaggerating her feminist tendencies. In addition, Tituba’s magical powers could be used in an argument against any ‘reality’ in the text. Though a lot of Tituba’s magic is implied, readers get the sense that she makes Susanna Endicott ill with her powers (“an inconvenient and humiliating sickness? Which one would I choose?” [Condé, 1986, p. 30]), and uses animal sacrifices to conjure the spirits of Mama Yaya and Abena. While I feel this argument is significantly weaker than any argument that suggests that Condé is questioning the nature of reality, it must be acknowledged that this is one of many possible readings.
In conclusion, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem can be considered postmodern because it is an example of metafiction, it uses intertextuality, it plays with genre conventions, it interacts with history, it questions history and its grand narratives and especially because it questions the nature of reality. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem allows for multiple interpretations, and when applied, these interpretations are paradoxical. Condé’s novel can be read as either 2 nd, 3 rd, or 4 th order simulation. It can be taken seriously, or as a parody. It should be re-read because it demands that we as readers think about the nature of fiction and history’s use of narratives, as well as how people, images, and stories can be appropriated for political purposes. Through challenging the perceived difference between ‘historical’ and ‘fictional’ narratives, this novel makes us think twice about history’s treatment of oppressed groups.
Baudrillard, J. (1988) ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, in Lodge, D., and Wood, N. (ed.) Modern Literary Theory and Criticism: A Reader. New York: Longman, pp. 423-430.
Breslaw, E. G. (1996) Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies. New York: New York University Press.
Condé, M. (1992) I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. New York: Ballantine Books.
Hawthorne, N. (1991) The Scarlet Letter. Boston and New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press.
Jalalzai, Z. (2009) ‘Historical Fiction and Maryse Cond é’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem ’, African American Review, 43(2/3), pp. 413-425.
Lyotard, J. F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Miller, A. (1981). The Crucible. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Waugh, P. N. (2002) ‘Metafiction’, in Nicol, B. (ed.) Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 239-249.
© Rebecca Parmenter. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY).
<reponame>stefanofago73/php_dsl
<?php
namespace Fago\Samples\Cars\Impl;

use Fago\Samples\Cars\CarProducer;
use Fago\Samples\Cars\CarProduct;
use Fago\Samples\Cars\Process\Preset;

class CarProducerImpl implements CarProducer
{
    public function Produce(): CarProduct
    {
        return CarProduct::Default();
    }

    public final static function BasicProducer():CarProducer
    {
        return new CarProducerImpl();
    }
    
    public final static function ProducerFullOptional():CarProducer
    {