The Virgin Mary is a recurring image throughout Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt. Catholicism, in which Mary is a significant figure, plays a very tangible role in Truong’s novel. After all, the setting of the book alternates between a majority Catholic France and colonial Vietnam, in which Catholicism plays a role in maintaining French imperial power. Several of the major characters, including Bình’s mother and the Old Man, are Catholic. Thus, the Virgin Mary’s multiple appearances are perhaps not at all surprising. In the Catholic tradition, Mary, the virginal mother of Jesus, represents motherhood, and the ability to give birth without sex, but The Book of Salt refuses to take this symbolization at face value. Although Mary in Catholicism is generally a symbol of parental devotion and immaculate conception, in The Book of Salt, Her passive iconography often appears ironically during moments of parental abandonment and sexual violation. Through this irony, the novel is critical of passive images of the Virgin Mary that simply lurk in the background and, instead, upholds maternal figures that actively show love and care towards their children, such as Bình’s mother.
At the root of the Old Man’s abusive behavior towards Bình’s mother is, in part, the Virgin Mary. The backdrop against which the Old Man gets abandoned by his mother is “Saigon’s Notre-Dame,” a symbol of the Virgin Mary and Her unconditional, motherly love (Truong 48). This stony cathedral dedicated to Mary, passively representing parental devotion in the background, fails to intervene on behalf of the parental abandonment occurring right in front of it. It does not cause the Old Man’s mother to pause and consider the parental duty and love implied by the symbol of Mary before her in grand architectural form. Instead, she continues to “peel his small fingers from her own,” evidently unmoved by the pitiful image of her own child clinging to her or Mary, symbolizing parental love, in the background (Truong 48). At the same time, the Old Man is “told to kneel, to turn his face toward the cathedral doors” belonging to the passive Virgin Mary who has not caused his mother to reconsider her parental abandonment (Truong 48). In that sense, he is forced to worship and devote himself to Mary, though She is partly responsible for the Old Man’s pain by Her inaction and inability to emotionally move his mother to remember her role as a parent. The irony of his mother’s parental abandonment occurring before Mary, symbolic of parental devotion, and his subsequent forced worship of this symbol, though it has not prevented him from losing his parents, is not lost on the Old Man. He is left with a highly unfavorable and dismissive view of Mary, calling her “an unnecessary attachment, a weak character” (Truong 48). Such a characterization is critical of the passive iconography of the Virgin Mary. It underscores the Old Man’s lingering resentment against Mary, supposedly a symbol of motherly love now associated for him, contradictorily, with parental abandonment and suggests that he finds Her partly to blame for his loss.
The Old Man, having completely disregarded the Virgin Mary because of Her ironic failure through passivity, uses Her name to enable himself to objectify and abuse women. In order to marry, the Old Man tells a complete lie, declaring, “the Virgin Mother had come to him and told him to take a wife” (Truong 49). There is no indication that he feels any qualms about using Mary, a holy and honored figure in Catholicism, to engage in his deception. After all, Her ironic immovability and inability to remind the Old Man’s mother of her maternal duties has already proved her to be a useless symbol, “an unnecessary attachment, a weak character.” By using Mary’s name to get himself a wife, the Old Man, gains “something to call his own … he wanted something he could own, property that could multiply, in increase in worth every nine months” (Truong 49). This language of “own,” “property,” and “increase in worth” is extremely transactional and, along with how, emphasizes the Old Man’s devaluation of the role of women as mere tools in investments to propagate himself. Later on in the novel, Bình’s mother thinks about the Old Man, “He can make me open my legs but never my eyes” (Truong 201). Clearly, the Old Man does not gain her consent and violates her. This detestable view and treatment of women the Old Man masks, without any indication of unease, with the name Virgin Mary, who represents a lofty and honorable view of women as able to bear the Son of God. This Catholic perspective, in fact, opposes the reality of how the Old Man treats Bình’s mother. While this highly detestable depiction of the Old Man is a critique of him, it is also a criticism of the uninvolved image of the Virgin Mary of Catholicism. After all, the Old Man’s use of Mary’s name to engage in the sexual violation of Bình’s mother is, in part, the result of the irony he experiences when he is abandoned by his mother before Notre-Dame, symbolizing Mary and motherhood, leading to his disenchantment with the unmoving image of the Virgin Mary. As such, the Virgin Mary not only, through ironic passivity, traumatizes the Old Man in his youth, but also enables him to use Her name to abuse Bình’s mother.
Bình’s mother also seems to notice the irony of Mary’s iconography during her marriage to the Old Man. When she walks into “Father Vincente’s church” to be married, she sees “the statue of the ‘Virgin Mother’” (Truong 166). Like in the scene of the Old Man’s abandonment by his mother, the iconography of Mary, also representing immaculate conception, lingers in the background. Already, Bình’s mother seems to note a contradiction about Mary being a virgin but also a mother, as she wonders “‘Virgin Mother? But how do they have babies?’” (Truong 166). Through these questions, Bình’s mother seems to express some doubt about the image of the Virgin Mary and Her association with immaculate conception. This doubt and questioning is tragically justified as the passive image of the Virgin Mary fails in protecting Bình’s mother from being sexually violated by the Old Man, ironic in the sense that Mary, symbolically, is the antithesis of sex. The “statue” of Mary is a mere bystander, completely incapable of protecting Bình’s mother from experiencing the Old Man seemingly try “to push through to the other side,” leaving “blood caked to the inside of her legs,” descriptions that that highlight the trauma Bình’s mother faces during the loss of her virginity for the sake of conception that is not in any way immaculate. Though Mary is “the woman whom this religion [Catholicism] wanted her to be,” Bình’s mother, left with the trauma of sexual violation and considered merely a tool for propagation by the Old man, is therefore the complete opposite of Catholicism’s lofty view of Mary (Truong 166). Bình’s mother is not at all honored for her role as a mother capable of virginal birth and is, instead, abused. These ironies further The Book of Salt’s criticism of passive images of motherhood, such as the Virgin Mary, since, in the case of Bình’s mother, it is completely incapable of protecting her from the Old Man’s abuse and violation. In fact, there is no indication that Bình’s mother ever finds comfort in the passive, statuesque Virgin Mary associated with Father Vincente, the Old Man, and her marriage to him.
In contrast to the inactive, unmoving icon of Mary that lurks in the background, ironically unable to comfort or protect the people its symbolism relates to, Bình’s mother is actively loving. When the Old Man disowns Bình (Truong 163-164), Bình’s mother, though she is unable to prevent the breaking of ties, actively comforts her son in her own way, “[wrapping] herself around [Bình], pressing [Bình’s] stooped back into hers” and then “[putting] the [red] pouch in [Bình’s] hand” (Truong 174). The action verbs in active voice emphasize the active nature of her comforting Bình by holding him close. Her ability to act opposes the iconography of Mary that lingers in the background but fails to have any effect on those in Her presence. Because of the active nature of his mother’s attempts at comfort, Bình finds true solace in them years later, as he remarks, “I have never left your womb … I will always be protected, safe inside of you” (Truong 174). Bình’s language highlights how he clearly values his mother’s active love, contrasting the low esteem in which, for example, the Old Man holds the Virgin Mary, considering Her “an unnecessary attachment, a weak character” because of Her inactivity when he is abandoned by his mother (Truong 48) . The true comfort Bình finds from his mother who actively shows her love as a parental figure stands and lingering strong attachment he has towards her as a protector places active mother figures as an alternative to passive, religious images of motherhood, such as the Virgin Mary.
Bình’s habit of drawing his own blood is further indication of the strong attachment he feels for his mother (Truong 70-71). Bình draws his own blood during moments of “extreme cold or the usual bouts of loneliness,” moments of pain for himself (Truong 72). The act allows Bình to access “a memory of … the first time” he accidentally cuts himself with a knife in his mother’s presence(Truong 72). In Bình’s memories, as soon as his mother notices the accident, she springs into action, “[taking] off her blouse and [wrapping] it in tight circles around [Bình’s] fingers” (Truong 73). Again, the action verbs in the active voice underscore the active nature of Bình’s mother’s care for her son that contrasts her with Mary. She helps him and expresses her love for him by responding immediately to the wound. In addition, Bình’s mother does not allow passive images of parenthood perhaps comparable to the iconography of Mary from preventing her from acting. Though she clearly cares for the memory of her parents, seeing as to how “she apologizes every day” for how she can provide only a “lime” not an “‘[orange]’” for the “altar” of her deceased parents, she does not allow that memory to outweigh the needs of her living and beloved son (Truong 73). After instructing Bình to “Put the whole of [his] weight on top of [his] hand. She walks over to the altar, reaches inside the bowl, and takes out a small lime, a daughter’s offering,” which she uses on Bình’s wound (Truong 73). To Bình, the memory of his mother’s active love and prioritization of himself is “a caress” (Truong 74). The “ache” from drawing his own blood “fools [his] heart. Tricks it into a false memory of love.” This language of care and love highlights the comfort Bình feels from a warm memory of his mother as a counter to “extreme cold … or loneliness.” Though Bình’s interest in drawing his own blood is perhaps indicative of a need for psychological help of some kind, the reason he does this, the fact that he endures the pain of blood to feel near his mother, places Bình’s mother’s love in a positive light. Her active maternal love that is willing to take away from passive representations of parenthood in favor of comforting the beloved right in front of her makes her preferred over the passive Virgin Mary, whose ironic immovability has only led to pain. Her love is what gets preserved in Bình’s memory, which he chooses during moments of pain and powerlessness. Bình’s mother, representing active maternal and parental love, is upheld over passive images of parenthood, such as the Virgin Mary, that prove themselves to be ironic, ineffective onlookers to wrongs committed before them. Her passivity fails whereas Bình’s mother’s active and warm love succeeds in comforting Bình years after he has left Vietnam. Bình’s mother is a resistant figure in the sense that she uses her active love to counter patriarchal figures, such as the Old Man, and their associated colonial powers, such as France, who use Catholicism and passive religious icons, such as Mary, to take advantage of the powerless. These powerful forces use symbols as empty promises of love that never give them true power over the hearts of the oppressed. The Old Man, given up to the Church and its enforcement of colonial powers through religious conversion, does not care for Mary and only uses Her name to cause further violence against Bình’s mother. Bình’s mother “never wavered, however, when it came to her vow never to enter Father Vincente’s church, the place where she was bought and sold” under the statuesque Virgin Mary, though she may outwardly seem to acquiesce to the terms of her marriage with the Old Man (Truong 199). The patriarchal and imperial powers explored in The Book of Salt, represented through the Old Man and the Catholic Church, often seem insurmountable, undefeatable by means of direct force. Nonetheless Bình’s mother practices a persistent, active, and warm love for her son, which she prioritizes over the altar of her deceased parents, a passive image of parenthood like Mary used by oppressive systems of power, and takes from them to help her son when he is wounded. While Bình’s mother’s love does not topple the oppressive systems at play, her comfort is the type that endures, in contrast to passive, religious images of parenthood. It is what receives memorialization in the first person narrator, Bình, who evokes the image of his mother, rather than an inactive figure like Mary, to give himself warmth as a way to cancel out the cold of those who abuse power and privilege.
Works Cited
Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
Isabella Zhou 
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