The Fish Girl and The Four Dutchmen

The Fish Girl, published 2017.
(This review contains spoilers)

The epigraph at the beginning of The Fish Girl, a novella by Mirandi Riwoe, comes from the short story "The Four Dutchmen" by W. Somerset Maugham. It reads:

"One of these days he would buy himself a house on the hills in Java and marry a pretty little Javanese. They were so small and so gentle and they made no noise, and he would dress her in silk sarongs and give her gold chains to wear round her neck and gold bangles to put on her arms." (The Fish Girl, p. 4). 

Riwoe's story begins in a fishing village in Indonesia. It tells in simple language of the life of Mina, a very young daughter who works in her mother's kitchen, mostly preparing the fish her father catches. The first chapter tells how her father sells her to be a servant in a larger town, where she learns to wait on the master and work for the cook, making a variety of local dishes. After I read Riwoe's story, I read the Maugham story. In it, we can recognize Riwoe's girl, but Maugham presents her without any distictive characteristics at all. She's just a toy for men.

The master in Riwoe's story expects the arrival of group of visitors. A servant boy tells Mina: "These men are great friends, but no-one can tell them apart. We just call them 'the four Dutchmen.',... Tonight they are bringing a friend. I heard Master say he’s famous. A famous storyteller. From far away." (The Fish Girl, p. 20). So we can recognize the appearance in Riwoe's story of the humanized characters in the Maugham story -- the white men.

I chose this book cover because I appreciate the connection
to Gauguin's exotic women, maybe a little more human but still
problematic. (I read the Project Gutenberg version.)

I fear that if I read "The Four Dutchmen" without the context of Riwoe's story, I might not come around to fully grasping the cold way that the girl was only a thing: not human, not feeling, not suffering, not even having a name or origin. How could literature -- highly respected literature like Maugham's -- have been so careless with humans as long as they were exotic alien female creatures with dark skin? (He does mention the color of skin.) 

I admire Riwoe's creation of a flesh-and-blood character who has her own village, her own parents, her position in as a servant, her relationships with other servants, deep emotions, and a tragic fate, as well as a name. A much more profoundly depicted character. Maugham's creature is so indistinct that her death isn't even the least tragic, not even sad.

Here is the end of Maugham's story. The girl, having been taken on the tramp ship to be used by the captain, having been raped by one of the men, and then causing a murder and a suicide, becomes nothing but a bulky package as the sailors, who have fought over her, dispose of her, and blame her for her own fate. The narrator searching to know the end of the story reveals:

"But one of the sailors on the watch, just before dawn, had seen the supercargo and the chief engineer carry something up on deck, a bulky package, about the size of a native woman, look about them to see that they were unobserved, and drop it overboard; and it was said all over the ship that these two to avenge their friends had sought the girl out in her cabin and strangled her and flung her body into the sea." (W. Somerset Maugham, "The Four Dutchmen")

In The Fish Girl, we care about this "package," as the innocent girl, whom we've come to know, meets a tragic fate, thrown alive into the sea:

"The first shock of the cold ocean smites the fury from her. She falls through the water, as swiftly as a coin. Blackness smothers her, surrounds her in tiny bubbles. The blurred lights of the tramp waver and dim as she sinks. She panics, inhales salty water through her nostrils. A blank pressure builds inside her head. She feels she might burst. . . . Her descent slows. Specks of seaweed and silt swirl around her head, punctuate the murky depths.  . . . The Ocean Queen whispers to her, wraps her warm arms around Mina’s constricted body. Loosens the folds. Nyai Loro Kidul promises her much, buoys her descent. Mina’s head relaxes back and the tramp is nothing but a glowing spot in the distance. The silken water draws Mina further down into nothingness. Until she is finally back in the sunlight, scaling fish with her mother." (Mirandi Riwoe, The Fish Girl, p. 48)

Review © 2022 mae sander.