SHABINE
Men are having said to be breadwinners, the ones that bring home the money for their wives to cook meals but not all men are like this. Justine or Shabine as she was referred to by the men that desired her; saw men as devils and sexual predators. Justine even saw them as a way of easy money when she allowed herself to become a prostitute. The way she was physically described was very desirable for a man to lust for. Shabine was wanted by the men and she accepted this and used it to her own advantage.
Shabine the men would call her, not having a bit of respect for the woman she was. She saw men as devils or sexual predators who just wanted her body and what she could physically provide them. You could say she built even a stereotype for them, thinking that all the men that she met are the same. In my opinion it was true most of the men that she encountered were just sexual perverts who just wanted “a good time”. Shabine got so used it, she learned to deal with the phrases and shouts said to her by the men who saw her everyday quite casually. In my opinion the only good man she met was the Narrator who proposed to her a life of prosperity but she refused this because she couldn’t get over what all men had done to her.
“Shabine makes hungry where she most satisfies”. By rejecting the Narrators offer she accepted being a prostitute. She saw men as a way of easy money, knowing that no man could resist her body. She knew that she could make easy dollars from men by just fulfilling their sexual needs. The life of a prostitute isn’t easy and it isn’t legal either, somewhat risky with the consequences in society today but who can say maybe Shabine was just born into it. One thing I can say about Justine is that she never let her choices impact her children; every time the men would tease her and her sons would try to fight them back she would get angry with them. Shabine wasn’t a good mother but she had mother qualities, such as putting your child first, and my belief the only reason she did what she did was to get money for her children.
Lust is one of the seven capital sins that are being done nearly every single day. To be lustful of something is a very bad thing and that’s just what the men were towards Shabine. They desired her physical traits and observed them closely noting that she had red hair and a vicious temper. There was one man though that in my opinion really had feelings for Justine that she rejected harshly. The Narrator ignored what his grandmother had told him and still tried to entice her. That in my opinion wasn’t lust; it was more like a crush that when he came back as a man he needed to confess his emotions to. He reminisces about when they were just two young children, and when he used to give her paradise plums. He even wishes that there wasn’t a space between their houses so they could have savored the plums together at the river in the afternoons. He believed that if they were better circumstances Shabine may not be who she is today.
All in all, who can blame Justine for her actions and feelings towards men? Her decision to reject the Narrator was more on instinct because it might have been the first time a man actually had feelings for her, the first time someone even cared about her; she must have not trusted him and what he had offered. Justine never saw men as people who would respect and think of her well being, she only knew them as sexual perverts and easy money. The noises they would make and the chants they would taunt her with were very mean; she retaliated very angry at times but never allowing her children to retaliate for her. Furthermore, in the eyes of a woman who had been verbally abused for her physical traits who could blame her for being so insecure?