Post Modernism, Cultural Heterogeneity and Differences in The ...

International Indexed & Referred Research Journal, October,2012. ISSN 0974-2832, RNI- RAJBIL 2009/29954; VoL. IV * ISSUE- 45
Research Paper - English
Post Modernism, Cultural Heterogeneity and
Differences in The Selected Works of Toni Morrison
and Alice Walker
* Seemant
* Ph.D. , Scholar Singhania University, Pacheri Bari-, Jhunjhunu (Raj.)
Feminism, as a phenomenon of history, has two distinct
phases. The first phase covers the period from 1830-
1920 and the second from 1960 to present times. The
first phase feminism has its roots in classical liberal
thought. It is defined by an emphasis on campaigns for
women's enfranchisement and the extension of civil
rights to women. The period, following the achievement
of voting rights for women in 1920, is regarded as
a period of relative inaction for feminism. The 1960s,
however, witnessed the growth of widespread facilities
of education for women, entry of women into previously
all male professions, the establishment of legislation
on abortion and equal pay and the wide availability
of birth control devices. These developments created
conditions conducive to the resurfacing of feminism
during the 1960s which is regarded as the great
watershed of late modernity.
The study considers the three female protagonists,
situated in a specific cultural and economic
context, as paradigms of feminist analysis. For instance,
Pecola in The Bluest Eye internalizes the western/white
standards of beauty under the racial pressure of the
dominant culture. The colonization of mind fosters her
fatal fascination for a pair of blue eyes. Her praying for
the symbols of Anglo-Saxon beauty represents a
doomed attempt on her part to live up to an aesthetic
code that is essentially different from the concept of
traditional black beauty. Within the black community
itself, she is violated by her father, rejected by her
mother, taunted by the black boys, mistreated by
Geraldine and betrayed by Junior. In the intra-racial
context, signifying class hierarchy, she is humiliated
by Maureen and defrauded by Soaphead Church.
Similarly Sethe in Beloved and Celie in The
Color Purple are trapped in the inextricable web of
gender, race and class which reinforce one another in
blocking the black women's quest for identity which is
regarded as a conceptual category. They impinge relentlessly
on the socio-political, psychosexual, cultural
and economic aspects of the life practices of black
women in America.
The central question taken up in the feminist
analysis of the selected works of Toni Morrison and
Alice Walker encompasses the notions of heterogene-
SHODH, SAMIKSHA AUR MULYANKAN
October ,2012
ity, fragmentation, indeterminacy and differences, represented
by the blacks' minority ethnic group. In the
process the modernist notions of high culture patriarchy,
elitism and homogeneity are supplanted by the
black aesthetic in general and black women's radical
traditions in particular.
Black women writing touched a high watermark
when Toni Morrison had the distinction of being
the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1993. Her evocative use of the colloquial in
The Bluest Eye and Beloved furnish an illustration of
how she discards the linguistic stratagems and subterfuges
to capture the black female reality in all its bleakness.
Toni Morrison's first novel The Bluest Eye (1970)
makes a scathing attack on the imposition of white/
Anglo-Saxon standards of beauty on black women and
the creation of cultural perversion. It presents a critique
of the dominant aesthetic that is internalized by
majority of the black community, and attempts to
deconstruct the meta-ethnicity, which exercises a hegemonic
control over the lives of blacks in America.
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1988) grows out of
the historical context of American slavery and reconstruction.
It embodies a response to the Fugitive Slave
Law to which Sethe, the chief female protagonist of the
novel, falls a prey in 1855. The fugitive slaves were
those who had run away from slave masters in the
south and found haven in the northern and border
states. The Fugitive Slave law, enacted by the Congress,
empowered the slave masters to reclaim their
property i.e. the runaways.
Sethe, a runaway slave, who is the chief female
protagonist in Beloved slits her baby's throat
rather than see her sold as a slave when her slave
master comes to reclaim her and her children. Sethe is
the fictional representation of Margaret Garner, who, in
1851, had escaped with her children from her master in
Kentucky to Ohio. When she and her children were
about to be reclaimed by the slave master, she tried to
kill her children rather than return them to a life of
slavery. She succeeded in killing one of the children
and was imprisoned for infanticide. In addressing the
issue of slavery, Morrison wants people to be able to
feel at a personal level what it meant to be a slave and
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International Indexed & Referred Research Journal, October,2012. ISSN 0974-2832, RNI- RAJBIL 2009/29954; VoL. IV * ISSUE- 45
what slavery did to a people. Oprah Winfrey points systems of domination, devised by the white establishment,
to have hegemony over the blacks in America.
out: "People resented Sethe not because of what she
did but because there was never a moment of regret. The black feminist perspective on the three texts reveals
that black women are subjected to racial white
She didn't crumble she didn't fail (20).
The Color Purple unfolds the panorama of domination as members of the black community. At the
black female reality of the neo-slavery period that takes same time, they are maltreated with in the black community
itself because of their gender. In this perspective,
shape in the smithy of black male brutality towards
black females, racial/patriarchal oppression and misogynist
assumptions. The novel focuses on the pro-
Sethe and Celie are taken as models of feministanalysis.
the doubly trapped female protagonists i.e. Pecola,
cess of the self-discovery of an unlettered black southern
woman. It traces the gradual growth of her Eye, Beloved and The Color Purple theorizes power
The black feminist analysis of the The Bluest
radicalization and empowerment through female bonding,
education and self-employment. The black femi-
shaping of black subjectivity and identity during sla-
relations between the whites and the blacks and the
nist analysis reveals how black female radicalism, embracing
of womanhood, exploration of black heritage tive of colonial and neo-colonial politics, the feminist
very and the neo slavery period. In the overall perspec-
and resultant self-determination bring to fruition Celie's analysis unmasks the power structures that engineer
quest for identity and history.
racial oppression and cultural perversion. It
Celie succeeds in her quest for identity and deconstructs whiteness and blackness with a view to
history by developing an understanding of her roots destabilizing the two as biological categories and projecting
them as cultural constructs. The redefined per-
and heritage and acquiring the awareness that she has
a right to happiness, passion, creativity and emotional spective on the mediating concepts reveals that personal
is political, sexual is racial and the private is
fulfilment. To exercise her rights as an individual, Celie
learns to resist the advances of black men who hinder public in the feminist discourse on Pecola's and Sethe's
her self-fulfilment.
search for authentic existence in The Bluest Eye and
The feminist analysis of the selected works of Beloved and Celie's search for status, dignity and identity
and history in The Color Purple.
Toni Morrison and Alice Walker looks upon The Bluest
Eye, Beloved and The Color Purple as a black radical
response to aesthetic/cultural perversion, slavery and
black male cruelty respectively. It brings to light the
R E F E R E N C E
1 Morrison, Toni. Beloved. London: Picador, 1988.
2 ---. The Bluest Eye. London: Picador, 1993.
3 Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Washington Square Press, 1982.
4 Winfrey, Oprah. Journey to Beloved. New York: Hyperion, 1998.
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