Comparative Study of Race and Gender in Selected Novels of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker

Abstract

Toni Morrison and Alice Walker are two of the leading contemporary African-American female writers. Morrison is a Nobel Prize winner, while Walker is a Pulitzer Prize winner. They also have to their credit a plethora of literary awards. Some critics, particularly male critics, have accused them of being very cruel in their presentations of the male characters in their works. Coming under serious attack is Alice Walker in particular, especially after the publications of her The Third Life of Grange Copeland and The Color Purple. Even some African-American women rained tantrums on her, accusing her of stripping the remaining dignity left on the battered ego of the black male. This research is focused primarily on four selected novels of both novelists, namely: Sula, Song of Solomon, The Color Purple, and The Third Life of Grange Copeland. These four novels were selected based on the fact that they have identical settings, thematic axis, and characterization.The thesis posits that in their presentations of the male characters in their works, Morrison and Walker delineate the traumatizing and debilitating effects of racism, which is the result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. This situation has left a more traumatic scar on the black male psyche than on the black female character in the fictive works of Morrison and Walker. Contrary to some critical opinion, they are actually sympathetic to men, and their works feature in the realm of natural realism. A combination of two theories will form the theoretical framework of this research. These are womanist theory and Critical race theory. Womanism sprang up because some African-American critics argue that the traditional gender studies always privileged Anglo-American women to the detriment of black and minority women. In other words, discourse about white women has always occupied the centre and black and minority women have unwittingly been moved to the margins. The justification of womanist criticism lies in the need to move the discourse from the margins to the centre. Race dynamics plays out in the lives of the black and white characters in the novels. The blacks are often subjected to physical assault and gross abuse by the whites. Most white characters use deception and tricks to manipulate the blacks out of their rights. The male characters, in their egotistic disposition, are more psychologically traumatized than the female characters. Morrison and Walker are not really presenting their male characters as villains, murderers, and drunks, but are simply presenting a realist view of the black men after being traumatized and humiliated by the white supremacists. The male characters resort to oppressing the women in their lives to feel more like men. The female characters are exposed to oppression by both white and black men, so they resort to bonding with fellow women, and they emerge stronger than the male characters.