In the novel, Celie starts of as an abused, submissive wife, but is transformed into a confident and independent black woman, which goes against the ‘traditional’ values of that time. The male dominance in the novel is portrayed in several ways, sexual aggression being the main one. The novel itself is set between 1900-1940, in rural Georgia, where males often had power over their wives and children. The men were expected to control their wives and show superiority, this was commonly shown amongst the black community. Due to the daily humiliation faced by the ‘black man’ from the white people, the black men turned their frustration towards their women by beating them.
At the same time, Ryna is abandoned and left with the children, yet her name lives on through a scary, haunting gulch. Carr says‘The community rewards Solomon’s abandonment of his children but punishes Ryna’s inability to take care of them alone’ . This shows the oppressive, sexists attitudes the society in the novel has and portrays the plight Morrison presents black women to
In Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Hughes Not Without Laughter, and passages in Souls Looking Back, the struggles of African Americans are realistically portrayed in characters that go through traumatizing events while growing up in a place where blacks are seen as inferior to whites. These texts illustrate some of the major points in Peter’s essay: Constant exposure to racism leads to extreme environmental stress, blacks require more education than whites to be deemed successful, and whites can negatively influence individuals and make them want to change the way they live so they are not “associated” with the black population. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, there are many ways black lives are marginalized just because of the color of their skin. In Langston Hughes’s Not Without Laughter, the main character witnesses first hand how whites views of blacks are personal but society makes those views “normal”. The Souls Looking Back narrative explains how race is a social identity, and how blacks are inferior just because of color.
Furthermore, sometimes raped black women it leads them to be stressful, depression and sometime death. Black men were unable to help or defend their women because they were slaves themselves, therefore they had no power which means they just have to see and do nothing about it. Davis describe the important information about how badly is the black women being treated. “Many white men, who began by taking a slave girl in an act of sexual exploitation ended by loving her and the children she bore” (Davis, 1981:25). This shows that black women were treated like animal and treasure just for having high number of children.
The same has made the women to lose hope and resulted in giving up on men. This system is considered as a vital cultural value among most of African tribes when in actual sense should be abolished and termed out casted for the betterment of poor women and children who are raised under the same bubble. In conclusion woman expectations in many African communities is a huge dilemma which has made a few successful by getting good education and getting married in modern setting and the rest perishing as wives with kids who have no basis in life. This kind of marital injustices should be declared a national disaster in most of the
Hostility toward feminism has been further encouraged by the myth of the emasculating “black matriarch” hampering the progress of Black men. Patricia Hill Collins’ article
Another example of how strain applies to these women can be seen in Agnew’s writings when he said “Data suggest that child abuse and neglect negative school experiences, chronic unemployment, and residence in deprived communities are important causes sate anger and that such anger explains much of the effective of strains on crime.” (Agnew, Chp. 9) The presentation of negative stimuli or in the case of the African American battered women this was the abuse they received, regularly, which will cause large amounts of strain. The way most of these women dealt with the abuse was through drug and alcohol
Nunu son was with the system because he was the head of all the slaves and was the one who had to punish the slaves if they got in trouble. Towards the end of the movie they plan a way to get out and Nunu’s son was not involved because he was a head slave and followed God. When they first started to pan out the attack and plan to get out shola did not want to help out but soon she did because she was getting abused by her master and at night she was raped. Shola’s love shango knew that Nunu’s son was going to be a problem and would get in there way so he made up a poison that would make him sick and hallucinate. In the end that turned out to be a problem when they were exacuting there attack, before they could attack and leave he started to attack his mother and killed her at the river.
Some of the women who were involved into sexual relations with their owners gave birth to children, but such facts did not help the women and their children to get free, instead, slave owners would sell away such women, giving them no chance to see their families again. Sexual exploitation had another very serious impact on black families, as men, husbands, could not protect their wives from being involved into sexual relationship with slave owners. Women could be sexually harassed or raped by their owners, while nobody could protect them, because all slaves were punished severely for even the smallest faults they
This power structure is kept strong by making failures out of oneself and taking away any independence the women may have including the wives. The handmaids are raped and forced into childbirth and the wives are equally imprisoned because they are married to the masterminds of such a hideous society. I cannot imagine living is a society where my choice to have a child is stolen from me. Society that will punish with death or torture if I decide to rebel against child birth. Birth is a gift given to a woman’s body from GOD.