Black Womanhood

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the protagonists of three works: Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat", Toni Morrison's "Sula" and Harriet E. Adams Wilson's "Our Nig." The author analyzes the three main characters and the representation of black womanhood. Through their literature, it is shown how Wilson wished to achieve an active political purpose, the abolishment of slavery whereas Morrison and Hurston wished to reconfigure the norms that shaped Black female self-perception.

From the Paper:

"At the end of Toni Morrison's Sula, one of the two main protagonists, a woman named Nel, looks around her world and cries out, "All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude." Nel wails, "We was girls together." The author states that Nel speaks "as though explaining something," that she is evidently unable to name. Nel simply says, ""O Lord, Sula-girl, girl, girl girl girl."" (Morrison 174) Throughout the novel Sula, Nel and Sula are offered as two dichotomous examples of womanhood, and of Black womanhood in particular. The virgin/whore dichotomy of viewing womankind is hardly new to Western culture. However Morrison specifically deals with the Black female experience of this trope. Nel finds herself (and casts herself) as a kind of "earth mother" and Sula instead chooses to fashion her adult persona into that of "a bad woman," or a woman of dubious, hypersexualized reputation. However, neither of these common stereotypes, Morrison suggests by her narrative's course, truly satisfy the desired Black female experience of sexuality and family."

More papers on Black Womanhood:

• Poem Review # 108809 : "Celebration of Womanhood in "Phenomenal Woman"
• Analytical Essay # 58965 : "Quicksand" and "Passing" by Nella Larsen"
• Analytical Essay # 46424 : "The Legacy of Slavery"

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