Dream Deferred or Dream Defeated?: Ann Petry’s The Street
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In The Street, Ann Petry closely examines African American women’s lives in urban areas. In the symbolic space like a jungle where white dominance and power are maintained, the main character, Lutie Johnson, attempts to escape dirty and dangerous Harlem. Due to the circumstances she is under, however, she is given slim chances, falling victim to white and black men who take advantage of her vulnerability. Petry adamantly critiques the male-dominant ideology and politics of American society that regard black women as an object of exploitation and sexual pleasure. Significantly, however, Petry also demonstrates that because of Lutie’s reckless embrace of ‘American Dream’ constructed by white Americans, she fails to achieve her dream. In an effort to solve her economic hardship, she is too obsessed with earning money to recognize, analyze, and interpret the system she is in. That is, she fails to formulate her own subjectivity. Petry examines the complex web of the social and cultural system that hinders African Americans as they attempt to survive the social injustice and double standard of American society. Writing in the vein of Wrightian naturalism, but rather than being occupied solely by environmental determinism, Petry well depicts black women’s struggle and the painful life in the city by blending the techniques of Modernism and Realism. That is the reason why she can be regarded as one of the black women writers with a strong voice who developed the tradition of African American literature.
Abstract
In The Street, Ann Petry closely examines African American women’s lives in urban areas. In the symbolic space like a jungle where white dominance and power are maintained, the main character, Lutie Johnson, attempts to escape dirty and dangerous Harlem. Due to the circumstances she is under, however, she is given slim chances, falling victim to white and black men who take advantage of her vulnerability. Petry adamantly critiques the male-dominant ideology and politics of American society that regard black women as an object of exploitation and sexual pleasure. Significantly, however, Petry also demonstrates that because of Lutie’s reckless embrace of ‘American Dream’ constructed by white Americans, she fails to achieve her dream. In an effort to solve her economic hardship, she is too obsessed with earning money to recognize, analyze, and interpret the system she is in. That is, she fails to formulate her own subjectivity. Petry examines the complex web of the social and cultural system that hinders African Americans as they attempt to survive the social injustice and double standard of American society. Writing in the vein of Wrightian naturalism, but rather than being occupied solely by environmental determinism, Petry well depicts black women’s struggle and the painful life in the city by blending the techniques of Modernism and Realism. That is the reason why she can be regarded as one of the black women writers with a strong voice who developed the tradition of African American literature.
참고문헌 (17)
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