토니 모리슨의 『 술라 』를 통해 살펴본 흑인 공동체 내의 남성과 여성의 결합
Gender Conflicts and Its Representation through a Black Community in Toni Morrison’s Sula
2
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This paper aims to examine black male and female characters and their vulnerable gender relationship between opposite sexes in Toni Morrison’s novel Sula by reviewing phases of their social, racial, gender, and economic status at the beginning of the twentieth century in Jim Crow America, and provide contextual and circumstantial understanding for black male characters. While many of black male characters of Morrison seem to fail to show strong and promising black role model in a family, I would first contextualize this gender/race failure in the larger frame of American society that did not allow black men to perform as a man. Morrison’s many man-woman relationships depicted in the novel would give a clue why black men are considered irresponsible, vulnerable and violent in Morrison criticism. The devastated black men in Morrison’s novels fail to provide a positive vision because of harsh racial discrimination in white-centered American society. In the main section of this essay, I would attempt to connect social emasculation resulting from discriminatory racial segregation and their failing relationships in a black community, the Bottom. As “black” and as “man,” the Bottom’s men are vulnerable for they cannot properly perform their masculine roles in their own black community. Even if they try to express their manhood by marrying a black woman and pursuing a job, their attempt fails and only serves to confirm the inferiority that the society imposes on them. Through these analyses, this paper aims to focus upon the complex, problematic status of black male characters in Morrison’s novel by analyzing major black couples who fails to communicate each other, start a family, and maintain it. By doing so, black people’s domestic problems, which once seem to be inherent in a personal sphere of insecurity, irresponsibility, incompetence, and lacks, are closely related to and derived from the white-centered society.
Abstract
This paper aims to examine black male and female characters and their vulnerable gender relationship between opposite sexes in Toni Morrison’s novel Sula by reviewing phases of their social, racial, gender, and economic status at the beginning of the twentieth century in Jim Crow America, and provide contextual and circumstantial understanding for black male characters. While many of black male characters of Morrison seem to fail to show strong and promising black role model in a family, I would first contextualize this gender/race failure in the larger frame of American society that did not allow black men to perform as a man. Morrison’s many man-woman relationships depicted in the novel would give a clue why black men are considered irresponsible, vulnerable and violent in Morrison criticism. The devastated black men in Morrison’s novels fail to provide a positive vision because of harsh racial discrimination in white-centered American society. In the main section of this essay, I would attempt to connect social emasculation resulting from discriminatory racial segregation and their failing relationships in a black community, the Bottom. As “black” and as “man,” the Bottom’s men are vulnerable for they cannot properly perform their masculine roles in their own black community. Even if they try to express their manhood by marrying a black woman and pursuing a job, their attempt fails and only serves to confirm the inferiority that the society imposes on them. Through these analyses, this paper aims to focus upon the complex, problematic status of black male characters in Morrison’s novel by analyzing major black couples who fails to communicate each other, start a family, and maintain it. By doing so, black people’s domestic problems, which once seem to be inherent in a personal sphere of insecurity, irresponsibility, incompetence, and lacks, are closely related to and derived from the white-centered society.
참고문헌 (27)
- Allen, Robert L, "A Guide to Black Power in America: An Historical Analysis" (1970), Victor Gollancz
- Blake, Susan L, "Folklore and Community in Song of Solomon", MELUS, 7(3), pp.77~82 (1980)
- Carbado, Devon W, "Black Male Racial Victimhood", Callaloo, 21(2), pp.337~361 (1998)
- Crummell, Alexander, "The Black Woman of the South, Her Neglects and Her Needs" (1998), Library of Congress
- Denard, Carolyn, "The Convergence of Feminism and Ethnicity in the Fiction of Toni Morrison", pp.171~179 (1988), G. K. Hall & Co
- Du Bois, W. E. B, "The Immediate Program of the American Negro", The Crisis, 310~312 (1915)
- Du Bois, W. E. B, "The Souls of Black Folk" (1994), Dover
- Du Bois, W. E. B, "The Tragedy of ‘Jim Crow’", The Crisis, 169~172 (1923)
- Gaskin, Irene, "Boys, Salute the Flag, the Red, Black, Green", Negro World, 10~ (1924)
- Gillespie, Diane, "Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Contemporary Criticism", pp.61~91 (1997), Garland Publishing
- Kimmel, Michael, "Manhood in America" (1996), The Free Press
- Lewis, David. L, "W. E. B. Du Bois—Biography of a Race, 1868-1919" (1993), Henry Holt and Company
- McKay, Nellie Y, "Critical Essays on Toni Morrison" (1988), G. K. Hall & Co
- Michelet, Jules, (1860), Rudd & Carleton
- Morrison, Toni, "‘Intimate Things in Place’: A Conversation with Toni Morrison", The Massachusetts Review, 18(3), pp.473~489 (1977)
- Morrison, Toni, "What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction", pp.56~64 (2008), Mississippi UP
- Morrison, Toni, "Sula" (2004), Random House
- Morrison, Toni, "The Bluest Eye" (2004), Random House
- Moses, Wilson J, "Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent" (1989), Oxford UP
- Murray, Rolland, "The Long Strut: Song of Solomon and the Emancipatory Limits of Black Patriarchy", Callaloo, 22(1), pp.121~133 (1999)
- Page, Philip, "Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison's Novels" (1995), Mississippi UP
- Randolf, A. Phillip, "Segregation in the Public Schools: A Promise or a Menace", The Messenger, 185~188 (1924)
- Smith, Barbara, "Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present", pp.410~427 (1994), Duke UP
- Staples, Robert, "The Black Family: Essays and Studies", pp.149~159 (1971), Wadsworth Publishing Company
- Summers, Martin, "Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930" (2004), North Carolina UP
- Wintz, Cary D, "African American Political Thoughts, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey and Randolph" (1996), M. E. Sharpe
- Wright, Michelle M, "Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora" (2004), Duke UP