Postcolonial Criticism In Like A Winding Sheet By Ann Petry

In the story ‘Like a Winding Sheet’ written by Ann Petry in 1946, there are lots of things we can dig deep into such as the background of the characters, their behaviors as well as their motives. ‘Like a Winding Sheet’ is about a working day of Johnson, a factory worker with aching legs, and how he encounters racist events throughout his day. His conversation with Mrs. Scout, the factory forelady, and his unfair treatment at the restaurant have built up tension inside of him, which eventually turns a kind and nice man into a violent monster who keeps hitting his wife at the very end. By using different schools of criticism, we can elaborate our thoughts which lead to a higher level of analysis. I will be using Postcolonial Criticism, Marxist Criticism and Feminist Criticism to discover the social cultural issues and meaning the author is hiding in this story. Postcolonial criticism, as suggested in the textbook, “has developed because of the dramatic shrinking of the world and the increasing multicultural cast of our own country” (1603). As described by Andrea Smith in his book “From Heteropatriarchy and the Three pillars of White Supremacy”, “The

Scott, then the girl at the coffee shop and finally his wife Mae. By the way of how much effort the author has focused on describing women appearance and behaviors, we can interpret that Johnson is frequently affected by women near him, as suggested in the text “he noticed that the women workers have started to snap and snarl at each other.” (1623), and so he could tell that it is almost quitting time. While back to the days before feminist movements went wild, there is no way women can put pressure on men, or even share the same status of men. This setting in the story symbolizes a shift in status and power of gender, and how the society has become a fairer place where men and women can enjoy equal