Native Son Oppression

A Different Kind of Oppression: Women’s Injustice in Richard Wright’s Native Son Amid a novel wrought with social inequity and the force of white oppression, Wright fails to afford African American women, and by extension women in general, the passions and merits he affords his male characters, namely Bigger Thomas. Instead, in Native Son, Wright’s harrowing employment of systemic abuse to his female characters acts as a means to dehumanize, objectify, and belittle, ultimately reducing an entire population to the phallocentric whims and plights of both white and black men. Notably, Wright portrays his female characters as secondary to men, as “creatures” whose struggles mean less, thereby stripping women of their innate value as human beings.

in France 1). This notion is perhaps best embodied by the dynamic displayed between Bigger Thomas and Bessie Mears, in which Bigger’s control and restriction of Bessie’s life become the stepping stone for his own fulfillment. Because Bigger “had to have a girl, so he had Bessie,” Wright all but makes Bessie a faceless and ubiquitous character— she could be any woman in the context of Bigger’s story (Wright 467). It is Bessie who lives a “starved life,” much like many African American women of her time period, and yet Wright is unable to offer her any means of reconciling her harsh and ill-favored existence (Wright 158). In fact, Bessie’s only hope for escape lies in the very person who abuses her trust and loyalty, and yet her worth to Bigger is summed up to no more than a “dangerous burden” (Wright 162). Preceding his rape and murder of Bessie, Bigger’s internal dialogue are punctuated by the same one line, “He could not take her with him and he could not leave her behind,” (Wright 272). With these words, societal conditioning has rendered Bessie’s gender adequate cause to deem her less capable than a man in keeping Bigger’s secret and escaping town