Toni Morrison Research Paper

The American Declaration of Independence of 4th July, 1776 said, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. (Quoted in Burns 24) Did this not mean that ‘men’ were to include women as well in this statement? The category of ‘man’ here is a relatively very small group of the bourgeois white male; men of colour and women were excluded. Until the 1960s the Black people in the US were not guaranteed full civil rights.
The objective of this thesis is to highlight the discrimination and subjugation that the black woman in American has experienced; and how Toni Morrison through black aesthetics and literary tradition provides a platform for

Morrison’s black women are a product of history, of contemporary socio-economic situations, of gender bias and of the culture that they are brought up in. She provides a local fictional backdrop for a conceptual understanding of the social, gender and cultural power play, and how the individual situates herself within these realms. Morrison believes that cultural transmission and cultural transaction is possible within and beyond the author’s own

Through her character types she reflects the development of self in connection with the racial dilemmas and gender bias that they must face in the course of the story. Sexuality, procreative powers, maternity and economic struggle are the testifying features for the women characters of Morrison’s novels. She also provides these characters with strong insights, powerful articulation and objective ways to control the complex situations that may arise. The narrowed social construction of black womanhood, the tensions of family life, and the socio-economic struggle of the individual in society, sexuality and sexual integrity are the general motifs of Morrison’s novels. She discourages stereotypical representation of black woman in the literary world. She has also confronted some of the myths of the black woman’s character types that have been portrayed in the past. She analyses the black woman in literature as an eminent part of black behaviour in its totality. The author has thrown light on the basic salient features of the black women in America that are debatable: the economic, political and social status, psychological reactions to the racial practices against them, the pragmatic life as the ‘lesser’ gender, and the influence and practice of the African culture they carry with them along