Black Feminism: What Women of Color Went Through in Toni Morrison’s Selected Novels

Abstract

This article examines two of Toni Morrison’s novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved in the lights of black feminism, racism, realism and naturalism. It is an attempt to reflect the powerlessness, inhumanity, and pains that women of color went through. By using a feminist racist and naturalist filter, a descriptive-analytical method of study and by analyzing the situations, the characters and themes, the status of women of color in Literature based on Morrison’s selected novels are revealed and represented. Morrison very well describes how different women characters react and respond differently to the injustice and the inhumanity imposed on them through for example the contrasting nature of Sethe in Beloved and Pauline in The Bluest Eye. She depicts the bravery and courage in Sethe , the self-absorbedness in Pauline and the passiveness in Pecola all of which raise powerful questions regarding black-women’s self-identity, self-concept, and struggles to achieve freedom as a living being if not a human being: a path which will deepen our understanding of women issues in general. The researcher believes that a womanish and racist study of the selected novels would contribute to broaden our views of humanity. The researcher selected women of color because she thinks the sorrows of black women, and the pains and toils they went through have always been deeper than those of the white ones.