THE REPRESENTATIONS OF DOMESTICITY, MOTHERHOOD AND VIOLENCE IN TONI MORRISON’S BELOVED AND ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE

At a time when women around the world were staging a fight against gender discrimination and calling for equal rights with men in their various societies, black American women also tried to make their voices heard. As history holds it, unlike other women especially in the west, their story is different because it was shaped by slavery, which made them not only inferior to men but to women of other races. Coupled with the roles of housekeeping and motherhood assigned to women, thus sidelining them from decision making issues in the society, the African American woman also had to deal with the belittlement, violence and segregation from the white society during and after slavery. In this regard, Tony Morrison and Alice Walker like a host of other black writers, took it upon themselves to tell the stories that were often ignored or could not be perfectly told by men or white writers. Through similar characters Sethe and Celie in the novels Beloved and The Color Purple, Morrison and Alice very much brings out the themes of motherhood, domesticity and violence which affected the lives of the African American woman in various ways. Set in the South of the United States of America where slavery and segregation were most practiced, the novels depict the maltreatment and relegation and of black women both by the white society and the black society. Though Morrison’s Beloved is set during slavery and Walker’s The Color Purple set during the Jim Crow Laws that separated black and white people, the characters still share similarities in the ways they experience motherhood, domesticity and violence. Morrison and Walker offer an explicit feminist conceptualization of African American politics that exposes and enriches concepts of black feminism and radicalism. In Beloved, Morrison depicts the adverse side of motherhood that many writers of the time failed to consider. By attempting to exercise her motherly role in a period of extreme suffering, Sethe loses her identity and in the process also suppresses that of Denver her daughter. This is occasioned by the maternal ties that link Sethe to her children that preclude her individuation and thwart her self-development. Sethe sacrifices her being. Indeed, we see throughout the novel that all her efforts are directed at atoning for her losses as a daughter and re-establish herself as a good black mother based on the society’s conceptualizations. The Color Purple brings out the domestication and motherhood roles of women during the time and the fact that these roles meant that women had no voices, they were to remain silent and suppress their feelings as well as opinions. A good example of domestication of women in Celie’s society is Sophia who was a rebellious woman but is forced to silently acquiesce to the social norms of servitude to one’s husband and household chores. Similar to Morrison’s argument that the suffering in the society caused women to resent the role of motherhood, Sophia is extremely detached with the children that are under her charge. My thesis investigates how Toni Morrison and Alice walker portray the issue of domesticity, motherhood and violence in their novels Beloved and The Color Purple, during and after the days of slavery. The thesis also will provide the possibilities that lead to the characters emancipation.