IMAGES OF THE AFRO-AMERICAN FEMALE CHARACTER IN JEAN TOOMER'S 'CANE,' ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S 'THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD,' AND ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE'

The authors' depiction of Afro-American female characters is the focus of this study that examines the evolving image of the black woman in Jean Toomer's Cane, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The analysis shows that the Afro-American woman is mainly defined in terms of her relation to men. In Cane, the definition assigned is one of invisibility. In the female characters' various relations with men, the male characters and/or narrator fail to see or recognize the individual woman. Instead women are stereotyped and lack substance.; Hurston subsequently expands female characterizations beyond the invisible, almost completely passive woman that Toomer depicts in Cane and artistically creates a more visible, more realized, and increasingly more complex woman in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her depiction, unlike Toomer's, explores the female psyche and reveals from a feminist point of view how women truly may have felt in their relations with others. Hurston explores Janie Crawford's desire from adolescence to adulthood to find a meaningful relationship with a man. Nevertheless, the protagonist actualizes her quest only after she comes to know and understand herself, partially in relation to men. For Janie, individual identity is prerequisite to self-fulfillment.; In The Color Purple, Alice Walker provides an answer to how the Afro-American woman sustains herself after she is self-defined and fulfilled. She adapts and improves upon characterizations of the Afro-American female character in Cane and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Walker illustrates in The Color Purple women's refusal to define themselves solely in terms of their relation to men. While male-female relationships dominate the novel, the central issue becomes the survival of the individual female, free from the oppression of sex, race, or class. She survives by recreating herself through an art form, such as blues singing, quilting, or designing. When examined together, the three novels present the evolving depiction of the Afro-American woman from stereotypical images to increasingly more complex conceptions.