On The Inheritance And Development Of Black Women's Writing Tradition

As the first black woman writer to express the theme of black women's search for identity, Zora Neale Hurston has become an important precursor in black female literary history. Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston's best-known novel, which was published in 1937. In this novel, she breaks down the stereotype of inferior black woman and creates a new black woman image Janie, who searches, over twenty-five years and three marriages, for her true identity. This novel establishes the framework for contemporary black feminist literary tradition. Hurston is widely acknowledged as being the first American woman writer to explore realistically the psyche of black women. Another black woman writer—Alice Walker succeeded and developed this framework from Hurston. Alice Walker is one of the most remarkable and influential Afro-American writers in contemporary American literary world. Her epistolary novel The Color Purple is the summit of her literary achievements, which was awarded both the American Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize. The Color Purple best embodies Walker's womanist ideas. Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston in recent years are often linked together in discussion. Alice Walker carries on, develops and perfects the black women's writing tradition in The Color Purple by presenting a black girl Celie's growth from an innocent girl to a matured independent woman. This thesis, on one side, concentrates on the resemblances in thematic expression and narrative techniques between Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple. On the other side, the thesis tries to explore the development between them from a perspective of black feminist criticism.This thesis is divided into five parts: Introduction covers the general information about two writers, their works and critical comments on the two novels, and presents the theory basis—black feminism. Chapter One mainly pays attention to the analysis of the themes in both novels: the first point focuses on the ethnic characteristics in the two novels, which is further discussed from the distorted mind after long-time pressure and the idea of black being beautiful; the second point emphasizes the black women's real living conditions in the two novels, which is further discussed from racial and sexual oppression upon black women. Chapter two, from the perspective of black feminist criticism, analyzes the inheritance of narrative techniques, including insertion of black stories and folklores, use of black dialect and symbols, which are used by both writers in the two novels in order to understand writers'purpose of using these techniques for the expression of black women's writing tradition. Chapter Three puts emphasis on the relationship of development between the two novels, which is embodied in the perfection of a womanist image, evolution in the ideas of black women creativity, and the emphasis on the strength of community. The Color Purple develops and perfects the literary tradition in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The last part is Conclusion, which summarizes the previous four parts and points out that commonness in the two novels represents Hurston's influence on Walker, while Walker develops black women's writing tradition and ideology.Reading Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple, we can find that there is a kind of inheritance between Hurston and Walker. Walker's Celie in The Color Purple is built upon Hurston's Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and is more complex and fuller than Janie. Celie is the spiritual sister of Janie, so are Hurston and Walker. Hurston establishes the framework of black women literary tradition in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Walker carries on this tradition, she enriches and enlarges it and names it womanism. The Color Purple is a concrete reflection of Walker's womanism philosophy. Through the comparative study of two writers'novels, this thesis finds that the commonness in the novels reflects the precursor's influence on the later generation; different solutions to the question indicate later writers'development in the aspects of the writing tradition and ideology. This thesis provides a different angle for the understanding of the black women's writing.