On The Womanist Ideas In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula And Beloved

The term of "womanism" was first presented in Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. The fact that Walker refers to the African-American folk culture as the root of the term makes it the best ideology to celebrate African-American women's traditions, intelligence and strength. Hence, it has been frequently adopted by African-American women writers to represent the collective experience and the struggle and the wisdom of their fellow sisters.As the first African-American woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison also endorses the womanist theory to express and record the richness and complexity of the African-American women's experience in a society that undermines both blackness and womanhood. With immense love and sympathy, Morrison delineates African-American women's fortitude and dignity, and their partnership with African-American men in the struggle for survival and for a productive quality of life. Her writing makes the realities of being Black in America look very different form those that the male or the white writers have depicted. We should claim that Morrison's womanist ideas shape her novels.This thesis examines the womanist ideas in Toni Morrison's three widely acclaimed novels, The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), and Beloved (1987). The novels are discussed in chronological order to trace the development of Morrison's womanist consciousness. Through an intensive study of her writing, we will see Morrison's conscientious effort to seek for real solutions to the problems that marginalize and victimize African-American women such as the negative impact of white culture, gender relationships, and the traumatic history of slavery. Embracing a womanist perspective, Morrison intends to empower the African-American people as a whole by guiding them to the collective recovery of their lost identities and discredited culture and history.