THE EVOLUTION OF THE BLACK HEROINE IN THE NOVELS OF JESSIE FAUSET, NELLA LARSEN, ZORA NEALE HURSTON, TONI MORRISON, AND ALICE WALKER: A CURRICULUM

This dissertation portrays the plight of the black heroine in the fiction of five black American women. Their novels, dealing with female characters in search of meaning and role, explore how cultural pressures, guilt, irresponsibility, and marriage myths often impede a viable pattern of existence.; This study is divided into four chapters. Chapter one consists of an introduction which discusses the need of the study, a statement of the thesis, and a brief overview of how the content of the study may be used in a number of instructional contexts.; Chapter two discusses stereotyped black heroines in the fiction of three Renaissance writers (Jessie Redmond Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston) to assess how these images have affected the black heroines in their search for self-awareness.; Chapter three discusses the novels of two contemporary writers (Toni Morrison and Alice Walker) who are very much a part of the tradition that preceded them, but who developed their fiction from a different perspective. These writers present the rise of the new black heroines: images of survival, liberation, and achievement.; Chapter four is devoted to curricula and pedagogical aids which teachers might use to incorporate the novels of these writers along with other literary material (A) as a general American literature course for junior high school, (B) as a black American literature course for senior high school, and (C) as a comparative or interdisciplinary course for college students. The purpose of this chapter is to show how selected fiction by black women can be integrated in an organic framework that might help to relieve group tensions by stressing the universal and basic similarities in life as they are lived at many levels and under different conditions in American society and other parts of the world.