Mothering Violence: Ferocious Female Resistance in Toni ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

28 amanda putnam Pecola accepts a self-hatred and embraces all things white: Shirley Temple, white baby dolls, the white Mary Jane on the candy wrapper, and eventually, her quest to attain blue eyes. Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall (1992) discuss the effects of white beauty standards among black children: “According to psychiatrists William Grier and Price Cobbs, authors of Black Rage, every American Black girl experiences some degree of shame about her appearance. Many must submit to painful hair-combing rituals that aim to make them look, if not more ‘White-like,’ at least more ‘presentable’” (43). Without argument, Pecola accepts the shaming of her blackness, bowing to (and eventually breaking under) the heavy weight of white oppression. In Morrison’s novels, young black girls, taught by society to worship white femininity and white motherhood by the community adoration of them, must either believe in their own deficiencies, as Pecola does, or attack the source of oppression, as Claudia does. Thus, some of Morrison’s females resist white beauty ideals by using verbal violence to sustain a positive self-image. Claudia and Freda use verbal aggression against Maureen Peal, a “high-yellow dream child,” (Morrison 1994, 62), eventually disintegrating into a yelling fight about skin color. 2 Maureen represents yet more devotion to white beauty standards as the lightskinned, straight-haired black child who baits a dark-skinned girl. Grasping that Maureen is using “black” as a derogative description (and recognizing her own presence within the same category), Claudia’s mindset shifts as she understands that she is also under attack. The final insult by Maureen is used to draw acute awareness of her own highly favored light skin color: “‘I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos’” (ibid., 73). Claudia and Freda sink under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words: If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. . . . And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us. (ibid., 74) Their community at large has accepted white (and light) skin as beautiful— and thus has negated beauty in black (and darker) skin. The girls, living in this oppressive reality, must either accept the emotional violence forced on them, believing in their ugliness (which Pecola does) or fight back as aggressively as possible to maintain a positive self-image. They must rebel violently for their own self-preservation.
fall 2011 / black women, gender, and families 29 And so they do. Focusing on Maureen’s weaknesses—being born with six fingers, having a “dog tooth,” and a childish play on her name—Claudia and Freda attempt to restore power to themselves. Their verbal assault upends the power of white/light, refusing the racialized and gendered expectations for young black girls and instead creating a new vision of themselves as the dominant figures. While they still suffer from the realization that their dark skin is not as valued as Maureen’s light skin, their verbal attack becomes their own act of rebellion, denying society’s oppression of them. Claudia and Freda’s self-esteem remains intact, if dinged, by society’s white obsessive compulsion. Likewise, the young girls in Sula also engage in childhood teasing, but it quickly escalates into self-mutilation, the accidental murder of a childhood friend and then conspiracy to avoid discovery and punishment. In an early scene, the title character and her best friend Nel attempt to outmaneuver four white teenage boys who enjoyed “harassing black schoolchildren,” forcing the girls to take “elaborate” paths home from school (Morrison 1982, 53). One day, Sula confronts the boys, pulling out her grandmother’s “paring knife. . . . Holding the knife in her right hand, she . . . presses her left forefinger down hard on its edge. . . . She slashed off . . . the tip of her finger” (ibid., 54). Then, staring at the boys, Sula says, “‘If I can do that to myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?’” (ibid., 54–55). While some critics believe Sula’s action is an “internalized . . . lesson of racist oppression” (Bouson 2000, 63), it also can be read as an extreme example of redefined power. Sula’s willingness to mutilate herself is a means to show strength, offering new realizations of what is capable within violence. Instead of pitifully attacking the boys, who are taller, older, and stronger, and not succeeding, she chooses to harm that which she has the most control over: herself. 3 Attacking herself shows Sula’s inner courage and imagination to the boys, who quickly leave, realizing that their petty bullying is no match for Sula’s actual self-violence and audacity. Thus, Sula transforms her status, reflecting child and female powerlessness into a terrible ferocity from which the bullying white boys cannot depart fast enough. Regardless of her age, her skin color, or her size, Sula becomes the dominant person in this altercation. She succeeds in rebelling against the standards others have set for her (and others like her), forcing everyone—the boys, Nel, and even readers—to view her differently afterward. Interestingly, many of the girls in these novels learn their violent behaviors from within their own families, frequently from other female characters, and often from their mothers or grandmothers, making the violence inter-
Page 1 and 2: Mothering Violence: Ferocious Femal
Page 3: fall 2011 / black women, gender, an
Page 7 and 8: fall 2011 / black women, gender, an
Page 19: fall 2011 / black women, gender, an

Mothering Violence: Ferocious Female Resistance in Toni ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?