TONI MORRISON’S PROJECTION OF BLACK WOMANHOOD THROUGH PECOLA AND SETHE IN THE BLUEST EYE AND BELOVED

Abstract

Before the civil war in America, the black African people were treated as chattels and were subjected to all kind of injustice and discrimination. Slavery and discrimination, for instance, have brought severe miseries to Afro-Americans such as being treated as animals, losing their human rights, and subjecting to violence.  But the real victims were the black African women, as these women had no position in society and were living the most pathetic and humiliating life. These women were ill treated first by their own male members in their own homes and secondly they were subjugated to all kinds of humiliation by the white people. They had no honor or any sense of right as they were kept in complete ignorance and darkness for a long time. Since times of slavery, black womanhood has been destroyed, distorted, dismantled and abused with racial, sexual and inhuman practices by black men and white men and women. In the process, they have lost their genuine "self", and have developed a complexity in themselves. This has ultimately been responsible for the destruction of their self-confidence and the feeling of being human. The paper deals chiefly with Toni Morrison’s portrayal of Pecola and Sethe, which chiefly celebrate the black womanhood. The central theme of the paper deals with the black women characters who are raised from their poor, down trodden and most humiliating position to a new sense of awareness of freedom, liberty and equality in their society. They are filled with new desires, aspirations and ambitions and thereby are made conscious of social honor and dignity.