CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
Revision and Rewriting of History in Toni Morrison's Select Novels: A New Historicist Perspective
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Motivation

The present thesis is motivated by the necessity to reexamine the

revisions in literary writings of Blacks, which attempt to present a
history of Black people. Such an attempt considers the literary texts of
Toni Morrison as a parallel history that bring the narginalized elements
of history to the center. Traditional historical criticism used historical
context to explain and understand the literaiy texfc. In this mode of
reading of literary texts, subordination of literary texte takes place and
historical records are taken for truth and thus privileged. Revised views
on language and writing have complicated the ccmcept of history.
Therefore history is not reality but a record using the medium of writing,
involving language that carries the perspectives of tfre writer. Therefore
history is complicated and it is filtered through nvltiple perspectives.
The records of history are a matter of the recorders’ perception and
therefore no history is objective. The old historical approach to literary
texts creates several problem spots. Therefore a new approach to the
reading of the literary texts is necessary and hence die present thesis
takes up the New Historicist analysis of literary texts, especially the texts
of Toni Morrison.

1.2. Objective

The objective of the present thesis is to show through the analysis of the
select texts of Toni Morrison, how she appropriates the strategies of
New Historicism to rewrite and revise the history »f Black people. The
perception here is to consider the texts of Morrison as parallel history,
thereby focussing on the cultural, historical and social contexts. The
thick description in the texts is closely studied as to find how the texts
revise history and therefore become historical texts themselves. The
present study using New Historicism as a framework shows how
Morrison’s texts blur the distinction between literature and history.

1.3. Post Colonial Writings

Revision and rewriting of the cultural hegemony of the colonizers have

become a major strategy of the writers in the third world countries. They
have taken up images and narratives to explain thrir cultural problems,
hopes and obsessions. Their works reflect, refract and try to work
through the contemporaneous issues, anxieties and struggles. They use
Post Structuralism and New Historicism to question universalisms of
Euro-centric writings. New Historicism has created a congenial
condition for the critics and writers to bring the margms to the center.
They hope to revise and rewrite the marginalized concepts and histories.
Therefore New Historicism provides a best framework for interpreting
literature in its historical context and becomes a powerful strategy for
such writers to decolonize and do away with oppressive structures.

1.4. New Historicism

New Historicism is a literary theory that considers history as a text.

Historical events are represented and recorded in written documents.
These written documents always take the services of language and the
inscriptions in language take the perceptions of the writers and the

2
readers. These perceptions are liable to change in different point of time.
So history needs to be rewritten and revised to bring certain
marginalized elements to the center and fill the gaps. This act requires
several strategies on the part of the revisionist. This is based on the
assumptions of New Historicism. Therefore it becomes important for us
to look at the origins and basic assumptions of New Historicism.

1.4.1. Origin

Embodied in the work of Stephen Greenblatt (1980), Catherine

Gallagher (1989) and Walter Ben Michaels (1987), New Historicism has
been developed as a movement at Berkeley in the late 1970s and early
1980s. The movement has brought the tools of contemporary critical
discourse to the understanding of history and historical texts. Greenblatt
writes in the field of Renaissance studies when lots of New Historical
criticisms are generated. Later it has become important in the criticisms
of British and American literatures.

1.4.2. Why New Historicism

New Criticism has ignored the historical context of a work of art.

Instead, it treats the work of literature in a historical vacuum as if it has
no relation to its historical context. New Historicists relate interpretation
problems to social, historical and cultural problems to stress the
circumstances under which the writer would have written the text.
Therefore the literary critic’s renewed interest in the possibility of
historical reality in literary and cultural studies brought out the
emergence of New Historicism.

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1.4.3. By Whom

The American critic Stephen Greenblatt coined the term New

Historicism. His Renaissance Self-Fashioning From More to
Shakespeare (1980) is considered as the beginning and the journal
Representations consolidated the aims and methods of the movement.
The journal Representations has been founded by Catherine Gallagher,
Walter Ben Michaels, Stephen Greenblatt and other New Historicist
theorists. These New Historicists have consolidated New Historicism,
not as a doctrine, but as a set of themes, preoccupaions and attitudes.
Therefore, the journal Representations brings together the literary critics
and historians in a colorful carnival of cultural leadings and thick
descriptions. The other two important precursors of the movement are
Raymond Williams (1997) and Michel Foucault (1977). The literary
critic, Raymond Williams’ Marxism and Literature (1997) has inspired
the rehistoricization of literary studies in England a»d America. With his
wide-ranging interest in culture and critical methodology, he has made
the mid-century historical criticism to move away from the traditional
hierarchy of history over literature. Foucault (1982) has influenced the
cultural critics with his view of history as a ‘discursive practice’, what it
is possible to say in one era as opposed to other. New Historicism has
also been influenced by Clifford Geertz (1973), the anthropologist.
Using Foucault’s (1982) mode of power analysis and Geertz’s (1973)
thick description, New Historicists evolved a meiiod of describing
culture in action.

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1.4.4. How It Emerged

In the beginning, the movement concentrated mosiy in Renaissance

studies. These New Historicists have studied literary texts only to
explore the poetics of culture. This exploration draws upon the insights
of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Aram Veeser (1989) says:

The arrival of a new poetics of culture was neither unscheduled

nor unwelcome. Stephen Orgel, Roy Strong, and D.J.Gordan,
whose studies of Renaissance texts showed connections between
cultural codes and political power, were doing New Historicism
before anyone thought to give it a name and still earlier Warburg-
Courtauld Institute in England has influenced these pioneers (xiii).

Therefore, New Historicists understand literature to be rooted in its

cultural and authorial connections. Later it has been developed as an
identifiable movement in academic literary and cultural criticism.
Stephen Greenblatt’s (1980) essays on New Historicism, Louis
Montrose’s (1989) studies of power and Renaissance poetry, a spate of
articles and MLA sessions centering on idectagy and English
Renaissance texts contributed much to the development of New
Historicism. In a decade, the movement has overtaken several periods
and multiple disciplines. New American studies published well-known
articles and exciting essays on the theory of New Historicism, in the
Berkeley based journal Representations. Therefore New Historicism has
produced a substantial body of publications. It has enlarged its range
beyond the Renaissance to all other regions.

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1.4.5. Definitions

New Historicism has been defined by many critics and scholars who
inspire the term and determines the characteristics of New Historicism.
They introduce a number of different approaches to history and culture
and lump it together under the category of New Historicism. So it is
important to specify some of the influential theorists and the definitions
to provide the general trends and common practices ofNew Historicism.

1.4.5.1. Literary and Historical Texts - Treatment

New Historicism treats both literature and history as a kind of writing.

Peter Barry (1995) proves the point with Derrida’s view that: “...there is
nothing outside the text, in the special sense that everything about the
past is only available to us in a textualised form” (175). The events and
attitudes of the past exist solely as writing. Now the writing has become
a subject to the kind of close analysis, which has beem formerly reserved
only for literary texts. New Historicism, in dealing with history, takes
away the objectivity of history. The traditional historians’ pride in being
totalized realistic representation and offering a scientific model is
rootlessly damaged. The past becomes a kind of perpetual present. The
perception that runs through New Historical belief is that literature must
be understood in relation to a redefined or broadly conceived historical
context. Therefore, New Historicism recommends a parallel study of
literary and historical texts.

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I.4.5.2. Parallel Study

New Historicism based on the method of treating literature and history

as parallel texts. The achievement of New HistoricLsm is to eliminate the
idea of treating history as a background material. It places literary texts
within the frame of non-literary texts and treats both as parallel texts.
Peter Bany (1995) defines New Historicism as:

... it is a method based on the parallel reading «f literary and non-

literary texts, usually of the same historical period. That is to say,
New Historicism refuses to ‘privilege’ the literary text: instead of
literary ‘foreground’ and a historical ‘background’ it envisages
and practices a mode of study in which literary and non-literary
texts are given equal weight and constantly inform and interrogate
each other (172).

On this basis, non-literary texts need not be treated as belonging to a

different order of textuality. New Historicism insists that history is an
intersection of discourses, which establishes a dominant ideology. It
emphasizes the necessity to look upon the literary or historical texts as
many types of discourses that reveal history.

The American critic, Louis Montrose (1989) defines it as a combined

interest in the “textuality of history” and “the historicity of texts” (20). It
suggests its willingness to investigate all the textual traces of the past:
the life of the author, the social rules found within the texts, the manner
in which the text reveals the historical situation, the ways in which other
historical texts can help us understand the texts, and the way the critics
study them. Thus there is no access to a full and autheatic past or a lived

7
material existence. No writer can assume the historical past, but can
partially presume upon the textual traces, which are also considered as a
kind of a perception of a writer.

1.4.5.3. Resituation of the Past

New Historicists are likely to emphasize the readmg of the past in the
present situation. The past is informed by the presoit historical position
of the critic. In Frederic Jameson’s (1992:153-54) words, New
Historicism has been defined as, “a return of cultural theory to
‘immanence’ stressing ‘detail’ and ‘immediacy’ as the entry of society
and economics into the text”. Therefore, any text can be juxtaposed with
a chosen document, so that a new entity is formed. The texts should be
read in relation to each other and also in relation to non-discursive texts
or events. New Historicism presents a new reality by re-situating the past
in the present situation.

1.4.5.4. Thick Description

Thick description in New Historicism has ema^d from Clifford

Geertz’s (1973) anthropological studies. It provides New Historicists a
new way of thinking about culture in literary and historical texts. The
meanings of these texts are never entirely fixed and they are subject to
appropriations and aspects. Geertz’s (1973) ‘thick description’ is the
way in which societies create meaning through symbols and offer a
specific content for it and magnify the trivial everts, so that they gain
high priority. Actually, it is meant to thicken our knowledge about the
events and to fill in the previous omissions. It is a way of adding layers
to the events that instructs how to view the past. Therefore Geertz (1973)

8
has called this rhetorically self-conscious ethnographic practice as ‘thick
description’. Louis Montrose (1992) says:

‘Thick description’ might be more accurately described as an

‘interpretive narration’: it seizes on an event, performance, or
other practice and, through the interrogation of its minute
particulars, seeks to reveal the ethos of an alien culture (399).

The main tendency is to uncover the ideological commitments in the

texts. It is deeply interested in looking at the way tie texts represent the
directions and values of any culture in a prevailing social system in order
to provide the texts as evidences of the basic cultural pattern.

1.4.6. Old Historicism and New Historicism

According to the traditional historicists, history provicbs a backdrop and

a context for the better understanding of literary texts. In this view,
history is treated as a record of real events. Such a record of past reality
could be used in writing and reading of literary texts. In such a notion of
history the literary writer and reader could never aler history. However
the New Historicists attempts to abandon this notion of history that it
regards history as a form of writing.

1.4.6.1. Old Historicism - Explanation

Stephen Greenblatt, the American New Historicist defined the traditional

historical study as Old Historicism that tends to be ‘rnonological’:

If the old kind of Historicism tended to he ‘monological’,

concerned with the discovery of ‘a single political vision identical

9
 with that said to be held by the entire literate class, the New
Historicism looks upon the history of a culture as a history of all
its products, literature being just one such product, social
organization another, the legal apparatus yet another (Indra
1993:28).

Old Historicism studies history as an end in itself and literary text as an

object produced by history’s operation. It limits its scope within the
particular historical moment that is presented in the literary. Therefore
the author is considered irrelevant and takes a secondary position.
Christopher Hill (1985) states:

... the great tragedians and the metaphysical poets - whatever they
may have thought themselves - are not dealing with ‘the human
condition’ with ‘man’, but with specific problems which
confronted rulers and their subjects in i specific historical
situation (24).

Thus they read literature of the past in its historical context, in terms of
the beliefs, customs, rituals, institutions of the time and place to which
the work of art belonged.

I.4.6.2. Causes

The American critic, Thomas Brook (1989) says that the term
Historicism itself, “causes a problem because it is often used with little
awareness of its complicated history in English, a lack of awareness that
is damning for any movement claiming to take history seriously” (182).
While interpreting literature in the context of history, Old Historicists

10
fail to see the full intertextual network in which a literary work exists.
This leads to the emergence of a new concept.

1.4.6.3. Emergence of a New Concept

The literary critic, Lee Patterson (1995) states that Old Historicism has
manifested itself in two ways during the nineteenth century:

First, nineteenth-century literary historicism shared a widespread

assumption that historiography was capable of achieving an
objectivity and reliability that other fenns of cultural
understanding, like literary criticism, could not achieve.... Second,
and in line with the desire to use historical context to provide
interpretive reliability, nineteenth-century literary historicism
assumed that each part of a culture was governed by the values
that informed the whole.... and it tended to construct its
determinative historical context in homogeneous and even
monolithic terms (Patterson 1995:251).

There the paradigm for viewing history has been changed and the new
concept arises. The modem concept of reality is that any event takes
place not in history but through history. Therefore history becomes a
temporary component of reality. This reality undergoes a continual
transformation that necessitates continual rewritings of history.

1.4.6.4. Differences between Old Historicism and New Historicism

Generally, New Historicism is differentiated from Old Historicism in a

way of understanding the past. New Historicists treat history as a written
text which according to Old Historicists a fixed trufi. It is obviously

11
seen that Old Historicism puts an end to the full access of the historical
truth whereas New Historicism provides a wider context in which texts
are written and read. Therefore New Historicism examines the depth of
the texts based on culture, gender and the historical age of the writer.
However it is necessary to discuss the differences between Old
Historicism and New Historicism to make it clear that the new sense of
understanding history and literature is possible only in New Historicism.

1.4.6.4.1. Equal Weighting

New Historicism denies the Old Historicists’ concept of using history as

a background material to interpret a literary text. Peter Barry (1995) says
that, “the practice of giving ‘equal weighting’ to literary and non-literary
material is the first and major difference between the ‘new’ and the ‘old’
historicism” (175). Therefore New Historicism enoourages the parallel
reading of literary and non-literary texts, giving equal importance to
history as well as literature.

1.4.6.4.2. Treating History as another Text

According to Old Historicism, the shape and content of literature is

determined by history, the virtual master text. So the inportance is given
only to the historical framework of the literary text. According to New
Historicism, history is also represented and recorded in written
documents. It is also made up of language with perceptions. Therefore
New Historicism considers history as a text and literature as another text.
While interpreting these texts, Old Historicists’ enphasis is mainly on
texts whereas New Historicists’ emphasis is on historical events and

12
context. Rosenberg (1989) states that the New Histcrkasts’ subject is not
people in history but texts in history.

1.4.6.4.3. Revisiting History

New Historicism revisits history through literary tests. It situates the

literary texts in the excluded areas of history. Therefore New Historicism
breaks the hierarchical separation made between literary text and history.
Rosenberg (1989) explains:

... New Historicism may differ most dramatically from older

forms of historical criticism in its willingness to consider a wealth
of details drawn from a wide range of discourses and experiences
and in its adoption of the novelistic technique of encapsulating the
abstract in the particular (383).

New Historicists view the past as a text that needs revisions and
interpretations. Laurence Lemer (1993) says that New Historicism,
“looks at both literature and non-literaiy material as a way in which
social energy is circulated” (274). So, New Historician aims at putting
the literary text back into the context of the historical test.

1.4.6.4.4. Text and Context

According to Old Historicism the past is unproblematically accessible

through historical texts, whereas New Historicism believes in
constructing a past instead of simply describing or retrieving the past.
New Historicists argue that the meanings of the liteery and historical
texts are linguistically constructed by the interpretive critic or historian.
But Old Historicists believe in the fixed, monologicai world described

13
by historians. New Historicism denied the possibilty of objectivity in
history. C.T.Indra (1993) says that New Historicism:

...looks upon the history of a culture as a history of all its

products, literature being just one such product, social
organization another, the legal apparatus yet another (28).

Therefore both literature and history are considered as the products of

the same culture and both should be read and treated together in its
present context. From this point, a novelist can also be treated as a
historian. Rosenberg (1989) explains this view that a lovelist:

...could create a diverse contentious past always in the process of

being formed; rather than encouraging the study of the past,
novelists could allow one to enter into it, and to see it from the
perspective of those for whom it was present (3-85).

The past, therefore, will have a kind of presentness in the novel.

Rosenberg explains further that the historians, “are embracing the
situation of novelists, whose works always compete with but can never
supplant one another” (386).

1.4.7. Basic Methods

New Historicism, in general, has got some basic methods in its dealing
with the literary and historical texts. In order to define the perspectives,
locations, cultures and social systems of literature or listory, it becomes
necessary for the New Historicists to establish some basic methods that
focus on the ideology within the texts. Each method employs a valuable
outlook that helps the theorists in reading the texts.

14
1.4.7.1. Relating Past to Explain Present

The basic method of New Historicism is to establish a new relationship

to the past to create a new awareness of how history and culture define
eachother. New Historicism considers the text and co-text as expression
of the same historical moment and interprets the texts accordingly.

1.4.7.2. Bringing Out the Making of the Text

New Historicists’ aim is to clarify that the text is a kind of document,

which is made up of language. It describes the author as having a past
that determines the manner and style in which the author has written the
text. It also grasps the historical forces that shaped the literary text
initially. Thus the New Historicists bring out the circumstances that
make the writer to produce the work of art. The historical details, the
events, the narrative and the cultural codes are analyzed in detail to make
the text parallel to any historical text of the period.

1.4.7.3. Creating New Meanings in the Text

New Historicists believe that history is a linguistically constructed text

and it is available only, “through the ideology or eutlook or discursive
practices of its own time, then through those of ours, finally through the
distorting web of language itself’ (Barry 1995:175). New Historicists
believe in remaking any written text by juxtaposing the text with a
chosen document, thereby a new entity is formed. Therefore New
Historicists present a new reality by resituating the past in the present
situation.

15
1.4.7.4. Explaining Texts through Discourses

New Historicists look to a greater variety of discourses like social,

political, religious, and artistic to help explain the text. According to
New Historicists, text is an intersection of discourses that establishes a
dominant ideology. They look at all sorts of other texts of the same
period to best understand the text. Therefore they criticize and question
the values of literary texts in juxtaposition to non-litoraiy texts.

1.4.7.5. Parallel Reading of Texts

New Historicists refuse to privilege literary text or historical text. They

give equal weight to literary and non-literary texts, which according to
them constantly inform and interrogate eachother. They place literary
text within the frame of non-literary texts and re-read the texts largely in
the network of other historical discourses to trace the connections among
texts, discourses and contexts.

1.4.8. General Assumptions

New Historicism follows some basic assumptions to interpret a text.

These assumptions underlying New Historicism bring together the
avowed practitioners and critics in a position to enphasize their present
study.

I.4.8.I. Treating Texts in its Context

New Historicists give a particular attention to the Mstorical situation of

the literaiy text. Instead of treating history merely as a decorative
backdrop to the text, they treat it as an integral part of it or as a kind of

16
text itself. Thus they resituate the literary text m its connectable
significant context. The real meaning of the text will be known only
when we read it in its historical context.

I.4.8.2. Interpreting Texts

New Historicists insist that there is no objective history. All

interpretations are nothing but subjectively filtered ideas or historically
conditioned viewpoints. They follow Geertz’s (1973) method of ‘thick
description’ and re-read the texts to reveal the particulars behind the
making of the texts. So past can never be pure in texts and it is always
represented or narrated in a textualised form.

1.4.9. Individual Assumptions

Critics and practitioners of New Historicism sometimes differed by their

assumptions and methodologies in certain respectSL They use New
Historical theory in a multiple ways in order to find new reading
methods that would highlight the mutual dependency of the text and
context. The concerns shared by the New Historicists and their various
modes of analysis shape the terrain of New Historicism.

1.4.9.1. Aram Veeser

Aram Veeser (1989) suggests some of the key assumptions, which

according to him continuously reappear and bind together the New
Historicists:

1 .that every expressive act is embedded in a network of material

practices;

17
 2.that every act of unmasking, critique, and opposition uses the
tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes;

3.that literary and non-literary ‘texts’ circulate inseparably;

4.that no discourse, imaginative or archival gives access to

unchanging truth nor expresses inalterable human nature;

5.finally, ... that a critical method and a language adequate to

describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they
describe (xi).

1.4.9.2. Stephen Greenblatt: Self-Fashioning

Stephen Greenblatt, a critic of renaissance literature, has noted a set of

governing conditions in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare (1980), that are common to most instances of self-
fashioning - whether of the authors themselves or of their characters.
Greenblatt explains that:

... self-fashioning occurs at the point of encounter between an

authority and an alien, that what is produced in this encounter
partakes of both the authority and the alien that is marked for
attack, and hence that any achieved identty always contains
within itself the signs of its own subversion or loss (1980:9).

According to Greenblatt the mainstream literary history concerns with

single political vision and this monological history concerned as a
historical fact. Hence, Greenblatt believes in metiodological self-
consciousness that becomes the distinguishing mark oFNew Historicism.

18
His statement in his Shakespearean Negotiations (1988), “I began with
the desire to speak with the dead” (1) shows his idea about the past.
According to Greenblatt, New Historicists relate a w»rk of art and the
historical events to which it refers with a set of terms like allusion,
symbolization, allegorization, representation and mimesis.

Greenblatt has been much influenced by Michel Foucault (1977) and

Clifford Geertz’s (1973) functional anthropology. Clifford Geertz’s
anthropological studies of cultures in Southeast Asia and North Africa
provided New Historicists with new ways of thinking about culture. His
anecdotal introductions and his notion of ‘thick descriptions’ offered a
model for Greenblatt. Aram Veeser says:

For Greenblatt the critic’s role is to dismantle the dichotomy of

the economic and the non-economic, to show that the most
purportedly disinterested and self-sacrificing practices, including
art, aim to maximize material or symbolic profit (1989:xiv).

New Historicists try to discover the traces, margins and things left
unsaid, instead of discussing the character, theme and language of a
literary text. Greenblatt describes his own project of Imstorical inquiries
as a form of ‘cultural poetics’ in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early
Modem Culture (1990). New Historicists are interested in the questions
of ‘circulation’, ‘negotiations’ and ‘exchange’. They take up these
positions to claim that all cultural activities may be considered as equally
important texts for historical analysis.

19
I.4.9.3. Michel Foucault: Multiplicity of Discourses

The French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault (1977) believes

in Nietzsche’s will to power. According to Foucault, discourse is power.
Foucault’s interest in issues of power, epistemology* subjectivity, and
ideology has influenced critics not only in literary studies but also in
political science, history, and anthropology. He insists upon the
historical dimension of discursive change. The idea imposed upon
history will change from one era to another. There is no single history,
there are discontinuous and contradictory histories, propagated by the
ruling classes in their own interests. Foucault brings together incidents
even from unconnected areas to redefine the boundaries of historical
inquiry. He looks to many types of discourses that reveal history. The
discursive formations massively determine and constrain the nature of
the subject. New Historieists connect every event of iistory into a vast
web of economical, social and political factors. Foucault views history
in terms of power, which produces and determines what, really happens.
Foucault (1972) says:

Relations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect

to other types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge
relationship, sexual relations), but are immanent in the latter; they
are the immediate effects of the divisiom, inequalities, and
disequilibriums which occur in the latter, and conversely they are
the internal conditions of these differentiations; relations of power
are not in superstractural positions, with merely a role of
prohibition or accomplishment; they have a directly productive
role, wherever they come into play (94).

20
Thus according to Foucault the concept of immanence and the concept
of productivity are inseparable. Through his work, Foucault has
explored:

... the relationship between the hegemonic potror of discourse and

the subject of both language and history in a broad critique of
social and historical relation. He [Foucault] challenged the stable
forms of all rationalized thought underlying methodology. He
was against complete totalization such as dialectical thinking. He
came to the conclusion that ideological Merarchies and the
operation of social institution are specific operations of power
(Indra 1993:28).

Therefore Foucault insists the textual and subtly aesfceticizing nature of

studying history and the historicity of texts.

I.4.9.4. Louis Montrose: Historicity and Textuality

Louis A.Montrose (1989), a New Historical critic, h® observed the Post-

Structuralist orientation to history as a reciprocal concern with the
historicity of texts and the textuality of history. New Historicism
understands history both as what happened in the past and also as who
made the past. Montrose describes the relationship between history and
text as a circle that history is marked by textuality and texts are marked
by history. There is no single text that can produce history essentially,
because history takes place in every text. MonUose argues against
representations of history:

21
 Representations of the world in written discourse are engaged in
constructing the world, in shaping the modalities of social reality,
and in accommodating their writers, performers, readers, and
audiences to multiple and shifting positions within the world they
both constitute and inhabit (1989:16).

Therefore, a full and authentic history remains unavailable. New

Historicists construe history as a form of textuality, that is fragmented
and partial, is mediated by texts. New Historicists recognize not only the
past in history but also the critic or historian exists in history. Montrose
explains:

... writing and reading are always historically and socially

determinate events, performed in the world ami upon the world by
gendered individual and collective human agents. We may
simultaneously acknowledge the theoretical indeterminacy of the
signifying process and the historical specificity of discursive
practices - acts of speaking, writing and interpreting (1989:23).

Therefore New Historicists situate the literary texfc in relationship to

other genres, modes of discourse and also to non-cfecursive practices to
understand the textual construction of the critics, who according to New
Historicists, are themselves historical subjects. New Historicists,
Montrose says, while interpreting a literary text coisiders much the
cultural system to which literary works are to be related. And this
relationship becomes the preferred focus of the New Historicists’
attention. They call it intertextual reading of two texts - literary and
cultural texts. Montrose affirms that:

22
 ... the practice of a new historical criticism invites rhetorical
strategies by which to foreground the constitutive - of textuality
that traditional modes of literaiy history efface or misrecognize. It
also necessitates efforts to historicize the piesent as well as the
past, to historicize the dialectic between them - those reciprocal
historical pressures by which the past has shaped the present and
the present reshapes the past (1989:23-24).

Thus, Montrose makes it clear that history cannot be divorced from

textuality and explains how historical texts and literaiy texts reciprocate
and reshape eachother.

I.4.9.5. Catherine Gallagher

Catherine Gallagher (1989), a recognized pnotitioner of New

Historicism, assumes that New Historicism:

... entails reading literary and non-literary texts as constituents of

historical discourses that are both inside and outside of texts and
that its practitioners generally posit no fixed hierarchy of cause
and effect as they trace the connections among texts, discourses,
power and the constitution of subjectivity (Galfegher 1989:37).

Gallagher admires these issues of New Historiciste Study that, “they

have kindled speculation about their own discursive contexts,
commitments to and negotiations of power, or the constitution of their
historical subjectivity” (1989:37). Further Gallagher has break down the
concept of identifying New Historicism with Marxism. She explains the
nominal compulsion to Marxism to achieve consistency whereas New

23
Historicism is rarely bound with compulsions. She points out that New

Historicism confronts Marxism in a way that it is *1 amplified recorder

of Marxism’s unsatisfying methods.

I.4.9.6. Elizabeth Fox-Genevese

Elizabeth Fox-Genevese (1989), a New Historical critic, defines New

Historicism as a, “bastard child of a history that resembles

anthropological ‘thick description’ and of a literary theory in search of

its own possible significance” (213). According to Fox-Genevese, New

Historicism consists in a plethora of converging and conflicting

tendencies within cultural studies. New Historicism takes up

‘Historicism’ and ‘thick description’ to restore something new to the

reading of texts. Fox-Genevese explains as:

They [New Historicists] concern the refatixi between the

canonized texts of high culture and the culture at large and the

appropriate strategies for reading any tests. Or, to put it

differently, previous generations have bequeathed to us the

interlocking problems of which texts to read and of how to read

them (1989:215).

Therefore New Historicism has appropriated new strategies to the

reading of literary and historical texts. Fox-Genevese further says that

New Historicists’ aim is, “to restore women, workkig people and other

marginal groups (although rarely, so far, black people) to the discussion

of literary texts” (1989:217).

24
I.4.9.7. Thomas Brook

Thomas Brook (1989) defines New Historicism as a, ‘‘common label for

literary critics’ renewed interest in history” (182). As a New Historicist,
Brook talks about the temporality of reality in texts, which necessitate
revisions:

so long as temporality is a component part of reality, reality

undergoes continual transformations that necessitate continual
rewritings of history (1989:189).

Therefore New Historicism claims for newness in history, which

according to New Historicists is a product of the writer’s own
ideological formation.

I.4.9.8. Frank Lentricchia

Frank Lentricchia (1989), in his discussion about Old and New

Historicism states that New Historicism, “rejects the metaphysics of
determinism while cunningly retaining (not without discomfort) a
complicated commitment to the principle of causality...” (231).
According to Lentricchia, the New Historicists look upon a literary text
not as a reflection on the background of stable and unified historical fact
but as a fact that gives a shape to the historical truth. Lentricchia
explains:

The mainstream historicist must therefore practice a triple

repression: first, of his own active participation in the creation of
the history he thinks he objectively mirrors; second, of the
interest-ridden complicity of the literature that he studies in the

25
 shaping of what we are given as history; iiird, of the political
conflict of dominant and subaltern social groups which
presumably constitutes literature’s true shape and content. In
short, he covers up the struggle with monologue (1989:234).

New Historicists take much effort to analyse the relationship between

literary and historical texts in order to avoid the daterminist schemas of
understanding.

I.4.9.9. Judith Lowder Newton

Judith Lowder Newton (1989), a New Historicist critic states that, “there
is no transhistorical or universal human essence and that human
subjectivity is constructed by cultural codes which position and limit all
of us in various and divided ways” (152). It means that the subject
positions of literary and historical texts are linguistically constructed and
created by various discourses of a given culture. Therefore New
Historicists are against the concept of objectivity in history. The
assumption is:

...there is no ‘objective5, that we experionce the ‘world’ in

language, and that all our representations of the world, our
readings of texts and of the past, are informed by our own
historical position, by the values and politics that are rooted in
them (Newton 1989:152).

The New Historicists emphasize that past is represented and this

“representation ‘makes things happen’ by ‘shaping human
consciousness’ and that, as forces acting in history, various forms of

26
representation ought to be read in relation to each other and in relation to
non-discursive ‘texts’ like ‘events’” (152). Thus literary texts can have a
link with many other social and cultural phenomena of the period and
should be read accordingly. ... _

1.4.10. New Historicism and Other Critical Trends

In the wake of Post-Structuralist theories, New Historicism has found it

difficult to hold on to the traditional conceptions *f the relationship
between literature and history. So they have stressed the need to find
new theoretical model that would highlight the dynamic, mutual
dependency of text and context. According to New Criticism, the text’s
meaning exists in the text itself. It need not be explored with the author’s
biography or with the form of the text. They look far the patterns that
reveal the way in which social constructs are built. Bit New Historicism
opposes the formal ideas established by New Criticism. Groden (1997)
states that New Historicism is:

...an array of reading practices that investigate a series of issues

that emerge when critics seek to chart the ways texts, in dialectical
fashion, both represent a society’s behavior patterns and
perpetuate shape, or alter that culture’s dominant codes (2).

Therefore New Historicism investigates how power is distributed and

used in different cultures. In this way New HistoricKts share some of
their interest with Marxism that is also known as Cultural Materialism.

27
1.4.10.1. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

The major similarity between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

is that both are interested in recovering lost histories and also in the
question of ‘circulation’ of power. The term ‘circulation’ means:

...all levels of society share in the circulation of power through

the production and distribution of the most elementary cultural
and social ‘texts’. Power does not reside somehow ‘above’, with
lawyers, politicians, and the police, but rather follows a principle
of circulation, whereby everyone participates in the maintenance
of existing power structures (Felluga 2002:1).

Therefore New Historicism and Cultural Materialian take this position

to claim that all cultural activities may be considered as equally
important texts for historical analysis.

1.5. Black Aesthetics

During the early part of the 19th century the Afro-Americans have
formulated racial aesthetic which means that the general artistic rules
based on ethnic concerns and preoccupations. In the 1960s this racial
aesthetic has become a highly self-conscious formulation and it was then
called Black aesthetic. A detailed analysis of the history of Black racial
aesthetic would give us a clear idea about its impact cm the later ethnic
aesthetics.

28
1.5.1. Racial Aesthetics

The Afro-American literature began with the desire to define the racial
self. The Blacks felt that the Whites were misrepresenting their case and
so they wished to plead for themselves. Freedom’s Journal (1827) is the
first Black newspaper that spoke exclusively for Black’s freedom. To
avoid the danger of people believing the images created by Whites, the
Afro-American writers took much effort to represent for themselves as
good and positive. Their main focus was to nullify the negative character
of Blacks. They thought fiction as an excellent medium for preserving
the religious, political, and social customs of the Afro-Americans.
Pauline E.Hopkins states this idea in her Contending Forces (1978) that
nobody is better suited to faithfully portray the inmost thoughts and
feelings of the Negro than a Negro himself. So it has become essential
for them to speak for themselves. While expressing their pain the Black
authors unreflectively acquired the standard of Whites, so that they may
be included into the mainstream White American society. Even though
they wrote primarily for the Black audiences, they made no reference to
the oral folk or African traditions.

1.5.2. Harlem Renaissance

It was only in the beginning of the 20th century there was a conscious
effort in the making of Afro-American literature that explores the unique
Black expression. This aspiration to be Black in farm and content was
known as Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renacsance movement
tended toward assertion of not only of Black identity and consciousness
but also of political and social rights. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903),

29
W.E.B.DuBois had explored Black folk literature and its artistic
achievement. The writers of 1920s used this Black folk material more
extensively as models for their own writings. Ii the Crisis (1926),
DuBois argued for ‘A Negro Theatre’. His fundamental Afrocentric
principles provided a great deal for the Black aesthetic of the 1960s. He
insisted that a Black author should write the play aid the subject matter
should be Black life. Furthermore the theatre shouM be primarily for
Blacks and the plays should be performed in a Black neighborhood. So
the main function of the Black theatre was to interpret Black life for
Black people. Thus DuBois was challenging the White standard in the
1920s. Alain Locke (1925) and Langston Hughes (1958) were some of
the significant writers of the period. Alain Locke, the editor of The New
Negro (1925) felt that the essence of Black art was ta portray the Black
folk life in the idiom of the Black folk tradition. He writings paved the
way for an authentic folk culture. Locke insisted that Black art must seek
new styles to bring out the forms and values of African traditional life.
The intellectuals of the 1920s sought the racial aesthetics of Afro-
American writing. They characterized a new type of Black phenomenon
to give Afro-American culture a more urban, assertive, and cosmopolitan
voice. Therefore during the 1920s Afro-American literature embraced,
encouraged, and produced a new Negro Renaissance tiat was popularly
known as the Harlem Renaissance.

1.5.3. Racial Aesthetic

In the 1930s the oral tradition of Africa was heavily drawn to voice the
Black culture. The works of Margeret Walker (1966) were popularly
known for its racialized theme. Margeret Walker’s poems were known

30
for its Black militancy. There were some otier writers whose
contributions were more significant in the developnEnt of the African
folk culture. Langston Hughes’s The Book of Neap Folklore (1958)
describes Black folk realism. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eves Were
Watching God (1937) employs the fullest measure of southern folk
realism in her story of a young woman’s journey toward self-
actualization. These writers contributed to the racial aesthetic by
celebrating the folk tradition and therefore extended the styles and forms
of Harlem Renaissance.

1.5.4. Black Arts Movement

In the 1940s and 50s the Afro-American writers altogether ignored the
racial art. They had a strong belief in the democracy of the White
Americans. Their hope for integration was short lived and in the 1960s
the great cultural movement emphasizing a separate art form for the
Blacks, known as Black Arts Movement, had developed. This Black Arts
Movement catalyzed into action by the assassination of Malcolm X in
1965 that propelled the Black activists and artists to make definite moves
and declarations. Amiri Baraka (1980) found the Black Arts Repertory
Theatre/School in 1965 and the artists of Black Dial*jsie dedicated their
1965 debut issue to Malcolm X. The Civil Rigkts Movement was
effectively ended and the ‘Black Power’ officially fcegan as a social
movement in 1966. The more politically radical wing of the Black Arts
Movement especially its youth was identified as the ‘Black Power’
generation. The term ‘Black Power’ was already articulated by Richard
Wright specifically in his book Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a
Land of Pathos (1954). Later it became familiar with the Civil Rights

31
Movement that the term ‘Black Power’ was described as the most
militant of the major Civil Rights organizations. Carmichael (1967) in
his speech on ‘Black Power’ stated that:

There is a psychological war going on in ids country and it’s

whether or not Black people are going to be Ale to use the terms
they want about their movement without white people’s blessing.
We have to tell them we are going to use the term ‘Black Power’
and so we are going to define it because Black Power speaks to us.
We can’t let them project Black Power because they can only
project it from white power and we know what white power has
done to us. We have to organize ourselves to speak from a
position of strength and stop begging people to look kindly upon
us. We are going to build a movement in this country based on the
color of our skins that is going to free us from our oppressors and
we have to do that ourselves (474-75).

By offering violence and criminality as the logical r^ponses to a racist,

neglected society, the Afro-American writers spoke for their people in a
dehumanizing society that consistently denied foem access and
opportunity. Richard Wright was the first Afro-American writer to fully
grasp the material implications of migration and urtenization. Wright’s
artistic innovation was to shift from sympathy to anger as a tool of
manipulation. His works recreated the powerfully deterministic image of
the Afro-American people within the context of Amoica. During 1950s,
Ralph Ellison’s works found a unique way to blend foe forms of Afro-
American culture with that of western culture. His works contain myths,
dreams and symbols as well as the forms and structures of blues and

32
jazz. The unnamed protagonist in his Invisible Mai (1952) relives the
history of Black America during his personal journey that ends in his
alienation. These writers personified the Afro-American everyman as an
alienated and disengaged intellectual searching for personal meaning.
James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is another example
that its male protagonist is also searching for personal understanding
through suffering. The sacred and secular forms of Black culture found
an important place in Baldwin’s works. His visio* of human suffering
dealt not only with Blacks but also Whites. It boind together both
Blacks and Whites and set a literary stage for the contemporary Afro-
American literature.

1.5.5. Black Aesthetic

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s was populsly known as Black
Aesthetic that called for a cultural revolution, a search for more
indigenous forms of cultural expression. The key idadogical theorists of
the Black Aesthetic were Amiri Baraka (1980), Larry Neal (1968),
Addison Gayle (1971) and Maulana Ron Korenga (1975). These writers
defined Black Aesthetic as a system that isolates and evaluates the
artistic works of Black people that reflect the special character and
imperatives of Black experience. Amiri Baraka (1980) considered the
works of Blacks as weapons that could create a new Black world and
also could destroy the White one. Larry Neal and Maulana Karenga were
greatly inspired by the father of Black Power, Malcolm X. Larry Neal’s
influential writing was widely quoted by participants of Black Aesthetic.
Therefore the Black Aestheticians attacked the very idea of Universal art
and evolved their own standards. Because they fell what White critics

33
meant by Universal was White art, art that conformed to the White
standard. Actually this spirit is a continuation of the writers of the 1920s.
DuBois (1968) and Alain Locke (1925) were the important writers who
struggled for the Black standard and called for the nee of African forms
in writing. The inspiration of these writers was obviously seen in Black
Aesthetic. Malcolm X cogently articulated the task uidertook by Black
Aesthetic as:

We must recapture our heritage and identify if we are ever to

liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy. We must
launch a cultural revolution to unbrainwash an entire people. Our
cultural revolution must be the means of bringing us closer to our
African brothers and sisters. It must begin in the community and
be based on community participation. Afro-Americans will be free
to create only when they can depend on the Afro-American
community for support and Afro-American artists must realize
that they depend on the Afro-American for inspiration (1970:427).

Therefore the Black Aesthetic revolutionized against the White’s social

and cultural standards to recapture the traditional value of the Black
community.

1.5.6. The New Breed

In the 1970s, Ishmael Reed (1989), A1 Young (1970), Cecil Brown

(1993) and many writers of the New Breed rebelled against Black
Aesthetic. These writers believed that it was not only Blacks who needed
more attention but also their culture deserved to be celebrated. Reed
(1989) felt that the Black Aesthetic was too prescriptive and narrowly

34
political. However he did not want to return to the Universal Aesthetic.
Through his works he attacked the western cultural system that gave too
much of importance to its own civilizations.

1.5.7. The New Black Aesthetic

In the 1980s and 90s a new literary generation appeared that has been
influenced both by the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s and the New Breed
folk aesthetic of the 1970s. These young writers are self-consciously
writing about Afro-American tradition and Black experience. They have
declared themselves as the ‘New Black Aesthetic’. Though they are
borrowing ideas from any culture they never give up their Black
heritage.

1.5.8. Black Women Writers

The Afro-American literature has become a powerful discursive field in

which many inventions, innovations and historical meanings are made.
But two important social issues, class and gender, deserved more
attention and it has been taken up by Afro-American women writers in
the 1970s. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eves Were Watching God
(1937), Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha (1953), Paule Marshall’s
Brown Girl. Brownstones (1952) and Margeret Walter’s Jubilee (1966)
have provided an important source of inspiration far these women
writers. Hurston’s depiction of the journey of a young woman to
maturity and self-actualization gave Afro-American women writing a
canonical text. Brooks’s work gave a new literary meaning to the
unacknowledged Afro-American women’s experience. Paule Marshall’s
works clearly depicted the world occupied by the Black women.

35
Margeret Walker’s works paved a way for the possibility of the
historical novel and the slave narrative for modern Afro-American
writing. These Black women writers brought in mew consistent use of
personal development, social change and historical meaning as subjects
of their works. In this way, the works of Toni Morrison (1970) and Alice
Walker (1970) have provided a leadership for a new era. Toni Cade
Bambara (1980), Gayl Jones (1975) and Gloria Naytor (1982) are the
other notable writers whose focus is on the quest of the female self and
the historical conditions of racism and sexism. Their works have
challenged the absence of Black women’s stories in 4e recorded literary
history. They could found a new feminist discourse that enables them to
examine the lives of women and find unique ways to focus on the issues
of Black female identity and powerlessness. The restricted world of
Black women has become the context and metaphaf of their writings.
For example Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970),
Meridian (1976) and The Color Purple (1982) locate Hack women in an
isolated rural south where they are trapped within tleir own existence.
Gloria Naylor’s works also play a major role in the development of the
Afro-American women writing. Naylor presents the true picture of Black
people’s fives in her texts. In The Women of Brewster Place (1982)
Naylor focuses the struggles and sufferings of Black women by race,
gender and class. Thus Naylor depicts the fife of the Black women in a
racist and sexist society. Therefore the Afro-American women writers
take up for themselves the responsibility of revising tie Black women
histories and trying to put more emphasis on the theme of self-definition.
Toni Morrison’s contribution to the redefinition is substantial. Her works
study the marginalized history of Black women and their struggle

36
against the dominant groups. Morrison brings out the historical
conditions of racism and sexism by which the Black men and women
have suffered a lot. Therefore Morrison is recreating and revising the
history of Black people that was marginalized in the main stream
history.

1.6. Toni Morrison

Among all the Afro-American women writers, Toni Morrison holds a

special place as a leading literary figure in the field of Afro-American
literature. Morrison who is known for her lyricism and her ability to turn
the mundane into the magical is the first Black woman to receive Nobel
Prize for literature.

1.6.1. Personal Details

Toni Morrison is popularly known as a writer, essayist, editor, short

fiction writer, teacher, educator and Nobel Prize laixeate. She was bom
in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford. She is
the daughter of George Wofford, a shipyard welder and Ramah Wofford.
Her father told her folktales of the Black community and thus transferred
his African American heritage to his young daughter. Her mother sang in
the church choir. Thus Chloe heard many songs and tales of Southern
Black folklore in her childhood days. She spent her school days in the
richness of her Afro-American heritage and the joys of great literature.
When she entered first grade in 1949, she was the only Black student in
her class and also the only child who had already leaned to read. As an
enthusiastic student of literature she got bachelor degree in English from
Howard University in 1953. She wrote her thesis on the theme of suicide

37
in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf in 1955 and
earned master degree from Cornell University. She preferred to be
known by the name Toni, a shortened version of her middle name, while
in college. She married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect in 1958 to
whom she begot two sons, Harold Ford and Slack Kevin. She was
divorced in 1964. Now she is living in Princeton, New Jersey.

1.6.2. Career

Morrison began her career as an instructor in Englch at Texas Southern

University in 1955. She returned to Howard University where she
continued the same job as an instructor from 1957-64. During this
period, she joined a writer’s group and contributed a short story about a
little Black girl who wanted blue eyes. Later she devdoped the theme in
her first novel The Bluest Eve (1970). In 1965 she began working as a
book editor at Random House. When she moved inte a senior editorial
position she brought into print the literary efforts of prominent Afro-
Americans, including Muhammad Ah, Angela Davis, Andrew Young
and Toni Cade Bambara. From 1971-72, she worked as associate
professor of English at State University of New York at Purchase. She
occupied the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities from 1984-89 at
State University of New York at Albany. From 1989 she is the Robert F.
Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton
University, and becomes the first Black women ever to hold a chair at an
Ivy League School.

38
1.6.3. Awards and Honors

Morrison, in her fabulous literary career, has won so many awards and
honors. In 1975, her second work Sula (1973) has won the Ohioana
Book Award and was nominated for the prestigious National Book
Award. Her Song of Solomon (1977) which became the paperback
bestseller won the National Book Critics Circle Award and American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in the year of its
publication. Tar Babv (1981) topped bestseller lists for four months. In
1986, Morrison was honored with the New York State Governor’s Arts
Award. In 1987, Morrison published Beloved that has won international
acclaim including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and it was also nominated
for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award.
Morrison has also got the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Beloved. The
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Award for women from National Organization
has also honored Morrison. In 1993, Morrison was awarded Nobel Prize
in literature, which is considered as the highest honor in the field. She
was the first Afro-American and the eighth woman to become a Nobel
laureate. In 1996, Morrison received a prestigious award, the National
Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American
Letters.

1.6.4. Works by Morrison

The works of Morrison largely reflect the facts about iie history of Afro-
Americans. Morrison’s works are: The Bluest Eve (1970), Sula (1973),
Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Babv (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992),
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagkation (1993), The

39
Dancing Mind (1996), and Paradise (1997). M 1hese texts reveal
Morrison’s extraordinary sense of history, powerful handling of
language and indepth knowledge of culture.

L6.4.1. The Bluest Eve (1970)

Morrison’s literary career began in earnest in 1970, when The Bluest

Eve was published. Her text The Bluest Eve depicts the tragic life of a
young Black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who wants notiing more than to be
loved by her family and her society. She surmises that her skin color is a
lot darker than most other Black people and she is ostracized as ugly by
the people around her. Her desire to be loved by everyone sublimates
into a desire to have blue eyes, white skin and blo*d lair like the White
actress Shirley Temple. Instead of getting love and support from her
parents, she has been isolated in her own family. Moreover her trauma
escalates when her own father rapes her. Her mother finds haven, hope,
life and meaning as a servant to the rich White family. In this condition
Pecola is unable to endure the brutality towards her flail self-image. She
becomes mad and withdraws into a world of fantasy, \dhere she develops
an imaginary friend to whom she talks about her beautiful blue eyes.

Most of the events of 1940s that occur in the text Tie Bluest Eve, mirror
the time period. As a Black girl who did grow up in the 1940s, Morrison
knows the hardships endured by a Black girl in the society. The events
are set in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio. Morrison takes up the
life of a poor, innocent, ugly, little Black girl to show tie negative effect
of the White society’s ideas and views on every individual’ life. It
appears as if the events that take place in the text are real and the

40
characters are the representatives of the raising Black community in the
north. The problems, situations and dilemmas dealt by the characters
were perhaps really faced by the Black people during the 1940s.
Actually the story is set in the background of Post World War I and the
continuing migration northward. Cholly Breedlove and Pauline are
portrayed as the Black northern newcomers of that time. Cholly is full of
rage from his childhood days. He develops this rage even going to the
extreme of madness that he rapes his own daughter. Therefore Cholly
becomes the representative character of any misunderstood Black male
adult of that period and thus he is considered as a pad; of the generation
that started the Black community in the north. His wife Pauline is a
‘mammy’ to a White family and becomes the representative of the Black
society that tried too hard to conform to the White culture. The character
of Pecola represents every Black female child who desires the
acceptance and love from the society. Morrison has portrayed Pecola, as
a young child who has been terribly impressed and affected by the
White’s standard of beauty, which turns her life upside down and in the
end, leads her to madness. Therefore Morrison in this book describes the
conditions under which the Black people in general and Pecola in
particular are forced to live. It shows that Morrison is bringing in the
struggles and sufferings of Black people during the important historical
events. Morrison by identifying their sex, race and social standing
establishes the so far marginalized history of Black people and explores
the complexities of interracial prejudice.

41
Through The Bluest Eve Morrison offers the cultural values of African
American tradition. Trudier Harris in her “The Worlds That Toni
Morrison Made” (1995) says that:

The problem arises when African Americans adopt values from

the larger white American culture. Blond hair and blue eyes are
not the norm for black people, yet light skin and keen features
become the measure of beauty for Pecola, who believes that she
will be accepted and loved only when she has the bluest eyes of
all. Dark-skinned and broad-featured, she easily fails the
comparison, just as her family fails to live up to the idealized
image of the American nuclear family as; reflected in the
storybook lives of Dick and Jane and their parents. The reality, of
course, was that Americans of African descent were generally
denied access to such Dick-and-Jane middle class success (326).

Therefore the Black people, who are uprooted from the rich tradition and
culture of Africa, have struggled hard to survive in a strange and hostile
culture of American soil. They suppressed their own values and suffered
the cruel pangs of alienation. Morrison speaks for these people who lost
their own cultural heritage and self for their mere survival in America.
Mobley states in the article, “The Mellow Moods and Difficult Truths of
Toni Morrison” (1993) that:

The Bluest Eve told more truth than many of lb had ever thought
or dared to speak about the damage racism and sexism had done to
us, or to our image of ourselves.... Morrison’s use of history is
also a form of cultural intervention designed to interrupt and

42
 critique the present for those who never learned their history,
those who forgot it, and those who neglected or refused to pass it
on (614-615).

Therefore Morrison while bringing in the history of Black people brings

in the cultural heritage of Africa through which she connects the past to
the present situation.

The narrative style that Morrison has taken up to illustrate the pain of a
Black girl in White America reflects Morrison’s powerful craft of
narrating the reality as a story. The Bluest Eve is
bvj- a child curd.the world is seen through the eyes tf little Black girl
named Claudia. The text begins with a small passage from the Dick and
Jane primer. Then it is repeated without standard punctuation or
capitalization but closely resembles the first passage. It is repeated again
but run together without spaces or distinction between words. The first
version signifies the standard White family, the second signifies the
struggling Black family and the third signifies the damaged Black family
of Pecola. Further the text has four seasons as its chapter headings. This
indicates that the events described under each chapter is not all about a
particular family of a particular historical period, but the events will
happen again in present as well as in future like the all four seasons.
Beyond the class distinction the Black children are affected mentally as:

...White lower-class children can atleast more easily imagine

themselves posited within the story’s realm of possibility. For
black children this possibility might require a double reversal or
negation: Where the poor White child is encouraged to forget the

43
 particulars of her present life and look forward to a future of
prosperity - the result, no doubt, of forty yeais in Lorain’s steel
mills - a black child like Pecola must, in addition, see herself, in a
process repeated through The Bluest Eve, in (or as) the body of a
white little girl. In other words, she must see herself at all. The
effort required to do this and the damaging results of it are
illustrated typographically in the repetition of the Dick-and-Jane
story first with punctuation or capitalization and then without
punctuation, capitalization, or spacing (Kuenz 1993:422).

This technique symbolically pictures how the impact of White people’s

familial system damages the life of Blacks. Morrison has also made use
of metaphors like ‘marigolds’ and ‘dandelions’ to describe the
conditions under which the African Americans are forced to live.
Claudia and Frieda plant the marigold seeds with the belief that if the
marigolds grow, definitely Pecola’s baby would survive. But, “there
were no marigolds in the fall of 1941” (TBE:3) (Hereafter The Bluest
Eve will be cited as TBE). It is because:

.. .the land of the entire country was hostile to narigolds that year.
This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will
not nurture / certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills
of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right
to live (TBE: 164).

Therefore through the text The Bluest Eve. Morrison implies that the soil
that is inherently racist would never give a chance to Black people to
grow and survive.

44
I.6.4.2. Sula (1973)

Morrison’s second novel Sula (1973) has been produced in the midst of
the rein vigorated feminist movement and debate. Morrison’s
portrayal of the Afro-American life style as well as her superb narrative
voice is vivid * in Sula. The text brings out a real history of a
Black community and its origins in the false promise of a White farmer.
It has been cleared that the history of the Bottom that has been forgotten
behind ‘a nigger joke’. The text also deals with the family histories of
two young Black girls and the condition of a young Black veteran from
World War I. While depicting the friendship between the two Black
girls, Morrison traces the lives of these women in a Mid Western Black
community. The one, Nel Wright accepts the culture and tradition of the
community as any other women. She chooses to stay in the small Ohio
town, marries, raises her family and becomes a pillar of the tightly knit
Black community. But the other girl, S«la Peace, rejects all that Nel
accepts. She escapes to college, submerges herself imo the city life and
returns as a rebel do mock at the lives of Black people in the
community. Through these contradictory characters Morrison brings out
the consequences of their choices. Sula is significantly given importance
and her conformity is dictated in the text by the solid inhabitants of the
Bottom and even the rebellion gains strength from the community’s
disapproval. According to Trudier Harris (1995), “Unusual characters
(Shadrack), rituals (National Suicide Day), the power of names and
naming (three young adopted boys all named Dewey], and the creation

45
of a black village/community that becomes a character in the text (the
Bottom) are some of the identifying features of Sula°( 11).
~fkx'
Therefore the text reflects a history book fchvtU has significant years as
A
its chapter headings from 1919-1965, fine can understand the
experience and the situation of Black soldiers in World War I through
the characters, Shadrack and Plum Peace. Plum has been ravaged by
War like Shadrack, and the unemployment for Black men that followed
makes Plum to exhaust himself in a backward spiral, seeking rebirth.
Shadrack founds National Suicide Day that has became a recognized
ritual in the community later. This is the capitalist system of America
seemingly projected through the characters of Shadrack and Plum. The
Black soldiers were thrown away and were alienated from enjoying the
profits of a strong nation, which the Blacks had hdped to build. This
racial alienation had produced a chain of reactions among the Black
community that resulted in a mutilated and badly affected Black society.
Morrison has not only portrayed the condition of Warld War I veterans
after the War, but also the condition of men and women in the shattered
community. For example, the tunnel symbolically identifies the dream of
Black people, which began in 1927 and finally collapsed on the heads of
those who wish to build them. The untitled prologue of the text itself
brings out the fact how these Black people had keen promised and
cheated by the Whites. Each chapter heading reminds an important
historical event. The first chapter ‘1919’ recalls the World War I and the
last chapter ‘1941’ recalls the World War II. The epilogue, which is
titled as ‘1965’, reminds the War in Vietnam and afco the Civil Rights
Movement. Morrison indicates specifically through the text that the

46
people who die in the War are Black men and the people who suffer
from the War are Black women. The Black women who head the family
are portrayed as matriarchs in the White America* society. Morrison
brings out the reality behind the term ‘matriarch’ through the character
Eva Peace. Initially, Eva Woa depended so mmch upon her husband
and expected him to take up the whole responsibility of leading the
family. BoyBoy has left her with her three small dildren. Eva sells her
leg to earn and feed her children: “The astonishing twist on selling one’s
own body proves, nonetheless, a masterful move within the White
economy” (Stockton 1998:103). Morrison indicates that it is the
emergence of financial and emotional support to lead a family has
created matriarchs like Eva Peace. Thus Morrison’s Sula focuses on the
ignored fact of Black men and women during War and aftermath. In this
context the text need to be treated as a historical document.

It is not only history of Blacks that is revised in Sub, but also the culture
of Black people that is given importance. Turing Nel as the
representative of traditional type of Black women, Eva as the
representative of traditional but revolutionary type of Black women and
Sula as the representative of Black militants, Morrison has effectively
projected different Black characters. Nel has been passive, domestic and
submissive till Sula comes to liberate her. Though Sub puts Eva in an
old age home during her last days, Eva appreciates her actions and it is
Eva who helps Nel to reunite with her friend Sula. The conventions and
beliefs of the tradition bound community add more dimensions to the
events that happen in Bottom. They thought the color red symbolically
indicates fire, which according to them is a cause of destruction. For

47
example, Eva had a strange dream of wedding ii a red bridal gown,
foreshadowing the fire that caused the death of Hannah. They thought
the return of Sula and the darkening birthmark over her eye as the
foretelling of evil. Morrison ironically indicates that the birthmark of
Sula that has been loved by Shadrack and her return has created a delight
in Nel. Morrison puts more emphasis on the cultural beliefs and social
system of the Black people through the text Sula. To protect their culture
and family these people joined together and revolted against Sula. Her
actions have brought them more reasons to care about each other. They
could not bear Sula discarding their conventions. They treated her evil
and enjoyed her death. It is because they respect their culture.
Eventhough they are enslaved by Whites, they never give up their
heritage. It is after the death of Sula they realized their real enemy.
Finally they have become militant like Sula and joined Shadrack to end
their life.

The structure of the novel itself shows Morrisom’s power of telling

stories about past. The characters and events are symbolically indicating
the events of the specific historical moment. Every event has many
layers and the meanings behind those events can not be specific. The
narrative style is such that brings all the perspectives of any event or
character and leaves the conclusion to the reader. Every event is given
importance both historically and politically. Therefore Sula reflects
Morrison’s expertise in constructing a narrative out of ignored facts and
marginalized histories.

48
I.6.4.3. Song of Solomon (1977).

The perspective of Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) is to that of an

Afro- American man, named Milkman Dead, who journeys south from
his hometown Ohio to learn more about his family history. His father
Macon Dead is a well to do African American in a small town in
Michigan. He represents material progress achieved at the expense of
human beings. He advises his son: “Own things. And let the things you
own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people, too”
(SS:55) (Hereafter Song of Solomon will be cited as SS). His mother
Ruth Foster Dead and his sisters First Corinthians and Magdalena have
been bound in their family and isolated for their superior status in the
society. Milkman wants to come out of the family and follows his friend
Guitar to his Aunt Pilate’s house. Pilate represents folk and family
consciousness, which she demonstrates by listening to her father’s ghost
and befriending Macon’s wife and son. Through Pilate, Milkman has
been introduced to the folk tradition of his ancestors that is rich with
myths and legends. Then he starts his journey to learn more about his
ancestors that enables him to uncover the story of Salomon, his flying
African great-grand father. He discovers that Solomon was bom of a
special tribe who could literally fly home by uttering magical words if
Whites captured them and brought them to America for slavery. The
central theme of Song of Solomon is a Black man’s search for self and
how his search finally creates an awareness in him that enables him to
become a real man of his community.

The journey itself is historical that the journey enables the Black man to
explore his family history of past through which Morrison has explored

49
the Black people’s history altogether. It is their anceslral knowledge that
leads them to explore their community and their past Mobley (1993)
says about the text that, “Published in 1977, a period of intense activism
and black-nationalistic fervor, this novel explores the various versions of
the past that we listen to, that we tell to others and ourselves, and that we
live by” (617). Through the journey of Milkman, Morrison describes
various historical events of 1865, 1930s and 1961s. Therefore she
surveys nearly a century of American history. Milkman learns about his
family heritage that helps him to connect meaningfully to his
brotherhood. Morrison emphasizes the racial and social tensions between
Blacks and Whites and also contrasts the value systems of the north and
south.

The text Song of Solomon is not only a story of indhaiual self-discovery

but also homage to the richness of the Black cahural heritage. It
illustrates the archetypal stories of lost land, trumped-up debt, the
sharecropping trap and surreptitious flight. Thus it provides a
geographical and historical focus for the sense of cultural identity.
Mobley says that:

Song of Solomon can best be understood not merely as one man’s

search for his heritage, but also as a culteral critique, as an
interrogation of the various individualistic, materialistic, and
hedonistic forces that work against the discovery of meaning
(1993:618).

By placing the mythical blues song of Pilate at the center of the text,
Morrison has brought in the cultural heritage of ker Black ancestors.

50
Pilate is portrayed as a navel-less lady who carries a sack of rocks
representing each place she visited. Therefore Pilate is depicted as one of
the ancestors who carry the past histories of persons, events and places.

Morrison has used the structures of the African American folktale to

revise the lives of a group of African-born slaves who rose up from the
plantation and flew back home to Africa. The muli-feyered narrative in
the text brings out the layers of past history that intersect with the lives
of the living Blacks. Mobley (1993) says about the narrative technique
of Morrison as:

Invoking the black vernacular and the oral tradition as the

discursive means by which black people negotiate their way
through racial and economic oppression and exercise control over
their lives, Morrison tells, in Song of Solomon, the story of one
black man whose identity must be wrested front a web of family
narratives, secrets, misunderstandings, myths and mysteries”
(617).

In this context Morrison’s Song of Solomon is Healed as a political,

historical text that documents the unwritten facts #f Black people and
their ancestors.

1.6.4.4. Tar Baby (19811

Morrison’s Tar Babv (1981) is a passionate tale of racial, sexual and

class conflict that set on an island in the Caribbean. The retired White
candy magnate Valerian Street has settled in the island with his wife
Margaret and his faithful servants Sydney and Ondine Childs. Sydney

51
and Ondine’s mulatto niece Jadine Childs is a successful, educated
model in Paris. Son Green who is a handsome Black man from Eloe,
Florida, has a strong aversion to the White culture. It is an allegory of
colonialism based on the tale of the Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The Rabbit
in Tar Babv is Son and the Tar Baby is Jadine. The love affair between
Son and Tar Baby is a tug-of-war between opposing attitudes toward
colonialism. Valerian, who is the sole authority of his estate, represents
the power of the colonizer and his wife represents dependence and
vulnerability. She is a former beauty queen who cai neither cook nor
mother. Gideon and Therese, the islanders who da the yard work and
laundry, represent the natives who refuse to be coionized. But Sidney
and Ondine accept and maintain a relationship with the colonizer. These
colonized Black people have been disconnected from tieir community.

The text while exploring the love affair of Jadine and Son, dramatizes
the fact that complexion is a far more subtle issue than the simple
polarization of Black and White.

Within this context, Morrison discusses the evolution of Capitalism in

America. The class conflicts and its horrible effects upon the Afro-
Americans provide a basis for Tar Babv. Morrison creates and criticizes
the characters that represent classes and defy classes. Valerian Street in
Tar Babv is a wealthy man, a slave master and a symbol of American
capitalism. He controls and treats his servants as his slaves. Added to
this there is a class within a class that the house slaves Sydney and
Ondine have developed a sense of superiority to the lesser field slaves
Gideon and Therese. Morrison created the character Son in opposition to
Valerian and capitalism. When Jadine tries to rescue Son from naive

52
romanticism and backwardness, Son tries to rescue her from Valerian.
The White Americans talk about equality but they are largely exploiting
and destroying the Black people in the name of capitaSsm in order to get
money and power. It is this awareness Morrison is trying to convey
through Tar Babv. The text explores the source of capitalism with
vividly striking images and therefore becomes a parallel text of the
American political history.

Morrison’s Tar Babv is not only considered as a political history of

America but also a cultural workshop in which the cultural system of
Americans and African Americans are deeply analyzed. The conflict
between the life and humanism of Black culture aid the deadness and
materialism of White culture are dramatized in the conflict between Son
and Jadine. Jadine is a symbolic character who actually belongs to the
African community but culturally adopted by a Whie patron who has
paid for her education. Therefore Jadine is ignorant of her own culture
and assimilated into White culture. Though she is successful in her life,
she cannot belong to any class or culture. She has been caught in
between the classes and cultures. When she looks at the African woman
in yellow dress, “Jadine gasped.... Just a quick snatdh of breath before
that woman’s woman - that mother / sister / she; that unphotographable
beauty” (Tar Babv: 43). However the woman spits while looking at
Jadine and calls her bitch. But Jadine wants that lady to love and respect
her. The woman in yellow has actually made Jadine to feel lonely and
inauthentic. Through the incident Morrison emphasizes Jadine’s desire
to be with her people and culture. There are so many evidences in the
text that proves Tar Baby a cultural critique. The African and American

53
traditions are intertwined in the text along with iie issues of class
conflicts. The hundred mythical blind horsemen ride through the hills on
hundred horses and the magical breasts of Therese that always produce
milk reflect the ancient traditional belief of Africa. Rivers that
experience the pain of being rerouted, the swamp trees that are inhabited
by invisible women, the power of speech in butterflies and champion
daisy trees, and the ants’ marshal for war reflect the various folk tales of
Africa. Mobley (1993) states that:

Tar Babv also lays bare the terms under wkich any relationship
exists in a patriarchal culture, a culture which - like the island
paradise’s - ‘dislocates everything’, whether it’s the relationship
between black people and white people, black people and one
another, white people and one another, racn and women, or
mothers and daughters” (619).

Therefore Morrison clearly depicts the conflicts between cultures as well

as the cultural values of Africa.

The narrative style of the text serves as a historical critique that portrays
the gender issues, racial and political conflicts that prevail in the class
system of White America. The focus of Morrison is cm die life within the
African American community. The conversation between Son and
Jadine reflects every Black men and women’s desire and pain to be
Black. Morrison depicts both Son and Jadine as oaatradictory in then-
beliefs that Son discovers the truth behind the origin of the island, which
the Whites never wanted to reveal whereas Jadine forgets her ancient
properties. Therefore Morrison, by depicting the contradiction in

54
multiple dimensions, exposes the cultural encounters between the
colonizer and the colonized. The language becomes an expression of
Black experience and a means of revelation.

I.6.4.5. Beloved (1987)

Inspired by Margeret Gamer’s horrifying real life £ory Morrison has

produced Beloved in 1987. Gamer is a runaway slave who killed her
child in Cincinnati 143 years ago rather than to rescue her baby from
slavery. Taking the story as a background for Beloved Morrison revises
the silenced history of Black slaves in the racist society. Sethe Suggs and
Paul D reveal their unbearable past to each other and to the readers.
Unable to lead a life as a slave Sethe fled to Ohio wiii her children, just
to begin a free life. But the slave catchers find her and are about to take
her back to Sweet Home, the plantation from which she escaped. Sethe
has decided to kill herself and her children rather than to allow them to
experience the horrors of slavery. First she murders fcer newborn baby
by slitting its throat and her next attempt is stopped by a former slave
named Stamp Paid. Considering her insane and not fit for work the slave
catchers have left Sethe and her children. Sethe has been in prison for
sometime and released. The murdered baby ‘Befoved’, the name by
which she is remembered on its gravestone, returns to her house as a
ghost. The infant ghost playfully roams the house and makes its presence
always known to everyone in the house. Beloved remains as a ghost until
Paul D, a refugee from Sweet Home comes to her mother. Just as Paul D
appears, Beloved emerges from water as a young girl to lead a life with
her mother. She drives away Paul D, as she demands more affection and
attention from her mother.

55
Morrison’s Beloved has challenged the traditioiM way of writing
historical novels, when she brings in the real history cf young slave with
all the connected historical events. Although Seths has escaped from
slavery, she is continuously haunted by its heritage. She recalls the pain
that she has undergone as a slave that she always calls ‘rememories’.
Morrison sets the story of Beloved in a rural Ohio several years after
Civil War. The story revolves around the life of Selhe and her attempts
to get on with her life. There is Baby Suggs, another slave, who makes
her living only with her heart because she lost all her physical parts in
slavery. Paul D is also a slave who keeps his emotions in his memory for
years. His attempted escapes, the iron around his anldes and wrists, the
iron bit in his mouth and the locked boxes in whidi he slept are too
painful to be remembered. While describing the abuses and cruelties of
slavery, Morrison offers the historical and political events that attempt to
abolish slavery. Margaret Garner’s is not the cmty real event that
Morrison takes up but there are other important poldes and Slave Acts
that take place in Beloved. Through the ghost of Beloved. Morrison
speaks for all those who suffered and died during Ae middle passage.
Morrison describes the slave ships and their journey as-:

We are not crouching now we are standing fat my legs are like
my dead man’s eyes I cannot fall because theie is no room to the
men without skin are making loud noises I am not dead the
bread is sea-colored I am too hungry to eat it the sun closes my
eyes those able to die are in a pile I cannot find my man the
one whose teeth I have loved a hot thing the men without skin

56
 push them through with poles the woman is tlere with the face I
want the face that is mine (Beloved: 211).

Thus Morrison reflects the real experience of Blacks who lived through
the middle passage. The description signifies that tie painful journey
cannot be expressed as a composed history, but can oily be remembered.
Therefore by negotiating the mainstream history as simply a narrative
Beloved constructs and reconstructs the significance of past.

While revising the American history, Morrison alempts to appreciate

the cultural responsibilities of Black people even though they are
dominated by the ruling class. Karen Carmean states that

...the primary intent of Beloved had to do wifi Morrison’s deep

sense of responsibility with regard to telfing a story of her
people’s slavery as fully and honestly as possikle (1993:85),

Morrison has created Sethe as a responsible Africai mother who loves

her children and goes to the extent of killing her eifld to prevent her
child from being remanded to slavery. When the nMnfcred child returns
as a demanding ghost the mother gives up everything for the happiness
of the child. She cannot bear the child parting her -even if it is a ghost.
She tells Paul D, “She left me...She was my best tling”(Beloved:272).
Regarding the Black community, the community people shares and
relieves the pain of the returning slaves even though they themselves are
enslaved by the Whites. For example Sethe’s mothef-*>4aw, Baby Suggs
stands as a responsible traditional lady who is called as the ‘unchurched
preacher’. She makes fellow slaves to feel like they ae loved, cautioned,
fed, chastised and soothed, despite of their painful tragedy in slave life.

57
After her death the community takes up the responsibility that helps
Sethe to overcome her problem. Thus Morrison retells and recalls the
ignored fact behind the African culture and community.

The narrative style of the text looks more like a circle. The characters
and events are intertwined that the story of one dmracter reminds the
story of another character. There are evidences that itself signifies the
reality of what would have happened. For example the scars speak for
themselves how badly the slaves would have tceated by the White
masters./Helen Lock says in her article “‘Building up from Fragments’:
The Oral Memory Process in Some Recent Africai-American Written
Narratives” (1995) how the African American oral tradition helps
Morrison to reconstruct and regenerate the past:

Through her central character, Sethe, Morrison coins the

neologism ‘rememory’, and implies that rcmemory is to be
understood differently from the conventional (literate) definition
of memory. It puns on the fact that to ‘re-member’ something is to
perform the act of reassembling its members, thus stressing the
importance to the memory process of creative reconstruction.
Rememory, in fact, evokes the more inteative oral memory
process, which both defines the characters’ lqgotiations with the
past and provides the novel’s narrative and structural principle.
Yet it did so within the context of a highly sophisticated literary
framework (112)

58
To emphasize the cruelty of slavery, Morrison has technique of
narrating the events without capitalization and puncfluation/For-cxaniple v
she writes the emotions and experiences of Beloved as

someone is thrashing but there is no room to do it in if we had

more to drink we could make tears we cannot make sweat or
morning water so the men without skin bring us theirs one
time they ...(Beloved: 210-213).

In this passage the gaps between the sentences signify the untold event
in the stoiy. It also indicates that the cruelty cannot be expressed fully at
a time. Therefore the memories and rememories of the past are told in
bits and pieces but are clear and horrifying. Harris (1995) states that:

Morrison abandons linear narration for a structure that duplicate

memory, a pattern in which associative connections inspire the
relating of particular incidents.....It is less about what happened -
for we know that early on - than about why and how (12).

Therefore Morrison Beloved can be treated as a nistarical document that

reflects not only the events but also the source of events. ,hirithlir Unl¥.rtlty
Library

1.6.4.6. Jazz (1992) ^ y lul .

1722

The text Jazz (1992), the sixth novel of Morrison takes place in 1926
when the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak, a special time of success
and attention for Afro-American artists in all genres, imcluding literature,
art and music. Inspired by a photograph of a young girl in a coffin,
Morrison has written Jazz in order to draw the reality behind the murder
as she does in Beloved. Actually the girl is shot by her boyfriend but she

59
has kept his identity secret to let him escape. Morrisoi’s Jazz is about a
middle age couple, Joe Trace and Violet. Joe is a waiter and door to door
cosmetics salesman and his wife is a home hairdresser who migrates to
Harlem from the rural south in the early 1900s. Despite Joe’s attachment
to Violet, he falls in love with a teen-age girl named Dorcas. Joe kills her
when she rejects him for a younger lover. But the dyiag Dorcas does not
reveal the name of the murderer. At the funeral parlor Violet becomes
violent that she attempts to slash the dead Dorcas’s face, but she is
thrown out. Running back to home, Violet frees all her treasured birds.
Later she establishes a relationship with Dorcas’s aunt Alice Manfred
who heals Violet of her grief.

Apart from the main story, the events in Jazz reflect the real life of
Blacks in America over a century. The background of die story offers the
brutal Virginia country life that Blacks endured as sharecroppers at the
end of the nineteenth century. The southern couple, Joe and Violet,
signifies the thousands of Black family who left mml areas for urban
areas, the south for north between 1890 and 1930. They expect to
improve their economic condition just as Joe and Violet in Jazz. But the
unexpected stresses of the city, which refers New YoA City, complicate
their lives. Mobley explains the portrayal of Morrison as:

Yet Morrison’s portrayal of the Harlem Renaissance, though

romantic in some respects, is not a romanticized one. From the
references to the slave ancestors, Jim Crow laivs, race riots and
racial harassment, the Universal Negro Improvement Association
(the organization of the most prominent Hariem Renaissance
black nationalist, Marcus Garvey), and references to black

60
 publication such as The Amsterdam News. The Crisis, and The
Messenger, it is clear that Morrison is critiquing the political
realities of black life during the ‘20s at the same time that she
celebrates the cultural resources African-Americans drew on to
survive and thrive (1993:623).

Therefore Jazz has brought in many historical evetes and movements

into the actual story of Black couple. Mobley further says that the text,
“tells the story of slavery, Reconstruction, the hypnotic lure of cities like
New York and communities like Harlem, the Great Migration, the
frustration of dreams deferred in the North, race riots, race music, high
rents, lovemaking, and ecstasy” (624). Thus the text almost parallels the
century’s historical documents. It also provides indeptb details about the
events that are marginalized and sometimes ignored by tie historians.

Morrison uses the technique of the music jazz because it is a distinctly

Black art form that based on oral communication fornis. To emphasize
the importance of African American cultural art, Monison chooses the
African American classical music jazz as the title of her text and its form
as a structure of her narrative. The Black culture m thus celebrated by
Morrison that the sources of African American roots are explored in the
text. Thus Jazz reveals the unconscious cultural history of African
Americans that helps them to mend themselves, survive through hard
realities and sustain their families.

Regarding the narrative technique of Jazz, Morrison has carefully

structured the music jazz to improvise the history of African American
people. It is not spontaneously composed, but it attempts to provide an

61
illustration of what has happened during Harlem Reiaissance and other
historical moments, even if it digresses from the main plot. The main
plot is a simple story that forms the baseline for the lyrical text. The
multiple voices that complicate the story further trace the circumstances
that brought the Black people to Harlem in the 1930s with hopes and
dreams. Thus the form of jazz provides a space for Morrison to
improvise the facts about Blacks that the way they have been treated,
resisted and oppressed in America.

I.6.4.7. Paradise (1997)

Morrison’s seventh novel Paradise (1997) is set ii a Black utopian

community in Oklahoma. It is an obscure history of 19th century
America shortly after the Civil War. During this period the former slaves
headed west to the territories of Oklahoma and beyond. Morrison
captures the stark geography of the town Ruby that is founded by the
descendents of freed slaves and survivors who have teen tucked by the
enforced moral law of patriarchal community. As tke story begins in an
early morning of Oklahoma in 1976, nine men from Ruby assault the
nearby mansion called Convent and the women in it. Morrison illustrates
the origin behind the establishment of Ruby with evidences. Ruby is a
second-generation all-Black town that has been establshed in 1949. Its
predecessor Haven has been founded in 1889 by the nine strong
patriarchal families who led more than one hundred formerly enslaved
Black people from Louisiana and Mississippi to the Oklahoma Territory.
The ‘8 rocks’, the term signifies the darkest complexion of Blacks, have
walked across several towns, but they have been rebuffed and rejected
by their own people -the light skinned Blacks as wdl as Whites who

62
 a

want to live separately from them. It has been their belef in God that has
given them the strength to face the realities. They have called upon their
God to show them their Paradise. They have reached the wide treeless
plain of Oklahoma and established Haven from where they could reject
the rest of the world. They put down rules that for tiem the place is the
Paradise on earth and nobody should go outside. Thus they have been
enjoying the prosperity for a few decades in isolation. It is in the 1940s,
when the young men of Haven return from fighting overseas, the town
has mired in a quicksand of its own isolation. Then they have migrated
further toward west and established a city called Ruby on the same
principles that Haven had been sixty years before. This tiny self-
sufficient Ruby has reached a crisis of conviction m the 1970s. The
townspeople begin to lose their own convictions and succumb to the
uncertainties of the times. They lay their pain and te«rr upon the women
in Convent that is seventeen miles away from their place. The Convent
was a mansion converted into a school for the White American girls and
it was run by nuns. Later the mission was running oat of funds. But it
has assumed into a new mission in 1968, sheltering women who have
been injured physically and mentally. The women who have lost their
ways seek refuge and deliverance from a grim p®t. They gather in
Convent to heal their broken lives. They have become rebellious against
the patriarchal system of life. So the men of Ruby fnd these women as
evils who disturb the self-imposed isolation of Ruby. It seems that the
Convent threatens the very existence of Ruby. There arises the conflict
between Ruby and the Convent that results inevitably in an act of
violence.

63
 r

Therefore the isolation which keeps Ruby away from the people who
have rejected them once is the cause of their own destruction.

Morrison’s Paradise revises the history of the freed Black slaves during
Reconstruction, their treacherous journey toward west, their dreams of
Paradise, the establishment of all-Black cities, and the interior lives of
the darker-skinned Blacks. It explores the eternal struggle between men
and women. The focus is on the tremendous stress that is put both on
men and women. The Black men who struggle to protect their women
and children from the hostile Whites turn hard, dominating and
merciless. The bitterness of being rejected simply for the darker
complexion has a permanent effect on them. In response, they build their
own town in which both men and women have to Ive under a single
system. This patriarchal system of life affects the younger generation
that wants to bring reformation. When Ruby is on the verge of falling
apart, the patriarch of Ruby inflict their pain on the women of the
Convent. The women of the Convent are fugitives, refugees and outcasts
who have been creating an even stronger community than that of Ruby
that each chapter bears the name of one of the women of the Convent.
Thus the text goes back to the past and explores the cemmunity history,
racial and cultural hierarchies, and generation gaps in a
multidimensional detail. Morrison has written Paracfce to explore history
on three levels:

One to talk about the period of American histoiy which produced

large communities of Black people in the West and to measure
their escape to freedom with a more recent effort to be free - the
60’s and 70’s. On another level,...about the nature of racial

64
 A-

hierarchy that it comes in all shapes and forms and in all sorts of
culture. Thirdly...about the enormous collision between religious
people and unreligious people and between or among certain
religions. The point being everyone is searching for a paradise that
excludes somebody else (Toni Morrison AOL L*ne Chat 2000).

Thus Morrison has recreated the geographical history of the all-Black

cities in the west.

The story of Paradise is based on the culture and region of the former
enslaved Black people. The construction of the fast all-Black town
Haven is based on the people’s religious belief. They believe God will
show them their Paradise. Later Ruby is also founded on the same
principles that of Haven, the spiritual predecessor of Ruby. Thus the
spiritual community Ruby prides itself on its uncompromising
independence from the outside world. The Convent b also founded by
the aging ward of the former mother superior, Consaiata, who believes
in God faithfully for more than forty years. Though fie people in Ruby
believe in their religion and culture they have become victims of their
own system of life. It is because they oppose changes in the community
that they believe they are preserving the traditional values of their
culture. But the women in the Convent rebelliously advocate change in
the patriarchal system of their life. However Morrison preserves the
traditional values of Black culture by the end of the text. Though the
women in the Convent are damaged by heart they forgive those who
have injured them. It is their culture that makes them realize their roles
as wives, sisters and mother of the Black men. They are rebellious

65
enough to protect their human values as well as modest enough to
preserve their cultural values even at the time of losing their lives.

Thus the text is overpowering in its narrative style and its unique
approach to the Black experience. The opening sertence of Paradise,
“They shoot the white girl first” (3) makes the reader feels that that text
is not simply about the Black girls. Rather it refers to the group of Black
men who come to massacre the women in the nearby Convent. The
narrative voice moves the story further to numerous flashbacks with all
its minute details. Although the chapters bear the names of the female
characters of Ruby or Convent, the story under these chapters deal with
the entire Black people who are forced to stuck under principles that
make them escape the horrors of the dominating cultuae. This framework
helps Morrison explore the past history of the ex-sdaves individually,
geographically and chronologically. For example the land around Ruby
is also captured and described by Morrison. It seems that she builds
Ruby practically brick by brick. She names the streets and even fixes the
population of the city. She creates the people of Ruby as a fascinating
mixture of virtues and vices. Thus the narrative smoothly circles
between the present and various past histories that convey information
that is available nowhere else.

1.7. Toni Morrison and New Historicism

Clearly Morrison leaves the door open for exploring her works in terms
of New Historicism and that exploration should always be thoughtful
about its motives and consequences. Her works always invite readers
and critics to clarify the relationship between literature and history. Her

66
writing is a performance of her desire to bring the marginalized history
of Blacks to the center. She wants Black history shoUd be recognized as
a national history. Her literary works historicize the different histories
and struggles of Blacks. The present researcher’s socb/historical context
also presents similar responses to the marginalizaiion of south Indian
history in the mainstream Indian history. The following section
considers some of these elements present in the saeio/historical context
of the present researcher that had shaped my responses to Toni Morrison
and African American socio/historical context.

1.8. Socio/historical Context of this Reader

As an Indian hailing from Southern part, I have been observing these

contrasts since I am curious observer of history and ardent student of
literature. As an Indian my response to the history «f my own culture
and country becomes essential. When I come across non-historical
writings, lectures and folklores, I could see strong evidences for many
historical facts that were totally left out or marginalized in historical
texts. The perception of the southern people are that tie Indian historical
texts that document the history of the Freedom Struggle for Indian
Independence highlight the involvement of North Indian freedom
fighters whereas the South Indian freedom fighters are marginalized and
left out.

Historically the Aryans were the habitants of North of Himalayan range

in the central Asia and Eurasia - around Bamini Platen. The Dravidians
were occupying the Indus plains down South of Himalayan range in the
Northwest of Indian subcontinent. The civilizations of both were

67
diagnally opposite and palpably contrast. The Aryans were very fair in
contrast to dark eomplexioned Black Dravidians. Kith had their own
distinct cultures and faith. The Aryans migrated from Central Asia to
Europe and down of Himalayan ranges via Kyber and Bolan passes. The
ethnic group which migrated thus into the Indian plains were slowly
pushing the Dravidian ethnic group down South. The schematic spread
of the migrants ended in their occupation of almost tie entire plains of
Indus and Ganges and their tributaries (Chopra 1979).

There were regular expeditions of aliens from as far from Greece in the
preceding millennium by Alexander the Great and his trusted lieutenant
Selucus Nicadar ofcourse bravely but not effectively resisted by small
Indian kings. The following Dynasties viz Nandan and Mauryan
dynasties which ruled the major part of the Indian subcontinent on the
North of Vindhya and Satpura ranges were the mixture of cultures of
Aryan and Greece influence because of the free racial mixup of Aryans
with the invaders. This had a terrific influence on the Ife style of Indian
culture (Luniya 1978). The dividing point was Vinlhya ranges. The
North of it was Ganges Plains and Delta - comprisi^ of present west
Punjab in Pakistan and the entire India. This culture that practiced Vedic
culture and patronized the language Sanskrit lad enormous royal
support. The collosal buildings and monuments which were built by the
great kings of the then dynasties of Asoka the Great of Maurya Empire,
Chandragupta Vikramaditya, Harsha Vardhana and Chalukyas are the
evidences. Further Sanchi, Saranath, Ujjain, Pataliputea, Nalanda, Kasi
monuments depict these historical truths (Anandam 1998).

68
Contemporary developments in the South of VinAya ranges saw the
great and equally famous cultures and kingdoms like the Chera, Chola,
and Pandiya of down South and Chalukyas Rashtrageodas of upper part
of South. The influence of Tamil kingdoms spread upto Ezham
(Srilanka), Misiram (Indonesia), Kadaram (Malaysia and islands
around), Java, Sumatra and Borneo islands of present Indonesia (Chopra
1979).

In the 17th century, when the British East India Company, the French,
the Dutch and the Portugeese were vying with eadi other, the ethnical
divisions polarized to two distinct groups viz a North Indian Hindi
speaking belt and South Indian non Hindi speaking belt. By the end of
19th century and the beginning of 20th century the dftcens of the Indian
subcontinent were very sharply divided into two groups as Hindi
speaking North Indians and non-Hindi speaking South Indians (Luniya
1978).

The feeling that existed was that the South Indians wece marginalized by
the Northern counterparts in the political arena. The social worker and
writer Gunasekaran (2000a) states: “As far as the histmy of Tamil Nadu
is concerned, it has always been marginalized hy the historical
researches” (1). Therefore the perception was that the sacrifices for the
freedom struggle of the south Indians were not highlighted in the Indian
mainstream historical texts. The marginalization or possible lapse in
recording of the contribution of the people of southern India was very
obvious in many Indian historical texts.

69
Sometimes historical facts were altogether distorted in the mainstream
history. For example, Vidya Dhar Mahajan’s The Nationalist Movement
in India (1976) was accepted as a standard historical text that documents
the facts about Indian nationalist movements and tie contribution of
Indian leaders to the independence of India. In the text, Mahajan has
documented the Nationalist Movements like, ‘TCooka Movement”
(1976:52-53), “Home Rule Movement” (177-182T), “Revolutionary
Movement in Maharastra” (184-190), Revolutionary Movement in
Bengal” (190-198), “Revolutionary Movement in Punjab” (199-200),
“Ghadar India Movement” (207-209), “Post-War Revolutionary
Movement” (209-230), “Non-Co-operation Movement” (243-253),
“Civil Disobedience Movement” (284-288) and “Quit India Movement”
(332-338). It is stated in this text that these movements had their origins
and growth in the Northern part of India. Therefore the North Indian
national leaders have been given much importance and the history of
Indian freedom struggle is portrayed as based on their lives.

Many volunteers from Tamil Nadu, a Southern state of India, who

played a significant role in freedom struggle, were completely left out.
The Tamil writer V.V.V.Anandam (1998) describes the sacrifices of the
great freedom fighters like V.O.Chidhambaram Pflai (1872-1936);
Thiruppur Kumaran (1904-1932); E.V.Ramasamy Periyar (1879-1973);
Veerapandiya Kattabomman (1716-1799) and scores of martyrs like
them who were marginalized in the mainstream Indian history.

Pulithevan (1715-1767), a freedom fighter from Tamil Nadu was bom in

a village named Avudaiyapuram in Sankaran Koil Taluk, Thirunelveli
District (Anandam 1998). He was the earliest South bom warrior who

70
opposed the alien invasion with his military skills. The first invasion on
the Indian soil by the East India Company, the British merchandize
turned to capture power in the soil. Under the head of Colonel Alexander
in 1755 the Britishers launched their attack on the South Palayams.
Pulithevan successfully defended the alien attack 01 die Vasudevanallur
farm, instantaneously setting right the rent created by the opponents’
canons on the fort wall with hay grass and day. His death was
mysterious, a myth, that no mortal remnants are fourri and the belief is
that he confluenced with the divine light at Sankaran Koil Temple. His
heroic deeds are sung as folk songs in down South even today. Anandam
(1998) refers to Pulithevan as one of the great freedom fighters of early
days, who is conveniently forgotten. The folk aangs only bear the
testimony of his acts of sacrifice.

Veerapandiya Kattabomman, the 18th century fieedom fighter, had

denied the alien governance and succumbed to the diming betrayal of
his own neighboring state heads (Devanesan 1997). He had his brother
Umaidhurai, Lieutenant Vellaiya Thevan, Veeran Sundaralingam and
Marudhu Pandiyan brothers as his followers. The Tamil writer
Kumaraswamy (2000) states:

Historical writers and scholars have not come forward to write

about Umai Durai. One can understand when «ne gets to know the
fact that Umai Durai, who was bom deaf and dumb, was behind
every brave act of Veerapandiya Kattabomman (91).

Street dramas and folk songs in the Southern regica were the only
sources of subdued references of these warriors’ coitribution to freedom

71
straggle. It was the folk artists and choreographic writers who brought
them to the light than the Indian historical writers. Another
contemporary hero of the 18th century, in the Western Coast of down
South was Dhalavai Velu Thambi, whose body was publicly lynched by
the British force (Anandam 1998). He was one of the great freedom
fighter of Tamil Nadu whose acts of heroism are meriioned only in few
words in the history of freedom straggle.

The description of the deeds of the freedom fighters ef Tamil Nadu has
been brought out only in Tamil writings. The few ii^pertant 19th century
freedom fighters referred in the Tamil writer Anandam’s (1998) text are
Va.Ve.Subramaniam Iyer, Subramaniya Siva and V.O.Chidhambaram
Pillai. Subramaniya Siva who was imprisoned along with
V.O.Chidhambaram Pillai founded ‘Bharathashram’, a movement to
train youngsters in the freedom movement. The life history of
Dr.C.Shenbagaraman is very exiting. This innovative freedom fighter
sneaked to Germany and worked as a brain to tie German Military
Camp during World War I. He sailed to the port of Madras from German
in a well-known German Military Ship, EMDON and sprayed canons
over the Madras Fort St. George and terrorized the Britishers. Like
Subash Chandra Bose who joined Japanese attacked Britishers in World
War II forming National Army from Northeast comet, crossing through
the present Myanmar, Dr.C.Shenbagaraman Pillai joined the Germans in
World War II and attacked the British settlers in India. In fact it is a
historical gap that Dr.C.Shenbagaraman Pillai coined die passionate and
emotional proclamation ‘Jai Hind’ which today every politician ends his
or her speech with. Only veiy few Indians know this fact about the

72
contribution of Dr.C.Shenbagaraman Pillai. Later Subash Chandra Bose
adopted the term ‘Jai Hind’ and its cry for National Army soldiers. But
Dr.C.Shenbagaraman Pillai hardly gets recognition by the Indian
historians.

The Tamil writer and researcher, Arunagiri provides a list of literary

writings that depict the contributions of the freedom fighters of Tamil
Nadu in his text Viduthalai Poril Tamil Ilakkivam (1993). Another Tamil
writer Sivagnanam (1983) describes the deeds of many freedom fighters
of Tamil Nadu who fought against great odds and sacrificed their life.
Anandam (1998) the Tamil writer who was also a freedom fighter talks
about the act of courage of the early 20th century South Indian freedom
fighter, Vanchinadhan. In 1908 Thirunelveli Riot the Deputy Collector
of Thirunelveli Lord Ash was responsible for opening fire on the
peacefully agitating public. In this event four young vnihinteers died due
to firing. Lord Ash was also the key figure to foist false case of treason
on V.O.Chidhambaram Pillai and Subramaniya Siv» and both were
sentenced with life imprisonment and suffered in the dark cells. These
incidents infuriated Vanchinadhan and he was waiting with a master
plan to take revenge and settle the score with Collector Lord Ash. On the
fateful day of June 17, 1911 when the Collector was proceeding to
Kodaikanal hill station for a holiday he accosted to Collector in
Maniyachi Railway station near Thirunelveli and shot him with his pistol
point blank at a close range and he shot himself also, tt was hardly few
weeks after his wedding solemnization. Leaving his y«ung wife behind,
Vanchinadhan laid down his life for the sake of India. A note recovered
from his body that reads:

73
 In the land of Asoka, the Great, who reigned this land, King
George VI has plans for coronation as King of British India and
this tyrant Ash is the British King’s representative. By shooting
Ash, I am sending a warning note to the Britisl, who want to keep
Indians as slaves and India as slave land, of similar fate like
Collector Ash. I lay down my life as an hmmWe offering to my
motherland, India (Anandam 1998:141-142).

Though the heroic act of Vanchinadhan is great, his sacrifice to the

motherland is marginalized in Indian mainstream history. After a very
long dual with the bureaucracy and Indian Government, local senator
was able to succeed to name the Maniyachi station as Veera
Vanchinadhan Railway station. Therefore the sacrifices of many
freedom fighters were marginalized and left out i« Indian mainstream
historical texts.

The perception and the strong feeling that such acts of significance in the
history of the people of a region exist with the South Indians. The reason
for such a marginalization could be many. However the anxiety to
correct and revise history is strongly felt in this context. Stalin
Gunasekaran, a social worker from Tamil Nadu has attempted to revise
the marginalized history of Tamil freedom fighters in his Viduthalai
Velvivil Tamizhagam (2000). Stalin Gunasekaran states:

Marginalization of several heroic deeds and events related to the

Indian freedom struggle in down South had happened. The facts
about the First War of Independence in 1801 organized by
Pulithevan in Tirunelveli District in South India had been

74
 conveniently forgotten by historians. Instead they refer to 1847
Sepoy Mutiny as the First War of Indqpendence (Personal
Interview 2003).

According to Gunasekaran (2000) the National Movements were

effectively carried out by many leaders of Tamil Nfedu. For example
E.V.Ramasamy Naicker (1879-1973), Salem C.Vijayaragavachariar
(1852-1940), Sir.S.Subramania Iyer (1881-1925), V JCalyana Sundaranar
and P.Varadarajulu Naidu were pillars of the Home Rule Movement.
V.O.Chidambaram Pillai and Subramaniya Bharathi (1882-1921) served
for the country. T.S.S.Rajan and Rukmani Lakshmipathy (1892-1951)
successfully carried on the Salt Satyagraha during 193®. K.Kamaraj and
M.Bhaktavatsalam played a very important role in Quit India Movement.
Though these freedom fighters contribution was a must to the
Independence of India, they were completely left out and marginalized
in Indian historical texts.

Many Tamil literary writers like N.Parthasarathy (1982), Prabanjan

(1999) and Kalki (1953) have attempted to fill #ie gaps in the
mainstream history through their literary writings. For example Kalki’s
Alai Osai (1953) depicts the struggle of a middle class woman and a man
who involve themselves in the freedom struggle through the characters
Tharini and Surya. Researchers have found evidence for the parallelism
in history and literary writings. Dhandayudham (1977) researching on
this fact states:

Many political events of his [Kalki] time are referred to in his

novels: the Sepoy Mutiny (1857), the Civil Disobedience

75
 Campaign (1929), Salt Satyagraha (1930), Gandhi-Irwin Pact
(1931), the Second Round Table Conference (1931), the arrest of
Gandhi and Nehru (1931), Congress Party’s decision to continue
Civil Disobedience, the effects of the Second. World war upon
England and India. ‘Quit India’ movement (1942), the formation
of ‘Interim Government’, the Congress sessions at Karachi and
Haripura, Independence Day Celebrations in Delhi (1947), the
integration of Hyderabad State, Hindu-Muslim riots and the death
of the Father of Nation on 30-1-1948 - all these are described in
his novels (175).

Therefore evidences for the historical events are found in Kalki’s texts
that brought out the left out dimensions of the historical texts. The
researcher Sanjeevi (1974) has attempted to find out the historical
aspects in Kalki’s literary texts. Sanjeevi (1974) has found in Kalki’s
Thivagaboomi (1939), the sacrifices of the Tamil people who strongly
believe in Gandhiji’s Non Cooperation Movement. Further Kalki’s text
Alai Osai (1953) depicts almost the eighteen years ofthe struggle of the
freedom fighters. The analysis of Kalki’s text Magudapathv (1943)
shows Kalki’s depiction of the historical dates and events like Gandhi-
Irwin agreement, Gandhi’s visit to London in 1939 and the oncoming
events.

Fictional works become informative on historical events and can be

treated as historical works. Thiruppur Krishnan’s Pattoli Veesi (1997) is
a short story that depicts the condition of the freedom fighter’s family
after his death in the struggle. The character Anjalai Selvan in Pattoli
Veesi (1997) is an example of the condition of many women who lost

76
their husbands in the freedom struggle. They have been remembered and
respected formally only during Independence Day celebrations. They
were not even given enough food to survive. This has been the plight of
the families of the freedom fighters reflected in literary texts besides the
historical records.

The Government of Tamil Nadu (1973) has documented the history of

those who participated and sacrificed their life during freedom struggle.
But there is no history about their families who survived after the
Independence. To fill up this gap N.Parthasarathy has portrayed the
character Madhuram in his text Aathmavin Raaganeal (1982) who is an
example of many women who served for the country. She helped the
freedom fighters’ family when they were arrested and kept in jail. She
donated all her properties for those who founded the Satya Seva Ashram
in Madurai in South Tamil Nadu. She loved Raja Raman who changed
his name into Gandhi Raman for he was the follower of Mahatma
Gandhi and his Satyagraha. Madhuram and Raja Raman promised to
postpone their marriage till the Independence of India. With this
background Parthasarathy has brought in the important incidents
however small they may be, emanating from small nameless people that
occurred in and around Madurai during the Freedom Struggle. He has
quoted the dates and events that were left out in mainstream history. The
Tamil writer, Arunagiri in his text Viduthalai Porfl Tamil Ilakkivam
(1993) has referred the contributions of the Tamil literary writers to the
Independence of India. In this text, Arunagiri (1993) writes about many
Tamil literary writings that took a major part in actuating the people
towards independence. According to Arunagiri, it is Mt only the literary

77
writings that talk about history, but also the folk songs, street dances,
short stories, dramas, films and novels by the writers and artists whose
attempt glorify the heroic struggle of the freedom fighters of Tamil
Nadu. Therefore it becomes necessary for a reader Indian history to
read Tamil literary texts as a parallel text to the historical texts. The
experience of this researcher reads into Toni Morrisom’s texts and Black
historical texts.

The next chapter analyzes Toni Morrison’s select ncvds The Bluest Eve
09701. Sula (19731. Song of Solomon (1977) and Beleved (1987). In the
selection of these four novels, no other criteria is exercised except that
limiting to only four works would allow the researcha- to gain the depth
in the analysis. The texts are analyzed in the New Historical framework
focusing on four dimensions namely ‘Deeper Shades of History’,
‘Corrections in History’, ‘Cultural Workshop’ and ‘Gaps in History’.

78