RACE, IDENTITY AND PERSPECTIVES

OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN

SELECTED WORKS OF TONI
MORRISON

DECLARATION

I, HABEEBA TT hereby declare that this project work entitled “RACE , IDENTITY AND
PERSPECTIVES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN SELECTED WORKS OF TONI
MORISSON” is a bonafide work carried out by me and that it has not formed the basis for the
award of any degree, diploma or other title in any other university.

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Place :Parappanangadi HABEEBA TT
Date : Reg: KVASAEG039

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION : 4

CHAPTER 1:
(Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby) : 7

CHAPTER 2 : 14

CHAPTER 3 : 19
(Race and gender in
Toni Morrison’ Beloved)

CONCLUSION : 27

REFERENCE : 29

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 INTRODUCTION

Literature is the expression of life of an individual and the society around him. The thoughts of
an individual are seen through language in the form of literature. Literature and life are
connected in an intimate way, which is dynamic. Even ordinary books become literature when
they bring us into some relation with real life. The primary value of literature is its human
significance and so literature should consist of the many events of life put together. Its value
depends on the depth and breadth of the life that it paints. The reader tries to understand the
forces behind these social changes by reading literature. The value of literature depends on the
extent to which it has been able to express the changing circumstances of social life. Literature
cannot be limited to any one genre and any work of art which reflects life and if human beings
are able to identify them selves with the characters in that piece of work and that becomes great
literature. Literature becomes the vehicle of thoughts and feelings of the common man and the
working people only if it is free from its class limitations, and then it's trends become popular
and public

Race and identity is a very recurrent theme in African American novels; because the
search for identity is natural for every human being. From the very beginning of their presents in
Africa, the black were subjected to slavery, their basic human rights have being often violated
and they suffered from all forms of humiliation. Thus the search of identity and perspectives
pictured in the literary works. As a body of literature, black writing started in the 18th century as
the medium that provides African Americans the platform to interrogate the dynamics of the
African American identity, community and experience within America. Over the years African
American women writing has not been accorded due relevance within the American literary
space. As such, black males writers have dominated the literary scene for long, being literary
spokespersons on the specific and general dimensions of black people's existence and experience
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in America. In other words the claim of homogenous black experience is now being debated and
challenged by these African American women writers through different literary platforms. Thus
these black women characters who are now subject to their own narrations. This research
apprehends the various view of African American women about themselves, about the African
American community and how their perspectives have contributed significantly to shaping the
concerns bordering on history, existence and experience and the community of black people in
America via different literary platform. African American literary tradition seems to start with
the beginning of slavery in America. The human instinct to be free could not remain suppressed
for long and literature became the carrier of this instinct. The experience of being slave and
exploited became the main theme of their work .As a consequence, a subgenre of African
American literature which began in the middle of the 19th century i.e. slave narrative came into
existence.
African American literature has been written by the black writes of African descent in
America.Bruse, jr.elaborates the social and political framework in which the African American
literature was created, "This framework......was product of complex issues of voice and authority,
appropriation and attribution in colonial America and metropolitan Britain......the tendencies and
ambiguities of race relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.... created the kind of
possibilities and constraints that defined how African American sought to influence the larger
society or to use writing to establish a place of themselves in it.".... Depiction of the slavery had
been the main focus of the most of the early narratives of the literature. slavery, it's perennial
effects, and racism have been the main themes of the production of this genre, although slavery
was legally abolished in 1865.However, Black writers and artist gave a start to new approaches
to literature, music and theatre in Harlem Renaissance paved the way for the black writers in the
following decades. The civil rights movement made the idea of individual freedom and social
justice quite audible in black voices of the 1960s. The stream of consciousness, commenced by
Phillis Whitley ,continued in the 70s and 80s in the literary texts of Toni cade Bambara , Gayl
Jones, Maya Angelou, Alice walker, Rita dove and Toni Morrison writing back to white
supremacy reflecting the representation of trauma, apartheid and it's ramifications, sense of
identity. According to Abah( 2008) " The culture of African American writing is traceable to
the middle of the 18th century, although the issues at the front-burner of this literature extend
beyond two hundred years. In truth the life of bondage and enslavement became the necessary
materials which were to translate into black writing"

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Abahs'' contention brings to the fore the root and origin of African American literature and its
relationship with the social context of America. The struggles against the institution of slavery in
America formed the fabric for black writing and subsequently the impetus for its development.

Chloe Anthony Wofford, later known as Toni Morrison. The Melodies and stories of
Chloe Wofford’s youth without a doubt affected her later work ; undoubtedly, Toni Morrison
oeuvre draws intensely upon the oral work of artistic production of African Americans . Toni
Morrison's written work was likewise extraordinarily impacted by her crew. She was a greatly
talented understudy , figuring out how to pursue at an early age and performing admirably as she
learns at an integrated school. Morrison, who moved to Hawthorne Elementary School, was the
main African American in her first grade classroom. She was additionally the main understudy
who started school with the capacity to pursue. Since she was so talented, Morrison was
regularly asked to help different understudies figure out how to peruse. She as often as possible
worked with the offspring of new migrants to America.
Her guardians longing to shield their child from the bigot environment of the south
succeeded in numerous regards: racial bias was to a lesser degree an issue in Lorain, Ohio than it
would have been in the south, and Chloe Wofford played with a racially assorted gathering of
companions when she was young. Inevitably, on the other hand, she began to experience racial
segregation as she and her companions developed more established. She graduated with
distinction in 1949 and extended to Howard University in Washington DC At Howard, she
majored in English and minored in classics, and was effectively included in theater expressions
through the Howard University players. She went on from Howard in 1953 with a BA in English
and another name: Toni Wofford (Toni is an abbreviated form of her center name). She moved
ahead together with an MA in English from Cornell in 1955.
Toni Morrison is a prominent Afro- American writer, her well known novel " Tar Baby
"represent the dilemma of identity. This issue shows its power as one of the main thematic
concerns of African American literature. Her novels are deeply concerned with the issues of
gender ,race, slavery and identity. She has often been known as a voice of African American
culture, and she addressed the position of African American person and specifically women in
the contemporary world

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 CHAPTER :1

Toni Morrison's Tar Baby

Toni Morrison's recent naming as winner of the 1993 Nobel prize for literature compels us to
recognize her not only as a writer of stature, and thus of "universal" significance, but also as an
African American women writer, and thus writing out of racial, gendered, class and national
specificity. Critics of African American literature have demonstrated Morrison's aesthetic and
thematic use of black cultural traditions. If feminist critics have focused on how gender shapes
Morrison's text and Marxist critics have dwelt on Morrison's class consciousness and culture
redefinitions,comparativists have discussed Morrison's dept. to great writers such as Faulkner,
James Joyce, Ellison, Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare, universalist have delineated patterns
such as Christian myth or archetypal psychology in Morrison's novels.

Race , Identity

Toni Morrison very well describes how different women characters react and respond
differently to the injustice and the inhumanity imposed on them. She further questions black-
women's self-identity, self-concept, and struggles to achieve freedom as a living being if not a
human being. In Language Must Not Sweat, Toni Morrison focuses upon how Africans lost their
names through the institution of slavery, which in turn created a loss of connection with their
ancestry" . Toni Morrison stresses that black women can never become fully empowered in a
context of social injustice. Her novels give us deep insight into black women's minds and souls.
Morrison makes us listen to the voice of the suppressed group who are left out of literature.
Though the movement of Black Feminism and theory came much later, authors like Toni
Morrison are finite elements of this movement. The legacy of struggle, the search for voice, the
interdependence of thought and action and the significance of empowerment in everyday life are
core themes in Black Feminism. As the author's thoughts and works are against the sufferings of

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Blacks and especially the black women, it can be said that the ideology of Black Feminism is
blatantly evident in her novels.

First-wave Black feminism focused upon absolute rights such as suffrage. Second-wave
feminism was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination
and oppression. Issues of race, class and sexuality are central to third-wave feminism. Black
women have experienced great hardships and misery in the process of searching for identity and
struggling for freedom and equality. In the majority of her novels, Morrison highlights the
importance of identity, the formation of the 'self' , and the influence of the environment and
society on that development. According to Ron Eyerman in Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the
Formation of African American Identity, "cultural trauma refers to a dramatic loss of identity and
meaning, a tear in the social fabric, affecting a group of people that has achieved some degree of
cohesion" . African slaves were unified by their environment and society's racial oppression. In
the case of Toni Morrison's characters, 'the trauma in question is slavery, not [only] as an
institution or even an experience, but as a collective memory, a form of remembrance that
grounded the identity-formation of a people'.

The main problem the Afro-Americans face in trying to carve out an identity for them is that
white people have defined their existence. According to Neal, it is annoying for any African
American to derive contentment or pride from their name because Americans "designate people
of African descent as Negro-the name marked them as slaves-or black, which describes them
physically but deprives them of cultural identity" . This label serves as a reminder of the sting of
slavery and diaspora. The main character of the novel, Sula is from Black community in Bottom.
Sula knew that the lives of Blacks are considered inferior. During her adolescence, Sula realizes
that she would be more satisfied if she had more opportunity to live a worthwhile life according
to her own will. Sula finds her power not within her community, but in her rebellion against it.
Once she insists while talking to her grandmother Eva, "I want to make myself". Sula wants to
resist the system of segregation. Sula desires to go away and try something different from the
way she has lived until then in the town: "She escapes to college, submerges herself in the city
life" . Sula imposes a difficult task on herself. She tries to be both an African and an American
and she attempts to move from one world into another. However, Sula does not find any place

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remarkable to quench her actual desires. Eventually, she comes back to the Bottom ten years
later. It looks as if she has found out that she is not accepted by white world and so she returns to
her hometown. However, she comes back changed: "When she returns to her roots, it is as a
rebel, a mocker, a wanton sexual seductress" .

Jadine is a young black woman and works as a model in Europe. She is motherless and was
brought up by her black aunt and uncle. She goes to meet them in Isle des Chevaliers in the
Caribbean to spend two months. She comes to the island in order to think about herself. Her
current job implies the fact that she is not the kind of a black woman who would like to care for a
household at a white family's as her aunt actually does. Housekeeping has been the kind of work
typical for many black women to occupy. Jadine is well aware of this ill- treatment of black
women. But she also knows that her aunt Ondine likes to work as a housekeeper at a white
couple's. The fact that Valerian, the employer and a friend of Ondine's, has financed Jardine’s
studies and hence let her have to go to a big city might have helped Jadine to realize that
opportunities for women in general can be better than her black family is used to. It gives the
impression that this financial help made Jadine longing to live in another world.

Valerian has made it possible for Jadine to meet the white world. Since Jadine has had the
chance to see quite a lot of capitals in the world and try a way of living new to her, she has
developed a liking for the white culture, which may be seen as a beginning for her hunger for
change. She knows that there are different chances for blacks and whites. However, as a black
woman, Jadine has managed to get ahead. She is thought to be a pretty woman. Jadine is
conscious of the fortune that she has had but she wonders why everybody is transfixed by her:
"The height? The skin like tar against the canary yellow dress?" (Tar Baby 42). The fact that she
has had the opportunity to work as a model has left her in doubt about herself. But she is sure
that like to make it in the larger society.
In a broad sense, post colonialism studies how European culture influences colonies in most
fields. Also, it studies how these colonies react and resist the colonizer. Thus the oppression
imposed on them in different fields such as sociology, psychology and culture make them feel
inferior. This inferiority makes them aware of being colonized and leads them to struggle for
ethnic and self- governing. Moreover, the main focus of post-colonial theory is the binary

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opposition, which means the relation between colonized and colonizer, white and black, rich and
poor.

The Binary opposition

The term can be defined as the relationship of one to another and how they operate within a
large society. It's problem is that it creates boundaries between them and leads to discrimination,
each sides seems like opposite to another.

In literature binary opposition means exploring differences between groups of individuals like
black and white, male and female, high and low and so on. Luckily there was a night three years
ago, after he'd first settled into tropical life, when he woke up with a toothache so brutal it lifted
him out of bed and knocked him to his knees. He knelt on the floor clutching the Billy Blass
sheets and thinking, this must be a stroke. No tooth could do this to me. Directly above the
waves of pain his left eye was crying while his right went dry with rage. He crawled to the table
at night and pressed the button that called Sydney.

Blacks were inferior to whites; thus, in the novel valerian street is the Parton and Sydney was
the butler. The binary opposition is shown through the act of valerian street towards Sydney, that
shows him in a high position and at the same time shows Sydney in low position. The
expression “press the button" valerian uses to call Sydney like he is calling a machine and not a
human being. Class differences are shown through the racist act of valerian towards the black
character Sydney.

"Mrs. . Street awake?"

" I believe so.anything else special you are going to want for the holidays,"?

"No ,just the geese. I won't be able to eat a bit of it, but I want to see it on the table anyway. And
some more thalidomide".

"You want a yardman to bring you thalidomide? He can't even pronounce it".

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"Write a note. Tell him to give it to Dr . Michelin"

" All right."

The idea of literacy is shown here so that a yardman who is a black cannot read or even
pronounce a word properly. It Is known that blacks were brought as slaves, only for work
particularly in agriculture. Hence this extract from the novel shows the ideology of imperialism
which means that the colonizer is shown as more educated, more civilized and superior. Black
were considered uncivilized, narrow minded and harsh in both the way of thinking and behaving
in comparison to wishes;

Sydney returned with a bowl of crushed ice in which a mango stood. The peeling had been
pulled back from the shiny fruit in perfect curls. The slits along the pulp were barely visible.
Valerian yawned behind his fist and said : "Sydney , can I or can I not order a cup of coffee
and get it...?"

"Yes sir, of course you can". He put down the mango and filled Valerian's cup.

In this quote valerian orders Sydney and uses the expression ( can I or can I not order) to
serve him and that shows him in a position of power, but not the way that harms or minimizes
Sydney's dignity. Here, valerian is the person who has the power over the black character Sydney
, means that there are boundaries that oblige black person to act obediently because of the harsh
reaction of white one in terms of race and discrimination.

Sydney (unbidden but right on time) removed the glass and placed a fresh white napkin over the
wine spot. Then he collected the salad plates, replacing them with warm white china with a
single band of gold around the edges.

This quote as well shows Sydney as inferior and as a worker , because of his blackness; he
does not interfere in their issues. The expression "unbidden but right on time" proves the
differences : Sydney in this case is not waiting for orders whether to do or not, it becomes a
habit for him as a black servant which creates the sense of differences between groups and
individuals.

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Margaret Lenore started into the spaces and thought desperately of coffee, but she did not want
to ring up Sydney and ondine, for that would begin the day she was not sure she wanted to
participate in.

She had no sleep to speak of, and now, drained of panic, wavering between anger and sorrow,
she lay in bed. Things were not getting better. She was not getting better. She could feel it and
right smack in the middle of it , with Michael on his way, this had to happen: literally ,literally a
nigger in the woodpile

Margaret is still shocked about the boy who was in her closet. She thinks about how things
are not better , about how literally a "nigger" was in her closet . She calls him as " nigger"; this
word shows her racist behavior mentality. She starts to think racially, considering the closet as
an unclean place. She thinks about how she would better have to throw everything away and buy
new things. Thus Margaret's way of thinking proves the differences between two binaries; blacks
have fewer life positions than whites.

" Well , then he can swim back, now. Today I am not going to sleep with him in this house . If I
had known that I would have had a heart attack . All night I waited for that bastard valerian to
come up here and tell me what the hell was going on . He never showed "

" And Sydney was patrolling the halls with a gun . I thought he would have killed him by now ."

" What does he think?"

" He's angry. Ondine's scared , I think."

" I am going to have it out with Valerian . He is doing this just to ruin Christmas for me.
Michael 's coming and he knows I want everything right for him, and looks at what he does to
get me upset . Instead of throwing that....that.."

" Nigger."

" Right , nigger , instead of throwing him right out of here "

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" Maybe we are making something out of nothing ."

In this quote, jadine and Margaret are talking about a strange man. They discuss the black man
and what to do about the whole situation. Margaret is mad at Valerian for letting the man stay.
At one point she hesitates to call him " nigger" in front of jadine , but jadine volunteers to finish
the sentence for her with" nigger" and then in another description she compares the man in her
closet to a gorilla which makes jadine uncomfortable and she tells Margaret that they are all
scared and that they would have been equally scared if the man was white. Consequently, the
white women Margaret compares the black character to an animal because of his physical
appearance and his unclean cloths and body which shows the concept of race and discrimination.

Yardman's face was nothing to enjoy , but his teeth were a treat. Stone- white and organized like
a drug store sample of what teeth ought to be.

Race is shown here via the description of physical and biological traits . The narrator
describes the yardman's teeth as good looking and his face us ugly. The description of his face
goes in parallel with his occupation as well his blackness. So ,the power of white racists leads
black to be disabled to take care of themselves. The expression " nothing to enjoy" because of
his blackness , which means that there is " something to enjoy " in the other race and here the
binary opposition is completely shown between the two races.

The agency would laugh her out of the lobby , so why was she and everybody else in the store
transfixed? The height? The skin like tar against the Canary yellow dress? The woman walked
down the aisle as though her many- colored sandals were pressing gold tracks on the floor. Two
upside - down V's were scored into each of her cheeks , her hair was wrapped in a gelee as
yellow as her dress.

Again , there is another description of physical characteristics that shows the differences
between races. The word "Tar" denotes the colour of skin which is very dark. Here, jadine finds
her very attractive and follows her, she considers that this woman represents everything which
embodies real blackness from her beauty to her clothes and marks in her name. Though her

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classy appearance , white race looks down upon her ; this action shows the racism of white
against black.

CHAPTER 2
The story of the novel Tar baby explores the problems oppression and discrimination in the lives
of black people. Though these black people are living in advanced countries like America,
England and some parts of Europe, they have to live with the narrow mindedness of the white
people. The writer of the novel Toni Morrison, herself comes from a black family who is living
in America. She has raised the colour and gender discrimination issues symbolically in her
novels. Her different style of writing and bringing out the social issues stand her out from the
league of these genres. There are many diaspora writers who wrote about all these issues with
their self experience. Tar as a bond material keep the things bound together. In the novel, the
protagonist, jadine works like a tar to keep the family together. The phrase tar baby is also
symbolically used by the white people for the children of the black family. Jadine the protagonist
is a black female with attractive futures. She is a model and tries to have her own identity in
society. She loves the boy named son who also comes from the black family. The story reveals
the struggle and pain of jadine and son who come to America in search of living a good life
together in the beginning behaves badly with jadine . He tries to come near to jadine and smells
her hair. Jadine feels offended by the behaviour of son and feels that smelling someone like this
is the behaviour of animals. This behaviour reflects the patriarchal dominant behaviour of man
towards a woman.

Ahmed Seif Eddine Nefnouf , PhD candidate , reveals in his research posted in IJELLH that "
When Jadine is in her room laying in the fur coat , she thinks about her blackness and finds the
black men standing in her room. After a long conversation about clothes and jewellery he wants
to do sexual action with her , but she refuses and says : she stood with her back to him , rubbing
her wrists. She said : " I 'll have to tell valerian ." Thus , Means that she is controlled by white
male the owner of the house, jadine , wants to tell him about everything that son did with him .
She is a woman and cannot control herself because of her social position in this house unlike
couples."

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This indecent behaviour of the character son reveals that male- dominated society takes women
as an object of sexual gratification only . Plus the reaction of jadine reflects how a woman feels
in the adverse situation . Though she feels offended, she could not take action by herself and tells
Son that she will complain about this behaviour or her master who is white . So this thought
reflects that she cannot take action by herself.

There are many incidents which reflect the oppression of Blacks , especially women. As the
story progresses, son and jadine spend time together and slowly get attracted to each other and
fall in love. They decide to get back to America seeking a love life and living together . When
they come to America, the son notices prostitutes in one of the streets and most of them are
Black . He feels ashamed of this sight as he is also Black. Women get into selling their body just
to get bread and butter for them and their family members . Though Jadine comes to America to
lead a happy life with son , there is still a hitch and confusion in her mind as she is leaving her
own country and identity to live with someone.

Thematically, Tar Baby is much tighter than Morrison's earlier novels. It is a "highly
realistic novel, full of the actual riddles, the unanswerable questions, of our present lives," says
Mayreen Howard. It is through the conversation or rather debate between Jadine and Son that the
novelist explores the best way for blacks to be independent of the white man's world. Their
arguments, sometimes lengthy and tedious, vividly expose the novel's racial tension. This tension
is conveyed through suspicion and prejudices of the black characters. John Irving writes:
It is the white world that has created this, and in the constant warring between Sidney,
Ondine, and Jadine, and between Jadine and Son ... Morrison uncovers all the stereotypical racial
fears felt by whites and blacks alike. Like any ambitious writer, she's unafraid to employ these
stereotypes-she embraces the representative quality of her characters without embarrassment,
then proceeds to make them individuals too. What one witnesses in 'Tar Baby' is the fact that
Morrison has used European Americans as major characters in it. They would serve as "invisible
foes," Doreatha Drummond Mbalia asserts, in earlier novels that are hindered at, referred to,
laughed about, or ignored totally. This shows Morrison's heightened class consciousness for she
knows now the dialectical role they play as the ruling class in the African's exploitation and
oppression. While Pecola Breedlove struggles with the question of approbation, Sula struggles
against the traditional role of African women, and Milkman struggles with the issues of race and
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class, the two protagonists in Tar Baby must struggle together to resolve their opposing class
interests in order to unite. All these characters, nonetheless, become, in one way or the other,
subalterns and suffer against background of the existing power structure

Hybridity and identity

Hybridity refers to the state of when the colonizer gets out from the country , then the colonized
man affected a lot by the colonizer's past behaviour , conviction or what is so called neo-
colonialism (Ashcroft, Griffits , & Tiffin 1995)
Jadine loosened the straps of her halter and fanned her neck . "Well , let me tell you your face is
prettier than your kitchens," Ondine smiled .Look who's talking , the girl who molded for her
karen"
" Caron , Nanadine , Not Karen" "Whatever .my face wasn't in every magazine in Paris. Yours
was the prettiest thing I ever saw.
Mad.
Those white girls disappeared
Just disappear right off the page."

This quote shows the traits of bridity .means that " colonized" is behaving the same way as the
"colonizer". When ondine praises jadine because she appears in the first pages of magazines in
paris , which means that a poor girl that originates from slave ancestors in a European white
society honored with this honor of being a model. Thus through her praise for jadine she is
defining herself and proud of her belief among others (whites) . The black character (who is the
opposed one ) is behaving the same way that white character (who is oppressor ) do, so that
,blacks are imitating whites behaviors as a consequence of the oppression and effect of racism
imposed on them. Identity on the other hand relates to the way individuals define themselves .
Also , it relates to the person's self - concept . It was . Actually it was good he made me think
about myself that way , at that place . He might have convinced me if we'd had that talk on
Morgan Street . But in Orange County on a hundred and twenty acres of green velvet ? " She
laughed softly . " Can you believe it ? He wanted us to go back to Morgan Street and be thrilling

15
. " " Us ? He was going with you ? " " Just to get us started . He meant us Blacks : Sydney ,
Ondine and me .".
The pronoun " us " shows that they are proud of being blacks . They define their
self-conceptions and their identity , though Jadine is considering herself not one of them . Jadine
was living in Europe but she does not forget her origin of being black . The black protagonist
Jadine finds herself helpless to deny her identity , changing the place or the homeland does not
mean to exchange or replace your identity . Identity is something that cannot be separate from
one's mind . Also , identity is not something to be affected by racism or discrimination . The
woman appeared simply at a time when she had a major decision to make : of the three raucous
men , the one she most wanted to marry and who was desperate to marry her was exciting and
smart and fun and sexy ... so ? I guess the person I want to marry is him , but I wonder if the
person he wants to marry is me or a black girl ? And if it isn't me he wants , but any black girl
who looks like me , talks and acts like me , what will happen when he finds out that I hate ear
hoops , that I don't have to straighten my hair , that Mingus puts me to sleep , that sometimes
want to get out of my skin and be only the person inside - not American - not black - just me ?

this quote , Jadine, who is one of the major characters, is confused about her identity
whether she is black or white , African or American . She is thinking about the right man that she
wants to be with . She is concerned however that he wants to marry her only because she is black
while in truth she rejects all forms of blackness and black culture and that she sometimes even
wishes she could get out of her skin so as not to be black or American but just herself . She ran
away to the island after that because Ryk is white and the woman in yellow dress made her think
about her identity so she decided to go to her aunt and uncle to get their opinion . In fact , she is
defining her identity as being black although she is living inside a white European society . She
is not sure about her position , so she is still considered as black minority . The black protagonist
Jadine has doubts about her relationship with the white boy as a result of the racism imposed on
her
Within the question of identity we can discuss ethnicity which is incorporation of traits like
values , belief , behavior , memories , experience and loyalties belong to a specific group of
community
" Mango all right ? " she asked without turning her head .

16
" She ate a mouthful , " said Sydney .
" Contrary , " murmured his wife . She poured the eggs into a shallow buttered pan , and stirred
them slowly with a wooden spoon .
" It's all right , Ondine Lucky you had one . "
" I will say . Even the colored people down here don't eat mangoes" .
" Sure they do . " Sydney slipped a napkin from its ring . The pale blue linen complemented his
mahogany hands " Yardmen , " said Ondine . " And beggars .

In this quote when Ondine ate from the mangoes fruits in front of Yardman ,forgetting
that those workers were deprived or not allowed to eat mangoes . Ondine at that moment
remembers her belief and her origin though she is the butler's wife , so she can do whatever she
wants . Thus , being in a high position does not mean forgetting your ethnic identity .
Consequently , blacks are a minority and within this minority there is a classification of peoples
like the case of the black Ondine who is the butler's wife and the black yardman . Blacks are
aware of the racist behaviors towards them , but they never forget about their racial and ethnic
origin .
Identity and ethnicity are much related to diaspora . This term refers to the people who were
forced to migrate from their natural homeland . In literature diaspora has a relation which asks if
people save their identity, culture , religion , language while they are in another country or
culture .
" Ondine dreams of sliding into water , frightened that her heavy legs and swollen ankles will
sink her . But still asleep she turns over and touches her husband's back -- the dream dissolves
and with it the anxiety . He is in Balti moreno as usual and because it was always a red city in his
mind - red brick , red sun , redneck sand cardinals-- his dream of it now was rust - colored .
Wagons , fruit stands , all rust - colored . He had left that city to go to Philadelphia and there he
became one of those industrious Philadelphia Negroes - the proudest people in the race "
Sydney here is dreaming about his homeland and he feels diasporic . Diaspora is one
element of post colonialism which means enforcing individuals to migrate from their homeland .
This feeling of Sydney is a quest for identity as well ; he feels that he does not belong to this
country though he has been living in it for a long time . Here , the black character Sydney feels

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nostalgic to the place who belongs , where the place of all black ,so that , there is no kind of
racism , oppression or discrimination .

CHAPTER :3

Race, and gender in Toni Morrison's " Beloved"

In 1993 Toni Morrison was given the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her books connect with settings
and inquiries running from the way of bondage in the frontier period to the poetics and
legislative issues of Harlem in the Jazz Age, from investigations of the class contrasts that cut
crosswise over relations between African American people also, groups to the physical and
mental savagery that constituted isolation and Jim Crow. Certainly, it is difficult to distinguish an
"American reality" in which Morrison has not produced an accurate and singing mediation; even
as her books concentrate personally on the spirits of African Americans, white Americans are
interrelated just as by the courses in which her investigations uncover the operations of
whiteness-the repudiations of correspondence and the unsuccessful labors of equity that went
into its creation and maintenance. Similarly, as the global point of persuasion of a large
percentage of the members in the symposium illustrated, Morrison's record of the history of
"race" is not in any case constrained to American Reality.

In Beloved, gender oppression is not a visible problem that exists between African men
and women, but it is one that survives inside the context of the economic relationship between
master and slave, and race is alone a later justification for the subjugation of African people.
Understandably, then Morrison's choice of setting is germane in crystallizing the nature of
African's oppression, for the economic origin of both race and gender oppression is unobscured
in slavery. The crucial matter in her exploration of the collective solution to the African’s
oppression is the slave setting, for it serves to enhance the theme of Beloved by pointing up the
dialectical relationship between problem and solution: that his solution to the problem arises

18
from the status that makes it. Morrison's setting had to be one in which the strategy for solving
the problem was not only clearly evident but also inevitable.

Beloved represents the difficult, conflicting racial inheritance and identity of the blacks, both life
affirming and life devouring. It's an inheritance of pain, shame, despair that turns the victim and
victimizer, love into killing. It's very beauty and triumph, sharpened by deprivation, is linked
with despair and destruction. It's an inheritance, hard to embrace or disown - like the name of the
Beloved. The symbolic configuration of Beloved as the racial identity is proposed in the epitaph
of the book: "I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was
not beloved."

Beloved represents the racial inheritance and identity that its people require both to
acknowledge and disown, to love and to love, and it is a difference of opinion arising from the
poignant sense that they are the forsaken people of God . The difficult black inheritance is
suggested by the paradoxical relationship between Paul D and Beloved. when she makes love to
him. Her insistence on him to holler her name elicits in him a torrent of memories that is the core
of racial identity, hence that he croaked to himself, "Red Heart. Red Heat, Red Heart." Beloved 's
mesmerizing effect on Paul D on her sexual advance both attracts and repels him. The allusion to
Lot's wife hits at the danger of looking backward at a hard past . Beloved represented the racial
identity embedded in the past memories that all the references in the book try to escape but
cannot . Beloved's insistence of Paul D, against his revulsion, to call her the name Beloved
externalizes Paul D's inner compulsion to recognize and comprehend the humiliating and life
affirming racial past and identity.

Morrison makes a more complex Womanist space in the Beloved as characters, in their quests to
obtain self-forth, the conflict between controlling and falling prisoner to the places they inhabit.
Under schoolteacher's region, Sethe Suggs tries to make Sweet Home her own by gathering
flowers in the kitchen; however, she cannot relate safety because school teacher receives the
force to turn sweet home into a space that ruptures Sethe's body, mind and family. Furthermore,
Morrison initially suggests that 124 Bluestone road, under the Baby Sugg's dominion would

19
offer Sethe the healing and nurturing community necessary to "remember" herself. Yet, even
though Baby Suggs tries to eradicate the slavery's presence by remodeling 124, neither she nor
Sethe can control this space after schoolteacher invades her yard. 124 threatens to destroy its
inhabitants with its eighteen years of spiteful baby venom, and again after Sethe recognizes
Beloved. For Sethe, domestic spaces represent sites of crisis and self- destruction.

In Beloved, Morrison strikes a balance between missing or hostile female community and a
healing sisterhood. Beloved helps Sethe recall the painful memory of her birth, her mother's
hanging, and her own feelings of deprivation from her mother's inability to nurse her.

The cultural importance of Toni Morrison's most popular novel, Beloved, hardly can be
overstressed. Beloved, Toni Morrison's fifth Novel is "the book [that] had to exist. For Morrison,
this publication was a conscious act towards healing a painful wound: this publication to the
great social wrong of the enslavement of Africans. Her powerful words, on behalf of millions
give voice to a profound lament: the absence of a historical market to remind us never to let his
atrocity happen again. In its absence has neither erased nor diminishes its pain; rather, it reminds
us only for itself: of what is missing. The author was pleading for the wall or that bench or that
tower or that tree when he penned the final words. Morrison told The World. It is too significant,
though not surprising, that Toni Morrison took the responsibility for action to correct the
negligence. She frequently talks of the role of the black novelist in the world as one to address
and explore issues meaningful to the well being of the whole world community. As it responds
in kind to her expression of grief, and accepting her offering, Beloved made its way into the New
York Time's Bestseller Morrison wanted to explore the nature of slavery, it's from a rational or
the slave narrative perspective, but from within the day-to-day lived experience of the slave
themselves. Morrison claims she experienced many more worries in writing Beloved than with
any of her previous books. Morrison believed that this book is quite different from other books:

The death was like I'd never had a script ahead.....I recognized that I was in the society of people
whom I absolutely adored, in a position which I absolutely loathed. To stand in their society, to
heed, to imagine, to invent- and not to write – was exhausting. (Morrison and Richardson,
40)

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Unlike _The Bluest Eye,_ _Sula, Song of_ _Solomon_ and _Tar Baby_ Morrison's _Beloved_
deals with the life of a female slave, Sethe, who kills her own daughter called Beloved, to
prevent her from the ancients' suffering. Sethe's is an act of mercy killing; an act performed by a
mother out of concern for her own daughter and her community. Beloved is a product of the
invention of Morrison's imagination, but it is based on a factual story. It grew out of one of her
Random house projects, The Black Book (1974), a 'scrapbook' detailing three hundred years of
the folk journey of black America.

In fact, Morrison became aware of the story of Margaret Garner when she was gathering
materials for The Black Book. A fugitive from Kentucky, Garner attempts to kill her four
children rather than have them re -enslaved when they are all captured in Ohio in 1850. She
succeeds in killing only one, whose throat she slashes with a handsaw. Acknowledging the
sources while writing Beloved Morrison told Martha Darling:
I did research about a lot of things in this book in order to narrow it, to make it narrow and
deep, but I did not do much research on Margaret Garner other than the obvious stuff, because I
wanted to invent her life, which is a way of saying I wanted to be accessible to anything the
characters had to say about it. Recording her life as lived would not make me available to
anything that might be pertinent. Though Beloved in general is about slavery, it is not a call for
the abolition of slavery as it is a story narrated to a twentieth-century audience. It is mainly a
story of a black female slave who develops awareness about her own sub-human status on the
Sweet Home Plantation which ultimately awakens and forces her to develop a "quest for
meaning and wholeness in slavery and in freedom. It records the cruelty, violence and
degradation which makes a female slave, Sethe , to understand her situation and awakens her
from deep slumber
The major difference for Morrison between "Beloved" over the other novels was the sense of
melancholy she felt over the story. For exemplar, in writing the scene in which the minor is
killed, she recalls going up periodically to take long walks and feeding back to rewrite, "over and
o'er once more," She wanted the fact of infanticide to surface early in the narrative so that the
information would be known, the repugnance of the act was equally difficult for her as it is for
the readers. She was forced to struggle to find a voice communication in which the violence

21
would not "engorge “her or her readers, or struggle with the language itself. She struggled
against producing either obscenity or pornography. (William, Nelly, 9.10)

Beloved is a powerful, fully tender romance. Morrison strongly insists that her literary context
is essentially African American, and Beloved overtly involves slave narratives as it processes.
And the style and narrative procedures have more of a literary relationship to William Faulkner
and Virginia Woolf, than to any African American Writers. Love is a long perspective, is a child
of Faulkner's masterpiece, As I lay dying, while the heroine Sethe has more in common with
Lene Grove of Light in August than with any female character of African American Fiction. This
is anything but a limitation, aesthetically considered, but is rejected by Morrison and her critical
disciples alike. Ideology aside, Morrison's fierce assertion of independence is the norm for any
strong writer, but the author does not believe that this defense of a swerve from indubitable
literary origins can be a critical value in itself. Honey is a calculated series of shocks; whether
the retention of the shock is aesthetically persuasive has to seem secondary in a novel dedicated
to the innumerable victim of American Slavery. Morrison, whose earlier novels were not as over-
determined by ideological consideration as Beloved is, many have sacrificed lots of her art upon
the altar of a government, perhaps admirable in itself, but not necessarily in the inspection and
repair of high literature.

Toni Morrison creates focal characters that don't live in a vacuum in light of the fact that they
inhale and come together with others inside the story construction of every book. As they strike
all through the novel, these characters uncover layers of feelings that expand the peer user's
creative ability. Morrison goes to an affection scene that rattles the spirit. She uncovers an
enthusiasm that rises above social and monetary foundations. Morrison emphatically puts stock
in structuring an abnormal relationship inside her books; Sula Mae Peav and Nile Wright Greene
in Sula, Jadine

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RACE

The term race refers to groups of people who have differences and similarities in biological
traits deemed by society to be *socially significant* , meaning that people treat other people
differently because of them. For illustration, while conflicts and similarities in eye color have not
been treated as socially significant, differences and similarities in skin color have. According to
John H. Relethford, author of _The Fundamentals of Biological_ _Anthropology_ , race "is a
group of populations that share some biological characteristics.... These populations differ from
other groups of populations according to these characteristics." Scientists can divide some
organisms into racial categories easier than others, such as those which remain isolated from one
another in different environments. In contrast, the race concept doesn't go so comfortably with
humans. That's because not only do humans exist in a broad scope of environments, they also
move backwards and forwards between them. As a consequence, there's a high level of gene
flow between people groups that makes it tough to devise them into distinct groups.

Skin color remains a primary trait Westerners use to point people into racial groups. However,
someone of African descent may be the same skin tone as someone of Asian lineage. Someone
of Asian descent may be the same tone as someone of European origin. Where do one race end
and another lead off? In addition to skin color, features such as hair texture and face-shape have
been utilized to separate people into races. But many people groups cannot be categorized as
Caucasoid, Negroid or Mongoloid, the defunct terms used for the so-called three races. Take
Native Australians, for illustration. Although typically dark-skinned, they tend to hold curly hair
which is often light colored. On the basis of skin color, we might be tempted to label these
people as African, but on the basis of hair and facial shape they might be classified as European,"
Relethford writes. "One approach has been to make a fourth category, the Australoid.

Why else is grouping people by race difficult? The concept of race posits that more genetic
variation exists interracially than intra- racially when the reverse is true . But around 10% of

23
variation in humans exists between the so-called races. Then, how did the concept of race take
off in the West, especially in the United States? . The stand for the thought of race espoused by
Judge Tucker, and still popular today, that there exist naturally, physical divisions among
humans that are hereditary, reflected in morphology, and roughly, but correctly captured by
terms like Black, White, and Asian (or Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid).Under this
perspective, one's ancestors and epidermis ineluctably determine membership in a genetically
defined racial group. The link between human physiognomy and racial status is concrete; in
Judge Tucker's words, every individual's race has been "stamped" by nature......Despite the
prevalent belief in biological races, overwhelming evidence proves that race is not biological.
Biological races like Negroid and Caucasoid simply do not survive. [A]. .. Newly popular
[argument] among several scholars, [is] that races are totally illusory, whether as a biological or
social concept. Under this thinking if there is no natural link between looks and races , then no
association exists .

On that point are no genetic characteristics possessed by all Blacks but not by non- Blacks;
similarly, there is no factor or cluster of genes common to all Whites but not to non-Whites.
One’s race is not decided by a single factor or information accumulated by various scientists
demonstrate, contrary to popular belief, that intragroup differences exceed inter-group conflicts
(6). That is, greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and
White than between these populations. This finding refutes the assumption that racial divisions
reflect fundamental genetic differences.
Note this does not imply that people are genetically indistinguishable from each other, or even
that small population groups cannot be genetically differentiated. Small populations, for example
the Xhosa or the Basques, share similar gene frequencies. However, specialization is a function
of separation, usually geographic, and comes in gradations rather than across fractures.. The
opinion that humans can be divided along White, Black, and Yellow lines reveals the social
rather than the scientific origin of races. The estimation that there exist three races, and that these
races are "Caucasoid," "Negroid," and "Mongoloid," is rooted in the European imagination of the
Middle Ages, which encompassed only Europe, Africa, and the Near East.. However, the history
of science has long been the history of failed attempts to justify these social beliefs. Along the
way, various minds tried to fashion practical human typologies along the following physical

24
axes: skin color, hair texture, facial angle, jaw size, cranial capacity, head mass, frontal lobe
mass, brain surface fissures and convolutions, and even body lice. As one student notes, " the
nineteenth century was a period of exhaustive and--as it turned out--futile search for criteria to
fix and describe race differences.". ... Attempts to define racial categories by physical attributes
ultimately failed. By 1871, some leading intellectuals had recognized that even applying the
word "race" "was virtually a confession of ignorance or evil intent." The genetic studies of the
final few decades have simply added more nails to the coffin of biological race. Evidence proves
that those features usually coded to race, for example, height, skin color, hair texture, and facial
structure, do not correlate strongly with genetic mutation. The rejection of race in science is now
almost complete. In the final stage, we should embrace historian Barbara Fields's succinct
conclusion with regard to the plausibility of biological races: "Anyone who continues to believe
in race as a physical attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace disclaimers of
biologists and geneticists, might as well also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the
tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still while the sun moves."

Race in Social Culture:

To define a "race" as a vast group of people loosely bound together with historically contingent,
socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. I indicate that race must be
realized as a sui generis social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the
links between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. In other words, social
meanings connect our faces to our people. Race is neither an essence nor an
illusion,[Anthias,Davis. ] but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process subject to
the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of everyday decisions. ..
[R] referents of terms like Black, White, Asian, and Latino are social groups, not genetically
distinct branches of humankind.

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 CONCLUSION

This text, definitely, creates a space where social justice is envisioned, constructed and very
much desired. One of the main components of feminist literary texts is a message about the
necessity for a society in which women in general, and women of colour, (here in this case Black
or Dalit) are seen not as a hindrance, but as vital members of the culture they inhabit. And this
message is overtly embedded in the select Dalit texts and Morrison's fiction. Dalit women's stand
and the trauma of Dalit women are voiced by several Dalit writers Sharan Kumar Limbale (The
Outcaste), Om Prakash Valmiki (Joothan), Bama ( karukku and sangati). In the next chapters of
the study, there will be an effort to explore extensively the corpus of Morrison's writing and to
study its comparability with Dalit literary texts written by the abovementioned writers.

As it has started to be stated now, Toni Morison can without quite a bit of an extent be
scrutinized as a dim ladies extremist maker. She talks as a Black woman in a world that still
disparages the voice of the Black woman. Her books especially advance themselves to ladies'
lobbyist readings because of the courses in which they challenge the social norms of sexual
introduction, race, and class. Dull ladies' activists suggest that the Black woman and the Black
woman writer organize different social regions in securing a place in American culture and
composing-not only those sex and class found in all ladies' dissident systems moreover that of
race. Subsequently, Black women writers have always, out of need, expected to move outside of
the mind-boggling white (tallying the white woman's) creative system. Their restriction from the
standard masterful traditions drove them to make and use elective strategy for passing on,
drawing upon their own specific experiences of manhandle and impenetrability to shape their
compositions and to address the characters and conditions inside it. Morrison's mindfulness
toward the Black society and the perseverance of its momentous culture can be seen all through
her theoretical work. She by and large returns to the subjects of underestimation and irritation of
blacks in the white society.
Gynocentric perspectives help the pursuers to test into the lives of women in Afro-American
social universes bitterly. Women endeavored to exist and expect their parts in all the possible
courses in family and society however, men were either truant from the families or contracted

26
from their commitments. Women have strived hard under the association of subjugation to fulfill
their parts as mothers. This affirmation of self identity is the principal requirement of ladies'
activists and it transforms into their circumstance in social requests where women are taken as
useless animals, as items with prize names. Remembering the true objective to think about
themselves, dim women, fight for their rights and are regarded as people from the dim social
requests.
The writer of the novel explores the pain and agony of a Black woman. Being an African black
woman ,Toni herself experienced the oppressions done to the Black people. Black women live in
the state of fear of being treated badly. They also have to face sexual misbehavior even by their
own community. Despite all these odds, a woman wants to have her own identity in the society
she lives in. Jadine loves a man and wants to spend her life with him but still she does not want
to sacrifice her self-identity. She cannot compromise with the identity she owns in society. The
story also reveals that if a woman decides to fight against the oppression and the evils of the
society, she can do anything. They also have the right to live with pride and self respect.

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 REFERENCE

1. Toni Morrison , Tar Baby, 12 March 1981.

2. Toni Morrison, Beloved, September 1987
3. “Toni Morrison”, En. Wikipedia.org, 2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni Morrison
4. https://doi.org/10.24113/ijohmn.v5i3.100

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