Images of Black Women in 3 Novels

The thesis of the study will be that, despite these differences, the overall messages of the three novels is that it is a tragedy that human beings are judged according to their skin color, and it is an even greater tragedy when people are judged by the members of their own race because of skin color differences.

Pecola Breedlove, the young black protagonist of Morrison's novel, is dark-skinned and is seen by almost everybody else in the novel as a symbol of all that is ugly and undesirable in society. Worse, Pecola sees herself in the same way. She longs to be white and pretty and lovable, like Shirley Temple. She is hated by everybody, including herself.

Pecola sees the only answer to be her complete transformation into a white girl, symbolized by her desire for blue eyes: "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed" (Morrison 46). She thinks about a white shopkeeper and the look he gives her, a look in which she feel

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t in both books, the black female suffers great injustices which line up against her struggle for freedom and identity. Just because Janie is light-skinned does not mean that she will inevitably find liberation and love. In fact, it can hardly be argued that Janie ends up as a truly liberated woman. Only if we keep in mind that Hurston wrote the book in the 1930s can we see the protagonist in a proper cultural and historical context. By today's light, Janie is a woman who still defines herself according to her relationships with men. Tea Cake is a man who respects her more than other men have, but he still abuses her, and the author seems to accept that this is a part of even the best heterosexual relationships. Whatever stylistic shortcomings Hurston might have, her novel is nevertheless a work dedicated to exploring a black woman's journey toward relative freedom. She seems to lean toward the comic or grotesque in her descriptions and dialogue, as opposed to Morrison's more restrained and realistic style. Especially off-putting is her depiction of the speech patterns of her black characters, which would probably be considered racist today. Both authors are capable of finely lyrical writing, however. In any case, again, the essen
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Emma Lou, Morrison Pecola's, Tea Cake, Bell Hooks, Shirley Temple, Janie Crawford, Pecola Geraldine, Bluest Eye, Keith Byerman's, Blacker Berry, skin color, emma lou, blue eyes, lighter skin, black female, blacker berry, own race, black women, lighter-skinned blacks, eyes watching god, gender skin, wallace thurman's blacker, skin color tragedy, blacks lighter skin, thurman's blacker berry,
Approximate Word count = 2156
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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