The University of Chicago Press

Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English Author(s): Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi Source: Signs,
Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 63-80 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174287 . Accessed: 03/12/2013 12:22
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VIEWPOINT
Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English

Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi
We are not white.We are not Europeans. We are black will like the Africansthemselves.... We and theAfricans of black people be workingfora common goal: the uplift everywhere.[ALICE WALKER,The Color Purple] Whatdoes a blackwoman novelist go throughas she comes in contactwith and realizes that Shakespeare's illustrioussisters white feminist writing to the second a situation thathas turnedtheminto impotent sex, belong eunuchs withoutroomsof theirown in whichto read and writetheirvery own literature, so thattheyhave become madwomen,now emergingfrom fortheirrightsby engaging in the acrimothe attic,determinedto fight nious politics of sex? Does she precipitately enter the lists with them in Euro-American their further and, victory, against patriarchy jeopardize the chances of her race in the sharingof political,social, and economic power? Does she imitatetheirwar effort and throwthe gauntlet down to challengeblack patriarchy? Does she fight thesexual war some of the timeand the racial war at othertimes?Does she remainindifferent to the outer sex war and, maintaininga truce in the black sexual power tussle,fightonly the race war? in Englishhave understandably Many black female novelists writing not allied themselveswithradical whitefeminists; rather,theyhave explored the gamut of other positions and produced an exciting,fluid
in Culture and Society 1985, vol. 11, no. I] [Signs:Journalof Women ? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rightsreserved. 0097-9740/86/1101-0002$01.00
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corpus that defies rigid categorization.More often than not, where a to be is likely a blackwoman writer whitewoman writer maybe a feminist, consciousher with a "womanist."That is, she willrecognize that,along ness of sexual issues, she must incorporate racial, cultural, national, economic, and politicalconsiderationsinto her philosophy. It is importantto establishwhymanyblack women novelistsare not feministsin the way that their white counterpartsare and what the women writare between them. Africanand Afro-American differences thatseparate them. in spiteof factors ers share similaraestheticattitudes because of theirrace, fromwhitefeminists As a group, theyare distinct because theyhave experienced the past and presentsubjugationof the subtle (or not so subtle) control black population along withpresent-day exercised over them by the alien, Westernculture. These extraliterary have helped to make theblack femalenovelin Englishwhat determinants between white and black it is today and partlyaccount for the conflict in sexual politics.To illustratethe women over strategiesand priorities black womanistaesthetic,I willcite manynovels by black women in both without literatures Africanand Afro-American goingintodetailed analyis to establishthatwomanismis widespread and sis of them; myintention to pinpoint the factorsthat bind black female noveliststogetherunder thisdistinct praxis. On the Africanside I willreferto Bessie Head's When Rain CloudsGather, Maru, and A Question ofPower(South Africa); Flora Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Is One and Idu (Nigeria); Enough Nwapa's a Letter So Ba's Mariama and (Senegal). On the Long Killjoy(Ghana); on MargaretWalker's side myreferencesturnprimarily Afro-American Timeless Paule Marshall'sTheChosen Place,the Jubilee; Peopleand Praisesong and The Bluest Morrison's Toni the Widow; ofSolomon;and Song Eye for Alice Walker's The ThirdLifeof GrangeCopelandand The ColorPurple.
** *
Since the feministnovel is stillevolving,the followingdescriptive but serveas a workingbase: the and hypothetical are tentative statements novel is a formof protestliteraturedirected to both men and feminist it women. Protesting againstsexismand the patriarchalpower structure, or both. It demands thatits is unapologeticallypropagandistor strident readers, whetherthe male oppressorsor the femaleoppressed, be aware of ideological issues in order that it may change their attitudesabout it mustnot as feminist, therefore, For a novel to be identified patriarchy. some also should but issues women's and women with posit deal just ideology.' A reader can expect to find in it some aspects of a feminist
1. Ama Ata Aidoo dismissesthe assumption that all materialdealing withwomen is because I writeabout women. Are men writers necessarilyfeminist:"I am not a feminist
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combinationof the following themes:a critical perceptionof and reaction to patriarchy, oftenarticulatedthroughthe struggleof a victim or rebel who must face a patriarchalinstitution; to the inequities of sensitivity sexism allied with an acceptance of women and understandingof the choices open to them; a metamorphosisleading to female victory in a feminist the failureto eliminatesexism; a utopia, or a stasis,signifying discourse. As withrecipes,so stylespiced withthe acrimonyof feminist withworksof art; resultsare variable. Womanistnovels,while theytoo to a greateror lesserdegree,laystress on maypossess thesecharacteristics otherdistinctive featuresto leave an impressionmarkedly different from thatof feminist works.This divergence,I think, necessitates the separate I have given to black female novels. classification Consider Jane Eyre,a complex and far-reaching novel that Sandra Gilbertand Susan Gubar, in theirscintillating as partof analysis,identify the feminist tradition.2 The feminist characterof the novel is apparent in the portrait ofJane as a rebelagainstpatriarchal institutions, represented as theReverend Brocklehurst, bysuch domineeringmale figures Edward Rochester,and St.John Rivers.For the whitefeminist reader the novel's ending is a positiveone: Jane triumphs throughachievingacknowledged equality withher husband, Rochester. For the discerning black reader, however,Jane Eyre is not just a feministnovel, but a disarminglyrealisticappraisal of white survival ethics. David Cecil in his Early Victorian Novelists saw in the Heathcliffan economic(and, Edgar Lintonclash in EmilyBronte'sWutheringHeights I mightadd, a racial) dimension,an interpretation thatcan be extended to the Bertha-Rochester The indomitableWest Indian mulatrelationship. to, Bertha Rochester,exploited forher sexual attractiveness and wealth, is locked up because thepatriarchal Rochestersaysshe is mad.3Rochester,
male chauvinistpigsjust because theywriteabout men? Or is a writer an Africannationalist about Africans?... Obviouslynot... no writer, just bywriting femaleor male, is a feminist about women. Unless a particular just bywriting writer commits hisor her energies,actively, to exposing the sexisttragedyof women's history;protesting the ongoing degradation of women; celebratingtheirphysicaland intellectual capabilities,and above all, unfoldinga vision of the role [of women],"he or she cannot be pronounced a feminist. revolutionary "Unwelcome Pals and DecorativeSlaves-or Glimpsesof Women as Writers and Characters in ContemporaryAfricanLiterature," in Medium andMessage:Proceedings International ofthe on African Literature and theEnglishLanguage (Calabar, Nigeria: University Conference of Calabar, 1981), 1:17-37, esp. 33. 2. Sandra M. Gilbertand Susan Gubar, TheMadwoman inthe Attic: TheWoman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination(New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1979), pp. 338 ff. 3. David Cecil,EarlyVictorian Novelists (London: Constable& Son, 1935); cf.JeanRhys, WideSargassoSea (New York: W. W. Norton& Co., 1967). In thisfictional of interpretation JaneEyre, RhyspresentsMrs. Rochesteras a Creole. See also Elaine Showalter,A Literature of Their Own:British Women Novelists Bronte toLessing from (London: Virago Ltd., 1978), p. 124.
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likesher wealthand her sexual as is typicalof exploitativewhitemasters, the color that,among other her tint of but the dislikes skin, possibilities in first him the to vulnerable made her factors, place. He castsher aside,4 and attemptsto marrya whitewoman as ifthe black one has has affairs, metamorphosed into an invisiblewoman; for the "mad" Bertha, it is a catch-22 situation. She therefore fights for survival. She wreaks inclinedRochesterand his femaleaccomvengeance on the polygynously who should know betterthan to supplant plice, "virtuous,plain Jane," another femaleto secure a husband. Bertha burns down Thornfield,the whitepatriarchaledifice,to the chagrinof thewhiteman and woman. To from the black viewpoint,the white rightthe inequities of patriarchy, in life,havingas mate a man in woman mustaccept a more lowlysituation withwhomshe is equal. So far,so good. However reduced circumstances, when Bronte allows Bertha, betrayed on all sides by white womenAdele's mother; her guard, Grace Poole; and her rivalsfor Rochester's love, especiallyJane-to die as the patriarchycollapses, she creates a tragicvision of feminismfor a black reader. Such an ending makes the novel ambivalent;or is it, perhaps, that the feminist utopia is for white women only? For black women who would be feministsthe lesson is the black woman must not be so the establishment, simple: in fighting The factthatthislesson has mad as to destroyherselfwiththe patriarchy. been learned by manyblack women novelists explains theirlack of partly enthusiasm for feminism's implied endorsementof total whitecontrol. Hence theirwomaniststance. The worksof Nigeria's Buchi Emecheta,who has been livingin exile in England for almost twenty years and startedto writeaftera marital fiasco,are somethingof an exception. Emecheta's two autobiographical Citizen(1974), are deeply novels, In theDitch (1972) and Second-Class in whichshe was nurtured. grounded in the Britishand Irish feminism Adah, Emecheta's alter ego in these novels,is rebellious. Unlike Bertha Mason-a predecessor of Adah's insofaras theyare both black women experienced alone in a whitesociety-she successfully patriarchy, fights as the Britishwelfare state (In theDitch). She also triumphsover her bestial in his sexuality Citizen), Nigerian husband, Francis (Second-Class even though he is backed by a long Nigeand economic irresponsibility, rian patriarchaltradition.In England, Adah transcendsthe female predicamentbyobtaininga divorce(whichwould be frownedon in Nigeria), and she also copes withthe burden of caringforfivechildrenin a hostile environment. of feminists, Emecheta,in her laternonautoFollowingthe tradition slant-The Bride biographical works whose titlessuggest their feminist
4. Kate Millett(Sexual Politics [London: Sphere Books, 19721,p. 39) assertsthatblack men are more readyto stand by theirwhitewomen thanwhitemen are prepared to protect their black women.
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Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), TheJoys (1979), Double ofMotherhood Yoke(1982)-tends to feminizethe black male, makinghim weak, flabby, and unsuccessful. This disquieting tendency also calls into question Emecheta's opinion about women. She presents the black male as the "other,"a ridiculous"object,"to borrowSimone de Beauvoir's apt vocabulary. He is destined to be "killed" by Emecheta but is incongruously bid to remainfaithful to resurrected, perhaps in the author'slast-minute Nigerian patriarchalreality.Her heroines are mostlystrongcharacters who struggleagainstpatriarchy become enslaved onlyto die in childbirth, in marriage, or die insane, abandoned by the children they nurtured. Emecheta'sdestruction of her heroinesis a feminist trait thatcan be partly attributed to narcissismon the part of the writer.5 The Africanfeminist writer's positionis complicatedby the factthather worksometimeslacks since the traditional Africanwoman she uses as protagonist authenticity, beset by problemsof survivaland so is hardlyaware of her is, in reality, sexistpredicament;the feminist desire to presenther as rebelliouscan, in the contextof this reality, be merelyludicrous. If the feminist movementdesires the illumination of female literary of women,6 the experience in order to alterthe statusquo forthe benefit African woman writer'sdilemma in a feministcontext becomes immediatelyapparent. Black women are disadvantaged in several ways: as blacks they,withtheirmen, are victims of a whitepatriarchalculture; as women theyare victimizedby black men; and as black women theyare also victimized on racial,sexual, and class groundsbywhitemen. In order to cope, Emecheta largely ignores such complexitiesand deals mainly withthe black woman as victim of black patriarchy. This preoccupationis Emecheta's zeal for atypicalof blackwomen writers, though indefatigable black feminismcould become catching.
Interviewedduring the feminist book fairin London in June 1984, thewhiteSouth Africanjournalist Beata Lipman was forthright about the stateof women's writing in South Africa.Accordingto her, "Racism is a more urgent matterthan sexism,"7 a statement thatcan be extended to many Third World areas if we substitute or backwardhunger,poverty, ness for "racism." Much as she downplaysher power, the whitewoman
5. Compare Myrajehlen, "Archimedesand the Paradox of FeministCriticism," Signs: in Culture and Society Journalof Women 6, no. 4 (Summer 1981): 575-601, esp. 598. 6. Cheri Register,"LiteraryCriticism," in Culture and Society Signs:Journal ofWomen 6, no. 2 (Winter 1980): 268-82, esp. 269. 7. "The FeministBook Fair," West Africa(June 18, 1984), p. 1263. The East African writer Grace Ogot considersotherdimensions,such as "economicstruggle" and the generation gap; see Oladele Taiwo, FemaleNovelists ofModernAfrica(London: Macmillan Publishers, 1984), p. 162.
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thatthe black man or woman does not have. Moreover, has an authority writerprotestsagainst sexism,the black woman woman white the while one among manyevils; she battlesalso withthe it with as deal must writer fromracismand poverty. What,afterall, is the dehumanizationresulting are not limited writers women Black a in value of sexual equality ghetto? to tackle but to issues definedbytheirfemaleness questionsraised attempt is vision raciallyconscious in its by their humanity.Thus the womanist The politics of the life. black underscoring of the positive aspects of it is more complex womanistis unique in its racial-sexualramifications; than white sexual politics,for it addresses more directlythe ultimate question relatingto power:8how do we share equitablytheworld'swealth and concomitantpower among the races and between the sexes? White feminists compare the situationof whitewomen consistently "serfsin a feudal withthatof "slaves," "colonials,"the "black minority," Since these are demeaning positionsto the "Dark Continent."9 system," whichblack people have been assigned and whichtheystillhold in many partsof the world,such comparisonsalienate black readers because they black subordination.Indeed, the whitefeminist underscore yettrivialize stance arouses black suspicion thatwhiteswillfurther suppress blacks to in the white,sexual, politicalgame. make provisionfora female victory whetherin Africaor somewherein therefore, The black woman writer, the diaspora, tends to believe that white feminismis yet another ploy, againsther and hers.The commonblackheritage perhaps unintentional, of white and by the introjection of subjugation by whites,both directly values and mores,has determinedthe natureof modernblack life,which S. E. Ogude rightlyrecognizes as a living traditionof sufferingand To generate public awareness and understandingof this humiliation.10 of storiesthat are tellingly central factthrough the writing appropriate concern.She is thusnotas first is theblack woman writer's and instructive or exclusivelyinterestedin sexism as is the feminist. primarily conscious of black impotencein black woman writer, The intelligent the contextof white patriarchalculture,empowers the black man. She believesin him; hence herbooks end in integrative imagesof themale and
8. Millett, pp. 38-39. She notes thatsociallythe whitefemalehas a "higherstatus"than the black male who is in turn "higher" than the black female. some of her phraseologyfromSimone de Beauvoir (The inherits 9. Ibid., p. 33. Millett SecondSex,trans.H. M. Parshley[Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1972], p. 609); see also Barbara CharlesworthGelpi, "A Common Language: The American Woman Poet," in Feminist Poets,ed. Sandra M. Gilbertand Susan Gubar Sisters: Essayson Women Shakespeare's Indiana Press, 1979), pp. 269-79, esp. p. 269; Elaine Showalter, University (Bloomington: ed. Elizabeth Abel and Sexual Difference, "FeministCriticismin the Wilderness,"in Writing resembles writing (Brighton: HarvesterPress, 1982), pp. 9-35, esp. p. 31. Recent feminist Afro-Americanmale literaturefromthe Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s. World 10. S. E. Ogude, "Slaveryand the AfricanImagination: A CriticalPerspective," 24. 1 no. 21-25, esp. Literature (Winter 1981): Today55,
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female worlds. Given thiscommitment, she can hardlybecome a strong ally of the white feministuntil (perhaps) the political and economic fortunes of theblack race improve.Withtheworldpowerstructure as itis, what would the relevance be of a black female character'sstruggleto be equal to such a black man as, for example, on the Afro-American side, Richard Wright'sbestializedBigger Thomas or Ralph Ellison's eternally InvisibleMan orJames Baldwin's sterileLeo Proudhammer; hibernating or, on theAfricanside, as Ngugi wa Thiong'o's treacherousmale or Wole or Chinua Achebe's insecure Okonkwo? Soyinka's driftinginterpreter Justas Baldwin rejectsintegration into the burninghouse of the United recoilsfrommere equalitybecause, States,the black woman instinctively as in Aidoo's Our Sister she has to aim much higherthan thatand Killjoy, knitthe world's black familytogetherto achieve black, notjust female, 1 transcendence. Aidoo mighthave been speakingformostblackwomenwriters when she diagnosed the Africanwoman writer's disease: "Life forthe African woman writer is definitely 'not crystal stair.'It is a mostpeculiar predicament. But we also share all, or nearlyall the problems of male African do not have with writers"-sharing experience thatwhitefemalewriters theirmale counterparts.'2 For the Africanman or woman, thereare the basic problems of writingin a borrowed language and form; for most blacks the difficulties in gettingpublished when there are so few black issue. Then, too,manyAfricannovels publishinghouses remainsa critical are slight or lack the profundity foundin manyblackAmericanones. The traditionof Africanart withits simplicity and ephemerality-as can be seen in Africanarchitecture as wellas in oral and performedliteratureshas been bequeathed to Africanwomen writers. Yet theyhave to produce novelsin a milieuthathankersafterthecomplex and theenduring.At the same time,who willread what theyproduce when a large proportionof the home audience hates reading or cannot read-a predicamentshared by black Americans? does not Writingfroma positionof power, the whitefemale writer face such difficulties. Instead she concentrates on patriarchy, analyzingit, it,detectingitstentaclesin the mostunlikely attacking places. Patriarchy, as it manifestsitselfin black ghettosof the world, is a domestic affair withoutthe wide reverberations ithas in whitepatriarchy where the issue is real worldpower. The ultimate difference betweenthefeminist and the womanistis thuswhateach sees of patriarchy and whateach thinks can be
11. AmiriBaraka, "Afro-American Literature& Class Struggle," BlackAmerican LiteratureForum 14, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 5-14, esp. 12. Baraka treatstheblackfemalepredicament froman economic,racial,and socialviewpoint:"Third Worldwomenin thiscountry suffer a tripleoppression, if theyare workingwomen, as workersunder capitalism-class oppression, national oppression and oppression because of theirsex." 12. Aidoo (n. 1 above), p. 32.
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changed. Black sexism is a microcosmicreplicationof Euro-American racism, a concept Alice Walker recognizes. In The ColorPurple,Nettie thattheOlinka in noteducatinggirlsare "likewhitepeople at home writes who don't want colored people to learn."'3 It followsthat for the black woman racism and sexism must be eradicated together. Since the 1960s, when the idea of independence and nationalism blew throughAfricaand the diaspora, the whitewoman has intensified driveforequalitywithwhitemen,a positionthatcomplicates her feminist her response to racial issues and to black feminism. Many whitefeminist criticshave confirmedblack suspicionof duplicity by rarelydealing with black women's writing, curtlydismissingit on the pretextof theirignorance of it.14This neglecthas a positiveside in thatit has encouraged the between the whiteand emergence of black women critics.The conflict black positionsis concretizedin black women's antagonismtowardtheir white counterparts'sexual politics.It shows in the consistently unsymwomen black in novels characters female white of by patheticportrayal betweenwhite writers-a situationthat signals the extentof the conflict and black womanists. feminists is Aidoo's portraitof the GerA revealing example of thishostility FirstMarja appears man Marja, wifeof Adolf (Hitler?)in OurSister Killjoy. when she presentstheblackgirl,Sissie,withnumerousoffers as a tempter to a sexual advance. Sissie of fruitsin symbolicgesturesthatlead finally recoilsat whatshe considersabominable,thoughher horroris mixedwith Baldwinian tenderness, and rejects feminismwhile she moves toward 1 womanism. Similarly, in A Questionof Power Head demonstrates, of Camilla, thatthe whitewoman yearnsto control the portrait through them. She is stopped by an open women and black men by humiliating confrontation. have dealt withthe whitewoman even more The Afro-Americans African writers-understandably,since the racist viciously than have situationis more exacerbatingfor them than for theiraverage African counterpart. What could be more damaging than Margaret Walker's or of her daughter, of Big Missyas the hard matriarch inJubilee portrait of the fragile, in the Miss the lily-livered Lillian, stereotype contrasting of her black slaves, docile woman? Big Missy,forher diabolical treatment dead and receivesherjust desertswhen-with mostof her family finally
13. Alice Walker,TheColorPurple (New York: WashingtonSquare Press, 1983), p. 145. BlackAmer14. Deborah E. McDowell, "New DirectionsforBlack FeministCriticism," Forum14, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 153-58, esp. 153. ican Literature 15. Black American writers operate in a more liberal atmospherethan theirAfrican see, e.g., to tend and so portraylesbian relationshipsmore sympathetically: counterparts & Indigo;Paule Marshall'sThe Cypress Walker'sTheColor Purple;Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, where lesbianismis depicted ChosenPlace, theTimeless for theWidow, People and Praisesong Pool in the is Rebeka Njau, Ripples An exceptionto the rule in Africanliterature tangentially. Heinemann Books, 1975). (London:
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Yankee guns booming as if at the back of her plantation-she starts flatusand becomes incontinent a massivestroke.As if emitting following that were insufficient, Walker finishesthe white female by finallyporMiss Lillian (who is also adept at emitting flatusat gatherings)as traying insane and helpless, in sharp contrastto the black Vyry,who thrives under hardships created by Big Missyand other whitecharacters. Paule Marshallis as devastating as MargaretWalkerin her portrait of the whitewoman in BrownGirl,Brownstones and even more trenchant in TheChosen she makes an important Place, theTimeless People.In the latter, historical pointthroughher whitecharacterHarriet,whose wealthhad its origins in the slave trade; like Margaret Walker, Marshall asserts that slaverybenefitedwhitewomen as well as whitemen. The whitewoman's dubious role in the racial contextis further underscoredby the behavior of a white woman, the English lover of the black woman, Merle. The incidenthas the characterof a historicalparable. Determined to negate Merle's attemptsat connecting with her black African roots through marriage (worldwide unityof blacks), the white woman (Britain), in a symbolic,neocolonialist move, sets the African husband and the West Indian wife against each other,recklessly and treacherously destroying the budding relationshipbetween black people in Africa and the diaspora; she has economic control,and her tacticsare to divide and rule. Neofeminism's"socialistconnection" smacks of the black flirtation withcommunismin the 1940s.16A black and whitefemalealliance would have similarcharacteristics. Like the earlier flirtation, such connections would come to nothing much, since Euro-American economy with its willnot readilypermitblacksor women to win.So black presentstructure female writers what Sheila Rowbothamhas surexpress in theirwriting mised about the world economic situation:"A feminist movementwhich is confinedto the specificoppression of women cannot,in isolation,end If the ultimate aim of radical feminism exploitationand imperialism."17 is a separatist,idyllic existence away from the hullabaloo of the men's the ultimateaim of womanismis the unityof blackseverywhere world,'8 under theenlightenedcontrolof men and women.Each is finally separatist-the one sexually,the other racially-and theirdifferent goals create part of the disunityin the women's movement. Recognition of the impact of racism, neocolonialism,nationalism, economic instability, and psychological disorientationon black lives, when superimposed on the awareness of sexismthatcharacterizesblack women's writing,makes concern about sexism merely one aspect of
16. Sheila Rowbotham,Woman's Man's World Consciousness, (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1973), p. ix. 17. Ibid., pp. 123-24. 18. RosemaryRadford Ruether,Sexism and God-Talk: a Feminist Towards (LonTheology don: SCM Press, 1983), pp. 229 ff.
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womanismfromfeminism, womanism.Black women writers distinguish and particularconcern of black critical as their patriarchy perception just for black women distinguishthe themes in theirworksfromthe acceptance of obnoxious male prejudicesagainstwomenoftenfoundin writing by black men.
and was pleasantly I arrivedat the term"womanism"independently surprised to discover that my notion of its meaning overlaps withAlice Walker's. She employsit to denote the metamorphosisthatoccurs in an adolescent girl,such as Ruthor Celie, when she comes to a sense of herself as a woman; involvedis what Morrison,withher Pecola, refersto as "the and Ntozake Shange representsthroughthe little-girl-gone-to-woman" & Indigo.The young girl inherits Cypress maturingIndigo in Sassafrass, eventsuch as menarcheor afteran epiphany womanismaftera traumatic or or as a resultof the experience of racism,rape, death in the family, sudden responsibility. Through coping withthe experience she moves beyond the selfto thatconcern forthe needs of otherscharaccreatively on Nwapa, Alison Perrymade a While writing of adult womanists. teristic comment on Walker's extended usage of the word that tallies with my understandingof it. Accordingto Perry,"If Flora Nwapa would accept a label at all, she would be more at home withBlack Americanauthor Alice Walker's term 'womanist,'meaning a woman who is 'committedto the survivaland wholeness of the entire people, male and female.'"19 Black womanismis a philosophythatcelebratesblackroots,theideals of black womandom. It of black life,whilegivinga balanced presentation concerns itselfas much with the black sexual power tussle as with the world power structurethatsubjugatesblacks. Its ideal is forblack unity where every black person has a modicum of power and so can be a "brother" or a "sister"or a "father"or a "mother" to the other. This of wholenessand philosophyhas a mandaliccore: itsaim is thedynamism of womanist in the sees one that endings integrative positive, self-healing novels. share withblack males theheritageof Black Americanfemalewriters the blues, whose spiritualdynamicsensure equilibrium in a turbulent world-perhaps because, as Stephen Henderson points out, there is a connectionbetween the blues and the capacityto experience hope. The womanist blues have had a tremendous impact on the Afro-American womanist novels,mostAfro-American novel,and, in contrastto feminist AfroThe in hope.20 novels, culture-orientedas they are, abound
(June 18, 1984), p. 1262. 19. Alison Perry,"Meeting Flora Nwapa," West Africa Fiction(Sussex: Harvester Press, in Women's Patterns 20. See Annis Pratt,Archetypal 1982), pp. 51 ff.
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American female novelistsometimeseven employsthe mood and structureof the blues in her novels.As Henderson explains,"The blues... are a music and poetryof confrontation-withthe self,withthe family and loved ones, withthe oppressiveforcesof society, withnature,and, on the heaviestlevel, withfateand the universeitself. And in the confrontation . . . a woman discovers her strengths, and if she is a Ma Rainey, she sharesit withthecommunity and in theprocess becomes immortal" (emphasis added).21 More oftenthan not, in fiction we have many Ma Raineys-women withoutmen: examples include Janie Crawford (Zora Neale Hurston's TheirEyes WereWatching God); Vyry(Margaret Walker'sJubilee);Merle Timeless (Marshall'sTheChosen Place, the (Marshall's People);AveyJohnson theWidow);Sula and Nel (Morrison'sSula); Pilateand Circe Praisesongfor (Morrison's Song of Solomon);Meridian (Alice Walker'sMeridian); Ruth (Alice Walker'sThe Third LifeofGrange Copeland);Celie and Nettie(Alice Walker'sTheColorPurple).Manysuch womencan be foundin theAfrican female novel too: Elizabeth (Head's A Question ofPower); Sissie (Aidoo's Our Sister Idu (Nwapa's Idu); Killjoy);Ramatoulaye(Ba's So Longa Letter); and Amaka (Nwapa's OneIs Enough).In the contemporary scene, literary the Morrisonsand Heads and Aidoos and Marshallsare themselves such matriarchs withoutmen.22 On one level the depictionof such women can be regarded as an antipatriarchalstatementon the authors' part. On another these exemplaryfigures, like Ma Rainey,demonstrateconcern for the family-not for the Westernnuclear family(as viewed by feminists)but forthe black extended family (as viewed by womanists)withits large numbersand geographical spread. From thisperspective, Sula is a binding,spiritualforce in Medallion; Merle in Bournehills; Sissie amid black people. Karen Gasten is thereforemistakenin concluding about The Third Life of GrangeCopelandthat "what is needed to bring about a healthy balance in sexual relationshipsis a generationof Ruths."23 The book's purpose is not so much the achievementof that feministgoal but the of the Ruthsintothe black world-a womanistobjective.The integration black woman is not as powerlessin the black worldas the whitewoman is in the white world' the black woman, less protected than her white counterpart, has to grow independent. These factors generate an
21. Stephen E. Henderson, "The Heavy Blues of Sterling Brown: A Studyof Craftand Tradition," BlackAmerican Literature Forum14, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 32-44, esp. 32. 22. Elaine Showalterhas noted thestrangephenomenon thatstrong, successful female writershardly ever portraysuccessfulfemale characters(A Literature of TheirOwn [n. 3 above], pp. 244 ff).This is a feminist ratherthan a womanistpractice,as the strongfemale characterscited above easily establish. 23. Karen C. Gasten,"Women in the Lives of Grange Copeland," CLAJournal 24, no. 3 (March 1981): 276-86, esp. 286.
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affirmative spirit in the womanist novel that is packed full of female achievement.24 Also, womanistsexplore past and present connections between black America and black Africa. Like amiable co-wives with invisible husbands, they work together for the good of their people. in TheConjure Woman, Charles Chesnutt'sAun' Peggy,thewitch-herbalist Hurston's indomitableJanie Crawford,Ayi Kwei Armah's and Ngugi's formidablewomen-all serve as inspirationalsources. Like the younger sidetrackthe negablack femalewriters generationof black aestheticists, stillfinduseful. tive spiritof the protesttraditionthat some feminists In spite of the blues, black women occasionally go mad. Unlike negativelypresented whitemadwomen, the black madwoman in novels written by black women knowsin her subconsciousthatshe mustsurvive because she has people withoutother resourcesdepending on her; in a or positiveabout-faceshe usuallyrecoversthrougha superhumaneffort, somehow, aids others. Merle, carryingher national burden of leading Bournehillsup a road to progress,recoups her energyafterher bouts of forthe futurepoliticalstrugherselfspiritually and strengthens insanity gle by undertakinga pilgrimageto East Africa. In The BluestEye, the spiritual peculiar Pecola goes mad on the surfacebut acquires an interior blue). In thismixed bythebluesteye (an "I" thatis very beautysymbolized state she acts as the scapegoat so that"all who knew her-felt so wholeMerle is comparable to on her."25 some after[they]cleaned [them]selves her son, her neighbors, Head's Elizabeth, who-nudged on by self-will, of herbal greenery-recovers her sanityto play and the medicinal effect her part in an agriculturalcommune. Ba's Jacqueline recuperatesfrom her nervous breakdown as soon as she understands that her illness is psychosomatic,and she becomes reintegratedinto society.Aftereach mental upheaval there is thus a stasis in the womanistnovel when the black woman's communion withthe rest of the societyis established,a and transcenconsonance that expresses the black way to authenticity aberration becomes a Madness dence. preceding spiritual temporary growth,healing, and integration. These insightsinto character portrayaland thematicdevelopment have not come easily to the Africanwriter.In an articleunfortunately dated in some aspects, Maryse Conde observes that Nwapa and Aidoo "convey the impression that a gifted woman simply has no place in Africansociety."In her analysisthisis true "not onlybecause [the gifted woman] cannot finda proper matchbut because the price she has to pay for her unusual giftsis so high that she would be betterborn without them," an idea thatJuliet Okonkwo reiterates.Conde then concludes,
1892TheDevelopment Novelists: BlackWomen ofa Tradition, 24. See Barbara Christian, 1976 (Westport,Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), p. 239. 25. Toni Morrison,TheBluestEye (New York: Holt, Rinehart& Winston,1970), p. 163.
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"Here are two giftedwomen portraying giftedfemales like themselves, but ultimately them. murders These are the expression of a destroying deeply-rooted conflict."26 Perhaps. I suggest that this problem partly arises fromthe factthatearlyin theircareers the Africanwriters tend to model themselves on whitefeminists, thusputting themselves at variance withpolygamy, whichis generallyaccepted in ruralAfricaand is gaining in urban ground Nigeria.27 Conde's 1972 thesishas since been put into question by the appearance of Nwapa's One Is Enough (1981) and, most especially,by Aidoo's assertiveOur Sister Killjoy(1977). In the latter,the strong-headedSissie wantsblack men everywhere to undergo a psychological metamorphosis to assert their manhood in world politics, just as she has successfully represented black womanhood in her role as roving ambassador in Europe. A black man withsuch masterycan then become equal to and united withher. Here, the Ghanaian Aidoo, an Akan by birth,discards her Westernconsciousnessto embrace the Akan matrilineal cultureand outlook. Akan women are generallyacclaimed for theirindependence. There, as a proverb goes, the husband cooks and leaves the food to the woman to relish-though, I musthastily add, thewoman'sbrotherdishes itout. So, in thedenouementof thework,Aidoo envisagesblacksolidarity between men and women in Africaand the diaspora. The Senegalese novel So Long a Letter by Ba is grounded in a Fulani world where the foreign religion of Islam has, like Christianity, been both religionsbear ruthlessly imposed on Africans.As Ba demonstrates, partial responsibilityfor the fact that many Africans have suffered psychological and moral disorientation.She generates tension in the novelbyexploringthematrilineal of theFulanisin opposition perspective to the patriarchaltenetsof Islam, whichadvocatespolygyny. Her shortish novel takes the formof a long letterwritten by Ramatoulaye,the determined heroine,to a friendto tellher about the polygynous situationthat has ruined her marriagebecause of her Westernexpectationof monogyny.Ratherthancollapsing,she remainsundaunted,withlittle acrimony. Ramatoulaye will not break another woman's heart by marryingthat woman's husband as a second wife,and she even sympathizes withthe
26. MaryseConde, "Three Female Writers in Modern Africa:Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo and Grace Ogot," Presence 82 (1972): 132-43, esp. 139, 143.JulietOkonkwo, africaine "The Talented Woman in AfricanLiterature," 15, nos. 1, 2 (1975): 36-47, Africa Quarterly esp. 45. 27. Compare Gilbertand Gubar, TheMadwoman in the Attic (n. 2 above), p. 78. If one modifiestheirobservationabout the relationship betweenthe femalewriter and her mad or monstrouscharactersto suit Nwapa's and Aidoo's conceptual dilemma, one sees thatthe novelists project"theirrebelliousimpulses"intotheirheroinesbut lack thecourage to make them succeed, therebydemonstrating the authors' "own self-division, theirdesire both to of patriarchalsociety and to rejectthem,"evidenceofan earlyfeminism accept thestrictures mixed withan unconscious gravitation toward womanism.
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other woman who ruined her (Ramatoulaye's) marriage. Men must be men, it seems, but women do not have to be like them. Having accepted men withtheirlibidinousdisposition,she can create a stable lifearound her numerouschildren,male and female,along withtheirspouses. This is in action; the demands of Fulani cultureratherthan those of womanismo sexual politics predominate. Though she recognizes the inequities of patriarchy,she never really fightsfor her "rights"-a position further expressed by the novel's private,epistolaryform.It mustbe pointed out thatthese two societies-the Akan and the Fulani-though preferableto are matrilineal the strictly patriarchalsocietiesfroma woman'sviewpoint, and not trulymatriarchal.One can thereforepostulate that matrilineal and polygynoussocietiesin Africaare dynamicsources forthe womanist novel. Head's WhenRain Clouds Gatheris a womanist novel achieved on terms:widowhood involvingthe care of male and female childifferent dren. In thisidyllic novel,bad men are eliminatedso thatmen and women rather and ethnicism ostracism can livetogetherharmoniously. Similarly, Maru. in Head's woman than sexismcause the developmentof the strong and chief the marries In the end, the untouchable Margaret Cadmore in of forces apartheid conjunctouches other people. The disintegrating to care fora black male childcause the toughening tionwiththe necessity of Power. up and recoveryof the insane heroine in Head's A Question Elizabethfreesherselffromracial,ethnic,and male bondage to emergeas an intrepidindividual,able to cope withbringingup her son and living harmoniouslywith others and with nature. It is Head's unique South Africanexperience thatmakes it possible forher to detribalizethe African womanistnovel by exploring so many possibilities. In the United States Alice Walker has been equally inventive.To make her point she uses the woman who is docile (but not helpless as her and pittedagainst a terrible whitecounterpartwould be), hardworking, fate; her heroines sufferfrompovertyor racismallied withsexism,and sometimesfromall three together.Walker is making the point that the fromher whitecounin general,radicallydiffers black woman's destiny, About the latterde Beauvoir observes:"But woman is notcalled terpart's. upon to build a betterworld: her domain is fixedand she has onlyto keep up the never ending struggleagainstthe evil principlesthatcreep intoit; sin,wrestling in her war againstdust,stains,mud, and dirtshe is fighting In couching woman's war in domesticand religiousterms, withSatan."28 de Beauvoir is playfuland somewhatPuritanical;her account does not cover the experience of the black woman for whom Satan is not a out there,beyondher home,whereshe conceptbut a reality metaphysical fordecent survivalas wellas wherewithal mustwilly-nilly go to obtainthe
28. De Beauvoir (n. 9 above), pp. 470-71.
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for a "betterworld." Ruth's mother,Mem, does so in The ThirdLife of Grange Copeland; Meridian in Meridian; Celie and Nettie in The Color Purple.
in thelatterhalfof thetwentieth theblackwomanist Writing century, has been experimentingwithold formsused by her predecessors,male and female. It is significant thatthe Africanwoman writer emerged with theadventof politicalindependence. Handicapped bywriting in a second language, she has sometimestried to put herselfon familiarground by withthe foreignwritten fusingthe familiaroral tradition medium,while also playingthe role traditionally reservedforwoman: enlightening and entertainingthe population leftin her care. The classics of the female Afro-American novel came afterthe heydayof the protesttradition and took for granted the ideological backing of the black power movement. in bothcontinents Consequently,femalenovelists preferto tellof lifeas it is,sometimesoflifeas itis thoughtto be, and rarely oflifeas itoughtto be. Withsome parallelstoJane Austen'scleverexploitation of the gothic in Northanger Head manipulatesthe mystiqueof gothicismin her Abbey, of the mad Elizabethin A Question psychologicalportrait ofPower.As the "movies,"which representthe punishmentcells, unprivate,fantastical reel in Elizabeth'smind and vision,the reader is forcedto act the voyeur, intoan exotic,weirdworldwherethe unusual, the eccentric, transported the traumatic,the frightening, the mysterious become the norm. Elizabeth's interior world is wild,unjust,sexist,as her fight gothic againstthe two reprehensiblemen-Dan and Sello-demonstrates. Its power play replicatesthe outer racistand ethnocentric societywhose horrific power mongeringleads Elizabeth to a nervous breakdown.Human tenderness and her willpowerrestoreher to a supportable society. Aidoo's, Ba's, and Alice Walker'sreturnto the earlyepistolary form of the novel inheritedfromeighteenth-century women writers departs from twentieth-century novelisticpractice.29 Their rediscoveryof the epistleenables themto exploititsqualitiesof simplicity, relativeintimacy, and candor. As a result,a novel in thisformappears more open and more sincerethanone written in theautobiographicalmode-which tendsto be defensively as in the workof some aggressive,narcissistic, self-glorifying, feminists. The letterpretends to be authenticand, like oral narration, is not lying.In Aidoo's and Ba's gives the impressionthatthe storyteller novels, the correspondentsare loving friends.This aura of authenticity has a didacticfunction, forwomenreaders. Aidoo's use of the particularly
29. According to Showalter (A Literature of TheirOwn [n. 3 above], p. 17), "Most eighteenth-century epistolarynovels were written by women."
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seems a modification of thatemployed in Baldformin Our Sister Killjoy win's The Fire NextTime: she retainshis clarityof vision and makes an objectiveassessmentof the black global predicament.Her femininenagging tone resemblesBaldwin's sermonizingmode, made acceptable by a tendernessextended to friendand foe alike. In itsdaring experimentation in form,Our Sister Killjoyalso resemblesJean Toomer's Cane. Like Toomer, Aidoo mixes prose, the sketch,poetry,song, and the like to produce something living,fresh,and lyrical-an oral performancein book form. Alice Walker's The ColorPurpleis also complex and variable in its structure.The firstaddressee in its epistles is a power-wieldingGod. voyeur.When God White,patriarchal,he acts the role of the indifferent metamorphoses into "It," neuter but not quite neutral, in the female imagination,life miraculouslyimprovesfor womanhood. Also included sisters.Like in the book is the correspondenceof twolovingand trusting rural, sequestered women, some of theirlettersremain unopened, hidmale. Walker then bringsthe truthof den in a trunkby an interfering theirlives to the world,just as Shug, the enlightenedblack woman who and bringsthe secluded, "private"Celie into the public world of artistic Celie and the lettersresemble Emily Dickinson's economic fulfillment. poems, sewn up and hidden in a wombed trunk, away from public or public honor, but later delivered for many eyes to see. hostility a patchin thequiltthatputs in TheColorPurplerepresents Each letter on display. the whole of southernlifewithitssexism,racism,and poverty One distinct pattern in the enormous quilt, painstakinglystitched together,shows the black woman's development from slaveryto some form of emancipation from both white and black patriarchy.Walker's stanceemergesas the expressionof her yearning:a visionof a positivistic union of the male and the female,the black American and the African, broughtabout throughwomen's faiththatis in turnsustainedby (letter) writing. The letterwithits surfaceinnocuousnessis indeed subversive.As a formthatpretendsto be privatewhileitis made public,itensures literary one's materialwell-being, an open inquiryinto those mattersthataffect one's spiritualdisposition,one's destiny,and one's relationshipboth to other people and to the environment.Lettersin black female writing of the black predicamentthatprecedes black ensure illumination finally integrity. theirnovels It is notable thatsome black women writers intersperse withsongs, verse,reiteratedphrases. These seem to have the communal of the call-and-response function usuallyemployedduringAfricanstorytellingsessions.They relievethetediumof a long speech or a long stretch of narrationand involvethe audience in the spinningof the yarn.They sometimesuse are effective during public readingsof novels.The writers
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themto emphasize climacticpointsin the narrationwhere the emotionis so intense that prose can no longer serve as a suitablevehicle; so Aidoo does in Our Sister In Margaret Killjoyand Morrison in Song of Solomon. Walker'sJubilee as wellas in Marshall'sPraisesongfor the Widow thenumerous songs, wise sayings,and dances link the principalswithblack tradiblack beliefs,and black religion. Ntozake Shange tion, black suffering, achieves a similar result by including weaving,culinaryand medicinal & Indigo;she demonstrates recipes,and herbal lore in Sassafrass, Cypress theirvoodoo-like,"chemical" effects in the black lives involved.
The forcethatbinds manyblack femalenovelsin Englishtogether is, thus, womanism. As a woman withher own peculiar burden, knowing thatshe is deprived of her rights in the black domestic by sexistattitudes domain and by Euro-American patriarchyin the public sphere; as a memberof a race thatfeelspowerlessand under siege, withlittleesteem in theworld-the black femalenovelist cannotwholeheartedly join forces with white feminists to fighta battle against patriarchy that,given her and is absurd. So is she a womanist because of understanding experience, her racial and her sexual predicament. The long-standingtraditionof black American women writershas helped to define the black American woman's situation.The works of Pauline Hopkins, MaryEtta Spenser,Jean Fauset, Nella Larsen, Dorothy and Zora Neale Hurston,among manyothers,have all West,Ann Petry, (It willbe a usefulline of researchto findout ifthese helped to thisend.30 authors'underlying philosophyis womanismtoo.) This long line of black foremothers-and also of forefathers-givesthe Afro-American female writer an advantage over her Africancounterpart who was forefathered (in the writtentradition) with a vengeance. Nevertheless, the black woman writer in Africaand in the United Stateshas finally emerged as a spokeswomanforblack women and the black race by movingaway from black male chauvinism and the iconoclastictendencies of feminismto embrace the relativeconservatism of womanism.3' She consequentlyensures larger horizons for herselfand her people. Indeed, in helping to liberatethe black race throughher writing she is aiding the black woman who has been and stillis concernedwiththeethicsof surviving ratherthan withthe aestheticsof living.Womanismwithitswholesome,its religious grounding in black togetherness,is her gospel of hope. Morrison ex30. The first Afro-American novel by a woman is Frances Harper's Iola Leroy; or,The ShadowsUplifted Africannovel bya woman is Flora Nwapa's Efuru(1966). (1892). The first The Afro-Americanwoman's scribal traditionis, of course, over two hundred years old, dating back to PhillisWheatley,though the oral tradition in Africafar predates Wheatley. 31. Aidoo (n. 1 above), p. 33.
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presses its nature when she says of black women, "There is something fromotherpeople. It is notlikemen and inside us thatmakes us different it is not like white women. We talked earlier about the relationship between my women and the men in theirlives. When [the women] sing the blues it is one of those 'somebody is gone' kind of thingbut there is never any bitterness."32 Department ofEnglish University ofIbadan
32. BettyeJ. Parker,"Complexity:Toni Morrison'sWomen-an InterviewEssay," in ed. Roseann P. Bell, BettyeJ. Parker, inLiterature, Visions BlackBridges: ofBlackWomen Sturdy N.Y.: AnchorBooks, 1979), pp. 251-57, esp. p. 255. and BeverlyGuy-Sheftall (Garden City,

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Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English Author(s): Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi Source: Signs,

Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English

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