CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Toni Morrison explains the silent voices in traditional literature as “the voices never heard and they don’t speak in the text” because women and African-Americans are not “permitted to say things” (qtd. in Moyers). Morrison challenges the master narrative-a specific patriarchal socio-political narrative-with a variety of non-traditional narratives of African-American children, men, and women in The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Paradise.
Silence
The white patriarchal class silenced women and African-Americans through language, literature, and economics in order to gain political and social power. This led to whole groups being excluded from the “right to create a recognizable public self-as individuals or as a community” (Davis 31). Even now women and African-American voices are “repeatedly denied and negated by a dominant white culture” (Plasa 11) because the traditional patriarchal ruling class represents them in American literature and organizes society “to serve [their] interests and impose [their] will on all other groups” (Mbalia 18).
In a patriarchal and racist culture women and African-Americans had similar fates-”Womanhood, like blackness, is the other in this society, and the dilemma of woman in a patriarchal society is parallel to that of blacks in a racist one” (Davis 31). In her women characters, Morrison presents women’s quest for self-identity through determination, belief, and inspiration, which is different from the traditional narrative. The traditional narrative presents women as fickle, dependent, and mundane, such as the characters of Scarlet O’Hara from the 1939 movie “Gone with the Wind” and June Cleaver from 1957-1963 television program “Leave it to Beaver.” When women are given a voice in literature by the traditional culture, they are to speak or sing the sounds that imitate nature, but are to do so silently at the side of men, which means women are to live quietly, work quietly, and think quietly-the message sent by the dominant male culture is to conform:
The speaking woman [was] bound to silence that delivers a blow and a shock to modern life, one that we still live with. Though women were rendered silent, in their own right, they retained a kind of mystical preeminence that still exists and cannot be taken away. (Toni Morrison in Germany)
The silence creates pleas for freedom of self-expression by individuals and groups. Women and African-Americans began to investigate what it is that silenced them (Plasa). Morrison investigates this silence directly through her characters, such as when Stamp Paid states, “How much is a nigger suppose to take? Tell me. How much?” (Beloved 235). Women and African-Americans have had enough of being oppressed and silenced in American literature and want to be heard. Many American authors have joined Toni Morrison in providing a voice to non-traditional narratives and these new voices refuse to conform and be shaped by the traditional patriarchal ruling class.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison places the voiceless African-American children at the center of the novel. Morrison inverts the traditional culture’s ideals and values in order to provide a non-fairy tale story. Morrison uses the myth of Dick and Jane to contrast to the story of Pecola and the other characters. By using the fairy tale, she demystifies the traditional culture’s ideal and values of beauty and brings them to the surface of literature.
In the Song of Solomon, Milkman’s quest for identity provides a voice for the silenced black man and three-generations of women-Pilate, Reba, and Hagar. Morrison provides many levels to Milkman’s identity quest. On the surface, Milkman searches for his individual identity and background, but on another level, he searches for his family background. A deeper level represents the African-Americans’ search for their identity and heritage in American literature.
The traditional culture uses language to silence women and African-Americans. Morrison uses language to present the question of who has the privilege of naming people and things. “The act of naming another reflects a desire to regulate and control” (Hill-Rigney 61). The traditional culture of slave owners wanted to control the language of the slaves in order to keep them in the subservient role. The patriarchal control is accomplished by “promoting its own image” (Mbalia 29) in American culture. African-Americans are considered ‘The Other’ in traditional literature, and as Perez-Torres writes, “blacks are nameless” (99). Morrison changes this by having her characters refuse the namelessness and silence in American literature, but instead they question the ruling class’ control over language, the privilege of naming, and the traditional representation of African-Americans.
Morrison controls language by using several narrative techniques. She carefully chooses what words to include and when to be silent in her texts, which makes “the control of language a centerpiece [in] her novels” (Jaffrey 163). Many of the words emphasized in her novels are from traditional oral storytelling, and the silence represents the effects of the master narrative. One of the techniques used by Morrison is the “subverting [of] the linear and chronological time by reinforcing the concept of cyclical time” (Heinz 123). Morrison interrupts this by presenting the story in fragments from different characters’ perspectives and allowing the narrator to switch from the past to the present events. Using these multiple perspectives to allow “comments and variations on the central characters’ story” (Davis 37) creates different renditions of the central event in the novels. This technique develops the illusion of reality by providing the reader with “different perspectives on the struggle for freedom and individualism” (Davis 41). This type of narration forces the reader to act, to put the fragments together to form a whole story.
Morrison also subverts the narration by juxtaposing realistic events with fairy tales and myth. She uses the Cinderella and the Hansel and Gretel fairy tales as well as traditional ideology myths like Dick and Jane, the Shirley Temple persona, the American Dream, and the ‘Us and Them’ to show how “machinery of myth” (Davis 36) works on the mind and behavior of the characters to create oppression and even self-oppression, and to silence more natural inclinations to self-pride and self-respect. She effectively portrays unspoken realities in American culture and shows their inappropriate and tragic effect on “the Other.” With the African-American flying myth and the loss of personal and racial identity, she implies an “absent reality,” the lost mythic knowledge and a people that might enable the contemporary characters to act.
Often the perspectives and memory of the characters subvert the dominant narration, which prefers chronological “progressive” development. Further, Morrison presents the continuity of the past and present as circular, not lineal or chronological. The narration switches from the past to the present to provide background information about a single event that occurs showing the effect the past has on creating the future. Morrison’s characters begin without a sense of self-identity, but by the end of the novels, her characters “evolve toward a greater sense of themselves” (Bracks 3) and create an individual identity. Morrison forces her characters to go into their past in order to establish a sense of self-discovery and community.
The community plays a major role in Morrison’s use of language. On one side, she uses language to show how and what the community should or should not do and if they do, what the consequences will be. On the other side, she presents how the community should behave and what they should do for the individuals of the community. According to Patrick Bjork, Morrison also uses language that “demonstrates what the community can or should offer to its members by way of identity and place” (x). The individual’s identity depends on the community identity because without the community an individual would have no need for individual identity: “the community is necessary to the individual’s wholeness and identity” (Furman 72).
In Beloved, Morrison “gives form to the nameless and wordless grief of the sixty-million who died during the Middle Passage” (William 126). Even though they were denied a voice several decades ago, in the character of Beloved, they all are given a voice in American literature. The non-traditional voices of Sethe, Stamp Paid, Baby Suggs, Denver, Beloved, and Paul D create depth in this novel as they tell their individual stories and family tales, developing a sense of the richness of African-American cultures.
In Paradise, Morrison provides a voice to the isolated women in a community called Ruby, even though nine men try to silence them. The women-Mavis, Connie, Grace, Seneca, and Pallas-become scapegoats for the community because they are outsiders and are considered different in the community of Ruby. This novel provides more ethical and political levels than other novels because Morrison basically shows that tyranny can be carried out by any culture, at any level, and then justified by the community.
The following chapters present Morrison breaking the silence of the voiceless through effectively combining the individual’s voice with the community voice to create a collective voice for American culture. Morrison’s techniques provide a new narrative for individual and social identity by breaking the silence of women and African-Americans. Having a voice also means being someone, being granted the status of personhood and having a ‘self’ that deserves respect and response. She uses multiple voices and circular time narration because the whole context of the story cannot be understood from one character’s perspective at one point in time.
2002: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this may be produced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from me at cldensmore@glccomputers.com
