Male Domination and Female Resistance

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Department of English and North American Studies), course: Anglistik/ Amerikanistik, language: English, abstract: Of course, the [whites] oppress us, they oppress the world. Who s got his big white foot on the whole world? The white man, the rich white man. But we also oppress each other and we oppress ourselves. I think that one of the traditions we have in Black Women s literature is a tradition of trying to fight all the oppression. (Walker, Sojourner 14) (Christophe, p. 102) The question of domination and resistance has been one of the major problems in interpersonal relationships ever since. Whereas there are diverse forms of domination and oppression, the issue of females being dominated by men is one of the most crucial to Alice Walker. Consequently she focuses on black-on-black violence between the characters in her novel The Color Purple. Often criticized for not dealing with the problem of racism and discrimination of African American by their white fellow-citizens in the first place but concentrating on the disproportion between the sexes, Alice Walker aims at the creation of equality between men and women due to the fact that it is important to her to strive for a solution of the problems she experiences in her immediate environment, namely black communities, first: I mean to deal with the guy who beat you up in your house and then see who s beating you up on the street. (Sojourner 14) (Christophe, p. 102). Only by solving the problems that exist between African Americans a strong community that can overcome greater issues as discrimination by whites can come into being. To create awareness of the fact that the discrimination most African Americans suffer from also exists within their own community, Walker deals with the oppression of women in black communities rather than with racism. Nevertheless there are significant similarities between racism and the treatment of women to be found in her novel. The fact that a group of human beings is considered to be less valuable and thus can be dominated by a supposedly superior group is the same in racism and slavery as in the oppression of women. The concept of a relationship between a person who dominates and a person who obeys underlies the relationship between master and slave and some of the relationships between the male and female characters in the novel alike. These parallels will be dealt with as well as with the way the female characters try to resist.[...]