A Black-Feminist Analysis of Women Characters in Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Abstract

- This paper aimed at exploring the way Toni Morrison has projected his women characters in Jazz, who are subjected to social and gender discriminations on the basis of their skin color, thereby exposing the white America who was repressing the black Americans in order to maintain its cultural hegemony or dominance. The analysis is carried out by using the vision of black feminism. Black feminism is a school of thought which argues that sexism, class oppression, gender identity and racism are inextricably bound together. The main objective of the study was to examine the role of Afro-American women who were abused, psychologically tortured and physically victimized as they were not only individually suppressed but also institutionally marginalized and psychologically abused on the basis of being Black. The technique of close reading examined dialogues, situation, actions and reaction of women characters in Jazz. The main issue of the present study was to investigate the female characters of Jazz and their reactions to particular situations. The study also investigated the situations as to how black women unconsciously resist against the patterns set for them. It was found that the women are living in restricted society where their individuality is suppressed on the basis of their gender. Moreover, the women show hypocrisy towards each other while neglecting their moral attributes. This study extends the boundaries of existing research and gives new insights for feminist researchers working in the field of black feminism.