'The River that Dies Thirsty': Murdering Black Womanhood in Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye
'The River that Dies Thirsty': Murdering Black Womanhood in Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye

Summary/Abstract: Since their arrival at the colonial American society, Black females started their journey of suffering. They used to be perceived within this oppressive racial and capitalistic society as an item of commodity whose basic function is to reproduce as many black bodies as possible to increase the capital of their white masters. However, in spite of the bitterness of slavery and its consequent troubles such as poverty, illiteracy, self-split, violence, oppression and exploitation - which continued even after the emancipation - Black women were able to adjust to these surrounding conditions because they were accompanied by another partner in such journey of suffering, namely Black man. Indeed Black woman suffered physical and psychological violence at the hands of the Whites, but her exploitation by the Black man was more torturous. Tyranny and dominance of the White society was so clear and obvious for the Black women and thus some of them decided to challenge it while others felt that the best way is to adapt the Whites' values in order to ensure their survival. In this regard, this paper is devoted to shed the light on black women who fell victims of their racist and sexist society. It is an attempt to examine the factors that prevented black women from self-recognition and led to the murdering of their womanhood. Adopting the psycho-analytical technique, one of Toni Morrison's novels, The Bluest Eye, was selected to demonstrate how black womanhood was lost in such context of social injustice.

• Details
• Contents