Empowerment of Black Mother: Some Feminist Ideologies Agarwal Ranjana Research Scholar, Department of English, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Email id: ranjana85agarwal@gmail.com Online published on 18 July, 2017. Abstract Gender has always been a sensitive issue especially in writing. Today identity has become the most important term in every sphere of the world. Each person search for ‘who am I’ or ‘where I stand’; but women have faced more discrimination from time to time in the patriarchal societies. The inequality of sexes finds expression in writing also. Our society and culture have always discouraged women from writing and expressing themselves. But women's urge to talk about themselves through writing compels them to adopt different means of expression. Many post-structuralist feminists like Luce Irigaray, Helen Cixous and Julia Kristeva find woman's specificity buried in the present psycho-socio cultural set-up where language can represent men only. Therefore, women's specificity remains suppressed. Though the meaning, scope and significance of ‘gender’ has enlarged over the years, women studies in India have so far not indulged in these theoretical controversies for the mere reason that hierarchies of caste and class are so strong here, they do not escape anyone's notice, and the western feminists’ ideas regarding gender do not seem so important to woman writers in India. The paper is a focus on the empowerment of woman, especially black woman. Toni Morrison, an African-American feminist writer, presents a realistic portrayal of black mother. Black women have been the victim of racism and sexism for years, and they have been oppressed by the Whites during the slavery. Toni Morrison writes stories, themes and the structure of literature which concentrates wholly on black woman. Her protagonists like Pecola in The Bluest Eye and Sethe in Beloved are perfect and living examples of the black women who at first were exploited by the Whites, but eventually succeeded in creating an individual identity. Morrison views motherhood as an important source of empowerment and freedom. She tries to show the significance of self-definition and self-respect of a black mother in the African-American society. Thus, Morrison puts forth the new mother image, with an identity of her own to persuade black mothers to develop their subjectivity and to break the stereotypical motherhood of African-American community. Top Keywords Gender, Empowerment, Black mother, Identity, Feminist, Racism and Motherhood. Top |