Realism, Naturalism, & Modernism Idea Development Assignment.edited
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Liberty University
Realism, Naturalism, & Modernism Idea Development Assignment
Hannah Rauch
ENGL 637: Studies in African-American Literature
Dr. Yaw Adu-Gyamfi
26 Nov. 2023
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Richard Wright was an African American author who wrote about many things. He wrote
an autobiography titled
Black Boy
that is "hailed as a masterpiece"; however, there have been
themes of Wright's work that have gained him many criticisms (Gates and Smith 121). While
much of Wright's work has clear themes of "realism and naturalism," criticisms arise in how he
wrote about women (Gates and Smith 121).
Every author writes in their own style, and with their style comes compliments and
critiques. One of the prominent critiques is the way that Wright presented women as "merely as
accessories to the larger political and philosophical themes of his fictions" (Gates and Smith
120). What this did for Wright's audience was make women not apt to read his works. An
example of this is his short story,
Long Black Song
. In this story, Sarah is raped by a White door-
to-door salesman. While the rape and Sarah getting through this would be the logical move for
the story, Wright instead focused on the rape being "an affront to her husband's pride and
masculinity" (Gates and Smith 120). Without explicitly saying it, Wright is showing that while
he claimed to want equality in society, that equality did not extend to women.
The question that arises from this work is why Wright viewed women in this way (Keady
124). The prevailing thought is that his stereotyping of women comes from his Marxist
background. Wright characterized the female characters in his work in a negative light with an
"inability to grasp subtle principles of conduct, large aspirations, childlike, whimpering, and
stupid" (Keady 124). Part of what makes the way Wright wrote about women so hard to look at
is that it causes a further and intentional division of African Americans because the women he
painted in a negative light were African American. When looking at Wright's portrayal of
women, it is easy to search for a deeper reason. For example, could it be that Wright had a
woman in his life who betrayed him or that his mom did something unforgivable to him? There
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is no way to honestly answer this with Wright having passed many years ago, but that will never
stop readers from theorizing why he would intentionally cause a divide between his own people.
In Wright’s story
Native Son
, readers meet a character named Jake. One evening, Jake is
sitting at the dining room table reading a newspaper and thinking out loud. During this time, his
wife, Bessie, does not respond to him. The fact that she does not respond to him seems to anger
Jake. The interaction goes: Jake asks Bessie, "Woman, what makes you so dumb? Don't you ever
try using your brains sometimes? Don't you never think of nothing that's serious?" (Keady 125)
To which Bessie responds, "I don't know, Jake" (Keady 125). What this moment exemplifies is
Wright passing his female characters off as childlike and stupid. Rather than having Bessie
respond in a way that would show her standing up for herself and saying that she is not as dumb
as her husband is claiming she is, she responds in a way that almost agrees with him. This makes
Bessie's character hard for readers to connect with. Bessie's character can best be described as
"dull and mindless," which makes it hard for the readers to want to know more about it (Keady
125). It is almost as if Bessie is there just to be a problem for Jake. Making female characters
like Bessie an issue for the males in their lives is part of how Wright's work made a divide
between African American men and women.
While there are many criticisms regarding the way that Wright characterized females,
there are some who believe he was attempting to bring awareness to "sexual racism" (Gates and
Smith 125). However, as said earlier, there is no real way to know what his intention was. As a
woman, it is hard for me to see how Wright's characterization of women would have had any
form of positive impact. Wright's work, as that of any author, will have positive and negative
reviews, but personally, it is hard to see his work in good lighting with the way that he portrays
women.
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Work Cited
Gates, Henry Louis, and Valerie Smith.
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
.
Vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Keady, Sylvia H. “Richard Wright’s Women Characters and Inequality.”
Black American
Literature Forum
, vol. 10, no. 4, 1976, pp. 124–28.
JSTOR
,
https://doi.org/10.2307/3041611. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023.