Rachel By Angelina Weld Grimke Analysis

After World War II, the United States has emerged as the world's number one power in both economic and military. However, the consequence of this strong emergence makes the contradictions internal of the US more painful than ever. These are the gap between rich and poor is increasing in large cities, the discrimination that people of skin color suffer every day, and the inequality gender between male and female in American society. In the 1950s after the war, women still played the traditional role in the life of the family as a housewife. However, it seems that the war brings them a taste of another life and an opportunity that pushed them slowly breaking out to become more independent. Through the main character Rose in the play Fences, a Modern play was written in 1985 by the African-American playwright August Wilson, it is not difficult to recognize the black women’s true images in the 1950s whose were limited in the role of expected being a good wife and mother, trying to become stronger, as well as filling of altruism.

As a mixed race product of an African American mother and a Caucasian father, Vyry isn’t given much of a chance to establish her identity from the moment she is born. Being the child of an African American woman automatically labels her as the “other” within the society she lives in. At a younger age, Vyry loves to play with her half-sister, and she is still oblivious of the racial separations in existence on the Dutton plantation. Soon enough, Vyry comes to learn what it means to be, not only a girl, but a Negro girl living in a white dominated society; as she finds herself and her half-sister being treated more and more different. In Jubilee, Vyry’s stepmother, who is a Caucasian woman named Salina is the emblem of white, middle class womanhood.

The thesis statement above attempts to examine the role that Elizabeth Bennet plays in the novel as she goes against the women’s idealistic views. This article will help justify my thesis statement in how Greenfield expresses the oppression that women go through and how they lack to see the discrimination they are faced with daily.

Though born into slavery, Nanny had "dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do." She wanted to "preach a great sermon about colored women sittin' on high, but they wasn't no pulpit for [her]." She tries to fulfill her dreams first through her daughter and then through Janie. But slavery and years of dependence on a white family have warped

I believe that the short story clearly presents the stereotypes of rural Black women, and the challenges and struggles that African women faced with regard to heritage, personal fulfillment, and family relations as the past collided with the present realities. The concepts of family and Black women within this short story are highlighted by the fact that the three main characters among who the story revolves are all Black women and members of the same family. The clash of the past and future, personal fulfilment, heritage struggles, and the stereotyping of rural Black women is visible in the clear contrast of attitudes and ambitions of Dee and her boyfriend, who represent the future, and mama and her daughter Maggie, who in this case embody the past.

It is stated, “It was merely a nondescript collection of houses and buildings in a region of farms- one of those sad American places with sidewalks, but no paved streets; electric lights, but no sewage; a station but no trains that stopped…And it was 150 miles from any city at all (Hughes, 3).” Even though Cora was a relying, humble and hard working women she was unaccepted to white society. Cora was only seen for her labor. It is stated, “Cora iron my stockings, Cora come here… Cora, put… Cora… Cora… Cora! Cora! (Hughes, 4).” At a very young age colored people had to work for a living. On the other hand white society had an education and a far better future. Therefore, the circumstance of working with unpleasant superior was not discussed. Any job at the time was appreciated. Throughout the years that Cora worked with the Studevants she fell in love and had a child. At this time contraception or birth control was illegal. Even though Cora was looked down by society she had no shamed and became a proud mother. Unfortunately, due to the lack of medical assistance her child died from whopping cough. The years passed and the Studevants had a child named Jessie which Cora nursed and treated her as a daughter. When Jessie was in high school she experienced Cora’s situation, pregnant and unmarried. On one side Cora advise to have the child and become a proud mother just like her, but the mother disagreed she viewed this situation

Elijah’s daughter, Luvenia, struggles to get a job and into college in Chicago while her brother Richard travels back to South Carolina. Abby’s grandson, Tommy works with civil rights and protests, and tries to get into college for basketball. The story ends with Malcolm, Richard’s grandson, getting his his cousin Shep, who is struggling with drugs, to the family reunion. In reading this story one could wonder how the transition from slavery to segregation in the United States really occurred. The timeline can be split into three distinct sections, Emancipation, forming segregation, and life post-Civil War, pre-civil rights.

Throughout Kidd’s exquisitely written story, Handful struggles, sometimes with quiet dissidence, sometimes with open rebellion, to cultivate a belief in the invincibility of her spirit and in the sacred truth that one does not need actual wings in order to rise. Barely a stone’s throw from the slave quarters where Handful and her mother share a room behind the grand Grimké house, another young woman fights a different battle with the constraints of her society. Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter of a wealthy and prominent family at the pinnacle of Charleston’s social hierarchy, the daughter her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. From the time of her first violent childhood confrontation with slavery, Sarah is unable to abide the oppression and brutality of the slave system that surrounds her. Ambitious and keenly intelligent, she harbors an intense longing to have a voice in the world and to follow her father and brothers’ footsteps to a profession in the law. Crushed by the strictures that her family and society impose on women, Sarah forges a tortuous, yet brave path toward

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts February 27, 1880 to Archibald Henry Grimké and Sarah E. Stanley. As a result, Grimké was born into a rather “unusual and distinguished biracial family” (Zvonkin, para. 1). Her father was the son of a slave and her master, who also happened to be the brother of the two famous abolitionist Grimké sisters: Angelina and Sarah. Grimké’s mother, Sarah, was from a prominent, white middle class family; she left Grimké and her African American husband due to racial pressure from her white family and, as a result, Grimké was raised entirely by her father.

Harriet Wilson’s novel Our Nig, follows the life of Frado, a young mulatto girl in the household of a white family in New England. She is abandoned to this family at the age of six because her mother could not afford to care for her and resented her and the hardships to which her birth had contributed. The mistress of the household to which Frado is left is a cruel and spiteful woman, especially towards blacks. When Frado is left in the care of the Bellmont residence as a young girl, she has no idea of the troubles she would have to face for most of her life. From the very beginning, neither Mrs. Bellmont, the main antagonist, nor her equally cruel daughter, Mary, show any hint of compassion or even mercy for the young girl. The story follows Frado and her life in the Bellmont household.

From the very beginning, racial tensions were seen, even from girls of such a young age. While being in the shelter, Twyla did not want to share a room with Roberta because previously her mother had told her that “those people smell funny.” Come to find out, this was an untrue statement and the two girls ended up sticking together; it is the girl’s bond that keeps them sane in this orphanage. They are the only one’s at St. Bonny’s that still actually have parents and this too is a reason they stay so intertwined. The narrator of the story talks of all the things that lessens herself as a person and she is most likely ashamed of. In the early pages of the story, Twyla remembers a time when Maggie ran through the field to catch the bus, which she was inevitably late for. The older girls in the orphanage always gawked at and made fun of this poor woman and the way she walked, which made her fall. Twyla felt tinges of guilt remembering how she never helped Maggie

In “An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States”, Angelina Grimke immediately addresses all women as her “Beloved Sisters”, white or black. She establishes her audience right away and attempts to connect them through the powerful use of the sisterhood mentality. She begins to remind all women of their important duties in the world and then questions why women are stripped of political rights and duties solely because they are women, even though they are a crucial part of society. She goes on to explain slavery as a brutish crime “by which man is robbed of his inalienable right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the diadem of glory, and honor, with which he was crowned, and that sceptre of dominion which was placed in his hand when he was ushered upon the theater of creation.” (Grimke). Grimke uses this vivid explanation of slavery to connect the oppression of African-Americans to the oppression of women and how women cannot forget that it is their duty to help their fellow oppressed citizens, regardless of their skin color. She says that it is not only their moral duty but also their political duty to act as members of “The Great Human Family”. She then begins to specifically describe how slave women are

In this Drama written by Jane Anderson and directed by Jane Anderson and Robert Robinson. A couple living the American life in California is a despairing couple that wants to have a child. Both Rachel and Richard put up an ad on the paper, happily married, financially secured, and looking for a white baby to love. A couple from Louisiana Wanda and Al are struggling with money and cannot provide for their four children let alone to bring another child in this world. While looking through the paper Wanda reads the ad that Rachel and Richard put up. Rachel goes to Louisiana to visit Wanda and Al. Rachel is concerned about Wanda’s health, and insists her to get a checkup with her doctor, even to get her to drink her prenatal pills. While Rachel is visiting she realizes that their living condition is not stable. Rachel has been giving them money to fix a few things around the house, but Al is the one controlling the money and is spending the money on other stuff. Wanda tells Rachel that the money being send to them is not enough. Al is just lazy and has no motivation to work, or to take his family out of poverty, he is just interested in money. Rachel mentions to Wanda that poverty is a big issue among many women who are careless towards their children. Rachel wanted to make sure if Wanda was sure on giving up her unborn child, Wanda is sure and will not change her mind. Al wanted to ask Rachel a few questions due to

Shielded from the atrocities of slavery during her childhood, Jacobs depicts family life among slaves as one that remains intact in a “comfortable home” (29) through the example of her own family. Each member held limited rights along with the ability to work and the privilege to use their earnings as they pleased. It is not until the death of her mistress where she finally begins to feel the effects of slavery in the sudden separation of her family who are “all distributed among her [mistress’s] relatives” (Jacobs 33). The separation of family is one of the most integral subjects of her narrative since “motherhood [plays a great role] in her life” (Wolfe 518). Jacobs appeals to the emotions of her female audiences by contrasting a slave mother’s agonies in her separation from her children with the “happy free women” (40) whose children remain with her since “no hand” (40) has the right to take them away. The separation of families in Douglass’s narrative does call for some pity but the event is not as tragic in comparison to

The women of the late sixties, although some are older than others, in Alice Walker’s fiction that exhibit the qualities of the developing, emergent model are greatly influenced through the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Motherhood is a major theme in modern women’s literature, which examines as a sacred, powerful, and spiritual component of the woman’s life. Alice Walker does not choose Southern black women to be her major protagonists only because she is one, but because she had discovered in the tradition and history they collectively experience an understanding of oppression that has been drawn from them a willingness to reject the principle and to hold what is difficult. Walker’s most developed character, Meridian, is a person