The title of my paper is “Plight of a Black Woman: A Critical Study of The Women of Brewster
Place”.
“They were
hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women
of Brewster Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond their
years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had
a story.”
“When you’re a black woman, you seldom get
to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.”
Born in 1950, Gloria Naylor had witnessed her parents
migrating from rural southern communities to large, industrial northern cities,
during the Great Migration of African-Americans. The Women of Brewster Place,
which is her first novel, reflects this dual cultural inheritance. The stories
that reflected her own experiences as an African-American woman also influenced
some parts of it.
Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye published
in 1965, which received widespread critical acclaim, had a profound effect on
Naylor. It gave her the confidence and authority she needed to write about the
places and people she knew.
The Women of Brewster Place was published in 1982 after Naylor completed a
master’s degree in African-American studies at Yale. The novel got many
appreciations from the critics and authors for its lyrical prose style and its
frank yet hopeful portrayal of an African-American community struggling to
survive in a depressed landscape. Through this work, Naylor tried to present
the ideas that comprised of mainly the experiences of African-Americans, especially
those of black women.
The Women of Brewster Place reflects on many ideas including class, gender,
color, sexuality, and general reflections on the African-American experience in
the United States, from the legacy of the Civil Rights Era to the importance of
faith and religion.
Women, who came to Brewster Place in search of a home,
form the basis of this novel. The concept of home is well explored in the novel,
it is a place where relationships flower and breathe. Brewster
Place is a housing development in an unnamed city, a poor neighbourhood
on a dead-end street. It seems destined to be an unfortunate place since the
people linked to its creation are all corrupt. In words of Naylor, I quote, “Brewster Place was the bastard
child of several clandestine meetings between the alderman of the sixth
district and the managing director of Unico Realty Company”, I unquote.
The
Women of Brewster Place is a fictional portrayal of
events that occur during the challenging times of several women’s lives - Mattie
Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Kiswana Browne, Lucielia Louise Turner, Cora Lee,
Lorraine, and Theresa. The male characters merely play the roles of antagonists
for the women who are the central concern in the novel. Men are used as
dramatic devices to bring conflict, of some sort, into the lives of the women
residing in Brewster Place. The novel further consists of a second person
omniscient view, allowing the reader to gain insight of the characters thoughts
and feelings.
Naylor has efficiently used ‘Personification’ from
beginning till the end, giving voices to the mute objects. It starts with
Personification of The Brewster Place as a character itself, how it was born
and how it looked during its youth. As described in the novel, I quote, “The gray bricks of the buildings
were the color of dull silver during Brewster Place’s youth”, I unquote. As
we further move deeper into one of the stories in the novel, we find instances
when even the church is personified. “Canaan
Baptist Church, a brooding, ashen giant, sat in the middle of a block of
rundown private homes. Its multi-colored, dome-shaped eyes glowered into the
darkness.”
Towards the end, there is another more prominent
example, where blood oozes out of the bricks of the wall of the Brewster Place,
aptly symbolizing the unending plight of the residents and the death of the
dead-end street.
Throughout The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor
emphasized the importance of sister hood by showing how the women are
strengthened by their relationships with one another and proving that men are
not necessary to their survival or happiness.
In one of
the recent Bollywood Films, ‘Queen’ directed by Vikas Bahl, a similar theme has
been taken up. Women don’t need to depend on men for happiness.
Surviving racism,
rape, war, childhood neglect, and poverty, the women in this novel pull
together and share a sense of sisterhood. They are all joined in their
community by loss and all have a real sense, which the reader can relate to. Naylor's
people are real, touchable, and tragically elegant.
The
Women of Brewster Place, attempts to trace Black women’s
migration from slavery to freedom and submissiveness to self-assertion. All the
women characters in the novel are exemplary of many African American women who
still struggle to find a place of their own.
Each character comes as a ray of hope in the otherwise
dark world. Kiswana Browne is introduced as a young revolutionist, who is
determined to bring a change in the living conditions of her people. She is
born in a family that can offer her a comfortable life and yet she does not
want to lose her identity as a Black. So she leaves Linden Hills and resolves
to stay at Brewster Place where she would be able to lead a life with her
people. She is so proud to be a Black that she even adopts an African name; she
becomes Kiswana instead of Melanie. She fights with her mother for remarking
the black as ‘them’. In her own words, I
quote, “What do you mean, these people.
They’re my people and yours, too, Mama - we’re all black. But maybe you’ve
forgotten that over in Linden Hills”, I unquote.
Naylor gives a graphic picture of Kiswana’s efforts to
unite the women of Brewster Place to find solutions for their common problems. Kiswana
also goes out of her way to help Cora Lee deal with her children. She compelled
them to attend the production of a Shakespeare play being
staged in the park. Cora Lee’s life takes a turn by Kiswana’s brief appearance and
she starts taking interest in her children. She changes her ways and cleans the
house and the children, dresses them up for the play. The performance at the
play, further moves Cora Lee and by the end, she begins to imagine a better
future for her children.
Kiswana Browne is thus, the representative of the
young population of black women in America. The
day women unite and fight for themselves; all kind of discrimination will come
to an end, be it Gender Discrimination or Color Discrimination.
Another central
character, Mattie Michael, had to leave her parent’s home when she got pregnant
with the child of Butch Fuller. Miss Eva Turner plays a vital role in Mattie's
life by taking her in during her loneliness and destitution and treating Mattie
and her child, as if they are her own family. Mattie struggled to give her
child utmost care yet he grew up to be as mischievous as he could be. He got
into further trouble when he killed a man and was jailed. But here too as an
epitome of an ever loving mother, Mattie fights for him. But Basil flees and
Mattie is stuck with no son and no home. Instead of her just dwelling on the
situation she moves forward and moves to Brewster Place. When she reaches there
she ends up becoming a mentor to the other women who were having a hard time at
the Brewster Place.
Naylor uses Mattie to
portray the strengthening of women through other women. Mattie plays the role of
a daughter to Miss Eva, a sister to Etta Mae, and a mother to Lucielia, thereby
providing a support to them.
The sisterhood between
Mattie and Etta Mae Johnson is illustrated by each woman's willingness to help
the other in their most trying times. Etta’s long lasting struggle, in search of a
dignified life and a decent life partner, highlights one of the common problems
of most of the black women.
Lorraine and Theresa
come as the lesbian couple introduced towards the end of the novel. They
together raise the issue of sexuality. Lorraine as opposed to Theresa cares
about how people see and think about her. She tries her best to fit in the
Brewster Place with the rest of the women but a woman named Sophie gives
Lorraine a hard time about her sexuality and taunts her.
Ben is the only one who befriends Lorraine as he had
lost his crippled daughter and claims to see her in Lorraine. Ironically,
Lorraine kills Ben in her frenzied efforts to save herself against her
attackers. Here Naylor shows us one of the cruelest realities of the society we
live in. Black women are not only prey
for white men; but also for their own men. The gang rape of Lorraine brings
this horrible reality to the center. Lorraine’s rape at the dead end wall shows
a helpless state of women in African - American Community. She is attacked by a
gang of teenagers. After the boy leaves her batter and bloody, the other one mercilessly
sponges her. A black woman is smashed by her own men. Clearly, a black woman is not only exploited by whites, but within her
own community, she is rendered unsafe. What can be a more brutal picture!
With whatever little strength that she had, she drags
a loose brick towards the figure and bashes the person in the face, without
knowing it is Ben and not the gang men who destroyed her completely.
Ben happens to be the first black resident of Brewster
Place, and thus his death at the wall of Brewster Place is symbolic. It
signifies the death of a community, of its inability to hold together for long.
In the last scene, when the women gather to chip away at the wall that
imprisons them, we are aware of the fact that the community rebellion has
finally taken place. In one of the related critical essays, titled, ‘New Black
Feminist Criticism (1985-2000) Barbara Christian mentions, “Brewster Place residents are displaced again, just as they had been
before. They are as powerless as they were when they first came to Brewster
Place.”
Thus, The Women
of Brewster Place becomes a narrative of sexism and racism. It is a
reflection of the pain and suffering of women who have been oppressed and
discriminated against on the score of race and sex. Women like Mattie, Luciela
and Cora Lee are all at Brewster Place because they have nowhere else to go;
they have reached the end of the road, a dead-end because of their racial and
sexual identity. They have been abandoned by their men and have to look after
themselves and their children single-handedly. Traumatized and economically
vulnerable, these poor women cannot survive in the white world. Brewster Place
echoes with the blues, but there are glimpses of a subdued joy also. Black
women are tough and enduring; they are the survivors as well as the victims.
