8

Emergence of Black Feminism—An Overview

Women constitute half of the human population, yet they are not treated at par

with men in the world. They are pushed to the limits of oppression, suppression, and are

highly marginalised. They are destined to endure from cradle to grave for no mistake of

theirs and face discrimination. Women all over the world are seen lacking access to

opportunities, knowledge, skill and even some basic human rights. Ernestine observes:

Humanity recognises no sex; Mind recognises no sex; Life and death,

pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery recognise no sex. A woman

comes involuntarily into exercise; like him she possesses physical and

mental and moral powers . . . Like him [man] she has to pay the penalty

for disobeying nature’s law, and far greater penalties she has to suffer

from ignorance . . . Like man she also enjoys or suffers with her country.

Like man, woman comes involuntarily into existence; yet she is not

recognised as his equal! (qtd. in Shukla 1)

Women live in a male dominated world where they have to play manifold roles.

They have always been seen in relationship with the other. A woman is always supposed

to accept herself as secondary to men. Shyness, humility, selflessness, meekness,

modesty, and faithfulness are some qualities attributed to her. Ann Fergusson says, “. . .

in every age woman has been seen as mother, wife, mistress and as sex object—their

roles in relationship with man!” (qtd. in Shukla 2)

Etymologically, the term “feminism” has been derived from a Latin word

‘Femina’ meaning ‘woman.’ The term feminism is an ideology which recognises the
 9

inadequacy of male chauvinism and demands equality of women with men. The Oxford

English Dictionary defines the term as having the “qualities of females.” It was the

French dramatist, Alexander Dumas who first used the term in 1872 in a pamphlet to

designate the then emerging movement for women’s rights. Different people have

defined feminism in different ways. Barbara Berg, in her introduction to The

Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism, defines feminism as a “broad

movement embracing numerous phases of women’s emancipation.” She further writes:

It is the freedom to decide her own identity; freedom from sex-determined

role; freedom from society’s oppressive restrictions; freedom to express

her thoughts fully and to convert them freely to actions. Feminism

demands the acceptance of woman’s right to individual conscience and

judgement. It postulates that woman’s essential worth stems from her

common humanity and does not depend on the other relationship of her

life. (24)

Sally J. Scholz says, “Feminist methodology takes the lives of women as central”

(3). Krishan Das and Deepchand write, “Feminist methodology aims to understand

gender inequality and focuses on gender politics, power relations, and sexuality” (248).

Thus from the above definitions, we can conclude that feminism is the ideology

which seeks gender equality in economic, social, or cultural fields. It also focuses on the

inappropriateness and scantiness of patriarchal ideologies and stresses on the spiritual,

social, cultural, economic, and racial equality between women with men. It also seeks to

free women of the seemingly interminable sexual and biological colonization. Feminism
 10

demands equal voice and freedom of self-expression and is thus, a protest against male

domination and subjugation of women.

Feminism is not a single concept, but it is a diverse amalgam of ideas. Literary

theorists in the West have talked about the feminist movements as a series of ‘waves’ and

the history and evolution of Western feminism have been divided into three waves.

First Wave Feminism: The term was coined in March 1968 by Marsha Lear who

simultaneously coined the term “second wave feminism.” It refers to the feminist

activities of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The chief concern of

these activities was to gain equal rights for women and their right to suffrage. Feminists

saw right to vote as important both symbolically and practically. It would provide them

full citizenship and bring practical changes in women’s lives. By 1890s, women argued

that illiterate men were enfranchised and allowed to vote whereas highly educated

women were denied the right to vote. Consequently, suffragists like Lydia Becker

asserted that peaceful means could not yield fruitful results and favoured violent means

so that government could provide them justice. With the result, they adopted some

violent means like banging at politicians’ doors, burning of letterboxes, etc which even

led to the imprisonment of some suffragists. In 1910, Christabel Pankhurst declared, “The

truce was all well, but there is nothing like militancy. We glory in this fight because we

feel how much it strengthens us” (qtd. in Walters 83).

The First World War (1914) resulted in the suspension of the campaign.

Pankhurst remarked: “a man-made civilization, hideous and cruel in time of peace, is to

 11

be destroyed” and the war, she asserted, was “God’s vengeance upon the people who held

women in subjection” (qtd. in Walters 85). In The Suffragette Movement, she remarked:

Men and woman had been drawn closer together by the suffering and

sacrifice of the war. Awed and humbled by the great catastrophe, and by

the huge economic problems it had thrown into naked prominence, the

women of the suffrage movement had learnt that social regeneration is a

long and mighty work. (qtd. in Walters 85)

This gave women a chance to work in factories, hospitals, etc, and their

contribution during the war led to their partial enfranchisement in 1918. The years

between 1920 and 1960 saw a decline of feminism because of the Great Depression and

political turmoil in the interwar period.

Second Wave feminism: It refers to the period of resurgence of feminist activity

in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and later throughout the Western world when

protests again included issues like gender inequality, sexuality, family, work, reproductive

rights, etc. Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, etc were the most influential

figures in the second wave feminist phase.

Third Wave feminism: The term ‘Third wave’ feminism includes the feminist

activities and study from 1990 to the present. The movement was a reaction against many

initiatives of second wave feminism and took off with the realization that women belong

to many colours, religions, ethnicities, races, nationalities, and cultures. The term ‘third-

wave’ feminism was coined by Rebecca Walker in 1992. The third wave feminists

worked for the changes needed to be brought in the stereotypical images of women and
 12

consequently, women gathered in small different groups to discuss various issues and

problems. This resulted in the ‘Consciousness-raising’, a term coined by Kathie Sarachild

which means women would meet and discuss their own personal experiences.

Feminist literary theory came into vogue following the international women’s

movement. It is an offspring of the feminist movement which largely gained momentum

in twentieth century. Feminist criticism attempts to study the works of women writers and

the influence of society and environment in their writings. There are numerous feminists

in the West who are responsible for the growth of feminism all over the world. Mary

Wollstonecraft has been very aptly called the “first feminist” and also the “mother of

feminism”, her essay A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a seminal work on

feminist thought. She believed that it is only through education that women will feel the

sense of judgement and interpretation which would enable them to be at par with the

men. Her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) is a plea for girls

about their proper education. She strongly focussed on the women’s rights, especially

their right to education which would ultimately bring their emancipation and strengthen

their marriage bonds and relationships. She firmly believed that equality would bring true

freedom and stressed that men and women should be equally free, and dutiful of their

responsibilities to their family and state. She demanded that women should equally be

considered as creatures of reason. She writes, “If the abstract rights of man will bear

discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink

from the same test . . . Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him of

the gift of reason?” (87)

 13

Wollstonecraft vehemently pointed out that women in her times were oppressed,

marginalised, uneducated, and isolated from the real world. They “are taught from their

infancy that beauty is a woman’s sceptre, with the result, the mind shapes itself to the

body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adore its prison” (44). Along with the

education of girls, she advocated for universal education also. She writes, “Men and

women must be educated in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society

they live in”, and without any crucial change in society, there can be no real “revolution

in female manners” (21).

Towards the end of nineteenth century, some male thinkers began to argue for

rights of women and marked a shift in the history of feminism. William Thompson and

John Stuart Mill acknowledged the inspirational influence of their wives. William

Thompson published his Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the

Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Restrain them in Political and thence in Civil and

Domestic Slavery and describes this book as “the protest of at least one man and one

woman” against the “degradation of one half of the adult portion of the human race” (ix).

Thompson advises women to demand their educational, civil, and political rights which

would later on benefit men also. As he remarks:

Women of England, awake! Women, in whatever country ye breathe

degraded. Awake. Awake to the contemplation of the happiness that

awaits you when all your faculties of mind and body shall be fully

cultivated and developed . . . As your bondage has chained down man to

the ignorance and vices of despotism, so will your liberation reward him

with knowledge, with freedom and happiness. (209)

 14

John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869) asserted that the

subordination of women is one of the main hindrances to human improvement. He

insisted that women should be given the right to vote. Consequently, he presented the first

women’s petition for the vote and worked for the amendments to the 1867 Reform Bill in

favour of women.

Virginia Woolf emerged out with some more detailed and helpful programme for

the liberation of women. She is considered to be one of the most influential feminists of

her day. She emphasised on the idea of economic independence and privacy so that

women can make themselves able to think and write on their own, thus emphasizing for

good social and material conditions required for writing. Her work A Room of One’s Own

(1929) is considered a landmark in the history of twentieth-century feminist thought. She

made a daring statement that, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she

is to write fiction” (6). She attempted to examine the obstacles and hindrances that come

in the way of women writers and expose the false gender-consciousness that becomes a

problem for both male and female writers. She closely observes the false male superiority

and subsequent insecurity of women which comes with the feeling of their inferior status

in the society. She does not completely blame man and is of the opinion that woman too is

responsible for her degraded position in the society and herself contributes to her

oppression in the patriarchal system. She states that, “Women have served all the

centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the

power of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would be

swamp and jungle” (37).

 15

Woolf’s book too, like Wollstonecraft’s book, is a plea for the education and

emancipation of women. Woolf invents the figure of Shakespeare’s sister who was as

gifted and talented as her brother, but was mocked and ridiculed by men and never wrote

a word. Drastically, she kills herself one winter night and Woolf insists:

Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at

the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and me, and in many other

women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and

putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they

are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among

us in the flesh. (111-12)

Woolf stresses on the need for men and women to live in perfect harmony and

cooperation and urges them to avoid looking at each other as rivals to each other. She

remarks that, “Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a

mind that is purely feminine” (97). Finally, she argues that a writer should be

androgynous.

Simone de Beauvoir’s, The Second Sex (1949), is considered one of the most

important books ever written on the subject of the subjugation of women and one of the

most effective feminist works ever written. She contests the all time definition and

description of women by male thinkers and writes in the introduction to her book that,

“humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not

regarded as an autonomous being” (16). She firmly believes that women have always
 16

been considered as secondary and have received the treatment meted out to a servant. She

remarks:

Man has succeeded in enslaving woman; but in the same degree he has

deprived her of what made her possession desirable. With woman

integrated in the family and in society, her magic is dissipated rather than

transformed; reduced to the condition of servant, she is no longer that

unconquered prey incarnating all the treasures of nature. (219)

Beauvoir, like Woolf, finds it disgusting that women have never reacted against

their “other” position by turning man into the “other” for her which is the main cause for

her reduced and downgrade status. So a woman is all responsible for her secondary status

and position because of her unwillingness to resist against the patriarchal system. She

remarks:

Woman herself recognizes that the world is masculine on the whole; those

who fashioned it, ruled it, and still dominate it today are men. As for her,

she does not consider herself responsible for it; it is understood that she is

inferior and dependent; she has not learned the lessons of violence, she has

never stood forth as subject before the other members of the group. (609)

She advises women to write about their own experiences in the male dominated society.

Finally, she draws the conclusion that man and woman relationship will become better

only when they are equal.

Betty Friedan is another distinguished figure in the history of feminism whose

book, The Feminine Mystique (1963) is an important sociological study. She portrayed
 17

the pathetic condition of American women whose sadness mounted in the post-war

society. The women suffered from the problem of household ‘boredom.’ She held the

opinion that intelligent, talented, and career-conscious women did not deserve

domesticity and considered women’s magazines, Freudian psychology, and

advertisements responsible for the false view that women could gain happiness only

through marriage, motherhood, and domesticity, the ideology that she labelled as

feminine mystique. She defined it as, “a strange discrepancy between the realities of our

lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform” (7).

She realized the massive pressure put on American women as the feminine

mystique “permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their identity” (64),

thereby making them realize that they had no private image of their own. Friedan

encouraged women to break through the feminine mystique and advised them to take

themselves seriously. The book showed the women how to lead a fruitful, novel, and

creative life as against a life marred by domesticity.

Mary Ellmann in her, Thinking about Women (1968) and Kate Millet in Sexual

Politics (1970) came forward with path-breaking texts in feminist literary criticism. Both

the writers in their texts demonstrate the misogynist stereotypes of women. Ellmann’s

book is one of the first works of feminist literary criticism and she comes out with

stereotypes of women in English, American, and continental literature from Jane Austen

to Norman Mailer. It also looks into the views of male critics regarding women writers.

Ellmann protests against ignominious roles and attributes, especially the roles related to

the reproductive function of women and the physical superiority of man. Kate Millet’s

Sexual Politics (1970) is an exemplary feminist work and emphatically took the world by
 18

storm. A great number of other feminist critics were influenced by her. Millet defines

sexual politics as “power structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of

people is controlled by another” (23). She analyses sexual power politics in the works of

D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Jenet. She considers these

authors as sexist and analyses some passages from the works of these authors to show

how the language and tone show male dominance. She labels these authors as “the

counter revolutionary sexual politicians” (233). Millet exhaustively discusses patriarchy

and declares that, “Patriarchy has God on its side. One of the most effective agents of

control is the powerfully expeditious character of its doctrines as to the nature and origin

of the female and the attribution to her alone and the dangers and evils it imputes to

sexuality” (51). She also discusses masculine and feminine traits—‘masculine’

(intelligent, aggressive and force) and ‘feminine’ (domicility and passivity). She finally

declares that only a sexual revolution would put the institution of patriarchy to an end.

Feminist critics from the 1970s focussed on the works of women writers such as

Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. In the 1970s Writers

like Ellen Moers, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert, and Susan Gubar came out with

outstanding books. Ellen Moers’s Literary Women (1976), Elaine Showalter’s A

Literature of their Own (1977), and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Mad Woman

in the Attic (1979) have emerged as the modern classics of feminist literature and literary

theory.

Moers’s Literary Women, is a seminal work of feminist criticism. Moers

examines English, American, and French women writers from the eighteenth century to

the present day and analyzes how gender has influenced their works. The book is a
 19

description of women’s literature from the viewpoint of literary criticism, history, and

feminism.

Elaine Showalter’s “A Literature of their Own” outlines a female literary tradition

in the English novel from the Brontes to the present day. She remarks that, “Women have

generally been regarded as ‘sociological chameleons,’ taking on the class, lifestyle, and

culture of their male relatives” (11). She identifies three major phases of historical

development and writes:

First, there is a prolonged phase of imitation of the prevailing modes of the

dominant tradition, and internalization of its standards of art and its views

on social roles. Second, there is a phase of protest against these standards

and values, and advocacy of minority rights and values, including a

demand for autonomy. Finally, there is a phase of self-discovery, a turning

inward freed from some of the dependency of opposition, a search for

identity. An appropriate terminology for women writers is to call these

stages feminine, feminist, and female. (12-13)

Showalter explains that the feminine phase dates from 1840 to the death of

George Eliot in 1880 and women writers endeavored to equal the intellectual

achievements and writings of the male culture. The English women writers chose male

pseudonyms in 1840s, like Bronte sisters, George Eliot and others, as a way of coping

with a double literary standard, thus their writings clearly exhibit the irregular pressure on

their narratives which in turn affects tone, diction, and characterization. Showalter asserts

that, “During the Feminine phase, dating from about 1840 to 1880, women wrote in an

effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its
 20

assumptions about female nature” (137). About the feminist phase, she writes in Feminist

Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature Theory:

In the Feminist phase, from about 1880 to 1920, or the winning of vote,

women are historically enabled to reject the accommodating postures of

feminity and to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged

womanhood. The personal sense of injustice which feminine novelists

such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Frances Trollope expressed in their novels

of class struggle and factory life become increasingly and explicitly

feminist in the 1880s, when a generation of New Women redefined the

woman artist’s role in terms of responsibility to suffering sisters. (138)

She writes about the female phase:

In the Female phase, ongoing since 1920, women reject both imitation and

protest—two forms of dependency—and turn instead to female experience

as the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of

culture to the forms and techniques of literature. Representatives of the

formal Female Aesthetic, such as Dorothy Richardson and Virginia

Woolf, begin to think in terms of male and female sentences, and divide

their work into “masculine” journalism and “feminine” fictions, redefining

and sexualizing external and internal experience. (138-39)

Another important and influential text, The Mad Woman in the Attic (1979) by

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar is considered as an early landmark in the feminist

literary theory. This book delineates the “distinctively female tradition” of the nineteenth

century and aims to offer a complex theory of women’s creativity. The author argues that
 21

the woman writer of the nineteenth century suffers from an intense anxiety of authorship

because creativity is defined as male in the patriarchal culture. The woman writer gives

expression to her voice indirectly though she possesses a distinctive female power. Thus

she creates the female stereotypes of angel and monster as male writers have done and

also subverts and revises them. The question that Gilbert and Gubar ask is, “What does it

mean to be a woman writer in a culture whose fundamental definitions of literary

authority are, as we have seen, both overtly and covertly patriarchal?” (45-46) They

conclude that, “In projecting their anger and dis-ease into dreadful figures, creating dark

doubles for themselves and their heroines, women writers are both identifying with and

revising the self-definitions patriarchal culture has imposed on them” (79). The angel, the

monster, the sweet heroine, and the raging mad woman are all aspects of the author’s

self-images. “It is debilitating to be any woman in a society where women are warned

that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters” (53). This aspect lays bare

the truth that a real woman is hidden behind the facade of patriarchal texture and the onus

is on the feminist critics to make the reality manifest. They remark:

Dis-eased and infected by the sentences of patriarchy, yet unable to deny

the urgency of that “poet-fire” she felt within herself, what strategies did

the woman writer develop for overcoming her anxiety of authorship? How

did she dance out of the looking glass of the male text into a tradition that

enabled her to create her own authority? Denied the economic, social, and

psychological status ordinarily essential to creativity; denied the right,

skill, and education to tell their own stories with confidence, women who
 22

did not retreat into angelic silence seem at first to have had very limited

options. (71)

A host of thinkers and writers reacted to Western feminism as it focused on gender

discrimination only and neglected differences of race and class which are very much

interrelated with gender. It lacked the comprehensiveness to encompass the existence of

black women and other women of color. Brazilian women have asserted the Eurocentric

view of feminism as it avoids the discussion of problems like racism, health issues, and

other problems related to work. Western feminists are confronted with the problems of

sexism and political and social inequalities while the ‘Third World’ women confront and

face even more complicated and intricate problems. Bell Hooks in her Feminist Theory:

From Margin to Centre (1984) critically argued about and analyzes, that the women “who

are most victimized by sexist oppression . . . who are powerless to change their condition

in life have never been permitted to speak” (1). She holds the view that Western feminism

is basically racist and has disappointed and dissatisfied many women. Sojourner Truth

was one of the first feminists who drew white women’s attention to black slave women

and made them realize that women could work like men. She delivered a speech for the

women’s rights movement in Ohio in 1852 and said:

. . . and ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! . . . I have plowed,

and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and

ain’t I a woman? I could work as much as any man (when I could get it),

and bear de lash as well—and ain’t I a woman? I have borne five children

and I seen ‘em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a
 23

mother’s grief, none but Jesus hear—and ain’t I a woman? (qtd. in hooks,

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism 160)

White women very hypocritically thought the movement to be theirs and ignored

the fact that women are divided by various differences—sexism, racism, and class

privilege. Hooks writes her own experience in feminist groups and declares that white

women applied a very condescending attitude towards non-white women. By doing so,

they reminded them that it were them who allowed these women to participate in the

feminist movement. They never saw them as equals (19).

Black women writers analyse the complex and complicated social issues because

of being black and women. They clearly express the immeasurable and fathomless pain,

injustice, and horror of slavery. Black women have faced many kinds of oppression both

from the white people and black men. This experience has provided them enough material

whereby they can vent their feelings of oppression. These writers have been deliberately

made inconspicuous by both the traditions—the women’s literary tradition and by the

African-American literary tradition. The black women’s writings have been “patronized,

slighted and misunderstood by a cultural establishment operating according to male norms

out of male perceptions” (Morgan 11).

The white female scholars and writers deliberately excluded the works of black

women writers from literary anthologies and critical studies. The best illustration of this

can be found in Patricia Meyer Spacks’s book The Female Imagination: Literary and

Psychological Investigation of Women’s Writing where one finds definite apathy and

complacence for black female writers. The black female writers were pityingly
 24

disenfranchised from both the critical works on the tradition of white women writers as

well as black men writers of their own native literary tradition.

So, one encounters a misrepresentation and dismissal of black women writers in

literary history. Bell Hooks portrays the status of the black women in her book Ain’t I A

Woman:

Black women are one of the most devalued female groups in American

society, and they have been the recipients of a male abuse and cruelty that

has known no bounds or limits. Since the black woman has been

stereotyped by both white and black men as the “bad” woman, she has not

been able to ally herself with men from either group to get protection from

the other. Neither group feels that she deserves protection . . . most young

black men see their female companions solely as objects to be exploited . .

. referred to black female as “that bitch” or “that whore.” Their perception

of the black female as a degraded sexual object is similar to white male

perceptions of the black female. (108)

The onus lies on the black feminist critics who must focus wholly on the black

women writers who had been made invisible in the literary canon. What actually impelled

the black women critics to focus on the African-American women writers was Elaine

Showalter’s great discovery of the forgotten white women writers from American literary

tradition. Accordingly, the black women formulated theories and found proper means to

rejuvenate the neglected and forgotten black female writers and worked for the proper

interpretation of their critical opinions.

 25

Black women joined the feminist movement to put an end to sexist oppression but

soon they were to realize the harsh reality that white women were hardly concerned with

the various problems faced by the non-white women. The participants came to realize

that the feminist movement was concerned with the small minority who had organized

the movement. Their role in the movement was never given due credit and their efforts

went unnoticed. The racial segregation against the black women was so brazen that the

term “women” meant “white women” and the term “blacks” signified “black men.” Black

women were always destined to suffer from stereotyping and were portrayed negatively

and suffered many atrocities like persecution, beating, torture, etc. This cruel, pathetic,

and piteous racial attitude of white female folk towards black women resulted in the

unavoidable emergence of women’s organizations whose sole aim was to end racism.

Black feminism stresses upon the fact that sexism, racism, and class oppression

are very much interlinked and intersectional. Black feminists had to face different

challenges: to show other black females that feminism was not a white women movement,

to persuade and command white women to share power with them and to fight to end the

misogynist tendencies of Black Nationalism. The white feminist theorists did not take

cognizance of issues related to racism, gender discrimination, and class conflict and such

urgencies of black female experience. The exclusion of black women from the feminist

theory and antiracist discourses became clear for the first time in the social movements of

the 1960s and 70s which fought for racial and gender equality. The task was accomplished

by the black theorists like Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Patricia Hill Collins who

stressed on the marginalization of black women due to race, sex, class, and gender.

Kimberle Crenshaw, black feminist scholar, states, “black women are sometimes excluded
 26

from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a

discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and

gender” (140).

Another pivotal figure and spokesperson for Black American rights, Mary Church

Terrell, the President of the National Association of Colored Women, made some rigorous

efforts to involve black women in women’s struggle for rights and played a vital role to

bring them at par with men in the educational sphere. Josephine St. Pieree Ruffin, an

important black activist after working with white woman’s organisations demanded for

separate organisations for black women which would try to address their problems. She

longed for such organisations where women could establish a women’s movement that

would generally address the concerns of all women. She writes:

Our women’s movement is a women’s movement that is led and directed

by women for the good of women and men, for the benefit of humanity,

which is more than any one branch or section of it . . . we are not drawing

the color line; we are women, American women, as intensely interested in

all that pertains to us as such as all other American women, we are not

alienating or withdrawing, we are only coming to the front, willing to join

any others in the same work and cordially inviting and welcoming any

others to join us. (qtd. in Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman 164)

Some more black activists clearly showed the world that black women were as

committed to the struggles of women’s rights as other women. One such activist Fannie

Barrier Williams addressed the World Congress of Representative women and held the

same opinion about black women. She stressed in her address that black women should
 27

build cooperation and unity among themselves which would influence American culture

significantly. She remarks that, “The highest ascendency of woman’s development has

been reached when they have become mentally strong enough to final bonds of

association interwoven with sympathy, loyalty, and mutual truthfulness. To-day union is

the watchword of woman’s onward march” (qtd. in Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman 165). The

white Americans regarded black women as sexually immoral, undisciplined, and

lascivious. Black women were stereotyped in the disastrous images of mammy, sapphire,

prostitute, and bull dagger. They were portrayed as deceitful, despiteful, evil, adamant,

vicious, and malicious. The sapphire image stereotyped them negatively and described

them as naturally evil.

A prominent black activist, Anna Julia Cooper stimulated black women to speak

out about their problems and issues. In her book, A Voice from the South (1892), she

writes:

The colored woman of today occupies, one might say, a unique position in

this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems

one of the ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which makes for our

civilization. She is confronted by a woman question and a race problem,

and is yet an unknown or unacknowledged factor in both. (112)

She described woman’s rights to higher education and writes about the social

status of women. She urged the black women to leave their subordinate position in

relation to black men and serve as leaders to struggle against racism. She realised the

equal commitment of black woman as that of black men to the black freedom struggle.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a black woman activist and plainspoken person who
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emphatically spoke on the issue of woman suffrage and stated her views on the suffrage

issue.

In 1920, all women were granted the right to vote. Monthly magazine, Women’s

Voice which started in 1919 held the belief—“by women—of women—for women.”

However, the right to vote did not change the social status of the black female suffragists

and white women were concerned with themselves only. Black women were ridiculed

violently at the polling stations and were excused not to vote because of their ineligibility

to vote due to some ambiguous reasons. Women’s organisation in the 1930s and 40s

focused on racial segregation, but from 1940 to 1960, women came together on a single

platform to raise their social and professional status and did not fight for their liberation.

From 1920s to mid 1960s, black women stressed on the freedom for black people

irrespective of their sex and after that worked for Civil Rights Movement. The black men

focused on their masculinity like the white men and the black women copied the white

women and focused on feminity. Their own men were demanding them to be submissive,

passive, and unemployed. To maintain their manhood, black men always looked for the

suppression of females and they chose to approve sexual oppression and exploitation on

black women.

The Civil Rights Movement which was started by Martin Luther King stood for

the liberation of the whole black community by fighting against racism. However, it only

ended in the dominance of the male community. The Black women of the U.S formed the

National Black Feminist Organisation (NBFO) in New York in 1973 as they began to feel

frustrated about the organisations set up by Black men. Its purpose was to accredit and

empower black women against racist, sexist, and classist oppression and the issues of
 29

homophobia, lesbianism, etc. The main purpose of the Black Feminist Movement was to

empower black women mentally, spiritually, and economically to fight against this

oppression. “The Combahee River Collective” was a prominent feminist organisation and

it was Barbara Smith who suggested the name of the organisation which stressed on black

women’s struggle. The organisation included members from different political

movements. Though the organisation ended in 1980, it left a very influential imprint in the

history of black feminism.

Black men gave no credit to the contribution of black women in Civil Rights

Movement and forums like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Gloria Hull,

Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith reacted to this in “All the Women Are White, All the

Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.”

Black feminist critics took the inevitable initiative of rejuvenating and

resurrecting forgotten Black women writers and revising the negative critical views of

them. The black feminist critics devised their own feminist theories. They focused wholly

on black women’s writings and history, not only in the United States but also in other

countries. Their main accord is to see how the race, class, and sexuality influence

women’s lives. One of the most eminent and crucial tenets of black feminist thought

clearly shows that the black feminists are concerned with issues like economic survival,

racial discrimination, and patriarchy which the white women’s movement has failed to

address.

The main obsession of black feminist criticism is “its discourse on stereotype

versus character, which bespeaks the strong political investment of black feminist critics
 30

in the notion of a whole self; and its affirmation of oral folk culture as the source of

uniquely black feminine literary authority” (Dubey 2).

Mary Washington enunciated a fundamental belief of black feminist criticism. She

asserted that, “we should be about the business of reading, absorbing, and giving critical

attention to those writers whose understanding of black woman can take us further” (11).

She found the marginalisation of Black women writers in the literary canon. African-

American women have often been deprecated by their males, and have been found in the

disappearing margins of a vigorous American culture. They are made to struggle to gain

an equal and respected position enjoyed by all citizens of the United States no matter how

enslaved or free they are or whether they live in North or South.

African-American feminist critics have endeavoured to give a voice to the

problems of double invisibility and double jeopardy which are a result of their being black

and female which really isn’t their fault. Black feminist thought emphasizes and

accentuates masculinity bias and racism, two major factors responsible for the oppression

of the black female community. Some of the important themes in the black feminist

thought are the sexual politics of black womanhood, black women and motherhood, black

women’s lesbian relationships and their activism.

The intellectual activism of Afro-American women writers has always proved to

be as an essential support for the whole community. Patricia Hill Collins in Black

Feminist Thought remarks:

African women writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, and

Ellen Kuzwayo have used their voices to raise important issues that affect
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Black African women (James 1990). Like the work of Maria W. Stewart

and that of Black women transnationally, African-American women’s

intellectual work has aimed to foster Black women’s activism. (3)

Maria Stewart, the first American woman to lecture on Black woman’s rights and

one of the first U.S Black feminists to introduce race, gender, and class oppression being

the major causes of the suffering of black women, challenged the white people’s control

over the black women. She affirmed that, “We have pursued the shadow, they have

obtained the substance; we have performed the labour, they have received the profits; we

have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them” (Richardson 59). Self-

definition and self-reliance were two main factors foregrounded and stressed by Maria

Stewart. According to her, these factors would ultimately enable women to become

independent and oppose the oppression of race and sex. She writes that, “It is useless for

us any longer to sit with our hands folded, reproaching the whites; for that will never

elevate us” (Richardson 53). Stewart emphasises on the improvement of materialistic and

spiritual needs of black women.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a great growth in black feminist writers. They

openly criticized gender, white male patriarchy and other types of hegemony and

dominance. 1980s was a significant time in which some black women writers and literary

critics strictly speculated about gender and black women as subjects in historical

contexts. In Black Women Writers at Work (1983), Cade Bambara told the editor Claudia

Tate:

What has changed about the woman’s movement is the way we perceive

it, the way black women define the term, the phenomena and our
 32

participation in it . . . We are more inclined to trust our traditions,

whatever name we gave and now give those impulses, those groups, those

agendas and are less inclined to think we have to sound like, build like,

non-colored groups that identify themselves as feminist or as women’s

rights groups or so it seems to me. (57)

The black feminist literature and critical ideology embodied and assimilated

various ideas with the spread of the awareness of black culture in the 1960s and the

remarkable emergence of black feminist critics in the 1970s and 1980s. The concept of

‘race’ being ‘black’ is now contested as meaningless. Barbara Smith and Deborah E

McDowell demonstrate and clarify that many black women novelists exploit the themes

of oppression based on race, sex or class, black female protagonists, their spiritual

journey from victimization to self-realization, female sisterhood, black female language,

lesbianism, etc. Barbara Smith, American lesbian feminist has played a very important

role in maintaining Black Feminism in the United States. She has aptly been called an

ingenious critic, lecturer, author, scholar, and publisher of black feminist thought. She

greatly addressed the problems of women of color and along with Audre Lorde and

Cherrie Moragh co-founded Kitchen-Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S

publisher for black women. Her important contribution is seen in the inclusion of lesbians

in black feminist literature. She realized the contribution of black lesbians as being

fervent activists in the black feminist movement whose role was otherwise discredited by

the black feminist theorizations.

Smith states that feminist criticism is a valid and necessary cultural and political

enterprise. With the publication of her essay “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism”
 33

(1977), it was realized that black women’s literature required good and feasible political

and literary conditions. She states “that the existence of a feminist movement was an

essential precondition to the growth of feminist literature, criticism, and women’s

studies” (170). Black women writers and artists were ignored due to the absence of an

independent black feminist movement and there being no “ political movement to give

power or support to those who want to examine Black women’s experience through

studying our history, literature, and culture” (170). Therefore, a political movement is

quite mandatory for the existence of black feminist theory so that the art of black women

is well appreciated and given critical attention. Smith urged for the development of both

the political movement and the political theory so that black feminist literary criticism

would assimilate “the realization that the politics of sex as well as the politics of race and

class are crucially interlocking factors in the works of Black women writers” (170). Her

statement clearly stated the fact that both the black feminist criticism and black political

theory should analyze how different systems of oppression are intersectional and

interlocked. According to her, both black political theory and black feminist criticism are

responsible for the disenfranchisement of black women.

McDowell’s essay “New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism” (1980) stresses

on the need for contextual and textual analysis for the assessment of the writings of

African-American women writers. McDowell states that black feminist critics form a

combination of a contextual approach and precise textual analysis and a concern for the

issue of gender-specific uses of language. She realizes that Black women writers were

neglected by the critical community around the world. She remarks:

 34

Suffice it to say that the critical community has not favored Black women

writers. The recognition among Black female critics and writers that white

women, white men, and Black men consider their experiences as

normative and Black women’s experiences as deviant has given rise to

Black feminist criticism. (187-88)

Black feminist critics work for the pious cause that black women writers should

be given a good and greater place in literary discourses. Black feminists work for

explaining the interlocked and intersectional motifs of racist, sexist, and classist

oppression in black texts. Black feminist critical discourse firmly delineates the view that

black women are confronted with the triple jeopardy and nurture a black consciousness,

which is very much vital for their liberation.

Kimberle Crenshaw, a prominent feminist law theorist in “Age, Race, sex and

Class” addresses the issues of ‘intersectionality’. She coined the term ‘intersectionality’

in her study “ Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Politics and Violence against

Women of Color” (1995) which suggested that legal theory must take into consideration

the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality in order to understand how laws

which though claim to be equitable for all, actually do not treat black women fairly. Her

essay is about the various interactions of race and gender which result in the violence

against women of color.

Bell Hooks is another important feminist theorist who contributed to the

intersectionality theory. In the preface to her Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre

(1984), Hooks discussed the black Americans in her hometown and explained the

meaning of her title, “From Margin to Centre.” She wrote:

 35

Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing

reality. We looked from both the outside in and the inside out. We focused

our attention on the centre as well as the margin. We understand both.

This mode of seeing reminded us of the existence of a whole universe, a

main body made up of both margin and centre. (2)

Barbara Christian is one of the founders of contemporary African-American

feminist literary criticism. Her Black Feminist Criticism is a collection of essays written

between 1975 and 1984. Her book tried to set up a literary history of black women’s

writings by opposing the concepts of stereotypes and images. Her 1989 essay “But What

Do We Think We’re Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism or My

Version of a Little Bit of History” sketches the development of black feminist criticism

and debates about how black feminist criticism should be defined. Christian describes the

tradition of black feminist criticism from Washington’s “Black Women Image Makers”

(1974) to Hazel Carby’s intellectual history of black women in Reconstructing

Womanhood (1987) which stresses on developing a political theory of black women’s

writings and lays down the need for developing a critical theory.

Patricia Hill Collins is another major theorist who introduced the sociological

theory of “Matrix of Domination” and her writings are concerned with the politics of

black feminist thought and the oppression suffered by black women. Her work, Black

Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990)

is an influential book. She stresses on the correlation between empowerment, knowledge,

and self-definition and expresses ample concern towards black women, whose sufferings
 36

and oppression she realizes personally. She, too, is best known for her ideas of

intersectionality and the problems of domination.

The writings of black women writers, particularly of 1970s like Toni Morrison,

Paul Marshall, Alice Walker, etc have attained ample critical attention. It is a bit

surprising to observe that the works of these important writers were censored strongly by

various critics. This hostile attitude is exemplified in Calvin Hernton’s essay “The Sexual

Mountain and the Black Women Writers.” The author states that black women writers

who wrote about gender issues in their works were strongly criticized by black nationalist

critics who “accused these women of being Black men-haters , bull-dykes and perverse

lovers of white men and women” (141). However, these black writers have been able to

find a crucial place for themselves and have tried their best to give vent to their feelings

about some of their unique experiences resulting from racist, classist, and sexist violence

and oppression. Interestingly, they have surpassed many white women writers. Some

writers have seen continuity in the works of African-American women writers. One such

writer is Michelle Cliff who found continuity from the slave narratives of Linda Brent to

Paul Marshall’s Praise Song for the Widow. Cliff has clearly demonstrated that all these

black women writers have worked to give themselves proper identities through their

works. The novels of Paul Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker tell the stories of

their mothers—not their biological mothers but the women who came before them.

Barbara Christian in her book, Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition,

1892-1976 writes about the novels of these three writers:

Their novels are the literary counterparts of their communities’ oral

traditions, which in the Americas have become more and more the domain
 37

of women. The history of these communities, seldom related in textbooks,

are incorporated into tales that emphasize the marvelous, sometimes the

outrageous, as a means of teaching a lesson . . . Not that any of these

novelists are merely reporting stories; they are obviously creating fiction.

Rather they tell their mothers’ stories through their crafted articulation of

the particular imaginative style their respective communities use to

manifest their experience. (239)

Paule Marshall is one of America’s eminent and remarkable contemporary black

women writers who have left a perennial impression in the minds of her readers. She

treats in a clear manner the issues of gender, race, sex, and power in her works. She is

deeply concerned with the issues which affect women’s lives and thus tries to build up

positive and promising images of women to give them a voice. She realistically portrays

the oppressed, unfortunate black women who are victims of many kinds of oppression

like political, social, psychological, economic, literary, etc. She deals openly with the

black women’s quest for their identity in an oppressive, patriarchal, and racially

discriminative world. She has five novels and two short story collections to her credit and

has received many lifetime awards for her fiction. Her first novel Brown Girl,

Brownstones (1959) is a crucial work in twentieth-century black American women’s

literary history and is considered a landmark in African-American fiction providing new

dimensions to the black womanhood. Marshall was influenced by Barbadian women. Her

second novel, The Chosen Place, the Timeless People was published in 1969 and

explores the theme of quest for identity. Praise Song for the Widow (1983) is another
 38

important novel by her which describes the journey of a sixty year old widow on a

Caribbean cruise and portrays her psychic distress.

Toni Morrison has emerged as an appealing figure and is the first African-

American woman to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. Her

writings illustrate the spirit of resistance of black women. She wrote her first novel, The

Bluest Eye (1970) at the age of thirty while she was teaching at Howard University. The

novel describes the life of a young African-American girl Pecola who longed for blue

eyes and had the notion that her life would change if she acquired blue eyes. Her second

novel, Sula (1973) portrays the friendship between two girls while revealing their

African-American experiences. Her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977), which won her

many awards, portrays Milkman Dead’s journey to his roots in the South. Tar Baby

(1981), her fourth novel which embodies folk tales and myths, received much critical

attention. Beloved (1981), her landmark novel depicts the story of an African-American

slave Margaret Garner who escapes to Ohio. Sethe kills her daughter Beloved who

returns back years after to haunt her mother’s home. This book won her the Pulitzer Prize

for Fiction in 1988. Morison has tried to rewrite African-American history from the

perspective of African-American women. Her works too, follow the pattern of

intersectionality of race, gender, and class. She focuses on the black women’s

experiences in an unjust and cruel society and their quest for cultural identity. She

juxtaposes fantasy and mythic elements with the conflicts of race, gender, and class. Her

style combines unrealistic elements with the realistic ones to portray the plight of her

female characters.
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Alice Walker powerfully and passionately depicts the black women’s struggle for

spiritual wholeness and urges for the sexual, racial, and economic equality of black

women. She has emerged as a contemporary literary celebrity. Her writings centre on the

role of black women in their culture and history. She has strived to find out a special

place for African-Americans in general and African-American women in particular in the

American literary canon.