The Dilemma of "Double-Consciousness": Toni Morrison's Novels.

Abstract

In The Dilemma of 'Double-Consciousness', Denise Heinze makes a contribution to the current dialogue on Toni Morrison by analising the extent to which Morrison's novels have been influenced by history and by the interactions of race, class and gender. Although Morrison's career represents an American success story, her writings attack values long revered in American society: the cult of domesticity and true womanhood, romantic love and ideal standards of beauty, capitalism and the Protestant work ethic, and the primacy of Western culture and modern technology. Central to understanding Morrison's challenge to traditional values, Heinze argues, is W.E.B. Du Bois's notion of double-consciousness - the condition in which a person is representative of, and immersed in, two distinct ways of life. Morrison's position as part of the literary establishment and as part of minority culture in America grants her two perspectives, both of which inform her work. She successfully incorporates these perspectives, Heinze contends, by appropriating conventional literary forms to render artistically the story of black experience inside white culture. Morrison employs rational and controlled methods to naturalise seemingly irrational responses to life, and her outsider within status lends her a credibility that crosses racial, cultural and class lines.