Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and American Patriarchy

Abstract

Black American society's place in the vanguard of social change in that country is an interesting and long-established sociological trend. This paper aims to investigate Alice Walker's and Toni Morrison's respective literary stances towards the black American patriarchal system as an indicator of the fate of the broader social patriarchy, using The Colour Purple and Sula as the sources. Of the two authors, it has often been Walker who has been commended for a forward-looking positivism which shines through her work, while Morrison is singled out for her bleak, uncompromising and partially nihilistic endings. This paper will hold that it is Morrison who retains the ultimately more positive literary and social view, for she remains willing to engage in the troublesome sexual politics of the crumbling institution of patriarchy, rather than withdraw as Walker seems to do.