THE AWAKENING OF BLACK WOMAN’S MOVEMENT IN ALICE WALKER’S MERIDIAN

DINA, SUHANDRATIA (2016) THE AWAKENING OF BLACK WOMAN’S MOVEMENT IN ALICE WALKER’S MERIDIAN. Diploma thesis, Universitas Andalas.

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Abstract

Literary works have long been one of the sources of enjoyment, which serve to refine our minds and expand our sense of life. Through literary works, human can find understanding, because they provide “the depiction of imagined experience [which] can provide authentic insights” (Perrine: 3). However, gaining an understanding from literary works requires a particular mode of thinking, such as literary theory and literary criticism. Since literary works depict human experiences, both imagined and real, they also portray the social phenomenon of woman’s discrimination in the society. Since the early phase of human civilization, women are always given the second position in the society. Women are always treated under the oppression and control of men. Female are stereotyped as a weak creative, less intellectual and hence should act as the inferior party before their male counterparts. However, as the time goes by, women gradually realize that they are actually equal to men. Thus, women take action to gain equal rights and roles in the society. Some women criticize men’s works that underestimate women, and also they write their own literary works to make the society aware about women’s ideas and feelings. This movement is later on lead to the emergence of Feminist Criticism. The phenomenon of unequal treatment toward women happens to both white and colored women. In fact, it is even harder for colored women because they also have to face racial discrimination. For example, in America, black people are underestimated and black women have to deal with black men’s sexism, and white women’s racism. Consequently, black women are on the lowest position among the American society. In this case, black women encounter such condition through a movement known as Black Feminist. The Black Feminist movement, as Collins stated in Defining Black Feminist Thought, “was formed to address the ways sexism, racism, and classism influence the lives of black women whose needs were ignored by the black men of the Black Liberation Movement and white women in the Women’s Movement” (20). The passage strengthens the goal of Black Feminist movement; that is, to free black women from sexism and racism. The fact that African-American women are regarded as the lowest people in America has become the main issue of Black Feminist thinkers and activists in the United States. This phenomenon can also be seen in black women’s literary works. One of them is in the novel entitled Meridian by Alice Walker. Meridian (1976) is one of Walker’s best-known works. The setting is in the 1960’s and 70’s, Southern America. This novel tells about a black female student in Saxon College, who became an activist in the Atlanta Movement for black people’s civil rights. However, despite of the complicated personal problem that Meridian dealt with, she moved on to live independently and devoted her life to conduct campaign on human rights movement for black women and children. She dedicates herself to join Civil Rights worker because as black woman she got discrimination from white. She fights discrimination not only for herself but also for black women. Black women at that time were suffering for discrimination and oppression, both from white and black men. The novel itself deals with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled to some of Walker's own experiences. According to Torfs in Alice Walker’s Womanism: Theory and Practice, Alice Walker “…often incorporates autobiographical elements in her work and depicts the political, social and moral conditions of the South in it” (2008). It suggests that to some extents, Alice Walker manifests her feelings and thoughts about black woman in the South America based on her own experience into her works, including Meridian. Based on the elaboration above, the writer decides to analyze Alice Walker’s Meridian by using Black Feminist theory. Black Feminist theory is considered to be a suitable theory for this novel because the novel highlights the issue of black women discrimination in American society, in which the main character had to struggle, both for herself and also for the sake of her fellows in black women society. Therefore the writer entitles her research as "THE AWAKENING OF BLACK WOMAN’S MOVEMENT IN ALICE WALKER’S MERIDIAN"

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