Black writer’s fictions and narratives generally revolve around the black subaltern, especially the African American life style. Any individual by instinct will be eager to express an art form which belongs to his/her own culture. Black people tried establishing their culture primarily through self narratives, ethnographic writings and then through the sophisticated creative art form, such as fiction. Alice Walker being an African American is entirely subject to the subaltern studies. Subaltern experiences and post-colonial space have been the source for all of her novels and characters.
Subalternity as a subject has greater connectivity with racism, sexism, dual consciousness and double marginalization to a larger extent. Rebellious nature is a psychological response for any kind of oppression. Any kind of domination would definitely result in rebellious attitude, where people would behave in such a way in which they actually don’t want to, in order to break the restrictions. Human nature and character greatly depends on their personal and social environment. Behavior pattern or attitude of any particular subaltern may be an outcome of the suffering, the entire community had undergone throughout. Thus racism and sexism had played a vital role in sketching the attitude and behavior pattern of any subaltern society.
Colonization was the major cause for the submissive and rebellious or resistive nature of the subaltern societies. The word ‘Colonization’ brings along with it the binaries ‘Submissive’ and ‘Resistive’ ‘Rebellious’ from the same society. ‘Ambivalence’ ‘Hybridity’ and ‘Mimicry’ are the post-colonial models of behavior patterns expressed through the African American literature.
Colonization has inculcated the quality of ‘Ambivalence’ in the mind of the colonizer and the colonized worldwide. Ambivalence caused by colonialism, racism and sexism is found to be a major concept in Walker’s art of characterization. Her male and female characters are ambivalent by nature due to the above said causes. African American literature is inseparable from subaltern studies, colonial and post-colonial literature, as African Americans were the main reserves for colonization and slavery.
This article analyses Walker’s art of Characterization focusing on how Walker’s characters turn to be a victim of ‘Ambivalence’ a psychological concept, as well as a post-colonial element. This article analyze Walker’s characters under the light of the above two criteria.
Ambivalence is a term first developed in psychoanalysis to describe a continual fluctuation between wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. It also refers to a simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an object, person or action [Young 1995:161]. Adapted into colonial Discourse theory by Homi Bhabha, it describes the complex mix of attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and colonized. The relationship is ambivalent because The colonized subject is never simply and completely opposed to the colonizer. Rather than assuming that some colonized subjects are ‘complicit’ and some ‘resistant’, ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relation within the colonial subject.
Most importantly in Bhabha’s theory, however, ambivalence disrupts the clear-cut authority of colonial domination because it disturbs the simple relationship between colonizers and colonized. Ambivalence is therefore an unwelcome aspect of colonial discourse for the colonizer. The problem for colonial discourse is that it wants to produce compliant subjects who reproduce its assumptions, habits and values that is, ‘mimic’ the colonizer. But instead it produces ambivalent subjects whose mimicry is never very far from mockery. Ambivalence describes this fluctuating relationship between mimicry and mockery, an ambivalence that is fundamentally unsettling to colonial dominance.
Bleuler’s Tripartite Scheme
The concept of ambivalence was introduced in to psychiatric parlance by Eugen Bleuler in 1910-11. Bleuler distinguished three main types of ambivalence. Volitional, Intellectual and Emotional. Volitional ambivalence refers to an inability to decide on an action — what Montaigne Called “a spirit justly balanced between two equal desires”. Intellectual ambivalence — The Skeptical belief that “there is no reason but hath a contrary to it”. Emotional ambivalence Involves opposing affective attitudes towards the same object, as with the man who both loved And hated his wife.
In Walker’s famous novel Color Purple, The character Shug Avery, a Blues singer is an anti heroine who turns to be a heroine at the end of the novel. She is a mistress of Albert and co-wife of Celie. She fell in love with Albert in her teenage and gave birth to three children. Shug could not marry Albert as he could not stand strong against his father’s choice for his life partner. Though Albert was married to Annie Julia and had children, he never gave up the relationship With Shug or she never let him to do so. Shug always returned to Albert for sexual pleasures and thoroughly enjoyed it. Albert respected shug equally and welcomed her calling him by his name.
In Walker’s Meridian the Protagonist is intellectually ambivalent, where she has no reason for resigning the role of motherhood in her personal life. The concept of motherhood is sacred cow in the united Sates, and it has affected both black and white woman to some degree. Under the romanticized version of motherhood, woman should be hard-working, caring and self-sacrificing when it comes to raising their children. Within this schema, there is no place for a childless woman, above all for a woman who chooses to be child less. The choices Meridian makes concerning motherhood, namely adoption, abortion and sterilization, are extreme, but they serve.
Meridian carries a bloated and decomposing corpse to the Mayor’s office to force the authorities to acknowledge their responsibility for the child’s death. She tries to protect the Wild-Child. She feels for the death of Truman’s daughter Camera. Meridian wants to help the children Of Chikokema. Though Meridian ignores motherhood personally she do demonstrate maternal inclinations in social life. In the chapter “release”, Truman tells Meridian, “Your ambivalence will always be deplored by people who consider themselves revolutionists, and your unorthodox behavior will cause traditionalists to gnash their teeth.” Meridian rejects Motherhood in personal life but tries to adopt it in social life, which expose the Intellectual ambivalence in her nature.
The Psychological ambivalence of the Characters Shug, Susannah and Meridian in choosing between the roles of a beloved lover or friend, dearest daughter or sister, and a mother or socialist well reflects the obsession with identity. Zed’s ambivalence in choosing between an orthodox and unorthodox role results in Cultural schizophrenia. Walker’s handling of the literary device of ‘Ambivalence’ well express human Psychology.
The governing tropes of Du Bois’s ‘Souls’ are double-consciousness and the “veil” — the curtain separating black and white life. By turns, Du Bois locates himself above, below, within, and without the veil, employing an imagery as old as the Bible. Allied with this is his concept of double-consciousness — a term with roots in contemporary thought, and certainly in that of earlier American thinkers such as Emerson and James, but with Du Bois makes uniquely his own. “One ever feels his two-ness-” Du Bois wrote in the signal passage defining double consciousness, “An American and Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder”.
In Color Purple, Sophia one of the main characters expresses post colonial ambivalence. Sophia was that kind of a woman who could never accept racism and sexism in her life. She was physically and mentally strong woman, who never gave a chance for inferior feelings. When her husband Harpo tried controlling her by physical attacks, she fought back and left him bruised. She never allowed anybody to rule over her.
This helpless subordination and double consciousness results in post-colonial ambivalence as depicted in the characters of Sophia, Truman, Robinson and Evelyn.
Works Cited
- Ashcraft, Bill., Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. (Eds).(2000). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.
- Bloom, Harold. (Ed).(2007). Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Alice Walker. New York: InfoBase Publishing.
- Kerr, Christine. (2008). Bloom’s How to Write about Alice Walker. New York: Chelsea House.
- Louis Gates, Henry. JR and West, Cornel. (2000). “W.E.B. Du Bois”. The African American Century: How Black Americans have Shaped our Country. New York: Touchstone Book.
- Ambivalence: Ambivalence in Clinical Psychology. Wikipedia (2017, Aug). Retrieved Sep 8, 2017.