The Double Oppreion of Racism and Sexism on Women Reflected in Sula由刀豆文库小编整理，希望给你工作、学习、生活带来方便，猜你可能喜欢“makethemostof造句”。
The Double Oppreion on Black Women——Racism and Sexism
Reflected in Sula
郭颖琪黎淑雯康恋卿谢诗玲韩梦冰
Sula(1937 and 1939)recounts the Sula’s experience back in Medallion after a ten-year travel away from home.Sula lives an “unusual” life which is not accepted by all the others in the Bottom.She takes one man after another and then casts them away without any excuse the men could swallow.She even sleeps with her best friend Nel’s husband Jude, which leaves Nel in black despair for a very long time.All the indulgent behaviors Sula does bring her spurn and hostility from people around her.From the two chapters(1937 and 1939)we can clearly find the trace of racism and sexism——the two oppreion that paralyze black women’s ability to find out their own value.In terms of racism, the nigger joke at the beginning of the novel set quite a sarcastic tone for it.The black people are deprived of their “home” by white people.But it is not just the material home.What comes next is the lo of their spiritual home.As the novel depicted in 1937:”Such evil must be avoided, they felt, and precautions must naturally be taken to protect themselves from it.But they let it run its course, fulfill itself, and never invented ways either to alter it, to annihilate it or to prevent its happening again”, even though the black people hate the way white people treat them, few of them would react against it.They take an attitude which is to avoid rather than get rid of it.As for Sula, she has her own way to resist the oppreion of racism, although it is a bit extreme.After ten years’ pursuit for independence and freedom as an individual and more exactly, as a black woman, it turns out that what the world outside her homeland gives Sula is just disappointment.As a result, Sula tries to console her broken heart by taking white men and trying black men and then discarding them.These revenge-like affairs are also her silent defiance against racism as well as sexism.Besides her silent defiance, Sula has also quite a humorous way to ridicule racism.When Jude exprees his indignation for “white man running it”, “a Negro man had a hard row to hoe in this world”, Sula uses remarks with wit and irony to make him laugh.Her humor and wisdom pose contrast sharply with the man’s stiffne.As to sexism, both Sula and Nel suffer a lot from it.Nel is a good example of what a black woman is traditionally supposed to be——a “good” wife and “good” mother who devotes herself to family chores and child-rearing only to be deserted by her husband.Nel’s adherence to her husband almost ruins her when he walks away.Sula is not a conventional “good” woman, though as far as I am concerned, she’s a good woman for at least her extreme deeds do contribute to the undutiful mother’s turning to be dutiful(caring more for their children), and make wives more tender to their husbands.She endeavors to break through the shackles of marriage.She refused to be a servant and sex object of men.Therefore, Sula discards the men she takes as a way to show that women are equal to men.Throughout her life, Sula had always been seeking for independence and equality.Even when she’s on her deathbed, she is deeply convinced that her loneline is worthwhile in that it is the price that she has to pay for her self-reliance and independent thought.And she believes that the other black women will someday understand her.And indeed, there is a time when she gets happine.It is because of Ajax, a man who acquaints himself with Sula out of curiosity but not mere lust.Sula can talk freely and truly with Ajax.Talking to Ajax is like talking to herself, which makes Sula feel comfortable and at ease.So the departure of Ajax is kind of a presage of Sula’s self-splitting and also Sula’s death.
