BLACK MALE CHARACTERS’ VIOLENCE ON BLACK FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE THIRD LIFE OF GRANGE COPELAND

Abstract

The present work tries to probe in one of the African American female writings as being –besides their aesthetic forms- the most genuine types of literature. This association with reality displays itself while striving to voice and articulate the victimisation of the black woman (in particular) in a kind of fiction loaded with discourse. This piece of research deals with the inter-gender relationships in the Third Life of Grange Copeland (a novel written by the African American writer Alice Walker).The aim of this work is to discus –not to say demonstrate- the causes of black male characters’ violence on black female characters. To approach such a topic, the main question it raises is; what causes and enhances home violence, or wife abuse, among black families in this novel? It therefore introduces a set of tentative answers related to different, yet interrelated, disciplines like the sociological, the historical, the psychological and the literary that provide me with a considerable help by which I attempt to build up my hypothesis. I then try to take the Frustration-Aggression hypothesis, sexism and gender role polarisations as supporting backgrounds. Hence, to structure my work, I am going to divide it into three chapters: one theoretical and others analytical. The first chapter probes in the theme of violence, and particularly domestic violence, as a general phenomenon. It therefore deals with its definition, its forms and issues, and its causes. Thus, it relates all of frustration, racism, sexism, patriarchy, and submission as key words and conceptions applied to the whole work. The second chapter handles black male characters’ violence on their women because of frustration applying by that the frustration and aggression relationship. This chapter therefore tackles their subjection to frustration and its relation with their being violent. The last chapter deals with violence as a gender issue (patriarchal terrorism). Likewise, it tackles how gender role orientation (because of socialisation) for both black male and female characters affects wife abuse (or male violence). Proceeding with such a methodology, I achieved certain hypothetical findings. Black male characters’ feelings of frustration and oppression along with their masculine orientation by society result in generating wife abuse in this novel, and black female characters’ submission –as their socialised gender role- enhances their men’s violence on them.