Black Woman Consciousness in Go Tell It on the Mountain

李 江

Black Woman Consciousness in Go Tell It on the Mountain

李 江

Author:

Li Jiang, M.A.in English Language & Literature, lecturer in Department of College Foreign Languages in Yunnan University.

Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin's first novel, and a story about African-Americans' self-loss and self-exploration, has an extensive and long history of composition, spanning across two continents and at least three countries. Baldwin conceived the ideas for the novel when he f rst left home at the age of seventeen. As an autobiographical writing, the novel is based on Baldwin's own experiences—his religious career in Harlem, his exile in France, his traveling to the South, his troubled relationship with his stepfather. It reveals the annoying reality of Black life against a historical background. It shows the Black people as a race have been trying to achieve self-recognition and psychological maturity over the centuries. With his uniquely powerful modern language, Baldwin tries to tell his people that the blacks are suffering a longsuffering injustice, and they must fight with all of their strength.

James Baldwin explores the quest for black female identity in Go Tell It on the Mountain from the perspective of black feminist criticism to reveal the complexity of questing for black female identity and show his consideration for the black female characters in this novel. Even though James Baldwin is a male writer, he shows great sympathies for the black woman characters in this novel, reveals how the image of women is distorted in the patriarchal culture, and focuses on the criticism of male sexism in the male-centered world. Black women's history is a history of suffering double oppressions of racial and sexual discrimination, and of their continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women have to face not only the racist oppression from the white, both men and women, but also sexual discrimination from men, including black men. In Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin not only discloses the hard and miserable existence of the black women who suffer from the sexual, racial and class oppression, but also vividly describes the silent struggle and the sisterhood of the black women.

Black feminist criticism explores the distinct cultural values of black woman writers in order to prevent their beings from being subsumed in the "universal" literary studies dominated mainly by male and white writers. Alice Walker, one of the most important black female authors and critics, explains in detail her understanding of black feminist criticism: "Black women…are the most oppressed people in the world" (Gates 39). As part of the black community, black women are looked down upon by the white people, and as women, they are abused by black men.

Almost all of the roles that the black women play in Baldwin's novel are the traditional ones, such as mothers, sisters, lovers, wives, and almost all of them are playing the roles of support for the male characters. Few women in Baldwin's f ction are able to move beyond the limits of the traditional roles that have been assigned to them and in their roles the use of their physical bodies is the most important factor. As far as their work is concerned, few women in Baldwin's works are nontraditional. The female characters in Baldwin's f ction can fall into several different categories, which indicates that the black women are dealt with differently by Baldwin and that Baldwin has different degrees of positive or negative responses to them.

As a whole, the black women suffer great pains derived from intersecting oppressions of race, sex, and class. Oppressions are seen in any unjustified situations where one group denies another accesses to the resources of the society. The black women's situations of being victimized, humiliated and insulted under double oppressions are found in some tragic images in Go Tell It on the Mountain. This is just what Shirly Anna Williams (1978) points out: "(They are) too refined and sensitive to live under the repressive conditions endured by ordinary blacks and too colored to enter the white world" (Williams Ⅶ). Thus, black women in f ctions are seldom shown in healthy relationship with their men, their children, or other women. Deborah in Go Tell It on the Mountain is among these victims.

Deborah, Gabriel's first wife who died years ago, clings to the traditions of the church as if it was her last chance for life. These church women, counting in Deborah, through the very example of their piety, influence those black people around them. People around who would make fun of the fact that Deborah has been raped by several of the white or just of her plainness are usually awed into silence by the religious faith she exhibits.

Deborah's life is that of a woman who is victimized by racism and sexism. Her rape solidif es her relationship with Florence, Gabriel's sister, and makes her seek for comfort within the church. Deborah's neighbors do not look upon her as a woman, but as "a harlot, a source of delight more bestial and mysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could provide" (Baldwin 73). For Deborah, however, she silently accepts these discriminations and believes it is her doomed fate never to be loved or to be respected, thus, she turns to the church, in which she does not f nd any discrimination against victims like her. That the black community makes her a victim is testament to the power the whites have over them; blacks cannot face the reality of blaming whites for Deborah's violation, which would mean they are all subject to similar violation, so they blame Deborah and try to stay as excluded from white hatred as they can. They make her guilty, and she accepts her guilt and devotes herself to the church.

Women as sisters are also important in Baldwin's novel. Florence, Gabriel's sister, for example, is an important character in Go Tell It on the Mountain. In his writing, sisters, like mothers, are very attractive, when they are in helpful roles to other members of their families, particularly to the male family members.

At the age of twenty-six, Florence makes the decision to leave, but she has to risk the public condemnation of abandoning her old mother and young brother. Upon her leaving, her mother was "so ill now that she no longer stirred out of bed" (Baldwin 74) and her brother was still too young to take care of their old mother. But Florence listens to her own mind and "knew nothing could stop her" (Baldwin 74) and left. So throughout Florence's life, to think of herself and achieve her independence is to abandon those people who need her. This leaves an eternal sense of guilt through her whole life. Because she has no frame of reference for self-realization, she is torn between her desperate need for independence and the externally imposed teachings that in the patriarchic community.

Florence left the South partly to escape the doomed fate of the "common niggers" (Baldwin 67) she despises. Upon leaving, she tells Gabriel that if he sees her again, she will not be wearing "rags" like those he is wearing. She later keeps rubbing "old skin whiteners" into her skin, though her husband told her once "black's mighty pretty color" (Baldwin 90). George Kent explains that Florence "founders in a mixture of self-hatred, self-righteousness, sadism, and guilt feelings" (Kent 151). Her guilt and her self-hatred are prominent, but her self-righteousness dwarfs in comparison to what Gabriel exhibits.

In the greatest irony, Florence, once displaying spirits of daring and venturing for freedom, may become the traditional female supplicant seeking comfort and refuge in the church. But Florence in the end still struggles between "a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call God into account" (Baldwin 90). She keeps questioning why He let her "who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty, in a dirty, furnished room" (Baldwin 90)? Florence, through her whole suffering life, struggles for her own freedom and identity as a black woman.

A subdivision of the category of churchgoers, represented by women slightly younger than those ones described above, would be Elizabeth Grimes. Due to the fact that her husband is a deacon and a preacher, she must have a role in the church. She is torn, therefore, between what she is demanded and what she knows her own heart wants to believe. She tries to f nd the blend of minding her own soul and raising her children within the church. Though she is always seen on her knees praying in the church, during the services she attends, she is seldom heard utter "amens".

In fact, Elizabeth has made the same geographical move from the South to the North as Florence, and she has a similar potential for breaking away from the constraints that def ned her early life. That spark of independence which led her to New York, however, is very quickly diminished under her feelings of guilt for having betrayed her aunt and the relative in New York with whom she lives.

For all the instances of her proud defiance, Elizabeth is still at the mercy of the males in her life. She has had only two "romantic" involvements, one with Richard and one with Gabriel, each of which represents an extreme. When she was still very young, she followed Richard, her f rst love, to New York. She loved and admired him, because he was a charming, hardworking and knowledgeable man. But he was suspected to be one of the black robbers who robbed a store and stabbed the white store-owner just because "You black bastards, you are the same" (Baldwin 171). He was imprisoned, beaten and whipped, and killed himself, leaving Elizabeth and their unborn child alone in this world. But Elizabeth has to carry on, as Florence says "The menfolk, they die, and it's over for them, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us" (Baldwin 182).

Elizabeth met Gabriel through Florence. She f nally agreed to marry Gabriel because she believed him when he said that God had sent him to her, and he would cherish her and love her nameless son as if he were his own son. But through her painful years, she knew Gabriel didn't love her illegitimate son and didn't cherish her. Gabriel regards Elizabeth as a woman who is " hardhearted, stiff-necked, and hard to bend" (Baldwin 152).

Elizabeth knew that her prayers and weeping were in vain, but through her little boy, John, she could see that "deadly pride" of her father's, and John reminds her of her father's words: "when he wept, alone; never to let the world see, never to ask for mercy; if one had to die, to go ahead and die, but never to let oneself be beaten" (Baldwin 154). These words also remind her of her own self-awareness. Through many years of long-suffering trials and tribulations, this woman, "who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward clime—upward, with her baby, on the steep side of the mountain" (Baldwin 185).

Of the above two f gures, Florence is surely a bold and confident black woman in pursuing what she desires and deserves in this world as a bornequal human being. But as a black woman who seeks restlessly for freedom and equality with men, she suffers greatly from both the outside white world and her inner heart longing for everything she wants. Finally, she is, thrown back to where she was born and where she hates most. On the contrary, Elizabeth, with an educated background and a sharper insight into this world, accepts her own fate in her own cunning ways. Though her family suffers a very poor and tough life and she herself suffers a brutal husband, she still tries her best to protect her family and her children, and live a spiritual life in which nobody, including her husband, could disturb her. Her woman consciousness has been aroused.

The female characters in Go Tell It on the Mountain are the black women who have no superpower to resist suffering the double oppressions imposed upon them. But these black women show different responses to their seemingly doomed fate. One group accept their fate submissively, the other seek ways to f ght.

Alice Walker focuses on the value of the sisterhood. She claims that a womanist is "a woman who loves other women, sexually or nonsexually, appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional f exibility and women's strength" (WalkerⅪ). She stresses the solidarity among black women can help them f ght against the patriarchal ideology and provide both spiritual and material support for themselves. According to Barbara Christian, it "demonstrates how sisterhood among the women benef ts the entire black community" (Christian 199).

There are two pairs of positive relationships between black women in Go Tell It on the Mountain—the relationship between Florence and Deborah and the relationship between Florence and Elizabeth. Both relationships develop so deeper because of the outside impacts men have had upon their lives. Their relationship demonstrates that a person can not be reduced to dealing with things only, interacting with others is indispensable for one's physical and spiritual growth. Their communications and faithful friendship point out at least one constructive way in the novel, through which black women interact with each other and try their best to help and comfort each other.

From the above analysis, a conclusion can be drawn that the self-consciousness has already been aroused in some of the black women. Collins points out " no matter how oppressed an individual woman may be, the power to save the self lies within the self " (Collins 114). As far as James Baldwin is concerned, even if he is not a radical feminist, he has already shown the readers a black male writer who shows great sympathy and deep love towards women, especially black women under the double oppressions. There is abundant evidence in his Go Tell It on the Mountain to reveal his black woman consciousness.

【W(wǎng)orks Cited】

Gates, Henry Louis Jr., & K.A. Appiah. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present .New York: Amistard Press, 1993.

Williams, Shirly Anna."Forward" in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God ,Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Dell Publishing, Inc.,1985.

Kent, George. "Baldwin and the Problems of Being," Five Black Writers, B.Donald (Ed.). Gibson ,New York: New York University Press, 1970.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Garden.New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. New York: University of California, Berkeley, 1985.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the politics of Empowerment. New York: Routleage, 2000.

（《向蒼天呼吁》中的黑人女性意識探析）

本文以黑人女性主義的視角，在文本分析的基礎上，通過分析小說中兩類不同的黑人女性角色在種族和性別的雙重壓迫下所經(jīng)歷的悲慘遭遇，探索作品中所體現(xiàn)出的黑人女性意識，展現(xiàn)黑人女性在雙重壓迫下如何通過自我意識的覺醒來反抗壓迫和實現(xiàn)自我滿足?！断蛏n天呼吁》 黑人女性意識 雙重壓迫李江，英語語言文學碩士，云南大學大學外語教學部講師，主要研究英美文學。This paper, based on the theories of the black feminism and a detailed textual analysis of the two different kinds of black female characters and their miserable situations under racial and sexual oppressions in the novel, probes into the black women consciousness as ref ected in Go Tell It on the Mountain, and it further explores how black women in the novel struggled for a way to defend their own identities against double oppressions and how they realized their self-fulf llment.Go Tell It on the Mountain black woman consciousness double oppressions