Historical+Context

Novel

The novel is set in the 1920s South. In the early twentieth century South where poverty was widespread, and sharecropping replaced black slavery as the form of black labor on which the South still largely relied.

The Jim Crow laws, those enacted to foster completely separate white and black societies, also played a big role in the early twentieth century.

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Events When Written



The 1960s saw the rise of the civil rights movement and the abolishment of the Jim Crow laws.

With the struggle for African American civil rights followed the struggle for women's rights continuing on into the 1970s and 1980s. This movement was rarely supported by black women as a group but did include a few African American feminists. The 1950s society encouraged black women, like all women, to assume passive, subordinate roles in relation to men. However, during WWII, women had taken over the men's jobs while they were away at war.



After the war, white and black men alike wanted to see women back in the home and role models in magazines and television helped spread this successful message. Black as well as white mothers taught their daughters who came of age in the 1970s that a man should be the most important element in their lives. This idea was not new to white women, who since the Victorian 1800s and even before, had been considered men's helpers; however, this was the first time that black women bought into this idea. Aside from the general pressures placed on all women to become subordinate, African American women also had the added pressure of their own race's search for liberation. Many black women believed that racial liberation and progress could be made only thought the growth of a strong, male-dominated black society and this was of course placed before women's own search for equality.

Alice Walker herself joined the forefront of the struggle for women's rights. Instead of a feminist black women preferred to be termed "womanist" to reflect their separate struggle.

Womanist... A BLack feminist or feminist of color ... usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or //willful// behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered 'good' for one ... [A womanist is also] a woman who loves other women ... Appreciates and prefers women's culture ... and women's strength ... committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist... Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."