"Woman," Mulvey observes, "stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic control by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning." She is a woman who knows her own mind. The story's seven main characters speak to one another with undisguised affection through their humor and even their insults. dreams are those told in "Cora Lee" and "The Block Party. When Mattie moves to Brewster Place, Ciel has grown up and has a child of her own. Theresa wants Lorraine to toughen upto accept who she is and not try to please other people. This selfless love carries the women through betrayal, loss, and violence. While critics may have differing opinions regarding Naylor's intentions for her characters' future circumstances, they agree that Naylor successfully presents the themes of The Women of Brewster Place. She also encourages Mattie to save her money. WebMattie uses her house for collateral, which Basil forfeits once he disappears. Kiswana finds one of these wild children eating out of a dumpster, and soon Kiswana and Cora become friends. Ben is killed with a brick from the dead-end wall of Brewster Place. A man who is going to buy a sandwich turns away; it is more important that he stay and eat the sandwich than that he pay for it. WebBasil grows into a spoiled, irresponsible young man due to Mattie's overbearing parenting. 62, No. Webclimax Lorraines brutal gang rape in Brewster Places alley by C. C. Baker and his friends is the climax of the novel. Naylor, 48, is the oldest of three daughters of a transit worker and a telephone operator, former sharecroppers who migrated from Mississippi to the New York burrough of Queens in 1949. Mattie's dream scripts important changes for Ciel: She works for an insurance company (good pay, independence, and status above the domestic), is ready to start another family, and is now connected to a good man. "Dawn" (the prologue) is coupled neither with death nor darkness, but with "dusk," a condition whose half-light underscores the half-life of the street. Butch succeeds in seducing Mattie and, unbeknownst to him, is the father of the baby she carries when she leaves Rock Vale, Tennessee. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. For example, Deirdre Donahue, a reviewer for the Washington Post, says of Naylor, "Naylor is not afraid to grapple with life's big subjects: sex, birth, love, death, grief. "The Women of Brewster Place "Power and violence," in Hannah Arendt's words, "are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent" [On Violence, 1970]. Cane, Gaiman, Neil 1960- Fifteen years after the publication of her best-selling first novel, "The Women of Brewster Place," Gloria Naylor revisits the same territory to give voices to the men who were in the background. The quotation is appropriate to Cora Lee's story not only because Cora and her children will attend the play but also because Cora's chapter will explore the connection between the begetting of children and the begetting of dreams. Lorraine clamped her eyes shut and, using all of the strength left within her, willed it to rise again. They teach you to minutely dissect texts and (I thought) `How could I ever just cut that off from myself and go on to do what I have to do?' ", The situation of black men, she says, is one that "still needs work. In a ironic turn, Kiswana believes that her mother denies her heritage; during a confrontation, she is surprised when she learns that the two share a great deal. Since 1983, Naylor has continued to write, lecture, and receive awards for her writing. But I worried about whether or not the problems that were being caused by the men in the women's lives would be interpreted as some bitter statement I had to make about black men. Two years later, she read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; it was the first time she had read a novel written by a black woman. Whatever happened to Basil, that errant son of Mattie Micheal? The image of the ebony phoenix developed in the introduction to the novel is instructive: The women rise, as from the ashes, and continue to live. Brewster is a place for women who have no realistic expectations of revising their marginality, most of whom have "come down" in the world. Mattie puts Graduate school was a problem, she says, because Yale was "the home base of all nationally known Structuralist critics. 55982. | When Lorraine and Teresa first move onto Brewster street, the other women are relieved that they seem like nice girls who will not be after their husbands. That is, Naylor writes from the first-person point of view, but she writes from the perspective of the character on whom the story is focusing at the time. It also was turned into a television mini-series in 1989, produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey. They have to face the stigma created by the (errant) one-third and also the fact that they live as archetypes in the mind of Americans -- something dark and shadowy and unknown.". What happened to Ciel in Brewster Place? Ciel keeps taking Eugene back, even though he is verbally abusive and threatens her with physical abuse. There are many readers who feel cheated and betrayed to discover that the apocalyptic destruction of Brewster's wall never takes place. These two events, she says, "got me to thinking about the two-thirds of black men who are not in jail and have not had brushes with the criminal law system. She continues to protect him from harm and nightmares until he jumps bail and abandons her to her own nightmare. Virginia C. Fowler, "'Ebony Phoenixes': The Women of Brewster Place," in Gloria Naylor: In Search of Sanctuary, edited by Frank Day, Twayne Publishers, 1996, pp. Basil grows up to be a bothered younger guy who is unable to claim accountability for his actions. 29), edited by Sharon Felton and Michelle C. Loris, Greenwood, 1997. When he leaves her anyway, she finally sees him for what he is, and only regrets that she had not had this realization before the abortion. Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place, Penguin, 1983. This technique works for Naylor because she has used the setting to provide the unity underlying the story. It's important that when (people) turn to what they consider the portals of knowledge, they be taught all of American literature. Under the pressure of the reader's controlling gaze, Lorraine is immediately reduced to the status of an objectpart mouth, part breasts, part thighssubject to the viewer's scrutiny. ), has her baby, ends up living with an older black woman named Eta and lives her life working 2 jobs to provide for her child, named Basil. Now the two are Lorraine and Mattie. While much of her prose soars lyrically, her poetry, she says, tends to be "stark and linear. The interactions of the characters and the similar struggles they live through connect the stories, as do the recurring themes and motifs. For one evening, Cora Lee envisions a new life for herself and her children. WebIn ''The Women of Brewster Place,'' for example, we saw Eugene in the background, brawling with his wife, Ceil, forgetting to help look out for his baby daughter, who was about to stick At first there is no explanation given for the girl's death. Eugene, whose young daughter stuck a fork in an electrical socket and died while he was fighting with his wife Ciel, turns out to be a closeted homosexual. All of the women, like the street, fully experience life with its high and low points. Especially poignant is Lorraine's relationship with Ben. Source: Laura E. Tanner, "Reading Rape: Sanctuary and The Women of Brewster Place" in American Literature, Vol. As this chapter opens, people are gathering for Serena's funeral. Encyclopedia.com. Of these unifying elements, the most notable is the dream motif, for though these women are living a nightmarish existence, they are united by their common dreams. She thought about quitting, but completed her degree when the school declared that her second novel, "Linden Hills," would fulfill the thesis requirement. Critics say that Naylor may have fashioned Kiswana's character after activists from the 60s, particularly those associated with the Black Power Movement. For many of the women who have lived there, Brewster Place is an anchor as well as a confinement and a burden; it is the social network that, like a web, both sustains and entraps. Praises Naylor's treatment of women and relationships. WebTheresa regrets her final words to her as she dies. Kiswana, an outsider on Brewster Place, is constantly dreaming of ways in which she can organize the residents and enact social reform. It is on Brewster Place that the women encounter everyday problems, joys, and sorrows. Like many of those people, Naylor's parents, Alberta McAlpin and Roosevelt Naylor, migrated to New York in 1949. Plot Summary GENERAL COMMENTARY Dismayed to learn that there were very few books written by black women about black women, she began to believe that her education in northern integrated schools had deprived her of learning about the long tradition of black history and literature. Having recognized Lorraine as a human being who becomes a victim of violence, the reader recoils from the unfamiliar picture of a creature who seems less human than animal, less subject than object. Because of the wall, Brewster Place is economically and culturally isolated from the rest of the city. Kiswana thinks that she is nothing like her mother, but when her mother's temper flares Kiswana has to admit that she admires her mother and that they are more alike that she had realized. Naylor has died at age Naylor gives Brewster Place human characteristics, using a literary technique known as personification. "It took me a little time, but after I got over the writer's block, I never looked back.". slammed his kneecap into her spine and her body arched up, causing his nails to cut into the side of her mouth to stifle her cry. Kay Bonetti, "An Interview with Gloria Naylor" (audiotape), American Prose Library, 1988. If the epilogue recalls the prologue, so the final emphasis on dreams postponed yet persistent recalls the poem by Langston Hughes with which Naylor begins the book: "What happens to a dream deferred? " Ciel hesitantly acknowledges that he is not black. My emotional energy was spent in creating a woman's world, telling her side of it because I knew it hadn't been done enough in literature. She will not change her actions and become a devoted mother, and her dreams for her children will be deferred. According to Annie Gottlieb in Women Together, a review of The Women of Brewster Place," all our lives those relationships had been the backdrop, while the sexy, angry fireworks with men were the show the bonds between women are the abiding ones. "Marcia Gillespie took me out for my first literary lunch," Naylor recalls. In Bonetti's, An Interview with Gloria Naylor, Naylor said "one character, one female protagonist, could not even attempt to represent the riches and diversity of the black female experience." The scene evokes a sense of healing and rebirth, and reinforces the sense of community among the women. In summary, the general consensus of critics is that Naylor possesses a talent that is seldom seen in new writers. A final symbol, in the form of toe-nail polish, stands for the deeper similarities that Kiswana and her mother discover. WebBasil turns out to be a spoiled young boy, and grows into a selfish man. INTRODUCTION In Brewster Place, who played Basil? The children gather around the car, and the adults wait to see who will step out of it. "The Block Party" tells the story of another deferred dream, this one literally dreamt by Mattie the night before the real Block Party. She felt a weight drop on her spread body. William died on April 18, 1644, at nearly 80 years old. And I knew better. By manipulating the reader's placement within the scene of violence, Naylor subverts the objectifying power of the gaze; as the gaze is trapped within the erotic object, the necessary distance between the voyeur and the object of voyeuristic pleasure is collapsed. Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place is made up of seven stories of the women who live 282-85. "My horizons have broadened. Writer She couldn't feel the skin that was rubbing off of her arms from being pressed against the rough cement. According to Stoll in Magill's Literary Annual, "Gloria Naylor is already numbered among the freshest and most vital voices in contemporary American literature.". The final act of violence, the gang rape of Lorraine, underscores men's violent tendencies, emphasizing the differences between the sexes. The close of the novel turns away from the intensity of the dream, and the satisfaction of violent protest, insisting rather on prolonged yearning and dreaming amid conditions which do not magically transform. Her life revolves around her relationship with her husband and her desperate attempts to please him. 'And something bad had happened to me by the wallI mean hersomething bad had happened to her'." The story, published in a 1980 issue of the magazine, later become a part of her first novel. and the boys] had been hiding up on the wall, watching her come up that back street, and they had waited. She resolved to write about her heritagethe black woman in America. Julia Boyd, In the Company of My Sisters: Black Women and Self Esteem, Plume, 1997. In a catalog of similes, Hughes evokes the fate of dreams unfulfilled: They dry up like raisins in the sun, fester like sores, stink like rotten meat, crust over like syrupy sweets: They become burdensome, or possibly explosive. Are we to take it that Ciel never really returns from San Francisco and Cora is not taking an interest in the community effort to raise funds for tenants' rights? Naylor's novel is not exhortatory or rousing in the same way; her response to the fracture of the collective dream is an affirmation of persistence rather than a song of culmination and apocalypse. ", At this point it seems that Cora's story is out of place in the novel, a mistake by an otherwise meticulous author. She also gave her introverted first-born child a journal in which to record her thoughts. The displacement of reality into dream defers closure, even though the chapter appears shaped to make an end. He is said to have been a She imagines that her daughter Maybelline "could be doing something like this some daystanding on a stage, wearing pretty clothes and saying fine things . Maybelline could go to collegeshe liked school." Miss Eva opens her home to Mattie and her infant son, Basil. As the body of the victim is forced to tell the rapist's story, that body turns against Lorraine's consciousness and begins to destroy itself, cell by cell. She says realizing that black writers were in the ranks of great American writers made her feel confident "to tell my own story.". Like the blood that runs down the palace walls in Blake's "London," this reminder of Ben and Lorrin e blights the block party. "(The challenges) were mostly inside myself, because I was under a lot of duress when I wrote the book," she says. One critic has said that her character may be modeled after adherents of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. But while she is aware that there is nothing enviable about the pressures, incapacities, and frustrations men absorb in a system they can neither beat nor truly join, her interest lies in evoking the lives of women, not men. Brewster Place is an American drama series which aired on ABC in May 1990. He seldom works. He implies that the story has a hopeless ending. Kate Rushin, Black Back-ups, Firebrand Books, 1993. In addition to planning her next novel, which may turn out to be a historical story involving two characters from her third novel, "Mama Day," Naylor also is involved in other art forms. She goes into a deep depression after her daughter's death, but Mattie succeeds in helping her recover. Ciel loves her husband, Eugene, even though he abuses her verbally and threatens physical harm. As a result, Influenced by Roots Much to his Mattie's dismay, he ends up in trouble and in jail. Etta Mae has always lived a life very different from that of Mattie Michael. When they had finished and stopped holding her up, her body fell over like an unstringed puppet. Explain. Critical Overview | THE LITERARY WORK "The Women of Brewster Place She will encourage her children, and they can grow up to be important, talented people, like the actors on the stage. The dismal, incessant rain becomes cleansing, and the water is described as beating down in unison with the beating of the women's hearts. WebHow did Ben die in The Women of Brewster Place? Provide detailed support for your answer drawing from various perspectives, including historical or sociological. He loves Mattie very much and blames himself for her pregnancy, until she tells him that the baby is not Fred Watson'sthe man he had chosen for her. While these ties have always existed, the women's movement has brought them more recognition. The "real" party for which Etta is rousing her has yet to take place, and we never get to hear how it turns out. Mattie allows herself to be seduced by Butch Fuller, whom Samuel thinks is worthless. But soon the neighbors start to notice the loving looks that pass between the two women, and soon the other women in the neighborhood reject Lorraine's gestures of friendship. "The Men of Brewster Place" include Mattie Michael's son, Basil, who jumped bail and left his mother to forfeit the house she had put up as bond. The novel begins with Langston Hughes's poem, "Harlem," which asks "what happens to a dream deferred?" | For example, while Mattie Michael loses her home as a result of her son's irresponsibility, the strength she gains enables her to care for the women whom she has known either since childhood and early adulthood or through her connection to Brewster Place. Mattie is the matriarch of Brewster Place; throughout the novel, she plays a motherly role for all of the characters. For Naylor, discovering the work of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Richard Wright, James Baldwin (whom she calls one of her favorite writers) and other black authors was a turning point. The changing ethnicity of the neighborhood reflects the changing demographics of society. Novels for Students. In this one sentence, Naylor pushes the reader back into the safety of a world of artistic mediation and restores the reader's freedom to navigate safely through the details of the text. Though Etta's journey starts in the same small town as Mattie's, the path she takes to Brewster Source: Donna Woodford, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1998. While the women were not literally born within the community of Brewster Place, the community provides the backdrop for their lives. The story traces the development of the civil rights movement, from a time when segregation was the norm through the beginnings of integration. Although eventually she did mend physically, there were signs that she had not come to terms with her feelings about the abortion. ("Conversation"), Bearing in mind the kind of hostile criticism that Alice Walker's The Color Purple evoked, one can understand Naylor's concern, since male sins in her novel are not insignificant. a body that is, in Mulvey's terms, "stylised and fragmented by close-ups," the body that is dissected by that gaze is the body of the violator and not his victim. Naylor would also like to try her hand at writing screenplays, and would like to take a poetry workshop someday to loosen herself up. Etta Mae Johnson arrives at Brewster Place with style. 24, No. Research the era to discover what the movement was, who was involved, and what the goals and achievements were. It is morning and the sun is still shining; the wall is still standing, and everyone is getting ready for the block party. knelt between them and pushed up her dress and tore at the top of her pantyhose. The limitations of narrative render any disruption of the violator/spectator affiliation difficult to achieve; while sadism, in Mulvey's words, "demands a story," pain destroys narrative, shatters referential realities, and challenges the very power of language. I had been the person behind `The Women of Brewster Place. Novels for Students. WebThe Women of Brewster Place: With Oprah Winfrey, Mary Alice, Olivia Cole, Robin Givens. The second climax, as violent as Maggie's beating in the beginning of the novel, happens when Lorraine is raped. Nevertheless, this is not the same sort of disappointing deferral as in Cora Lee's story. " This sudden shift of perspective unveils the connection between the scopophilic gaze and the objectifying force of violence. For example, when Mattie leaves her home after her father beats her, she never again sees her parents. Fowler tries to place Naylor's work within the context of African-American female writers since the 1960s. While the novel opens with Mattie as a woman in her 60s, it quickly flashes back to Mattie's teen years in Rock Vale, Tennessee, where Mattie lives a sheltered life with her over-protective father, Samuel, and her mother, Fannie. Place is very different. She beats the drunken and oblivious Ben to death before Mattie can reach her and stop her. When the sun began to warm the air and the horizon brightened, she still lay there, her mouth crammed with paper bag, her dress pushed up under her breasts, her bloody pantyhose hanging from her thighs." She spends her life loving and caring for her son and denies herself adult love. ." Faulkner uses fifteen different voices to tell the story. In 1989, Baker 2 episodes aired. As she explains to Bellinelli in an interview, Naylor strives in TheWomen of Brewster Place to "help us celebrate voraciously that which is ours.". Built strong by his years as a field hand, and cinnamon skinned, Mattie finds him irresistible. Yet the substance of the dream itself and the significance of the dreamer raise some further questions. Why is the anger and frustration that the women feel after the rape of Lorraine displaced into dream? Then the cells went that contained her powers of taste and smell. Even though the link between this neighborhood and the particular social, economic, and political realities of the sixties is muted rather than emphatic, defining characteristics are discernible. WebBrewster Place. Based on the novel by Gloria Naylor, which deals with several strong-willed women who live , Not only does Langston Hughes's poem speak generally about the nature of deferral and dreams unsatisfied, but in the historical context that Naylor evokes it also calls attention implicitly to the sixties' dream of racial equality and the "I have a dream" speech of Martin Luther King, Jr..
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