{"id":50,"date":"2021-02-21T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=50"},"modified":"2021-02-21T11:00:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T16:00:46","slug":"native-daughters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/02\/21\/native-daughters\/","title":{"rendered":"Native Daughters?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two-thirds of the way into Native Son<\/em>, seeing how Wright writes female characters\u2014especially Bessie\u2014 makes me ask how a different treatment of gender and sexuality would address the impact of racism on women\u2019s lives. I recognize the importance of showing how racism prevents Bigger from developing a healthy masculinity, but I remain frustrated with how the novel handles issues of gender and sexual violence. Engaging not just with racism and male identity, but also with racism and female identity, could offer a more compelling portrait of how the intersecting identities of race, gender, and sexuality shape these characters\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cFlight,\u201d Wright shows Bigger considering what \u201crape\u201d means in his life: \u201cYes, he had raped [Mary]. Every time he felt as he had felt that night, he raped. But rape was not what one did to women,\u201d and goes on to describe rape as the hatred Bigger feels in his environment (227). Passages like this one make it difficult for me to connect with Wright\u2019s project. Bigger\u2019s anxiety to assert his own masculinity is constantly part of the text in language about Bigger\u2019s sense of \u201chysteria\u201d and in phallic images like knives. To an extent, I understand Wright\u2019s choice to describe the effects of racism with language of sexual violence, because the threat of violence against Bigger looms over the text. As Bigger knows, \u201c[t]o hint that [Bigger] had committed a sex crime was to pronounce the death sentence\u201d (243).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I want to read this aspect of the novel with more empathy, I can\u2019t get past the way in which Wright treats his female characters as completely disposable. In order to take seriously what I think Wright is trying to do in his discussion of Bigger\u2019s sexuality, and, I think it\u2019s crucial that Wright acknowledge that rape is<\/em> also \u201cwhat one did to women,\u201d particularly for Bessie\u2019s character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attention to the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in Bessie\u2019s case is especially important. Just as the language of the introduction describes Mary\u2019s rape as only a possibility, it is similarly cagey about what happens to Bessie, commenting that \u201cBigger essentially rapes his girlfriend Bessie before killing her\u201d (xviii). I think the language falls short of the reality here, too. Wright (as well as the man who wrote this edition\u2019s introduction) seems to see the female characters in Native Son<\/em> only as objects of sexual violence. This unwillingness to write agentive women impoverishes the novel. Closer attention to the female characters\u2014and particularly the violence that Bessie faces because of both her race and her gender\u2014would handle these characters\u2019 intersectional identities more thoughtfully. Wright asks his readers to see how racism affects Bigger\u2019s masculinity; there\u2019s much he leaves unsaid about Bessie\u2019s identity. In the final third of the novel, I am curious to see how the theme of gender and sexuality continues to play out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two-thirds of the way into Native Son, seeing how Wright writes female characters\u2014especially Bessie\u2014 makes me ask how a different treatment of gender and sexuality would address the impact of racism on women\u2019s lives. I recognize the importance of showing how racism prevents Bigger from developing a healthy masculinity, but I remain frustrated with how … Continue reading Native Daughters?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3909,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}