Baker and his friends, the teenage boys who terrorize Brewster Place. When Samuel discovers that Mattie is pregnant by Fuller, he goes into a rage and beats her. The chapter begins with a mention of the troubling dreams that haunt all the women and girls of Brewster Place during the week after Ben's death and Lorraine's rape. As a child Cora dreams of new baby dolls. Kiswana is a young woman from a middle-class black family. and the boys] had been hiding up on the wall, watching her come up that back street, and they had waited. Why is the anger and frustration that the women feel after the rape of Lorraine displaced into dream? THE LITERARY WORK She tries to protect Mattie from the brutal beating Samuel Michael gives her when she refuses to name her baby's father. After she aborts the child she knows Eugene does not want, she feels remorse and begins to understand the kind of person Eugene really is. What happened to Basil on Brewster Place? Yet, when she returns to her apartment, she climbs into bed with another man. 37-70. It wasn't until she entered Brooklyn College as an English major in her mid-20s that she discovered "writers who were of my complexion.". Dorothy Wickenden, a review in The New Republic, September 6, 1982, p. 37. Basil and Eugene are forever on the run; other men in the stories (Kiswana's boyfriend Abshu, Cora Lee's shadowy lovers) are narrative ciphers. I'm challenging myself because it's important that you do not get stale. WebHow did Ben die in The Women of Brewster Place? I read all of Louisa May Alcott and all the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.". Cane, Gaiman, Neil 1960- Referring to Mattie' s dream of tearing the wall down together with the women of Brewster Place, Linda Labin contends in Masterpieces of Women's Literature: "It is this remarkable, hope-filled ending that impresses the majority of scholars." Like them, her books sing of sorrows proudly borne by black women in America. Because the victim's story cannot be told in the representation itself, it is told first; in the representation that follows, that story lingers in the viewer's mind, qualifying the victim's inability to express herself and providing, in essence, a counter-text to the story of violation that the camera provides. Gloria Naylor's debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, won a National Book Award and became a TV mini-series starring Oprah Winfrey. In her representation of violence, the victim's pain is defined only through negation, her agony experienced only in the reader's imagination: Lorraine was no longer conscious of the pain in her spine or stomach. She wasnt a young woman, but I am still haunted by a sense that she left work undone. Annie Gottlieb, a review in The New York Times Book Review, August 22, 1982, p. 11. The book ends with one final mention of dreams. 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." Mattie's journey to Brewster Place begins in rural Tennessee, but when she becomes pregnant she leaves town to avoid her father's wrath. Company Credits My interest here is to look at the way in which Naylor rethinks the poem in her novel's attention to dreams and desires and deferral., The dream of the last chapter is a way of deferring closure, but this deferral is not evidence of the author's self-indulgent reluctance to make an end. Lorraine's body was twisting in convulsions of fear that they mistook for resistance, and C.C. One night after an argument with Teresa, Lorraine decides to go visit Ben. Many commentators have noted the same deft touch with the novel's supporting characters; in fact, Hairston also notes, "Other characters are equally well-drawn. Now, clearly Mattie did not intend for this to happen. Their aggression, part-time presence, avoidance of commitment, and sense of dislocation renders them alien and other in the community of Brewster Place. Critic Jill Matus, in Black American Literature Forum, describes Mattie as "the community's best voice and sharpest eye.". Naylor brings the reader to the edge of experience only to abandon him or her to the power of the imagination; in this case, however, the structured blanks that the novel asks the reader to fill in demand the imaginative construction of the victim's pain rather than the violator's pleasure.. But perhaps the most revealing stories about Ciel is present in Mattie's dream because she herself has dreamed about the ghastly rape and mutilation with such identification and urgency that she obeys the impulse to return to Brewster Place: " 'And she had on a green dress with like black trimming, and there were red designs or red flowers or something on the front.' Linda Labin asserts in Masterpieces of Women's Literature, "In many ways, The Women of Brewster Place may prove to be as significant in its way as Southern writer William Faulkner's mythic Yoknapatawpha County or Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. For example, when one of the women faces the loss of a child, the others join together to offer themselves in any way that they can. 1, spring, 1990, pp. 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. The "imagised, eroticized concept of the world that makes a mockery of empirical objectivity" is here replaced by the discomforting proximity of two human faces locked in violent struggle and defined not by eroticism but by the pain inflicted by one and borne by the other: Then she opened her eyes and they screamed and screamed into the face above hersthe face that was pushing this tearing pain inside of her body. She also gave her introverted first-born child a journal in which to record her thoughts. So why not a last word on how it died? They will tear down that which has separated them and made them "different" from the other inhabitants of the city. The collective dream of the last chapter constitutes a "symbolic act" which, as Frederic Jameson puts it, enables "real social contradictions, insurmountable in their own terms, [to] find a purely formal resolution in the aesthetic realm." 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. The son of Macrina the Elder, Basil is said to have moved with his family to the shores of the Black Sea during the persecution of Christians under Galerius. It wasn't easy to write about men. "The Women of Brewster Place 4, December, 1990, pp. When her mother comes to visit her they quarrel over Kiswana's choice of neighborhood and over her decision to leave school. After Ciel underwent an abortion, she had difficulty returning to the daily routine of her life. Yet, he remains more critical of her ability to make historical connectionsto explore the depths of the human experience. Feeling rejected both by her neighbors and by Teresa, Lorraine finds comfort in talking to Ben, the old alcoholic handyman of Brewster Place. The violation of her personhood that is initiated with the rapist's objectifying look becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy borne out by the literal destruction of her body; rape reduces its victim to the status of an animal and then flaunts as authorization the very body that it has mutilated. Naylor uses each woman's sexuality to help define her character. Teresa, the bolder of the two, doesn't care what the neighbors think of them, and she doesn't understand why Lorraine does care. Naylor wants people to understand the richness of the black heritage. Ciel first appears in the story as Eva Turner's granddaughter. In Magill's Literary Annual, Rae Stoll concurs: "Ultimately then, The Women of Brewster Place is an optimistic work, offering the hope for a redemptive community of love as a counterforce to isolation and violence.". Official Sites 1004-5. King's sermon culminates in the language of apocalypse, a register which, as I have already suggested, Naylor's epilogue avoids: "I still have Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. As the dream ends, we are left to wonder what sort of register the "actual" block party would occupy. The novel begins with a flashback to Mattie's life as a typical young woman. Web"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. Later that year, Naylor began to study nursing at Medgar Evers College, then transferred to Brooklyn College of CUNY to study English. Lorraine feels the women's hostility and longs to be accepted. ", The situation of black men, she says, is one that "still needs work. 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. She reminds him of his daughter, and this friendship assuages the guilt he feels over his daughter's fate. 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? " After high school graduation in 1968, Naylor's solution to the shock and confusion she experienced in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination that same spring was to postpone college and become a Jehovah's Witness missionary. She resents her conservative parents and their middle-class values and feels that her family has rejected their black heritage. The extended comparison between the street's "life" and the women's lives make the work an "allegory." He seldom works. Novels for Students. Naylor's temporary restoration of the objectifying gaze only emphasizes the extent to which her representation of violence subverts the conventional dynamics of the reading and viewing processes. This selfless love carries the women through betrayal, loss, and violence. Etta Mae was always looking for something that was just out of her reach, attaching herself to " any promising rising black star, and when he burnt out, she found another." The sudden interjection of an "objective" perspective into Naylor's representation traces that process of authorization as the narrative pulls back from the subtext of the victim's pain to focus the reader's gaze on the "object" status of the victim's body. Butch Fuller exudes charm. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). They will tear down the wall which is stained with blood, and which has come to symbolize their dead end existence on Brewster Place. Etta Mae Johnson and Mattie Michael grew up together in Rock Vale, Tennessee. Ciel loves her husband, Eugene, even though he abuses her verbally and threatens physical harm. The face pushed itself so close to hers that she could look into the flared nostrils and smell the decomposing food in its teeth.. As the reader's gaze is centered within the victim's body, the reader, is stripped of the safety of aesthetic distance and the freedom of artistic response. Author Biography Praises Naylor's treatment of women and relationships. In Mattie's dream of the block party, even Ciel, who knows nothing of Lorraine, admits that she has dreamed of "a woman who was supposed to be me She didn't look exactly like me, but inside I felt it was me.". Although eventually she did mend physically, there were signs that she had not come to terms with her feelings about the abortion. Biographical and critical study. Even as she looks out her window at the wall that separates Brewster Place from the heart of the city, she is daydreaming: "she placed her dreams on the back of the bird and fantasized that it would glide forever in transparent silver circles until it ascended to the center of the universe and was swallowed up." But its reflection is subtle, achieved through the novel's concern with specific women and an individualized neighborhood and the way in which fiction, with its attention focused on the particular, can be made to reveal the play of large historical determinants and forces. She will not change her actions and become a devoted mother, and her dreams for her children will be deferred. Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place, Penguin, 1983. Although remarkably similar to Dr. King's sermon in the recognition of blasted hopes and dreams deferred, The Women of Brewster Place does not reassert its faith in the dream of harmony and equality: It stops short of apocalypse in its affirmation of persistence. Throughout the story, Naylor creates situations that stress the loneliness of the characters. "Rock Vale had no place for a black woman who was not only unwilling to play by the rules, but whose spirit challenged the very right of the game to exist." "Although I had been writing since I was 12 years old, the so-called serious writing happened when I was at Brooklyn College." The residents of Brewster Place outside are sitting on stoops or playing in the street because of the heat. Since 1983, Naylor has continued to write, lecture, and receive awards for her writing. ", Her new dream of maternal devotion continues as they arrive home and prepare for bed. ", Critics also recognize Naylor's ability to make history come alive. Naylor earned a Master of Arts degree in Afro-American Studies from Yale University in 1983. WebMattie uses her house for collateral, which Basil forfeits once he disappears. The Women of Brewster Place depicts seven courageous black women struggling to survive life's harsh realities. But even Ciel, who doesn't know what has happened by the wall, reports that she has been dreaming of Ben and Lorraine. She believes she must have a man to be happy. The other women do not view Theresa and Lorraine as separate individuals, but refer to them as "The Two." Kiswana finds one of these wild children eating out of a dumpster, and soon Kiswana and Cora become friends. Ciel hesitantly acknowledges that he is not black. And just as the poem suggests many answers to that question, so the novel explores many stories of deferred dreams. 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. As a result, It will also examine the point at which dreams become "vain fantasy.". William died on April 18, 1644, at nearly 80 years old. In his Freedomways review, he says of The Women of Brewster Place: "Naylor's first effort seems to fall in with most of the fiction being published today, which bypasses provocative social themes to play, instead, in the shallower waters of isolated personal relationships.". Plot Summary In their separate spaces the women dream of a tall yellow woman in a bloody green and black dress Lorraine. What happened to Ciel in Brewster Place? "It took me a little time, but after I got over the writer's block, I never looked back.". Critics like her style and appreciate her efforts to deal with societal issues and psychological themes. 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. Like the street, the novel hovers, moving toward the end of its line, but deferring. Mattie Michael. She felt a weight drop on her spread body. Etta Mae soon departs for New York, leaving Mattie to fend for herself. The rape scene in The Women of Brewster Place occurs in "The Two," one of the seven short stories that make up the novel. Support your reasons with evidence from the story. There are countless slum streets like Brewster; streets will continue to be condemned and to die, but there will be other streets to whose decay the women of Brewster will cling. Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; Linkedin; Influencers; Brands; Blog; About; FAQ; Contact One night Basil is arrested and thrown in jail for killing a man during a bar fight. They did find, though, that their children could attend schools and had access to libraries, opportunities the Naylors had not enjoyed as black children. Ben relates to Situated within the margins of the violator's story of rape, the reader is able to read beneath the bodily configurations that make up its text, to experience the world-destroying violence required to appropriate the victim's body as a sign of the violator's power. Each of the women in the story unconditionally loves at least one other woman. "(The challenges) were mostly inside myself, because I was under a lot of duress when I wrote the book," she says. Explain. She disappoints no one in her tight willow-green sundress and her large two-toned sunglasses. 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. At first there is no explanation given for the girl's death. Naylor wrote "The Women of Brewster Place" while she was a student, finishing it the very month she graduated in 1981. This unmovable and soothing will represents the historically strong communal spirit among all women, but especially African-American women. 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 Retrieved February 22, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/women-brewster-place. Like those before them, the women who live on Brewster Place overcome their difficulties through the support and wisdom of friends who have experienced their struggles. He complains that he will never be able to get ahead with her and two babies to care for, and although she does not want to do it, she gets an abortion. Co-opted by the rapist's story, the victim's bodyviolated, damaged and discarded is introduced as authorization for the very brutality that has destroyed it. The street continues to exist marginally, on the edge of death; it is the "end of the line" for most of its inhabitants. Throughout The Women of Brewster Place, the women support one another, counteracting the violence of their fathers, boyfriends, husbands, and sons. The men Naylor depicts in her novel are mean, cowardly, and lawless. For Further Study When she becomes pregnant again, however, it becomes harder to deny the problems. The "community among women" stands out as the book's most obvious theme. Early on, she lives with Turner and Mattie in North Carolina. Excitedly she tells Cora, "if we really pull together, we can put pressure on [the landlord] to start fixing this place up." Stultifying and confining, the rain prevents the inhabitants of Brewster's community from meeting to talk about the tragedy; instead they are faced with clogged gutters, debris, trapped odors in their apartments, and listless children. Characters By the end of the evening Etta realizes that Mattie was right, and she walks up Brewster Street with a broken spirit. It also was turned into a television mini-series in 1989, produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey. Linda Labin, Masterpieces of Women's Literature, edited by Frank Magill, HarperCollins, 1996, pp. His wife, Mary, had Yet the substance of the dream itself and the significance of the dreamer raise some further questions. WebThe Women of Brewster Place (TV Mini Series 1989) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. More importantly, the narrator emphasizes that the dreams of Brewster's inhabitants are what keep them alive. Then suddenly Mattie awakes. As the object of the reader's gaze is suddenly shifted, that reader is thrust into an understanding of the way in which his or her own look may perpetuate the violence of rape. "Linden Hills," which has parallels to Dante's "Inferno," is concerned with life in a suburb populated with well-to-do blacks. "Marcia Gillespie took me out for my first literary lunch," Naylor recalls. As she passes through the alley near the wall, she is attacked by C.C. According to Stoll in Magill's Literary Annual, "Gloria Naylor is already numbered among the freshest and most vital voices in contemporary American literature.". "It is really very tough to try to fight those kinds of images and still keep your home together. When her parents refuse to give her another for her thirteenth Christmas, she is heartbroken. brought his fist down into her stomach. In Naylor's representation, Lorraine's pain and not the rapist's body becomes the agent of violation, the force of her own destruction: "The screams tried to break through her corneas out into the air, but the tough rubbery flesh sent them vibrating back into her brain, first shaking lifeless the cells that nurtured her memory." Lorraine's decision to return home through the shortcut of an alley late one night leads her into an ambush in which the anger of seven teenage boys erupts into violence: Lorraine saw a pair of suede sneakers flying down behind the face in front of hers and they hit the cement with a dead thump. [C.C. The production, sponsored by a grant from the city, does indeed inspire Cora to dream for her older children. Because of the wall, Brewster Place is economically and culturally isolated from the rest of the city. She couldn't feel the skin that was rubbing off of her arms from being pressed against the rough cement. Lorraine's horrifying murder of Ben serves only to deepen the chasm of hopelessness felt at different times by all the characters in the story. She will encourage her children, and they can grow up to be important, talented people, like the actors on the stage. That year also marked the August March on Washington as well as the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. While much of her prose soars lyrically, her poetry, she says, tends to be "stark and linear. All six of the boys rape her, leaving her near death. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Basil 2 episodes, 1989 Bebe Drake Cleo Yes, that's what would happen to her babies. An anthology of stories that relate to the black experience. Frustrated with perpetual pregnancy and the burdens of poverty and single parenting, Cora joins in readily, and Theresa, about to quit Brewster Place in a cab, vents her pain at the fate of her lover and her fury with the submissiveness that breeds victimization. Theresa, on the other hand, makes no apologies for her lifestyle and gets angry with Lorraine for wanting to fit in with the women. Mattie awakes to discover that it is still morning, the wall is still standing, and the block party still looms in the future. Idealistic and yearning to help others, she dropped out of college and moved onto Brewster Place to live amongst other African-American people. Themes WebTheresa regrets her final words to her as she dies. As its name suggests, "The Block Party" is a vision of community effort, everyone's story. A novel set in northern Italy in the late nineteenth century; published in Italian (as Teresa) in 1886, in English, Harlem It would be simple to make a case for the unflattering portrayal of men in this novel; in fact Naylor was concerned that her work would be seen as deliberately slighting of men: there was something that I was very self-conscious about with my first novel; I bent over backwards not to have a negative message come through about the men. 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. 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. Ciel's eyes began to cloud. For example, in a review published in Freedomways, Loyle Hairston says that the characters " throb with vitality amid the shattering of their hopes and dreams." by Neera They no longer fit into her dream of a sweet, dependent baby who needs no one but her. Dreams keep the street alive as well, if only in the minds of its former inhabitants whose stories the dream motif unites into a coherent novel. Obliged comes from the political, social, and economic realities of post-sixties' Americaa world in which the women are largely disentitled. Cora is skeptical, but to pacify Kiswana she agrees to go. 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?' Naylor tells each woman's story through the woman's own voice. It is essentially a psychologica, Cane In this case, Brewster Place undergoes life processes. All that the dream has promised is undercut, it seems. Rather than watching a distant action unfold from the anonymity of the darkened theater or reading about an illicit act from the safety of an arm-chair, Naylor's audience is thrust into the middle of a rape the representation of which subverts the very "sense of separation" upon which voyeurism depends. She provides shelter and a sense of freedom to her old friend, Etta Mae; also, she comes to the aid of Ciel when Ciel loses her desire to live. The story, published in a 1980 issue of the magazine, later become a part of her first novel. her because she reminds him of his daughter. She vows that she will start helping them with homework and walking them to school. She did not believe in being submissive to whites, and she did not want to marry, be a mother, and remain with the same man for the rest of her life. When she discovers that sex produces babies, she starts to have sex in order to get pregnant. WebBrewster Place. Like many of those people, Naylor's parents, Alberta McAlpin and Roosevelt Naylor, migrated to New York in 1949. He is the estranged husband of Elvira and father of an unnamed The oldest of three girls, Naylor was born in New York City on January 25, 1950. Then her son, for whom she gave up her life, leaves without saying goodbye. Brewster Place, carries it within her, and shares its tragedies., Everyone in the community knows that this block party is significant and important because it is a way of moving forward after the terrible tragedy of Lorraine and Ben. She becomes friends with Cora Lee and succeeds, for one night, in showing her a different life. For one evening, Cora Lee envisions a new life for herself and her children. How does Serena die in Brewster Place? Essays, poetry, and prose on the black feminist experience. 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." ), 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. Woodford is a doctoral candidate at Washington University and has written for a wide variety of academic journals and educational publishers. Built strong by his years as a field hand, and cinnamon skinned, Mattie finds him irresistible. them, and defines their underprivileged status. As a result of their offenses toward the women in the story, the women are drawn together. The displacement of reality into dream defers closure, even though the chapter appears shaped to make an end. Following the abortion, Ciel is already struggling emotionally when young Serena dies in a freak accident. 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. Each foray away from the novel gives me something fresh and new to bring back to it when I'm ready. 918-22. 29), edited by Sharon Felton and Michelle C. Loris, Greenwood, 1997. For a while she manages to earn just enough money to pay rent on the room she shares with her baby, Basil.