In Wright’s Native Son the two main female characters, Mary Dalton and Bessie Mears, are killed Bigger Thomas. Their lives, deaths, and the way that both are seen are used by Wright to help show the divide in the opportunity how these women are valued by the public. In life, Mary was seen as rebel and judged by society for associating with Jan Erlone and the communists, but after her death she is made to be an angelic character to the public. To Bigger, and the audience, she seems unaware that simply because she is a communist racial boundaries still exist, which is evident by her actions in the car when she and Jan request to see where Bigger lives. For instance Mary seems unaware that her enthusiasm causes such distress to Bigger, even to the point where he felt “His entire mind and body were painfully concentrated into a single sharp point of attention,” furthering the idea that she is selfish in her ignorance. However, Bessie lives a life of suffering, though society sees her actions as expected, where she must work long hours and only finds relief from alcohol, which Bigger sees as the main reason for their relationship. Bessie and Bigger’s mutual use of each other, her for alcohol and him for sex and the relationship, shows the distorted limited opportunity that Bessie had to endure. The use of Bessie does not stop after she is raped and killed but is further violated by the court system by being used to make the case against Bigger stronger to gain justice for Mary’s death and the false assumption that she was raped. While in life Mary is seen as a rebel and Bessie as following the social guidelines, once Bigger murders them the preconceived ideas about innocence and the value put on the sexual violation of these two women is clearly different. Overall Wright uses the differences between these two characters to show inequality, not simply cause another problem for the main character.
You're closing statement's really interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way before, that Mary was seen as a rebel in life and Bessie as the "right" one, but in death Mary is almost deified while Bessie is degraded, shunned, and pushed to the side. Although this little point Wright makes on the side is very important, I have a feeling he also wanted to cause as many problems for Bigger as possible.
ReplyDeleteI guess I just feel less cynical about Wright than I do with Ellison. Though Wright likes to push his characters into corners I think he does so with less malice than Ellison does.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe Wright is more of an equal-opportunity corner-pusher (that is, Bigger gets it as bad as Mary or Bessie do?). I like the general idea that Wright "uses" all of his characters in a similar way, whereas Ellison's lack of depth in this area is more directly contradictory of his own aesthetic and ethical values in his novel, and thus more of a "problem."
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