Strategies of subversion: the deconstruction of madness in Eva's Man, Corregidora, and Beloved

• Autores: Clara Escoda Agustí
• Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 27, Nº 1, 2005, págs. 29-38
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a number of contemporary African American novels written by women, like Gayl Jones' Corregidora and Eva's Man, and Toni Morrison's Beloved, we encounter persistent images of female madness in the form of hysteria, violence or silence. My main thesis here is that madness works in these texts to reveal the oppressive control the ideologies of racism and sexism effect on the black woman. This use of madness transforms the negative construct of female insanity into a necessary affirmation of the female self. However, not all the works are equally successful in achieving this deconstruction of insanity. While the protagonist in Beloved claims maternal agency on the same terms of possession and ownership as the white patriarchal ideology, and Eva's Man still contemplates violence, not language, as the only possible response to sexism and racism, it is only Corregidora that actually uncovers the lost ground of female desire. Yet in their exploration of tenable, black female identities beyond the limits of white patriarchal structures, the novels put forth an alternative to both the black and white male constructions of identity and difference, thus plunging into crisis the patriarchal ideology that allows for gender and racial exploitation.