To start with, among those who have fought …show more content…
In this context, the critic MadhuDubey states that “like Walker, Toni Morrison is widely acclaimed as a “major author” of the developing black women’s fictional tradition”(2). Actually, in her novels, Morrison has repeatedly insisted on black women’s identity as depicted in The Bluest Eye(1970), Sula(1973), Beloved(1989), and A Mercy(2008).In her novel Paradise, Morrison subverts traditional gender rules by bringing the female characters to the foreground and giving them agency. She exposes the readers to a new type of females who have not only liberated themselves from the social constrains and stereotypes but also built a community that reflects “Paradise” on earth. In one of her interviews with Claudia Dreifusin Time New York Magazine (1994), Morrison explains the context of writing Paradise as follows:
I wanted to write books that ran the whole gamut of women’s sexual experiences. I did not like the imposition that had been placed on black women’s sexuality in literature. They were either mammies or whores. And they were not vulnerable people. They were not people who were supposed to enjoy sex, either that was forbidden in literature…. To enjoy your body, be in your body, defend your body…Right now, …show more content…
It recounts the story of the brutal massacre of five women (Consolata, Mavis, Gigi, Seneca and Pallas) who reside in a place called the Convent. Those responsible for this bloody assassination of women are their black male counterparts from the nearby town of Ruby. Morrison writes, “Everything that worries them must come from women”(217). This may suggest that the massacre of the females is due to the new community that they build with their coming to the Convent. It is also the community where Morrison allows these females to break their silence and subvert patriarchal stereotypes of