THE ISSUES AND CHALLENGES OF FEMININE IDENTITY,FREEDOM ANDEQUALITY IN TONI MORRISON’S SULA

Abstract

This paper explores the issues and challenges faced by the females, specially of African-American society. In her works, Toni Morrison, explores the position,state and problems of females in the male dominating society.The present article is a study of the female characters of Toni Morrison?s novel Sula, is about their struggles , strength, determination and love used to challenge discrimination and injustice of the society, community and of their own family where they have to live and survive. This paper provides an insight for the analysis of Morrison?s Female characters, particularly in Sula.Tomi Morrison, the Nobel prize winning author?s novels appear to criticize the feminist concept of unrestricted freedom. Sula , is Toni Morrison?s second novel ,published in1973,after The Bluest Eye,(1970). The female characters of her novel ,Sula, are struggling for their liberation from being manipulated by the male dominated society and community. They are in dynamic involvement with and at the same time are critically opposed to the system of society in which they live in order to assert their feminine self. In Sula , Morrison explores what she believes to be one of the most damaging components of sexist and racist oppression on black women perpetuation by the larger society of a Anglo-Saxon standard of female beauty as a measurement of self worth. As she said, " The concept of physical beauty as a virtue, is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it. Physical beauty has nothing to do with our past, present and future."1. Toni Morrison?s Sula, is a contemporary novel about female friendship, offers a view of female psychological development that definestraditional male-centered interpretations of female development and cells out for an expansion of the women-centered paradigm.