Post-Colonial Lens: Why this one?

For this project, I selected to read the book Beloved through a postcolonial lens. The postcolonial lens focuses around the oppressor and the oppressed. For the most part I haven’t read many books with that lens in mind and Beloved seemed like a good place where I can start to use it. The act of love should be mutual between the two parties and that way it can coincide and be balanced, but when one party begins to oppress the other that is when the balance shifts and the relationship begins to be unhealthy. The title of the book influenced me that there would be a relationship or a character that felt there needed to have love, but events would happen that would strain the bond. This lens caught my eye the most because for some of the lenses I have used them before and I haven’t looked at a book or novel in this kind of way. Oppression is one of the toughest things to handle whatever the situation is and in literature it’s interesting to see how people or groups deal with it. I believe that oppression is good or bad depending on the situation, but it usually comes with a negative connotation. From all of this I hope that I can learn and get a deeper understanding of harder literature so that college assignments will become easier.

The Historical Perspective Part One: Why?

Literature today is obsessed with shock and awe, meaning any little thing that gets a reaction is written into a novel. Modern readers drive that obsession, focusing on what is the equivalence of television literature. Minimally mentally stimulating for a maximum feeling is the modern reader’s motto. In essence we are becoming lazy readers. I am no different: I read some books because they are easy, and I read others because they are fast. I am impatient and want to get the pleasure of reading great texts in the time and effort required to flip through a magazine.

In modern America there are few places where we are challenged as readers to actually think when we read, and even more rare is to be challenged to read anything that has real meaning. The two places in my life where I have ever been pushed in my reading have been in my own head and in my English class. The latter has pushed me to expand my library and changed my opinions so that now, in my mind the only books worth reading are the books with genuine weight to them; Shakespeare, philosophical texts, anything that I could cite in an academic paper. My English teachers of the last few years have made it painfully clear to me how pretentious I have been with my opinions. I never would have chosen to read Lord of the Flies, or even Catcher in the Rye, but these books have messages that carry a similar weight to those in Othello or A Tale of Two Cities.

All of this buildup is leading up to the fact that I am writing this blog for my English class with the purpose of analyzing the novel Beloved—more specifically, analyzing Beloved with a focus on the historical context and implications of the novel, and how those impact the novel. I hope you stick around. I think this is going to be pretty interesting.

Why I Chose the Feminist Lens

For this blogging project, I have tasked myself with reading Beloved, the historical fiction novel by Toni Morrison, through the feminist critical lens. This is a lens that interests me because of the way in which it explored gender issues and the roles of men and women in society. Specifically this lens explores how the literature itself contributes to the social, political, emotional, and psychological oppression of women, something of great interest to me as a young woman. I have begun to notice a lopsided power structure and biased interactions between males and females and have started to form opinions on how I believe gender plays a role in our society. Our society is accustomed to an injustice in the treatment of women compared to that of men, but I also believe there is injustice in the way men are expected to meet a certain definition of “masculinity”. The feminist lens will allow my exploration of these ideas and opinions in a different era; Beloved’s post-Civil War setting will provide a look back into gender roles in the late nineteenth century. Reading Beloved through the feminist lens will allow me to dive deep into these opinions that I have and look at a level to this piece of literature that I would probably otherwise overlook.