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TRACY RENEE BUTTS Boys in the Mother ‘Hood: Literary Representations of Black Mother-Son Relationships in the Works of Ernest J. Gaines and Toni Morrison (Under the Direction of HUGH RUPPERSBURG) Very little scholarship exists on the subject of black mother-son relationships. However, black mother-son relationships have pervaded the literary works of African American writers since the slave narratives and continue to do so today. The abundance of primary texts and the scarcity of critical sources necessitated that I narrow my focus; after considerable thought and study, I decided to focus my attention on the literary works of Ernest J. Gaines and Toni Morrison because of my interest in determining to what extent gender inflects the author’s view of the mother-son dynamic. The dissertation relies upon a number of theoretical approaches— anthropological, psychological, sociological, historical, and black feminist theory—in addition to personal interviews, literary criticism, and close readings of Gaines’s and Morrison’s literary works. Although Gaines and Morrison both insist that their works are not autobiographical, their works reveal that both their gender and their experiences shape their portrayals of mother-son relationships. Reared by his maternal great aunt, who was severely handicapped, Gaines writes from the perspective of the son. Consequently, his works often depict mothers, drawn in the image of the infallible, strong black woman, rearing sons who believe initially that their mothers seek to control their lives, but who eventually come to realize that their mothers only have their best interests at heart. However, as a single mother, Morrison writes from the perspective of the mother. Therefore, Morrison, who is aware of the difficulties and challenges of motherhood for black women, refuses to subscribe to the good mother versus bad mother dichotomy when portraying her mother figures. Some of her mothers succeed and others fail, but they are all flawed in some way. When looked at together, Gaines’s and Morrison’s works suggest that the black mother-son relationship, despite being fraught with difficulties, is, for the most part, loving and harmonious. INDEX WORDS: Ernest J. Gaines, Toni Morrison, Black mother-son relationships, African American Literature, Black feminist theory, Gender BOYS IN THE MOTHER ‘HOOD: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK MOTHER- SON RELATIONSHIPS IN THE WORKS OF ERNEST J. GAINES AND TONI MORRISON by TRACY RENEE BUTTS B.A., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993 M.A., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2001 © 2001 Tracy Renee Butts All Rights Reserved BOYS IN THE MOTHER ‘HOOD: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK MOTHER- SON RELATIONSHIPS IN THE WORKS OF ERNEST J. GAINES AND TONI MORRISON by TRACY RENEE BUTTS Approved: Major Professor: Hugh Ruppersburg Committee: Douglas Anderson Tricia Lootens Barbara McCaskill Carl Rapp Electronic Version Approved: Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2001 DEDICATION To my mothers. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A few years ago, I could not have imagined that I would be at this point, writing the acknowledgments for my dissertation. Getting here has not been easy, and I could not have made it without the assistance of a number of individuals. For this reason, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the following people. To the members of my committee, Dr. Anderson, Dr. Lootens, Dr. McCaskill, Dr. Rapp, and Dr. Ruppersburg, thanks for all of the advice and service you have given me. I would also like to thank all of my friends, especially Stephanie Johnson, Alecia Harris, Cynthia Thompson, Avelonia Quarry, Melissa Williams, April Benson, Nicole Fore, Erica Griffin, and Sean Hill, for encouraging, cajoling, supporting, pestering, and listening to me whine and complain. To Virginia Fowler and Nikki Giovanni—my mentors, friends, and mothers—I wish to say I am forever indebted to you. I do not know what I would have done without your constant support. Thanks for helping me to work through my thoughts and ideas, stay focused, and, most importantly, maintain my composure. To the Butts, Haskins, Matthews, Lewis, Banks, Brown, Harris, Smith, and Williams families and my grandparents, Dorothy and Henry Matthews, thank you for loving, housing, feeding, supporting, and keeping me in your prayers. And, last but not least, thanks to my father, Lawrence Butts; my sister, Tia Butts; and my mother, Dorothy Butts for putting up with me. I know it has not been easy. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 2 ARE YOU MY MOTHER?: DETERMINING WHO IS A BLACK MOTHER ................. 16 3 EVERYTHING ERNEST J. GAINES NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A MAN HE LEARNED FROM AUGUSTEEN JEFFERSON, OR HOW GAINES’S RELATIONSHIP WITH AUGUSTEEN JEFFERSON INFLUENCED HIS PORTRAYALS OF BLACK MOTHER-SON RELATIONSHIPS.................................... 44 4 “TRAIN A CHILD IN THE WAY THAT HE SHOULD GO AND HE SHALL NOT DEPART FROM IT”: THE MOTHERS’ THREE-STEP PLAN FOR TRANSFORMING SONS INTO MEN IN THE LITERARY WORKS OF ERNEST J. GAINES ...................................................................................................... 73 5 MURDERERS, MAMMIES AND MATRIARCHS, NURTURERS, CAREGIVERS, ABANDONERS, AND CULTURE BEARERS: TONI MORRISON’S MOTHER CHARACTERS ARE AS IMPERFECT AS THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY LIVE................................................................................ 129 6 “A MAN AIN’T NOTHING BUT A MAN . BUT A SON? WELL NOW, THAT’S SOMEBODY”: THE GLORIFICATION AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT OF SONS IN TONI MORRISON’S NOVELS........................................ 171 7 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................ 203 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................ 207 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The literary careers of Toni Morrison and Ernest J. Gaines both began in the 1960s. Morrison began working on The Bluest Eye (1970), her first novel, in the late 1960s, expanding on a short story she had “jotted down . about a little girl who longed for blue eyes” (Samuels and Hudson-Weems 6). Morrison, who subsequently published six other novels—Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998)-- has won numerous book awards and accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize for Beloved and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Unarguably, Toni Morrison is one of the best writers at work today. Her contemporary Ernest J. Gaines, however, has received considerably less critical acclaim. Like Morrison, Gaines, whose first novel, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1964, has seven fictional works to his credit: Of Love and Dust (1967), Bloodline (1968), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), In My Father’s House (1978), A Gathering of Old Men (1983), and A Lesson Before Dying (1994). In 1994, after the publication of A Lesson Before Dying, Scott Jaschik hailed Gaines as “a new star in the canon” (287). Ironically, by this time, Gaines had already met success with The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps Jaschik’s oversight could be due to the fact that Gaines had been hard at work during a time “when the stars of black literature [have been] women” (Jaschik 287). Although “Gaines [has] won his share of awards and plaudits . other black writers such as Toni Morrison and his friend Alice Walker excited far more attention. His was a quieter kind of fame, largely centered around Miss Jane, which has been translated into a dozen languages and is taught on numerous college campuses” (Laney 277). In June 1995, Gaines was awarded the prestigious MacArthur “genius grant,” signaling that he had indeed arrived. 1 2 Despite the fact that their literary careers have taken off at different times, Toni Morrison and Ernest J. Gaines share a number of connections. Morrison and Gaines are both widely taught on college campuses. Even though Morrison is a northerner by birth, both writers are permanent fixtures in Southern literature classes because their works evoke the history and the culture of the South. However, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey, who chose Beloved, Paradise, and A Lesson Before Dying as selections in her famed book club, both writers are experiencing a wider readership outside of the academic realm and an increase in financial success. Those books selected by the Oprah Winfrey book club have all gone on to become bestsellers. Another connection the two share is that both writers say that their writing has been strongly influenced by William Faulkner. Gaines used Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha as “a model for the fictional city, Bayonne, that would provide the setting for all his works” (Babb 4). Morrison’s narrative strategies have been compared “to those of William Faulkner, who incidentally, along with Virginia Woolf, was the subject of her master’s thesis” (Mobley 190). Morrison has also been paired with Faulkner in numerous essays and in two book-length works,