| Toni Morrison's novels published to date--The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987) provide an excellent opportunity to study the entire process of creativity in the lives of black women. A study of the portraits of women as artists with or without an art form in her works is a significant means to understand Morrison's own concept of the black female artist, her role in society, and her aesthetics. This dissertation examines several women characters in her works to determine the special characteristics that identify them as potential artists, their modes of expression--traditional and non-traditional, the reasons for their success or failure as artists and the distinctive features of their artistic concerns.; A broad definition of creativity is established at the outset with the help of feminist revisions such as that made by Alice Walker in her "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," with that of D. W. Winnicott's perspective from his Playing and Reality, and by juxtaposing the emergent definition against Coleridgean image of the artist. Such a definition helps include and analyze non-traditional and discredited modes as valid expressions of the creative impulse in black women, and as authentic attempts towards articulation and autonomy.; External pressures of race and sex discrimination necessitate self-invention as well as self-expression for the creative black woman. Morrison raises issues of both gender and race in this context. A frank acceptance of the female condition--sexuality, procreative powers, maternity lead the female artist to clear insights, powerful articulation and effective ways to control her own situation while guiding and helping others to learn from her. Maternity is never a hindrance to female creativity, instead in many ways it defines her relationship to her art and her audience. Black history and black cultural resources are reclaimed through special powers and from the basis of both self-invention and self-expression. A careful textual analysis of Morrison's works, therefore, provides significant insights into Morrison herself as a writer and helps us see with greater clarity her place in the tradition of Afro-American writing. |
