Alice Walker's Womanism: On The Third Life Of Grange CopeLand And Possessing The Secret Of Joy

Womanism is throughout all the works by Alice Walker. In The Third Life of Grange Copeland, one of her early works, Alice Walker expresses her understanding of black sufferings, black self-realization and black people's search for their dream by putting her story against the white-dominated society. In Walker's early works, readers can obviously feel that Walker's creative writing is heavily influenced by black literary tradition: the search of black identity and the conflicts between the blacks and the whites. In her later work Possessing the Secret of Joy, however, Walker puts her stress on the discussion of black self-realization and personal worth. Thus it is safe to argue that Walker's womanism is embodied in the two novels in two different ways. Comparing the two novels, this paper is to point out that Walker's womanism puts more stress on black woman's personal value in her later works than inher earlier works.Except the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into threechapters in which different features of Walker's creative writing are discussed respectively.Chapter one is to analyze womanist perspective embodied in The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Although Walker puts her stress on the description of the miserable life of three black women, her main concern is still on black-white conflicts. This argument will be based on the discussion of Grange Copeland's first life in the south, Brownfield's androcentrism, Copeland's second life, Copeland's strong desire for land and the disillusion of his dream.Chapter two is on Possessing the Secret of Joy. Compared with The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Possessing the Secret of Joy reflects the great change of Walker's stresses and her writing techniques. By creating Olinka, an unreal African community, Walker highlights the cultural differences between Africa and America. The author of this paper is to analyze Tashi's struggle for identity and self-realization and point out that while Walker is looking forward to an ideal society, she is also fully aware of the cruel reality. Based on the discussion of African American women's personal value, Possessing the Secret of Joy presents Walker's womanism in a new way.The subsequent chapter, chapter three, is an analysis of the reasons of Walker's change of stress from social problem to individual value. Walker not only inherits elements from black literary tradition, feminism, and black feminism, she also adds a new dimension to African American literature. By emphasizing the cultural differences between the whites and the blacks, Walker concerns a lot about the realization of black female identity. It is safe to argue that Walker's contribution is on both womanist literary writing and black personal value.