Alice Walker's Meridian Analysis

Alice Walker’s historical novel, Meridian, illustrates how the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement directly contributed to the black women finding their voices and using them to shed light on the various issues that plagued women. One of those issues is that black females in the south still obey gender roles set up by a male-dominated society; however there were some who found liberation by defying to live up to those norms. The focal character, Meridian Hill, becomes an empowered black woman only after she decides to leave behind domesticity; by employing literary devices such as point of view, symbolism, and juxtaposition, Walker depicts Meridian’s transition from housewife to outspoken black woman. Such a transition manages
Gertrude is an older black southern women that was forced into domesticity, she complained about her husband “whose faults, she felt, more than made up for her ignorance of whatever faults might exist elsewhere”(Walker 76) and did not openly love her six children because she never wanted to have any (Walker 88). Of course, Walker compares Meridian’s life to that of her mother’s to show that she was destined for the same oppressive existence as her mother. However, with the sacrifice of her child and her ambition to go to college, Meridian is able to dodge a life of disparity. Walker also pits Meridian against her mother to portray the contrast between mother and daughter. While the author characterizes Gertrude as a woman who’s always followed the rules, she also represents how some black females in the 1960’s south were resistant to change. Those black women who feared change were the older females who had already decided their path in life, to domestically accommodate a man. On the contrary, Meridian is a young black female who is more open to change and represents those curious black females who no longer wanted to be shackled to a life of domesticity because they knew that women need their freedom to develop their own gender