Date of Award
Fall 12-2013
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
English
Department
English
Major Professor
Steeby, Elizabeth
Second Advisor
Bryant, Earle
Third Advisor
Hazlett, John
Abstract
In Song of Solomon, published during a transitional moment in the history of U.S. feminism, Toni Morrison portrays the destructive forces of hegemonic female beauty standards, materialism, and consumerism in a Midwestern African-American community from the 1930s to the 1960s. She reveals a hierarchy in which men define standards of beauty and respectability that enforce white bourgeois ideals. Focusing on five female characters, this thesis examines this hierarchy; the agents who maintain it; and the ways in which it affects female characters who accept and/or reject it. While one of the characters, Hagar, perishes in her attempt to live up to normative beauty standards, her cousin Corinthians is liberated when she leaves her oppressive father and moves in with a working class male partner. Morrison thus creates a viable alternative to strict adherence to materialist values, while representing the destructive force of oppressive beauty norms and standards of respectability.
Recommended Citation
Jensen, Karen, "Toni Morrison’s Depiction of Beauty Standards in Relation to Class, Politics of Respectability, and Consumerism in Song of Solomon" (2013). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1743.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1743
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.