Geraldin Morrison Analysis

Morrison provides the readers with the emotional landscape and the spectrum of black female sexuality of her characters who suffer from sexual violence. Morrison introduces Geraldine, a black women in town who is very sterile about her behavior, especially her sexuality. Whenever she has sex with her husband, she contemplates “why they didn’t put the necessary by private parts of the body in some more convenient place - like the armpit, for example, or the palm of the hand” (84). Geraldine and other women like her have been subjected to oppression from white society. Geraldine adopted the same norms of beauty and definition of womanhood as whites by emulating whiteness. She suppresses her own blackness as well as sexuality in hopes to become a more dignified individual within a white society. Consequently,

Cholly experiences a moment that was not only humiliating, but also emasculated him as the white men told him “‘Get on wid it, nigger… An’ make it good, nigger’” (42). Because Cholly could not bring himself to hate the white men, he decided to hate Darlene. If Cholly could hate the white men, then he would break the cycle of oppression, but because he a powerless black man her perpetuates the cycle of oppression by oppressing black women. As a result, Cholly becomes an oppressor himself due to the frustration, suffering, and humiliation and violence he experiences. In order to understand the implications of Pecola’s rape, it is imperative that readers understand the significance of Cholly’s rape. As Pecola washes dishes in the scene prior to her rape, Morrison describes how Cholly becomes uncomfortable watching her “young, helpless, hopeless presence” wash dishes (161). Cholly accuses himself of Pecola’s destitute attitude, but he does not know what a “burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven year old daughter”