Discussion Thread: Realism, Naturalism & Modernism Idea Development
Richard Wright was an African American author who wrote about many things. He wrote
an autobiography titled Black Boy that is “hailed as a masterpiece”; however, there have been
themes of Wright’s work that have gained him many criticisms (Gates & Smith 121). While
much of Wright’s work has clear themes of “realism and naturalism”, criticisms arise in how he
wrote about women (Gates & Smith 121).
Every author writes in their own style and with their style comes compliments and
critiques. One of the large critiques is the way that Wright presented women as “merely as
accessories to the larger political and philosophical themes of his fictions” (Gates & Smith 120).
What this did for Wright’s audience was make women not apt to read his works. An example of
this is his short story Long Black Song. In this story, Sarah is raped by a White door-to-door
salesman. While the rape and Sarah getting through this would be the logical move for the story
Wright instead focused on the rape being, “an affront to her husband’s pride and masculinity”
(Gates & Smith 120). Without explicitly saying it, Wright is showing that while he claimed to
want equality in society, that equality did not extend to women.
The question that arises from this work is why Wright viewed women in this way (Keady
124). The prevailing thought is that his stereotyping of women comes from his Marxist
background. Wright characterized the female characters in his work in a negative light with an
“inability to grasp subtle principles of conduct, large aspirations, childlike, whimpering, and
stupid” (Keady 124). Part of what makes the way Wright wrote about women so hard to look at
is that it causes a further and intentional division of African Americans because the women he
painted in a negative light were African American. When looking at Wright’s portrayal of women
it is easy to search for a deeper reason. For example, could it be that Wright had a woman in his
life that betrayed him or did his mom do something unforgivable to him? There is no way to
truly answer this with Wright having passed many years ago, but that will never stop readers
from theorizing why he would intentionally cause a divide between his own people.
In Wright’s story Native Son, readers meet a character named Jake. One evening Jake is
sitting at the dining room table reading a newspaper and thinking out loud. During this time his
wife Bessie does not respond to him. The fact that she does not respond to him seems to anger
Jake. The interaction goes: Jake asks Bessie “Woman, what makes you so dumb? Don’t you ever
try using your brains sometimes? Don’t you never think of nothing that’s serious?” (Keady 125)
To which Bessie responds, “I don’t know, Jake” (Keady 125). What this moment exemplifies is
Wright passing his female characters off as childlike and stupid. Rather than having Bessie
respond in a way that would show her standing up for herself and saying that she is not as dumb
as her husband is claiming she is, she responds in a way that almost agrees with him. This makes
Bessie’s character hard for readers to connect with. Bessie’s character can best be described as
“dull and mindless” which makes it hard for the readers to want to know more about (Keady
125). It is almost as if Bessie is there just to be a problem for Jake. Making female characters
like Bessie that are an issue for the males in their lives is part of how Wright’s work made a
divide between African American men and women.
While there are many criticisms regarding the way that Wright characterized females
there are some who believe he was attempting to bring awareness to “sexual racism” (Gates &
Smith 125). However, as said earlier there is no real way to know what his intention was. As a
woman, it is hard for me to see how Wright’s characterization of women would have had any
form of positive impact. Wright’s work, as that of any author, will have positive and negative
reviews, but personally, it is hard to see his work in good lighting with the way that he portrays
women.
Work Cited
Gates, Henry Louis, and Valerie Smith. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.
Vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
Keady, Sylvia H. “Richard Wright’s Women Characters and Inequality.” Black American
Literature Forum, vol. 10, no. 4, 1976, pp. 124–28. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/3041611. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023.
Hi Kayla,
While I think your writing is done well, however, your first paragraph was confusing for
me as a reader because it took a long time to get to being more specifically about art. Then, even
though you mentioned art you waited until the next paragraph to specifically bring up Black Art.
As I said, as a reader it was slightly unclear what you were planning to discuss.
As you continue your writing you mention Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison and how
their opinions on the purpose of Black Art were affected by their involvement with the
Communist Party. I feel like this idea could have been expanded on more. You do go on to write
paragraphs around Wright and Ellison, but both seem to glance over this. I feel like if you are
going to bring this up you need to go more in detail about it.
When I read your paragraph on Ellison, I had to go back a couple of times. While I see
the points you were making it felt as if you put too many points in one paragraph. I think if you
wanted to expand more on all of the points in this paragraph you could do so by breaking it down
into several paragraphs and going more in-depth on each.
I am also concerned because you did not include a conclusion. Your ideas are written out
well but without a conclusion to restate your points it feels off. Maybe this was done to stay
within the word limit I am not sure, but as a reader, it is off-putting. Again, your writing was
done well these are just places that I think you can improve upon to help strengthen your work.
Thank you for sharing your work,
Hannah Rauch
Hi Christine,
I want to first say that I think your topic is the same one that I wrote about, so it is nice to
see some information that I did not include in my post. I find it funny how two people can write
on the same topic and cover different parts of it without that intention set in place from the
beginning. I will say that your introduction was a bit confusing for me because you talked about
how Wright views himself without first telling the reader who Wright was. This change could
make that paragraph smoother for the audience.
Additionally, I understand the point you were making by comparing Wright to Ralph
Ellison, but it feels out of place in the introduction. Then, you go on to write another two
paragraphs about Wright’s background before exploring his work. I felt like some of the
background information was helpful, but it felt very drawn out to get to talking about his work. I
think that you could expand on his work in more detail if you remove some background
information. I say this because all the background information does not seem to add to what you
are saying about Wright and his work, however, this could be a style preference on my end.
In your conclusion, you go on to talk about Wright’s successes and one of those successes
includes achieving artistic equality. I feel like this is a thought that you should expand on more.
This could be a body paragraph of its own and do an in-depth explanation of what artistic
equality meant for Wright. I would like to say that these are just suggestions and remember some
of them are just writing style, your writing was done very well.
Thank you for sharing your work,
Hannah Rauch
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