Marie-Luise Löffler, Universität Leipzig
The field of African-American literature has, especially since the 1970s, represented an increasingly important focus of American literary studies. A central, recurring theme in the literature of black women is the examination of socially constructed images of African-American motherhood, images which historically arose primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The dominant white literature of this time nearly universally represented the black woman through the stereotypical, deprecatory roles of the “mammy” and the “matriarch”. In contrast, African-American literature of the time primarily idealized the black mother, emphasizing her superhuman strength, willingness to sacrifice, and love for her children.
The dominant culture’s discrimination against African-American mothers, as well as the idealization of black motherhood, constituted a tradition that often became a burden for African-American women. This is reflected particularly in postmodern African-American women’s literature and its rejection of excessively positive representations of mothers.
This dissertation is concerned with the analysis of images of motherhood in African-American women’s literature of the early twentieth century. It will be shown that already in this period, African-American women writers consciously took up discriminatory and idealized images of mothers, demythologizing them in their works. Central to these arguments are the novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, an author who worked during the so-called “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. The dissertation starts with the hypothesis that in her novels, Larsen explicitly breaks with dominant and African-American ideologies concerning motherhood. In this way, she points out how they limit the African-American woman in her self-definition and role as mother. For these studies, it is necessary to carry out an extensive discussion of the historical context (contemporary discourses on maternity), as well as comprehensive comparisons with other works of African-American writers of the early twentieth century.
The goal of this dissertation is to expand on previous interpretations of both novels by including an analysis of constructions of gender and motherhood. In addition, it will be shown to what extent Larsen’s novels formulated questions which anticipated the theoretical positions of Second Wave feminists and central aspects of “New Black Renaissance” literature. These findings will not only close a gap in the understanding of African-American women’s literature, but have wide-reaching implications for the study of American literature in general.