- Collection:
- Atlanta University and Clark Atlanta University Theses and Dissertations
- Title:
- The quest for identity in Frances W. Harper's Iola Leroy, Nella Larsen's quicksand and Zora Neale Hurston's their eyes were watching god., 2012
- Creator:
- Delaney-Lawrence, Ava P.
- Date of Original:
- 2012-12-01
- Subject:
- Degrees, Academic
Dissertations, Academic - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
- Medium:
- theses
- Type:
- Text
- Format:
- application/pdf
- Description:
- The literary works in this study: Frances E. W. Harpers lola Leroy, Nella Larsens Quicksand, and Zora Neale Hurston s Their Eyes Were Watching God provide examples of female protagonists facing identity crises and reaching milestones in their lives as a result of theirjourneys towards self-actualization. The protagonists lives (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood/womanhood/motherhood) are traced during times of slavery, the antebellum period, the post-bellum period, and the Harlem Renaissance. Their experiences in each stage of life in relation to societal norms present the identity crisis present in each novel. In an attempt to define feminine identity as portrayed by the protagonists in the novels, I examined past ideals of femininity in American and African American history and literature. Additionally, a definition of femininity based upon the early works is contrasted with a definition of identity in the later works of African American female authors. Based upon the two perspectives of how the female characters discovered thei identities, the female characters of later novels prove to be direct descendents of early female characters in African American literature. As the study demonstrates, the characteristics of African American female protagonists of strength, resilience, confidence, and, eventually, independence are progressive in these novels which results in characters that develop positively over a period of more than seventy years. The study also suggests that the portrayal of femal protagonists in the novels of African-American women continues to be patterned after the early novelists and, at the same time, continues to progress in strength and development.
- External Identifiers:
- Metadata URL:
- http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/cau.td:2012_delaney_lawrence_ava_p
- Rights Holder:
- Clark Atlanta University
- Holding Institution:
- Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library
- Rights:
-
