Wine in the Wilderness Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 56 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Wine in the Wilderness.

Wine in the Wilderness Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 56 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Wine in the Wilderness.
This section contains 155 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Wine in the Wilderness Study Guide

Because Wine in the Wilderness depicts a female protagonist asserting her autonomy in opposition to an unjust socio-sexual hierarchy, it is a feminist drama. The associational clusters in the play show a false ideal of subservient black womanhood, a negative cluster describing the supposed black matriarch, and a cluster describing the truly autonomous, individual black woman seeking equality. The pattern of symbolic action is one of Tommy's repeated assertions of her autonomy, at first unconscious and made from an assumption of inferiority. At the turning point in the play's motivation, Tommy becomes aware of her own self-worth, and converts the society of the play to her values. Agent dominates in this drama, in which Tommy's individual spirit transcends the false ideal of a patriarchal socio-sexual hierarchy. The play is an idealistic, optimistic statement of the feminist impulse.

Source: Janet Brown, "Wine in the Wilderness," in Feminist Drama...

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This section contains 155 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Wine in the Wilderness Study Guide
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