Structure

Critics agree that one of Naylor's strongest accomplishments in The Women of Brewster Place is her use of the setting to frame the structure of the novel, and often compare it to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Naylor sets the story within Brewster Place so that she can focus on telling each woman's story in relationship to her ties to the community. According to Fowler in Gloria Naylor: In Search of Sanctuary, Naylor believes that "individual identity is shaped within the matrix of a community." Thus, living in Brewster Place partly defines who the women are and becomes an important part of each woman's personal history.

Point of View

Naylor created seven female characters with seven individual voices. Naylor tells each woman's story through the woman's own voice. That is, Naylor writes from the first-person point of view, but she writes from the perspective of the character on whom...