Alice Walker's Meridian

Alice Walker's womanist term appeared In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), in which the author, similar to what she did in Meridian, defined the word as, “A black feminist or feminist of color. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or willful behavior” (pp. xi). In her novel Meridian, Walker is determined to give oppressed African-American women, a voice. Meridian utilizes Walker’s personal experiences to convey the struggles of a women in the 1960s. The reader follows the heroine’s battle for civil rights, and a battle within herself. In Meridian, Walker orchestrates narrative structure, characterization, and symbolism, to accentuate the matter of sexual politics. Walker embodies a woman’s endeavor …show more content…
Walker avails Meridian’s great-grandmother, Feather Mae, to embody the final stage of self-fulfillment: independency. Feather Mae is a misunderstood to be a nut, but really she is a high-spirited radical, “a woman it was said some of slight and harmless madness” (57). Walker uses Feather Mae’s personality to convey individuality, “It was whispered too that Feather Mae had been very hot, and so Meridian’s great-grandfather had not liked to offend her, since he could not bear to suffer the lonely consequences” (57). Walker’s description of Feather Mae symbolizes independency by implying she would not skip a heart beat to leave the great-grandfather. Her great-grandmother who is married, is continually fierce and will not let a man tie her down. Both great-grandparents are aware of the fact that she doesn't not need him to be happy. This leads to her self-revelation in the Serpent Mound, renouncing all religion, a motif for stripping herself of exterior influences. Through her brief appearance in the novel, the Wild Child makes such a significant embody of self-reliance and renouncement of external pressure women seek. Nothing was known about the Wild Child except that she was, “a young girl who had managed to live without parents, relatives or friends for all of her thirteen years” (35). When Meridian tries to bring the Wild Child in, Walker shows an oppressor-subjugated motif. The Wild Child, who did not want to become restrained by the societal norms of the fortunate escaped. By illustrating her desperate struggle to escape, which ultimately led to her demise, Walker symbolizes Meridian as some sort of an oppressor to the Wild Child, someone who is well-off on their own through the brief chapter. The Wild Child could also represent Meridian’s attempt at justifying her giving away of Eddie Jr. Meridian thought that by bringing in a young woman, who is revealed to be

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