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Alice Walkers "Roselily"

Introduction to the Author

Walker had made a name for herself early, with her first novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) and her first book of poetry, Once: Poems two years earlier. She suddenly stepped into limelight of critical attention when her book In Love and Trouble published in 1973. There were 29 reported reviews in the bibliography, of the book Alice Malsenior Walker, definitely far more as compared to others than the normal for first edition of short stories. Most of the reviews were favorable, with some a little critical on the consistency and quality of the stories.

Synopsis

Alice Walkers Roselily exemplifies the restoration of respectability for women. (Mordaunt, Owen G. Respectability Restored in Abioseh Nicols The Truly Married Woman, Echoed in Alice Walkers Roselily. International Third World Studies)

In her short story Roselily, Alice Walker is apparently trying to tell two stories in one. The first and the most obvious one is about an African American woman named Roselily, who is a symbol of change, she is just about to marry a Muslim, as she thinks about her past she wonders about lay in the future for her and is continuously asking herself whether she is choosing the right path or not. The other slightly veiled story is about the African American women in general, and deals with their history and their continuous struggle and quest for better life and safer future.

The short story is presented as to the reader, through Roselilys own thoughts (reflections of African Americans women around the 1960s), as a bitter satyr on the society, its prejudices and double standards. At that time, Blacks were declared as free Americans with the equal rights just like other Americans, but only in theory. Roselily is shown as a woman of free will, but a single mother of 4 children, who works long hours for mostly lousy wages in a sewing factory, in reality she was far from free. The Africans are not the slaves in the cotton fields anymore but now are paid slaves in the nations industries.

Roselily certainly possess an acute awareness of her situation, and is definitely willing to leave her past behind and start over a new life probably with a new man. She has apparently been searching for a good life partner for some time, and being with different men is an effort towards achieving the same objective. But unfortunately, all of them had given her only children but not a new life she is aspiring for. There is an underlying urge in Roselily, to keep on moving, indicated by all the numbers of cars in the short story which symbolizes the mobile nature of life.

Roselily has shown her will not to stay too long in the sewing factory, as she is continuously striving for something (or someone) better, but probably she is herself confused over the very notion of better, and she has her fears and apprehensions over her choices. Her own personality is a symbol of the different sections of Africans in the civil rights movements (some preferring segregation, some not; some wanted to be referred as Africans, some preferred White American lifestyle; some were Christians and some were Muslims. They all agreed on one point, that their present status was not acceptable, but they lacked any action plan to improve it.

On one side Roselily is longing to start a new life, and on the other she is afraid of losing her contact with her roots. She thinks of her children as exalted on a pedestal, a stalk that has no roots and questions herself that how the new roots will be established. Alice Walker in the story has depicted an average African American, their struggle and their search for identity, and in doing so she has probably shown herself as well. Which heritage is the right one; the one from their Black American ancestors, or the one from the African ancestors?

As Roselily contemplates the idea of marrying and going to Chicago and start over a whole new life with her new husband, she is experiencing regret over her decision and she came to realize that she is going from one slavery to the other. Whenever she thinks about Chicago, probably her new home, she often wonders that how little she knows about the place except that it was the city of President Lincoln. The same President Lincoln, who had abolished the slavery, but failed to free the African Americans.

Owen G. Mordaunt in his article has shown how Walker has captured the plight of women who have had children out of wedlock, as well as the restoration of respectability that women acquire as they live through the ceremonies of engagement and marriage. The process of restoration is expressed in her character. There is a transformation that restores every womans respectability. Roselily is transformed from a woman who is passionate, natural, and in the eyes of society, impure and immoral, to one who is resurrected and reborn. Mordaunts article gives a fascinating glimpse of how women are portrayed in the contemporary cultures.

One of the most problematic issues for the fiction writers at the dusk of the 20th century was that whether works of fiction that does not revolve around white Americans could be considered as applicable to every single American. It was a common practice that books written about white Americans were considered as representing the true human conditions, whereas the books written about women were considered as representing women, and books written about African American women are considered as only representing African American women. Some early critics applauded Walker for presenting her personal experiences in the rural South in order to represent the situation of African American women like Barbara Smith, in a review for Ms., admires Walkers skill at exploring with honesty the texture and terrors of Black womens lives. In a review for The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP, Mercedes Wright argues that Walkers characters face their particular conflicts because they live in a racist and sexist society. Retrieved December 19, 2008 from http://www.answers.com/topic/roselily-story-6

Some other early reviewers also acknowledged Walkers characters and felt that her stories could be more widely applicable like writing for Bestsellers, Oscar Bouise reports that Walker had enabled him to appreciate the experiences of these women, and praises her as a master of style. V. S. Nyabongo praises Walker in Books Abroad for presenting a collection of stories which, through womens stories, reflect on themes that are significant for all people. Retrieved December 19, 2008 from http://www.answers.com/topic/roselily-story-6

Alice Hall Petry has shown in her essay Walker: The Achievement of the Short Fiction, that Walkers women are kept into love and trouble by situations that are not in their own hands. She has noted that marriage has nothing to offer to these women and neither the religion has. Mary Helen Washington also seems to be agreeing to the notion, in An Essay on Alice Walker, she has shown her opinion that Roselily is actually trapped and cut down by old-fashioned morals, her superstition and also by customs that have tried in every way to cut women from their right to live peacefully.

It was during 1994, when Roselily suddenly caught attention of many followed by an order from California Department of Education to remove from a statewide reading test. This demand for removal originally came from an assemblage known as Traditional Values Coalition, who named the story as anti-religious. The much raised concern over Roselilys confession of not believing in God, and her husbands faith in Islam, and the subtly disguised questioning of matrimony itself and its potential effect over the tenth graders was the force behind the demand. On the other hand, backers of the storys inclusion say that it is a much needed requirement of including challenging and thought-provoking stories in the curricula dealing with real-world issues, around us. Interestingly enough, in the same year Walker received the honor of being declared as a state treasure by the governor of California for her contributions to literature.

Walker, later, collected the text of Roselily along with her two other censored pieces writing, supporting and opposing letters to the editor and some transcripts of the State Board of Educations hearings on the issue in a book named Banned. As expected, just like any other case of book removal, the exclusion of Roselily from California test created a whole renewed interest in the author and the story, and that certainly helped in bringing it to the attention of the later generations.

Roselily remained essentially a much-admired but very seldom discussed story and received the deserving notice after Walkers Pulitzer Prize winning in 1983 and an American Book Award for her much cherished creation The Color Purple.

After The Color Purple, people started complaining that Walker has stereotyped her male characters as some negative women-eaters, and her women, as perpetually resilient. But Roselily, can be presented as an example which has displayed no special valor in her situation. In an essay titled Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: A Spiritual Kinship, Alma Freeman compares Roselily with Janie Crawford, the protagonist in Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God, and finds that, unlike Janie, Roselily accepts her entrapment. Donna Haisty Winchell agrees that Roselily is an example of the women in In Love and Trouble who are not seen fighting back successfully against preconceived, stultifying, and restrictive notions of womens roles.

Works Cited

Mordaunt, Owen G. Respectability Restored in Abioseh Nicols The Truly Married Woman, Echoed in Alice Walkers Roselily. International Third World Studies. Journal and Review. Volume 13, p. 11-14. 2002.

Nyhagen, Ragnhild. Roselily -A short story by Alice Walker. 1997. Trondheim Katedralskole. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from

Walker, Alice. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. (19670. (reprint) Harvest Books (Harcourt), 2003, pp. 3-9.