Paper-2 Module-17

On Casteism and Colourism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of

Select Indian and African-American Women Playwrights.

I. (A) Personal Details

Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Sumita

Parmar Allahabad University, Allahabad

Paper Coordinator Prof. Sumita Parmar

Allahabad University, Allahabad

Content Writer/Author (CW)

Assistant Professor Mr.Raju Parghi

Department of English & Modern European Languages Allahabad University, Allahabad

Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. Sumita Parmar

Allahabad University, Allahabad

Language Editor (LE) Prof. Sumita Parmar

Allahabad University, Allahabad

(B) Description of Module

Items Description of Module

Subject Name Women’s Studies

Paper Name Women and Literature

Module Name/ Title On Casteism and Colourism: A Cross-Cultural

Analysis of Select Indian and African-American

Women Playwrights.

Module ID Paper-2 Module-17 Pre-requisites Some awareness of the politics of caste and race

Objectives To make the students aware of hoe these function in our society

Keywords Caste, race, colour, civil liberties, literature

On Casteism and Colourism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Select Indian and

African-American Women Playwrights

1. Introduction

The largest and the oldest democracies of the world, India and America,

respectively, have some striking similarities vis-à-vis equal constitutional rights

accorded to their citizens and marginalization of the select sections. The benefits

of these rights have not been enjoyed by the marginalized communities in both

these countries. Political unrest, social inequality, religious disharmony and

economic imbalance in these countries are reflected in their respective literatures,

especially women’s literature has raised specific issues related to the everyday life

of common ordinary folk. Casteism as practised in India has its roots in the social

classification of Varna and Jati, and colourism or racism has its origins in the 300

years of slavery. A cross-cultural analysis of select Indian and African-American

women playwrights is an endeavour to examine and compare certain serious issues

of caste and race, and their psychological impacts on the marginalized people,

particularly on women. Mahasweta Devi, Vinodini, Georgia Douglas Johnson and

Zora Neale Hurston are the select playwrights who have succeeded in portraying

the never-ending social evils, that is, colourism and casteism, in their respective

societies.

2. Examining Casteism in Mahasweta Devi and Vinodini’s Plays

M. N. Srinivasan defines caste as “a hereditary, endogamous, usually

localized group, having a traditional association with an occupation and a

particular position in the local hierarchy of castes”. He also points out that “a caste

itself seems to be usually segmented into several endogamous sub-castes.

Moreover, fairly close correlation existed between caste system and distribution of

land-holding and power” (1977). Gerald D Berreman in his article, “Caste in India

and United States” defines caste as “a hierarchy of endogamous divisions in which

membership is hereditary and permanent.” (1960: 120).

1. Mahasweta Devi’s Bayen

Mahasweta Devi, a versatile and prolific writer known for her short stories,

novels and drama, has contributed tremendously to Indian literature. She is also an

activist who has worked tirelessly for the tribals of India. Her plays deal with the

lives of the poor and the neglected, especially the tribals.

Devi’s play, Bayen, is set in rural India, and exposes the inherent

superstitious beliefs and practices victimizing innocent women in the lower castes.

Like most of Mahasweta Devi’s plays, Bayen was first written as a short story in

1971, and later converted into a play. She attempts to expose the harsh realities

“outside the pale of respectable existence” (trans. Bandyopadhyay 1997: 167). The

playwright deals with issues close to women and their daily chores of lives. The

play opens with a description of the Bayen as she is forced to guard the burial

ground:

The curtain goes up on an empty stag, with a lullaby droning offstage, till

the Bayen enters, singing. She looks utterly exhausted and despondent, at the

end of her tether, dragging her reluctant feet like some condemned ghost

debarred entry into human society. She draws in with her a string with

canister tied to its end rattling and clanging along the floor … she wears a

filthy red sari without the customary border, her hair dishevelled, she wears

no jewellery. (Devi 1997: 75)

A woman in a filthy red sari, without jewels on body and her untidy hair

symbolize her pathetic condition; she talks to herself as the society has

excommunicated her. She longs for her child, to breastfeed her, who also has been

separated from her. She is forced to live in isolation, without the company of any

other human being, causing her utter psychological turmoil. She talks to the dog,

Jhumra, “…I don’t have anybody anymore… when I hadn’t become a Bayen I had

everybody (puts down the pitcher and rocks and imagery child in her arms)” (75).

The play is concerned with a mother who is caught in a trap laid by the vested

interests: it is a blend of deep emotional bonds with hypocrisy of a superstitious

society. The playwright is able to come out with “the effects of exploitation –

political, social and economic – on the psyche of innocent individual who is

essentially humane” (Satyanarayana 2000: 82).

Devi, like the characters in her short stories, has succeeded in displaying the

plight of the women characters through the stage to expose inhuman subjugation of

women, and their constant struggle for survival. These women characters, as

compared to men in the plays of Mahasweta Devi, become the soft targets for the

great upholders of the traditional values and are subjected to all kinds of

humiliations. E. Satyanarayana says, “Being relegated to the position of mere

merchandise and commodities, the women are compelled to lose their identity”

(82). It is this lost identity of women that Mahasweta Devi, through her characters

on stage, searches for. Her characters are not afraid of harsh realities, they do not

yield to the forces of the society in which they dwell. In fact, they face life as it

comes to them with courage and determination, in order to overcome the charges

or the problems they face. Samik Bandyopadhyay says,

Two classes of characters that have dominated Mahasweta Devi’s novels

and stories in the seventies are the mothers bearing the brunt of social and

political expression and enduring and resisting with indomitable will… they

are too earthly and emotionally charged to bear overtones of any mystical-

mythical or archetypal motherhood. (1997: ix-x)

Chandidasi, turned into Bayen, is a mother who is branded as a witch and

has been excommunicated from the society and banned from meeting her own

husband and child. The punishment is so harsh that she starves; as she talks to her

dog she reveals,

They give me my ration on Saturday, with a little rice. Out of that I give you

a little, the rest I eat myself. (with a sad smile) A bayen shouldn’t eat too

much. Yet hunger gnaws … there comes Gangaputta … I will tell him

everything today, everything, all the wrongs that I suffer. Just a little rice,

the salt all mixed with dirt, worms in lentil – why should I take it? (Devi

1997: 75)

The practice of witchcraft has been prevalent in ancient India for a long

time, and it still exists in many parts of rural India. The women of the oppressed

class have often been charged with possessing evil spirits and practisinge

necromancy. The blind superstitious beliefs in the name of religions are vicious

instruments used for restricting the freedom of women. The practice of witchcraft

and black magic is found in Greek literature, too, in the plays of Marlowe and

Shakespeare, and even in the twentieth-century literature. E. Satyanarayana

presents the statement of Mahasweta Devi regarding this evil practice, “Any

strange thing or event can be attributed to the witches and they can be killed with

popular approval … majority of the victims are women” (2000: 84). Set against

this barbaric practice, Bayen is a play that presents a biting reality of Chandidasi

Gangadasi, who is a professional gravedigger. She buries dead children and guards

the graves at night. She is married to Malinder Gangaputta who is an employee in

the morgue. She is a tender-hearted mother to her son, Bhagirath. When her own

child is born she finds difficult to handle the job at the graveyard at night as she

has to breastfeed her son. She ponders over quitting the job that she had inherited

from her forefathers, the lords of the graveyard.

Once excommunicated by the villagers, the Bayen is denied entry into the

village as her presence is considered ominous, and she cannot show her face to any

living human being, as that person who looks at her face is believed to die the next

day. When Malindar, her husband, along with her son Bhagirath pass through her

place of work, she eagerly calls him (“she stands with her back to them”), but

“Malindar stops in his tracks, and instinctively covers his eyes, he covers his son’s

eyes too and draws him closer to himself” (76). Her husband tells her, “Stop it you

bitch! Turn away your face. You want to kill me?” (76).

Her own husband’s indifferent attitude and harsh words insulting her very

being, the Bayen stands motionless and speechless. She is aware of the fact that the

villagers will never allow her to lead a normal and respectable life anymore. Also,

her husband remarries. When asked by his son, Bhagirath, the reason behind his

mother becoming a Bayen, Malindar replies, “Our bad luck, hers, yours and mine.

Once a Bayen she is no longer human” (78). When the son looks at the Bayen who

stands with her back to him, and learns that she is his mother, his heart is

immediately filled with compassion and longing for her, and he says, “My mother?

Without clothes? Without food? Without oil in her hair?” (78). Her son’s doubts

are not removed, and he walks away with his father with a heavy heart. Chandidasi

has been held responsible for the death of the children in the village. The villagers

abuse her and throw stones at her. As she feels that her image will be tarnished and

her life will be ruined, she requests her husband to take her out of the village, “Hey

Gangaputta? Shall we run away in the dark of night. To any place whatsoever,

Anywhere? You, me and Bhagirath? Somewhere, where nobody knows us” (85).

But an insensitive Malindar, too, like others does not agree with her proposal.

Bhagirath, her son, wanting to know the truth and longing to see the face of

his mother, meets her and comes to know the reality of his mother, how she has

been wrongly charged by the villagers and his father. This meeting with his mother

re-establishes Chandidasi’s relation with humanity. She speaks to Bhagirath, “ O

my son, do you feel your mother’s woes. Men in general are so insensitive. Their

children die, I bury them. And they say I have the evil eye, if I stare at a child, it’s

sure to die” (81).

Moreover, Bhagirath decides that “he has no fear” (88) of the Bayen, and

that the Bayen is his mother.

2. Vinodini’s Thirst

Rising above the ‘casteism within casteism’ attitude, there is significant

development and caste consciousness which is fought collectively by the Dalits in

the Telugu playwright, Vinodini’s play, Thirst, originally written in Telugu as

Daaham. In the play, the activist and playwright attempts to make people aware of

the atrocities faced by Dalits in India, particularly in Andhra Pradesh, through

street plays. Sushila Vijaykumar observes, “Notwithstanding the constitutional

remedies for the removal of untouchability, Thirst portrays a poignant picture

of the caste atrocities faced by the downtrodden sections in rural India”

(2015: 95).

The play consists of five scenes. The first scene takes place in a village at

the thatched hut of Tata, a Dalit (Mala) elder. It begins as Souramma, a Dalit

woman, waits for a pot of water at the well from morning until noon and in return

is physically abused by the upper-caste Reddy women, her pot is broken and she

returns home without the drinking water. Interestingly, Vadina, Sauramma’s

daughter-in-law, goes to breastfeed Pedda Reddy’s grandson. The scene, as a

whole, portrays the arrogance and hypocrisy of the dominant Reddy community. In

the second scene, the action continues at Souramma’s hut. Pedda Mala, a Dalit

elder, scolds her for putting the rope on the well and getting involved in fights

and abuses with the Reddy women, and hence, inviting danger for whole Dalit

community. Souramma defends her action and behaviour and describes the

violence meted out to her by the Reddy women. In the next scene Pedda and

Chinna Reddy decide to impose heavy fine on the poverty-ridden Souramma’s

husband, Narsaiah, for violating the caste limitations. They further insist that

they would parade Souramma naked in front of the village if the fine was not paid

on time. Scene four witnesses the truth of the past when a Dalit of the same family

was killed by a Reddy. As the mystery is revealed, the young men of the Dalit

community revolt and decide that they would face the Reddys without paying any

fine. In contrast to the resigned attitude of the elders, the younger generation

protests and calls for collective action. The last scene becomes symbolically

significant as the Mala community comes together as a united front and faces the

Reddys and the other elders of the village. During the meeting, the powerful Pedda

Reddy is reminded that it is the Dalits (Mala community) who had dug the well

and it is their right to draw drinking water from the well unconditionally. The play

ends with the Dalit women refusing to nurse Pedda Reddy’s grandson till a public

apology is made to Souramma.

Sushila Vijaykumar in her article “Consciousness Raising in Thirst” states,

“Dalit literature is its depiction of its ideological commitment to the

elaboration of social conditions of Dalits and documentation of ‘the violence,

oppression and structural inequality engendered by casteism’” (2015: 96).

3. Examining Colourism in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s and Zora Neale

Hurston’s Plays

Colourism or racism is rooted in the era of slavery in America. Harry J Elam

Jr. links theatre and racism,

From the arrival of the first African humans on American soil, the discourse

on race, the definitions and meanings of blackness have been intricately

linked to issues of theatre and performance. Definitions of race, like the

processes of theatre, fundamentally depend on the relationship between the

seen and unseen, between the visibly marked and unmarked, between the

real and the illusionary. Like Casteism in India colorism/racism as defined

by the racial theorists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “race as a construct

that is historically, socially and culturally determined. (Harry J Elam Jr

2001: 5)

The literature of African-American writers, be it poetry, prose, fiction,

drama, biography or autobiography, has been fascinating and challenging with a

tint of social protest. Their literary history may be scanty but their pain-filled,

suffocating and inhuman experiences because of the whites in terms of colour,

race, slavery, lynching, miscegenation, rape, exploitation of women and ill-

treatment and injustice have been for a long time in the history right from the

colonization. Their journey from slavery to self-dignity, suffering to salvation,

unknown to establishing self-identity, rampage to restoration and constant struggle

to bring about social change with equal opportunities to everyone, has been long

but laudable.

1. Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Douglas Johnson is the best-known and most widely published

African-American woman poet of her time, as well as an accomplished and

pioneering dramatist of the early twentieth century. She has been a role model to

many African-American writers such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Alain

Locke May Miller, Claude McKay and W. E. B. Du Bois. Her plays have been

instrumental in educating the uneducated African Americans of the late-nineteenth

and early twentieth century, as they witnessed and relived the horrors of the

exploitation at the hands of the whites through the enactment of these plays at the

streets or churches or the market place. Moreover, they highlight issues of

miscegenation, lynching and its cause, powerlessness (loss of black manhood and

exploitation of women) and a sense of community living.

Georgia Douglas Camp was born on September 10, 1880 in Atlanta and was

educated at Atlanta University, specializing in music. She married Henry Johnson

in 1903 who was an influential politician endowed with a sense of social

awareness. Her artistic fame grew gradually as she devoted herself to music, poetry

and plays. Her literary identity slowly shifted from “genteel poet” to

“revolutionary playwright” (Stephens: 89). She has published several volumes of

poetry such as The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918), Bronze (1922), An

Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World (1962). Some of her published

plays include A Sunday Morning in the South, Plumes, And Yet They Paused, A Bill

To Be Passed, Blue Blood, Safe, Blue-Eyed Black Boy and Paupaulekejo. Many of

her plays have either been lost or still remain unpublished as critics and scholars

believe that she must have written at least 28 plays.

1. Blue Blood, Safe and Blue-Eyed Black Boy

Blue Blood (1926) is a play which revolves around the marriage of two

mulattoes, May Bush and John Temple. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Temple, the

respective mothers of the bride and bridegroom, brag about their children and try

to project them as superior to one another. Meanwhile, shockingly, both the

women learn that their children share the same white father, “Captain Winfield

McCallister the biggest banker, who got money invested in banks all over Georgia”

(Johnson 1990: 20). In distress and chaos, they agree to stop the marriage.

Shattered and shocked May Bush runs away with Randolph Strong in order to

escape the public blame.

Safe (1929) is another shocking play about a young black pregnant woman,

Liza, who after having witnessed the lynching of a black man, Sam Hosea, from

the window of her home, kills her new born son in order to save him from lynching

and oppression in America.

Blue-Eyed Black Boy (1930) is a unique play that revolves around Jack, a

black boy accused of brushing up against a white woman. As he is jailed and is

about to be lynched, his mother’s surprise evidence about his father being a

governor saves him from lynching.

2. Exploring Miscegenation and Lynching in Blue Blood and Blue-Eyed

Black Boy

Blue Blood and Blue-Eyed Black Boy both address the miscegenation (or

racial hybridity) theme, featuring mixed race characters, or mulattoes. In the

eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century miscegenation was considered a

crime in America, as it supposedly threatened the purity of the white race and its

supremacy. Also, it was feared that a mixed race may outnumber the actual

population of whites in America in the long run. As Carter G. Woodson in his

article, “The Beginnings of the Miscegenation of the Whites and Blacks” about the

increase in Black-White miscegenation in the North states:

Massachusetts enacted in 1705, that a Negro or Mulatto man committing

fornication with an English woman or a woman of any other Christian nation

should be sold out of the province. An English man or man of any other

Christian Nation committing fornication with a negro or Mulatto woman,

should be whipped and the woman should be sold out of province (Woodson

1918: 346).

As already mentioned, Georgia Douglas Johnson’s plays portray mixed-race

characters, and she relives the history answering what forces black women to keep

their relationship with white men a secret, or hide that truth, for a long time. In

Blue-Eyed Black Boy Pauline’s fear of her son, Jack, getting lynched makes her

finally reveal the truth that his father is the governor, Tinkham. (It also makes it

easier for Rebecca, Pauline’s younger daughter, to understand why her brother’s

eyes are blue.) Pauline wastes no time in sending Dr. Thomas Grey, Rebecca’s

fiancée, to reach the governor along with the ring as a sign to remind him of the

past, in order to save his son from lynching.

Pauline: (Feverishly tossing out the odd bits of jewellery in the box, finally

coming up with a small ring, she turns to Dr. Grey) Here, Tom, take this.

Run, jump on your horse and buggy and fly over to governor Tinkham’s

house and don’t you let nobody- nobody- stop you. Just give him this ring

and say, ‘Pauline sent this. She says they going to lynch her son born 21

years ago.’ Mind you say 21 years ago. Then say, listen close. Look in his

eyes and you will save him. (Johnson 1990: 36)

Pauline’s buried secret reveals her vulnerability and fear of being abandoned by

her black husband.

3. Georgia Douglas Johnson's Anti-Lynching Plays

Georgia Douglas Johnson is often known for anti-lynching plays as

considered as the forerunner of the lynching drama of 1920s a new kind of genre in

American literature. What is lynching? And why has lynching become the subject

matter of the dramatists? The word lynching could be explained in the context of

the plays as the murder of individuals, primarily black men by the white mobs

ignited with racial motives without any repercussions for the perpetrators. It took

many forms, namely hanging, burning alive, beaten to death, stabbed to death, or

shot dead publicly. Victims would be tortured and castrated by the mob before

killing them. This kind of lynching sprang up after the Reconstruction Period and

existed until the 1950s. It was a social construct, a myth, a kind of “rite of

exorcism” (Stephens 1999: 656).

Lynching was once considered the national crime of America. Henry E.

Barber in his article states that there were 4,761 lynchings between 1882 and 1930.

A little of 71 per cent of these involved the Negroes (Barber 1973: 378). O’Brien

in her article, “Cosmopolitanism in Georgia Douglas Johnson's Anti-Lynching

Literature” mentions that Francis Harper inverted the meaning traditionally

associated with the term “cursed blood, a phrase that does not overtly reject

discourses of African cultural inferiority”, by implying that “white Americans

cursed Africans with slavery first, they cursed them further with racial terrorism in

the form of lynching” (O’Brien 2004: 571).

Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Safe and Blue-Eyed Black Boy reveal the horror

and impact of lynching on black women and men. Even Blue Blood has an indirect

reference to lynching. Safe explores the crime of infanticide a black pregnant

woman commits after having witnessed the lynching of a young black boy, Sam

Hosea, in public. The innocent victim’s last words echo in her mind, “then a voice

rises above the men outside shouting, ‘don’t hang me, don’t hang me. I don’t want

to die! Mother! Mother!’” (Johnson 1990: 29). Liza Pettigrew wants to deliver a

girl child. She fears if the baby were a boy then he too would be subjected to

lynching. Unfortunately for her, a boy is born and she kills him, thereby saving

him from the lynching mob of the future. Dr. Jenkins narrates the action:

… and then I turned my back a minute to wash my hands in the basin. When

I looked around again she had her hands about the baby’s throat choking it. I

tried to stop her but its little tongue was already hanging from its mouth. It

was dead. Then she began, she kept muttering and muttering over and over

again, “Now he’s safe- safe from the Lynchers! Safe! (Johnson 1990: 32)

In Blue-Eyed Black Boy, Jack is arrested for “brushing against the white

woman on the street” (Johnson 1990: 35) and is lynched at night.

After the abolition of slavery, lynching grew rapidly. The main purpose was

to reduce the population of black men. It has had a strong impact on black life.

“Lynching can be seen as one of the strongest indications of the black-white racial

divide in the 1920s. For Black Americans, lynching reinforced social boundaries

that became quite literally, a matter of life and death” (Stephens 1999: 658).

Lynching continued to keep the racial discrimination alive as it became an excuse

for the protection of white women in the South, but “statistics refuted the myth that

black men were raping white women” (Stephens 1992: 332). Black men remained

helpless, restricted and controlled.

The practice of lynching by the whites resulted in the powerlessness of black

men and women. It generated unwanted fears about black men being jailed without

proper reason and getting killed, affecting black women psychologically. They

often remained silent and submissive. In Blue Blood, Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Temple,

having realized the truth about their children’s common father, are afraid of letting

the truth be known to John Temple, as they fear that out of rage he would kill his

white father, and later himself would be murdered by the white mob. Mrs. Bush

rightly tells Mrs. Temple, “Mrs. Bush: Keep it from him, it is the black women that

have got to protect their men from the white men by not telling on ’em” (Johnson

1990: 24).

In Safe, John’s portrayal appears to be less important and weak. It is perhaps

John’s inability to persuade Liza to bring up a boy child and to face the world. The

helplessness and powerlessness of black men signify the impact of lynching and

racial hybridity.

The anti-lynching plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson are direct reflections of

social and historical facts of American society. Her plays “touch the heart and both

anger and pain modern readers” (Brown-Guillory 1988: 7). The plays expose

lynching as violent crime and a pervasive influence on daily life. They manifest a

cry of social protest and justice, and equal rights. Her contribution to the (anti-

)lynching drama deserves greater recognition.

4. Depicting Community Living

Georgia Douglas Johnson’s depiction of a sense of community living of

black life is noteworthy. Blue Blood, Safe and Blue-Eyed Black Boy being one-act

plays also illustrate the importance of minor characters. All these characters

constitute the togetherness and unity of the nature of African Americans. They

render the timely support and give required information for the welfare of the

fellow beings. Randolph Strong in Blue Blood becomes the saviour of the family

shame caused by racial hybridity, and runs away with May Bush protecting her

from the insults of the society. In Safe, Hannah Wiggins, a neighbour, comes to

visit the ailing and pregnant Liza and cautions her about another possible lynching

on the street. She also fetches the doctor at a time when the white mob is violent.

In Blue-Eyed Black Boy, Hester Grant Pauline’s best friend gives first-hand

information about the arrest of her son, Jack, and virtually cautions Pauline to

rescue him from lynching. The black life, therefore, is portrayed as community

living where all share joy and sorrow equally. It is “the roots of African American

culture that value community and interpersonal relations as measures of success”

(O’Brien 2004: 577). The sense of togetherness is remarkable in the three plays as

they live in commune fighting against the whole white race.

2. Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck

Zora Neale Hurston is another significant playwright who has written about

racism within the African Americans. Their freedom from slavery has been

historical; however, its impacts are still felt in various forms. Miscegenation, as

thematically dealt in the plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson, leads to the ‘colourism

within colourism’ paradox, that is, the imposed hierarchy among ‘light-skinned’

African Americans and ‘dark-skinned’ African Americans. Raising an alarm to

such a psychological problem, Zora Neale Hurston successfully projects the issue

of ‘colourism within colourism’ through her critically acclaimed play, Color

Struck. (Compare the existence of ‘casteism within casteism’ in the Indian caste

system.)

Color Struck consists of four scenes. As the title suggests, it is mainly a

story of a young African-American woman whose skin is darker than the other

African-American girls. John is a light brown-skinned man who is deeply in love

with Emma, a black woman, and is constantly nagged by her. She has irreparable

prejudices against others especially light-skinned men and women alike, as she

feels inferior to them and constantly fears losing John. She is insecure about her

relationship with John and accuses him of flirting with a light-skinned African-

American girl, Miss Effie Jones, on the train. Her paranoia reaches heights when

she does not want to go for the cakewalk competition to represent their

community. John and Effie Jones perform dance and win the cake amidst loud

applause by the audience. From this moment, it takes twenty years for Emma and

John to see each other again, but in vain, she continues to suspect John and

eventually loses him.

As in the case of ‘untouchability within untouchability’ in the Indian context

of caste system, Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck illustrates that in the African-

American community, too, the feeling of “Colourism within Colourism” (or racism

within racism) exists because of various reasons like social, psychological, racial

and political. Emma tells Wesley when John goes to dance with Effie John in place

of Emma,

He went and left me. If we is spatting we done have our last one. (She stands

and clenches her fists.) Ah my God! He is in there with her – oh, them half

whites, they gets everything, they gets everything everybody else wants! The

men, the jobs, everything! The whole world is got a sign on it. Wanted: light

colored! Us blacks was made for cobble stones. (Hurston 1967: 44)

As the play progresses, it is clear that Emma and John share an uncertain and

an unstable relationship. John’s love and dedication for Emma is natural and

sincere, but Emma finds it difficult to believe that a light-skinned boy could love

her deeply and sincerely; hence she nags him constantly with distrust and disturbs

him emotionally.

Emma’s fear and prejudice rules her life. John confesses to her fairly that he

loves her deeply and she should change her attitude regarding him and others as

well. He says to her, “You makes yo’self mad den blame it on me. Ah keep on

tellin you Ah don’t love nobody but you. Ah knows heaps uh half –white girls Ah

could get ef Ah wanted to. But (he squeezes her hand again) Ah jus wants you”

(41). “Though Hurston does not indicate the skin colour of other characters, a

director might choose to surround the actress playing Emmaline with mainly

lighter complexion women in order to semiotically allude to these understood

social prejudices, and thereby allude to her fears … while intraracial prejudice

remains a provocative issue among African Americans, our communities also seem

to tolerate more diversity …” (Goodman 1998: 159).

‘Colourism within colourism’ is so deeply rooted in Emmaline’s mind that

she always carries a fear of insecurity. Twenty years of separation from John and

eventually giving birth to a disloyal white man’s daughter, she remains unchanged

in her attitude and behaviour. John’s intense search for Emma brings her hope of

reuniting with him. To John’s surprise, he finds that Emma’s daughter is light-

skinned and he immediately makes her realize that she practices double standard

and hypocrisy. On the one hand, she has accused John of sighting light skin girls,

and on the other hand, she herself has given birth to a daughter with fair skin. John

teases her, “talking ‘bout me liking high yallers – yo husband musta been pretty

near white”. (Hurston 1967: 47). She clarifies to him that she has never been

married to anyone though she got a daughter. John’s love and feelings for Emma

are unconditional, he realizes Emma’s struggle and pain and immediately consoles

her saying, “Everything is going to be O K … our child looks pretty sick … think

she oughter have a doctor” (48). In the last scene, the meeting of John and Emma

is short; John wants to dedicate his life to Emma and her daughter, whereas Emma

feels that John would not be a trustworthy man. When he comforts the child,

Emma having preconceived ideas and jealousy towards light-skinned people

bursts into anger, physically attacks John and abuses him. John is shocked and

drives away from Emma forever, his final words to Emma perhaps make him

realize her attitude. He says, “So this is the woman I have been wearing over my

heart like a rose for twenty years! She despises her own skin that she can’t believe

that anyone else could love it. Twenty years! Twenty years of adoration! Of

Hunger! Of Worship!” (50). Emma’s hatred and feeling of paranoia against light-

skinned people cost her her daughter’s life and true love in John. She is finally left

sobbing and in tears, in utter helplessness and loneliness.

4. Conclusion

These plays, written by women, centre on the women characters, who are

strong but helpless, courageous but speechless in front of the dominant majority. It

is conspicuous that the subjugation, oppression, and suffering for centuries

imposed by either whites in America or the upper-castes in India have been so

effectively portrayed in the performance and plays of these women playwrights

that they have produced the desired result in creating awareness and consciousness

of reality and about the rights of the marginalized.

Self-determination and sacrifice transform the ordinary women characters

into spokespersons of their own respective communities. Emma’s decision to

blindly reject John’s offer as her life partner comes at the cost of her ailing

daughter’s life; Liza in Safe kills her new born only to save him from future

lynching by the white mob; Chandidasi in Bayen gives up her own life to save

hundreds of people on the train proving to her own community that she has never

been a bayen (a witch); Souramma’s (a Dalit’s) decision in Thirst, not to feed the

Reddy newborn unless the upper-castes allow them to draw water from the well

and publicly apologize for physically assaulting her comes only at the cost of the

life of the newborn. These depictions are only a mark of resistance against the

racial prejudice and social status.

Amidst changing social scenario and racial practice within the African-

American community and caste differences in India, for the marginalized

communities, even though there are strong and punishable laws in the respective

constitutions to protect the dignity of these people, yet these laws often remain

practically inefficient because of various reasons. One could reasonably argue that

the intensity and persistence of oppression in caste-based and race-based societies

has changed. However, the physical oppression is now coupled with psychological

oppression in the mainstream society, as the Dalits and African Americans have to

compete not only with the powerful dominant groups but also within their own

groups. ‘Colourism within colourism’ and ‘casteism within casteism’ as discussed

in the plays of Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Mahasweta Devi

and Vinodini, prove how issues of race and caste still dominate and haunt the

twenty-first century.

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