Cora Lee

CORA LEE True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain Begot of nothing but vain fantasy
In these simple words lies the harsh reality of black women. Discrimination, exploitation, neglects and violence is the story of their life. They have had the toughest times fighting not only were they outcasts because of their color, their own men mistreated them. From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, black women were in a difficult position. Between the civil rights and feminist movements, where did they fit in? They had been the backbone of the civil rights movement, but their contributions were deemphasized as black men — often emasculated by white society — felt compelled to adopt patriarchal roles. When black women flocked to the feminist movement, white women discriminated against them and devoted little attention to class issues that seriously affected black women, who tended to also be poor.
Historically, black women have chosen race over gender concerns, a choice that was especially poignant during Reconstruction when African American female leaders, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, supported the Fifteenth Amendment giving black men the right to vote over the objections of white women suffragists.
The growth of the woman's movement, and its impact on the consciousness of African-American women in particular, helped fuel a "black women's literary renaissance” of the 1970s, beginning in earnest with the publication of "The Bluest Eye" (1970), by Toni Morrison. Morrison went on to publish "Sula" (1973) and "Song of Solomon" (1977); her fifth novel, the slave narrative "Beloved" (1987) became arguably the most influential work of African-American literature of the late 20th century (rivaled only by Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"). The success of writers like Morrison, Maya Angelou (poet and author of the 1970 memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings") and Alice Walker (winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for "The Color Purple") helped inspire a generation of younger black female novelists, including Toni Cade Bambara and Gloria Naylor.
Widely acclaimed for her vivid explorations of the experiences of African-American women in the 1980s and 90s, Naylor has explained that she decided to become a writer "because I felt that my presence as a black woman and my perspective as a woman in general had been unrepresented in American literature."
The Women of Brewster Place, details the shared oppressions and strengths of seven black women, grew out of Naylor's desire to reflect the diversity of the black female experience in America -- a diversity, she believed, that neither the black nor the white critical establishment had yet recognized. The characters in Gloria Naylor's novel consist of hardships and bitterness faced by a black woman. From the beginning of time, the black woman was mainly used for breeding more slaves. The strength of their spirits helped them survive. All the women in the Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor overcome some struggle but in reality they only complicate their situation because of race. As far back as most can remember, the female African American has played the part as a slave or as a household maid. However, unknown by most white Americans, the black woman was used as a sexual myth; just a pleasure for the white male. They also played a huge part in the fight for freedom of their people and heritage. The women were the ones who backed and sometimes even pushed harder than their men. The struggles of living and existence were confronted every day just like the characters in The Women of Brewster Place. Surviving racism, rape, war, childhood, neglect, and poverty, the women in this novel pull together and share a sense of sisterhood. They are all joined in their community by loss and all have a real sense, which the reader can relate to. "Naylor's people are real, touchable, and tragically elegant.
“In her case I wanted to broaden the myopic view that we often have of why unmarried women like "Cora Lee" continue to have babies. I wanted to show how we indoctrinate little girls very early with baby dolls, and take this kind of bucolic Christmas setting and turn it into a nightmare.” (Gloria Naylor). In The Women of Brewster Place, Cora Lee is a single mother struggling to raise her children. As a child, Cora Lee only wanted one thing for Christmas every year, a new doll. On her thirteenth Christmas, her father denies her a new baby doll. When her mother tells her that she already has too many in her room, Cora informs her that "they don't smell and feel the same way as the new ones". Cora adopts this philosophy and soon after starts having babies of her own. She is obsessed with new babies and spends all of her time caring for the baby of the family. Once a baby becomes a toddler, she is tired of the child, and she is ready for a new baby.
This story does not begin with the point of view of its eponymous focal character, Cora Lee, but with that of her parents when she is a child. The prologue gives us a warning, through the formless unease of her parents about her obsession with baby dolls, that there will be cause to worry about this girl when she becomes a woman.
Cora’s obsession with babies, and her inability to care for them as children, speaks to a larger idea: Cora is unable to face the reality and hardship that comes with children growing up. She wants only the dependency, need, and affection a baby can offer. The harder relationships in life, the ones that demand patience, sacrifice, and compromise, are beyond her capabilities. In this regard, Cora bears a striking resemblance to Butch Fuller, who had a similar perspective toward women, and Eugene, who, when faced with the difficulties of having a family, chooses immediately to leave.
The first focalization through Cora Lee comes in an abrupt transition from the past to the story's present, with the sound of a neighbor yelling at her to quiet her children down. She turns away from a soap opera, and only then do we see the "howling and flying bodies that were throwing dingy school books at each other, jumping off of crippled furniture, and swinging on her sagging velveteen draperies". The fact that Cora Lee is able to watch television while this is going on tells us the first important fact about her: she has a very high tolerance for certain things, arguably too high for her (or her children's) own good. The noise and messiness and overall chaos simply don't bother her, or at least not enough for her to take action to stop them. It is significant that the scene is described in words that are unlikely to be Cora Lee's own; "crippled furniture," "sagging velveteen draperies," and so forth - the reader can better appreciate this scene through the "camera eye" of the narrator's language, whereas Cora's own words to describe the scene would probably read more like "...they're wild and disgusting and there's nothing you can do".
In a sense, Cora Lee is fundamentally lazy. While she will spend hours taking care of the latest baby and its various impedimentia, any work that isn't directly related to the baby (especially work related to the children) seems to require a monumental effort on her part. After seeing the play, Cora Lee begins to think of the possibilities of her children that are no longer babies. Kiswana's concern helps Cora Lee to see the importance of all of her children, not just the babies. She also "contributes to restoring Cora Lee's self-esteem both as a person and as a mother" (Andrews 289). Their relationship is another example of the ability of women to be there for each other in times of need when men are nothing more than "shadows." Cora Lee's new found sisterhood with Kiswana enables her see the possibility of a better and brighter future.
Also Kiswana's knowledge of a better life rekindles Cora Lee's belief in herself and her abilities as a mother. In The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor sets out tell the story of the African-American woman and the struggles that she endures. In each of the stories, we see a woman overcoming an obstacle with the help of the women around her. Together the women of Brewster Place withstand the pressures of loss and pain that threaten to destroy their lives and overcome the barriers of living in a man's world.
Her overly tolerant behavior extends to her taste in men; she is perfectly satisfied with a succession of "shadows" whose only interest in her is sex. She doesn't care if they lie to her about their names and marital status, feeling that it's simply "too much trouble" to listen to them. She isn't even bothered by the "peculiar ways" of the abusive man who fathered two of her babies, until he goes too far: "But she still carried the scar under her left eye because of a baby's crying..... Babies had to cry sometimes, and so Sammy and Maybelline's father had to go". With her other children as with men, the only thing that upsets her enough to get a reaction is a threat to the latest baby. from her way of life it seems that she hasn't internalized anything about sex; to her it's still "the thing that feels good in the dark," and has no connotations more serious than that, other than the fact that sometimes it brings the new babies. She has none of the usual adult guilt/sin/dirty complexes about sex, but also no sense of intimate connection to another human being. She doesn't connect to other adults on any level but the most superficial - there is no close friend or loved one in this story, male or female, and no sense of loneliness for one either, in Cora's thoughts. And her connection to her mother seems to be entirely that of a child: "... 'And the last time I let them go to the park somebody gave Sammy a reefer and when my mother found it in his pocket, I caught hell for that.'
It is precisely because of this fundamental childlike quality that the ending of the story is plausible. She is also childlike in her sudden determination to fix every one of them overnight. And because this is a child's voice rather than an adult's, the reader is meant to be unconvinced that anything will actually change in the morning. Cora Lee is impressionable enough to truly believe that she can change her entire pattern of life just by wanting to, and to have no realistic concept of how difficult such a change is likely to be.