Date of Award
Spring 5-1999
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Honors College
Department
English
First Advisor
Mary Joseph
Second Advisor
Joyce W. O'Rourke
Third Advisor
Beverly Wade
Abstract
"From Margaret Walker to Terry McMillan: The Decline of Moral Values in Female Characters in Twentieth Century African-American Fiction" deals with how over the course of a century female characters have gone from strong moral beings to promiscuous immoral beings. It uses four novels written by prominent African-American women to present the decline of moral values. Margaret Walker, in her novel Jubilee, set in the civil war era, presents a strong moral being in Vyry Ware Brown. Toni Morrison's Nel Wright, in Sula, is slightly less moral than Walker's Vyry. The decline in moral values begins with April Sinclair's Coffee Will Make You Black and reaches its epitome in Terry Mclvlillan's Waiting to Exhale. From Margaret Walker to Terry McMillan: The Decline of Moral Values in Female Characters in Twentieth Century African-American Fiction attempts to show that through these novels a definite and obvious decline in moral values has taken place.
Recommended Citation
Cage, Kristy A., "From Margaret Walker to Terry McMillian : the decline of moral values in female characters in twentieth century African-American fiction" (1999). Electronic Dissertations and Theses. 12.
https://digitalcommons.subr.edu/dissertations_theses/12