What struck me the most during the first part of The Street was the notion of the sexual black or foreign woman. Lutie is extremely conscious of her "blackness", and this blackness is a large factor in how others (especially white people) perceive her female sexuality. Lutie realizes that white people see her as a type of sexual predator, and jealously among the white women raise Lutie's awareness of this. This stereotype, combined with Lutie's living situation, is very dehumanizing. Lutie's realization of this dehumanizing environment propels the novel in a positive and evolving manner; at the end of chapter three, Lutie ignores Mrs. Hedges' offer to Lutie about prostituting herself for a white man's money, and instead goes to buy herself a drink.
This first part of the novel illustrates how inseparable race, class, and gender really are. I cannot recall previously reading a novel where a minority protagonist was so conscious about the factors that impact the environment that she lives in. Lutie's awareness and realizations, however, make the novel a rather bleak one, and represent the realities of how different the challenges were of a white New Woman and a black New Women. It seems that Lutie fully symbolizes the black New Woman, and finds that she has to prove herself in different and more difficult ways than the white woman does.
I also was really struck by Lutie's awareness of others' perceptions of her as a sexual deviant and object. The passages when she is being shown the vacant apartment by the super are incredibly well written. I think we can all relate to those moments when you know a man is objectifying you. It's incredibly unnerving and can, at its worst, trap you into immobility physically and socially. Many writers don't accurately portray this awareness of being objectified as well as Petry does.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Alaina. It's really refreshing to have a character so aware of her environment and her role in it. The fact that she understands the influence she has on people gives her a sense of power, and the way she uses her influence will define her as a character.
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