Summary:
The novels "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker, "Not Without Laughter" by Langston Hughes, and "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston provide a common picture of the oppression suffered only by women in the early twentieth century.
Although none of the novels were wrote in conjunction, each has a link towards the other regarding abuse, both sexual and spousal, as well as class oppression and the manual labor that was a necessity for survival among black women. By examining present society, one can observe the systems of oppressions that have changed for the better as well as those that continue to devastate the lives of many women today.
Not Without Laughter, written by Hughes, was the only novel out of the three that had little or nothing to discuss of the rape or incest that is accepted of men at the time. Perhaps this was because it was from the viewpoint of a young boy, rather than a young girl, and it was therefore not a part of his daily life. Both.....
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