[Writer's surname] 1

[Writer’s name]

[Professor’s name]

[Course title]

[Date]

Alice Walker’s "Roselily"

Introduction to the Author

Walker had made a name for herself early, with her first novel The Third Life of

Grange Copeland (1970) and her first book of poetry, Once: Poems two years earlier. She

suddenly stepped into limelight of critical attention when her book In Love and Trouble

published in 1973. There were 29 reported reviews in the bibliography, of the book Alice

Malsenior Walker, definitely far more as compared to others than the normal for first edition

of short stories. Most of the reviews were favorable, with some a little critical on the

consistency and quality of the stories.

Synopsis

“Alice Walker’s “Roselily” exemplifies the restoration of respectability for women.”

(Mordaunt, Owen G. Respectability Restored in Abioseh Nicol’s “The Truly Married

Woman,” Echoed in Alice Walker’s “Roselily”. International Third World Studies)

In her short story “Roselily”, Alice Walker is apparently trying to tell two stories in

one. The first and the most obvious one is about an African American woman named

Roselily, who is a symbol of change, she is just about to marry a Muslim, as she thinks about

her past she wonders about lay in the future for her and is continuously asking herself

whether she is choosing the right path or not. The other slightly veiled story is about the
 [Writer's surname] 2

African American women in general, and deals with their history and their continuous

struggle and quest for better life and safer future.

The short story is presented as to the reader, through Roselily’s own thoughts

(reflections of African Americans women around the 1960s), as a bitter satyr on the society,

its prejudices and double standards. At that time, Blacks were declared as free Americans

with the equal rights just like other Americans, but only in theory. Roselily is shown as a

woman of free will, but a single mother of 4 children, who works long hours for mostly lousy

wages in a sewing factory, in reality she was far from free. The Africans are not the slaves in

the cotton fields anymore but now are paid slaves in the nation’s industries.

Roselily certainly possess an acute awareness of her situation, and is definitely willing

to leave her past behind and start over a new life probably with a new man. She has

apparently been searching for a good life partner for some time, and being with different men

is an effort towards achieving the same objective. But unfortunately, all of them had given

her only children but not a new life she is aspiring for. There is an underlying urge in

Roselily, to keep on moving, indicated by all the numbers of cars in the short story which

symbolizes the mobile nature of life.

Roselily has shown her will not to stay too long in the sewing factory, as she is

continuously striving for something (or someone) better, but probably she is herself confused

over the very notion of better, and she has her fears and apprehensions over her choices. Her

own personality is a symbol of the different sections of Africans in the civil rights

movements (some preferring segregation, some not; some wanted to be referred as Africans,

some preferred White American lifestyle; some were Christians and some were Muslims.

They all agreed on one point, that their present status was not acceptable, but they lacked any

action plan to improve it.

 [Writer's surname] 3

On one side Roselily is longing to start a new life, and on the other she is afraid of

losing her contact with her roots. She thinks of her children as “exalted on a pedestal, a stalk

that has no roots” and questions herself that how the new roots will be established. Alice

Walker in the story has depicted an average African American, their struggle and their search

for identity, and in doing so she has probably shown herself as well. Which heritage is the

right one; the one from their Black American ancestors, or the one from the African

ancestors?

As Roselily contemplates the idea of marrying and going to Chicago and start over a

whole new life with her new husband, she is experiencing regret over her decision and she

came to realize that she is going from one slavery to the other. Whenever she thinks about

Chicago, probably her new home, she often wonders that how little she knows about the

place except that it was the city of President Lincoln. The same President Lincoln, who had

abolished the slavery, but failed to free the African Americans.

Owen G. Mordaunt in his article has shown how Walker has captured the plight of

women who have had children out of wedlock, as well as the “restoration of respectability”

that women acquire as they live through the ceremonies of engagement and marriage. The

process of restoration is expressed in her character. There is a transformation that restores

every woman’s respectability. Roselily is transformed “from a woman who is passionate,

natural, and in the eyes of society, impure and immoral, to one who is resurrected and

reborn.” Mordaunt’s article gives a fascinating glimpse of how women are portrayed in the

contemporary cultures.

One of the most problematic issues for the fiction writers at the dusk of the 20th

century was that whether works of fiction that does not revolve around white Americans

could be considered as applicable to every single American. It was a common practice that

books written about white Americans were considered as representing the true human
 [Writer's surname] 4

conditions, whereas the books written about women were considered as representing women,

and books written about African American women are considered as “only” representing

African American women. Some early critics applauded Walker for presenting her personal

experiences in the rural South in order to represent the situation of African American women

like “Barbara Smith, in a review for Ms., admires Walker’s skill at exploring “with honesty

the texture and terrors of Black women’s lives.” In a review for The Crisis, the magazine of

the NAACP, Mercedes Wright argues that Walker’s characters face their particular conflicts

because they live in a racist and sexist society.” Retrieved December 19, 2008 from

http://www.answers.com/topic/roselily-story-6

Some other early reviewers also acknowledged Walker’s characters and felt that her

stories could be more widely applicable like “writing for Bestsellers, Oscar Bouise reports

that Walker had enabled him to appreciate the experiences of these women, and praises her as

a “master of style.” V. S. Nyabongo praises Walker in Books Abroad for presenting a

collection of stories which, through women’s stories, reflect on themes that are significant for

all people.” Retrieved December 19, 2008 from http://www.answers.com/topic/roselily-story-

Alice Hall Petry has shown in her essay “Walker: The Achievement of the Short

Fiction,” that Walker’s women are kept into love and trouble by situations that are not in their

own hands. She has noted that marriage has nothing to offer to these women and neither the

religion has. Mary Helen Washington also seems to be agreeing to the notion, in “An Essay

on Alice Walker,” she has shown her opinion that Roselily is actually trapped and cut down

by old-fashioned morals, her superstition and also by customs that have tried in every way to

cut women from their right to live peacefully.

It was during 1994, when “Roselily” suddenly caught attention of many followed by

an order from California Department of Education to remove from a statewide reading test.
 [Writer's surname] 5

This demand for removal originally came from an assemblage known as Traditional Values

Coalition, who named the story as anti-religious. The much raised concern over Roselily’s

confession of not believing in God, and her husband’s faith in Islam, and the subtly disguised

questioning of matrimony itself and its potential effect over the tenth graders was the force

behind the demand. On the other hand, backers of the story’s inclusion say that it is a much

needed requirement of including challenging and thought-provoking stories in the curricula

dealing with real-world issues, around us. Interestingly enough, in the same year Walker

received the honor of being declared as a “state treasure” by the governor of California for

her contributions to literature.

Walker, later, collected the text of “Roselily” along with her two other censored

pieces writing, supporting and opposing letters to the editor and some transcripts of the State

Board of Education’s hearings on the issue in a book named Banned. As expected, just like

any other case of book removal, the exclusion of “Roselily” from California test created a

whole renewed interest in the author and the story, and that certainly helped in bringing it to

the attention of the later generations.

“Roselily” remained essentially a much-admired but very seldom discussed story and

received the deserving notice after Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning in 1983 and an American

Book Award for her much cherished creation The Color Purple.

After The Color Purple, people started complaining that Walker has stereotyped her

male characters as some negative women-eaters, and her women, as perpetually resilient. But

Roselily, can be presented as an example which has displayed no special valor in her

situation. “In an essay titled ‘Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: A Spiritual Kinship,’

Alma Freeman compares Roselily with Janie Crawford, the protagonist in Hurston’s Their

Eyes Were Watching God, and finds that, unlike Janie, Roselily accepts her entrapment.

Donna Haisty Winchell agrees that Roselily is an example of the women in In Love and
 [Writer's surname] 6

Trouble who are not seen ‘fighting back successfully against preconceived, stultifying, and

restrictive notions of women’s roles.’”

Works Cited

Mordaunt, Owen G. Respectability Restored in Abioseh Nicol’s “The Truly Married

Woman,” Echoed in Alice Walker’s “Roselily”. International Third World Studies.

Journal and Review. Volume 13, p. 11-14. 2002.

Nyhagen, Ragnhild. Roselily -A short story by Alice Walker. 1997. Trondheim

Katedralskole. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from

<<home.online.no/~helhoel/elev.htm

Walker, Alice. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. (19670. (reprint) Harvest

.Books (Harcourt), 2003, pp. 3-9