Gender Roles In Alice Walker's Meridian

Meridian novel was published in 1976 by Alice Walker. This novel reflects her real life and real experiences in 1960s, the Civil Right Movement. In " Meridian", Meridian Hill is a main character who is a black student at the fictitious Saxon College. She becomes active in the Civil Rights Movement. Other characters are Truman Held and his wife, Lynne Rabinowitz. They are activist in civil right movements. They fight against the violence, rape, racism and their inner struggles in this novel. Meridian’s journey is marked by physical and sexual abuse, a broken marriage, and a child she decides to give away. She leaves her husband and gives up her child, distances herself from her devout Christian mother and devotes her life to activism (Lauret, …show more content…
The next character, Truman Held is ex-lover of Meridian and an activist in civil right. He subscribes to traditional notions of gender roles. He believes the man is the dominant force in a relationship, and his assumptions of male dominance are the source of his arrogance and short-sightedness. It leads him to be a victim of the sexual attitudes of his world and times. Truman gets back his life and find the purpose and meaning in his life when his mind is free out the various confusing presences. The last character, Lynne Rabinowitz is a white student who has arrived to take part in civil rights movement at Saxon College. She wants to sympathize with the reality of racism as it affects individual lives. However, her whiteness will always set her apart. She remains an outsider. After the death of her daughter, Camara, she is ispossessed, with no identifiable future. Throughout this novel, Walker wants to say to young people how black women in the past faced to struggles, discrimination, racism and sexual violence. They could pass over because they did not give up their hopes in

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