Street by Ann Petry Racism Term Paper

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The gothic elements in the novel serve to portray even better the squalor and the fierceness of the environment in which they were impelled to live. Even though Harlem was an African-American community, the life of the black woman was by no means improved by this fact. The place itself was degenerate and full of crime and as such, it did not offer any protection. All this was due to the racial discrimination of the white people against the black. Although the black had some economical and political rights, the society was very far from equality. The white people simply considered them less than human, and persecuted them only in a subtler way than during the years of slavery. A black person could not rise to a better social or economical statute simply because the prejudices against him or her were permanent obstacles. As Petry shows, the condition of the black woman was even more dramatic as she was constantly objectified as a sexual instrument by the male opinion. Lutie's case as presented in the novel is more adduces evidence for this situation. Despite her intelligence and her singing talents, she is unable to make it in a righteous way. When she refuses the sexual price that she is supposed to pay for her career, she is simply dismissed as a singer.

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Furthermore, when she tries to get a loan so as to take away her little boy from the children's shelter, she is again asked for sexual favors. In her rage, she kills Boots, emphasizing thus the impossibility of staying pure in an environment contaminated by crime.

Thus, Petry's novel is an evocative story of the period known as the Harlem Renaissance in America. Despite the fact that it marked the beginning of real freedom for the African- Americans, this period was nevertheless punctuated by racial and gender discrimination. The condition of the black woman was one of the worst possible from a social point-of-view, due to the double disadvantage given by skin-color and by gender at the same time. Petry's book thus pinpoints the injustice of this situation, and its disastrous influence on the life of the individual. A black woman was condemned even from her birth to live in mean and squalid conditions, an object of mockery for the white people and of mere sexual desire for the black. Any such person was unable thus to evolve as an individual, and proved to be a social puppet left at the mercy of both racial and gender discrimination.

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