Abstract

"Double consciousness," defined by Du Bois as the African-American's sense of always looking at himself through the eyes of White Americans, is examined in the light of five African-American novels: Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins's Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South; Jean Toomer's Cane; Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; Richard Wright's The Outsider, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Although Du Boisian double consciousness is frequently viewed as being inherently deplorable, a textual analysis of the five novels under discussion reveals that the questions surrounding the concept are much more complex and far-reaching in their ramification than they first appear. Pauline Hopkins's characters in Contending Forces represent this complexity most vividly. Abraham, Dora, Sappho, Will, and Arthur are created by Hopkins as foils to those who see themselves as confined to an unhappy existence in America because of their race. Despite the anxieties that accompany their dual loyalties in America, Hopkins's characters manage to remain optimistic and psychologically healthy. In contrast, the characters in Jean Toomer's Cane are psychologically split. Their split and hybrid states are heightened by the northern migration, American notion of "progress" with its attendant emphasis on rationalism, technology, and urbanization, and the accompanying tendency to abandon traditional roots. In a similar vein, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the protagonist's quest to make it the "American" way, and his growing identification with his Black community, reveal double consciousness as a desire to transcend a state of liminality and achieve union in a community. The Invisible Man's brightest moment of existence is experienced when he is in Harlem, living and fighting for his fellow Black inhabitants. In Richard Wright's The Outsider, double consciousness is initially repressed and takes on an existential and metaphysical dimension. Du Boisian double consciousness emerges only when Cross is forced to confront his outside status as an African-American in a hostile, alienating White society. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye calls attention to the media and American standards of beauty as factors that create a sense of twoness among African-Americans. The entire Breedlove family is a metaphor for those African-Americans who see themselves as marks of ugliness and abnormality. For Pecola, the result is self-hatred and, ultimately, insanity. As a hermeneutic tool for interpreting African-American literary texts, the trope of double consciousness is multilayered and can, accordingly, be misleading if taken too literally. As a psychological state, it is a complex phenomenon which repels all efforts to harness too tightly. It is precisely this complexity and elusiveness that give significance to the trope of double consciousness for African-American criticism