A Role of the Women Essays -- Literary Analysis, A Raisin In the Sun

The Role of a Woman In a Raisin in the Sun is a play about a family that lives on the South side of Chicago, a section of the city Hansberry once described as â€Å" a place apart†, where â€Å" each piece of our living is a protest â€Å". After the death of Walter Young (Big Walter), his wife, Lena (Mama), is the beneficiary of a $10,000 insurance policy. The money will be used to provide for the family’s future. Race, race relation and big Walter’s insurance money supply the thematic context for Hansberry’s play; but the Younger family is, essentially, searching for its place within American society. Hansberry once pointed out that even a â€Å"Negro family â€Å"has â€Å"many gradations as we see in a Raisin in the Sun the women portray the progression women have had from one generation to the next. Mama is prominent traditional black feminist role. Park stated that a very strong and pervasive female culture has survived within black communities, but its role has been disguised by negative â€Å"matriarchy† arguments of white and black men (4).The black mother situates black feminism in the place where it is ordinarily and traditionally practiced by black women; in the home. While part of the mainstream, academic feminist agenda has dermphasized mothering as an important part of women’s lives, to do so with black women would be to dismiss a traditional locus of black female power. Parks stated that in a Raisin in the Sun Niara Sudarkasa produced a body of a thropological work which presents the female – centered household as the Afrocentrically traditional form (5).Parks stated that the full bodied and strong, she is one, of those women of a certain grace and beauty who wear it so unobtrusively that it takes a while to notice †¦. Being a woman who has adju... ...e â€Å"side hustles†, the postmodern equivalent of Ruth laundry service, operated out of the home. â€Å"The black women’s role in the physical survival and is growth for her sake and her family’s sake (6). Ruth role is a house wife trying to stand by her husband side. In a Raisin in the Sun the three women plays an important part of the play. Each woman repents a different kind of generation. Mama repents the old fashion kind of women black in her days well on the other hands Beneatha repents the new women. Well is just in the middle of Mama and Beneatha so that would make Ruth a combination of both. As we see in a Raisin in the Sun the women portray the progression women have had from one generation to the next. The women in a Raisin in the Sun have a lot of new, old and in the middle kind of women that portray the progression from generation to generation.