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Echoes of the past: representation of black women’s quests for selfhood in Toni Morrison’s fiction
Date
2025
Abstract
This thesis examines the representation of black women’s quests for selfhood in Toni Morrison’s fiction by drawing on Maureen Murdock’s theory of The Heroine’s Journey, supplemented by black feminist thought and spectrality theories. While Joseph Campbell’s monomyth has long defined the structure of the heroic quest, it has been widely critiqued for its male-centeredness and limited applicability to women’s experiences. Murdock offers a compelling alternative by framing the heroine’s journey as one of reconciliation between the inner feminine and masculine, a structure that proves especially useful in reading Morrison’s exploration of coming to terms with fractured relationships with mothers and fathers. Morrison’s fiction – particularly Beloved (1987), Sula (1973), and Song of Solomon (1977) –resonates with many of Murdock’s core concerns and stages. However, Morrison extends and challenges Murdock’s model by situating the black woman’s quest within a broader historical and communal context. The legacy of slavery, Afro-American familial structures, and black women’s personal pasts in Morrison’s work introduce a spectral dimension to the heroine’s journey – one that requires attending to the persistent presence of the past. To address this, the thesis draws on Derrida’s theory of hauntology and Avery Gordon’s concept of social haunting, as well as black feminist perspectives that centre on home, community, and ancestry. Through close readings of the three selected texts, the analysis demonstrates that the black woman’s quest in Morrison is not a purely individual undertaking but one fundamentally shaped by communal ties, ancestral memory, and intergenerational trauma. While Murdock’s model offers a valuable framework for tracing the mythical structure of the inner journey, its grounding in a white, Western conception of individuation renders it insufficient to fully capture Morrison’s vision of black women’s quests. Ultimately, Morrison reimagines the heroine’s quest not as a solitary path to wholeness, but as a continuous, relational process of negotiating selfhood through the intertwined forces of nurturing others, home, community and ancestral memory.
Supervisor
Description
Publisher
University of Limerick
Citation
Files
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Mina_2025_Echoes.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.26 MB
ULRR Identifiers
Funding code
Funding Information
Sustainable Development Goals
Type
Thesis
Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/